"One hundred years of vampire cinema: opera capes and neck-nuzzling, glowing beauties and monster-kid wish-fulfilment. Gone! The whole lot swallowed up by this eerie bacchanal of sex and death."
That's Alec Worley on Substack, talking about Robert Eggers' 2024 remake of Nosferatu. Personally I found the movie disappointing after Eggers' previous work (especially The Lighthouse and The Northman) and would have spent my time better re-watching Werner Herzog's version or F W Murnau's 1922 original -- both so much eerier. (Spoiler-free review here if you're interested.)
My own preference is for the unglamorous and grave-cold variety of vampire, not the kind that snarls and growls and prowls like a big cat. It's a taste that may have been formed originally by Gerald W Page's short story "Thirst", which swept away my childhood notions of the vampire, acquired from reading Dracula when I was 10 years old*, and gave my teen self an unplugged, proto-punk take on the myth. Mr Page was kind enough to find the time to correspond with aspiring writers like me, so he may have discussed his reasons for wanting to break the mold. When I have time I shall go through his letters (which of course I have kept these fifty-three years) to see what he had to say about the story.
Later in my teens I was inspired by Gryphon's song "The Unquiet Grave" -- not specifically vampiric, admittedly, but chilling all the same with lines like this:
"My lips they are as cold as clay, my breath smells earthy strong,
And if you kiss my cold grey lips, your days they won't be long."
Robert Dale, with his deep knowledge of British folklore, encouraged this predilection with his very chilling depiction of Pyron the reaper, a vampire in the Brymstone campaign. Oliver Johnson a few decades later gave us another feral vampire in his Lightbringers game. This is from the game write-up:
"A pitiful mewling cry came from a thorn thicket to the south of the clearing. It sounded like a small child in distress or perhaps a snared bird. A narrow crawl way snaked deep into the thorns towards the sound. Nafaj squirmed into the tunnel. The thorns snagged cruelly at his clothing and skin. When he was several yards into the thicket, he saw a boyish white face staring back at him down the darkened tunnel of thorns. Though he had steeled himself for such an encounter, his will deserted him as the creature started whispering its blandishments. To his horror he found himself crawling forward. Soon he was next to the vampire. All its limbs had been ripped off; it was but a torso and a head. The vampire drank Nafaj’s blood and instructed him to return later that night.
"Nafaj emerged from the thicket. The setting sun causing him discomfort, he had thrown the hood of his cloak over his head, but none of the others thought to question why this was. He was carrying a dead bird and explained the noise had been its dying song. The others were eager to be gone from the accursed place, but the marquis’ horse was suddenly lame and this caused a delay. Darkness fell, a temporary camp was made and watches held throughout the night."
The natural habitat of these revenants isn't a Victorian drawing room, nor even a Gothic castle. They are the dead who won't stay quiet, clawing their way up out of the dirt of the graveyard and crawling along ditches and over country lanes because enough of a spark of consciousness remains that they are jealous of the living and want to steal their warmth and lifeblood.
Such walking-corpse vampires can still have uncanny powers, like Gerwin in the Jewelspider scenario "Death Is Only The Beginning" who is able to hide himself from mortal sight after dark, though I prefer them to be nothing more than bloodless cadavers with a raging thirst, like the thing that visits you in your sleep in Workshop of the Gods:
‘Wake up!’
‘My friend... I dreamt a beautiful vampire was about to drink my blood.’
‘Beautiful?’ cries your companion in a voice thick with horror. ‘It is a monster. See!’
You look where he’s pointing and in a split-second you’re on your feet, heart pounding with adrenaline. Because only the vampire’s appearance was a dream. The rest is all too real. You see the vampire now as she really is – not a pale and beautiful woman, but a rotted corpse with maggots writhing in her pock-marked cheeks and lustreless eyes that leak brown slime. Clammy strips of dead flesh hang from her bones. The room is filled with the stench of decay.
She lurches forward, swollen grey fingers reaching for you, her lipless teeth clacking eagerly.
Sleep tight!
* To be fair to Mr Stoker, the Count is not intended to be a typical vampire. His wives and Lucy Westenra present as chillingly inhuman, nearly mindless vessels of simple appetite.
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