13, a. A step back in time
Allow me to drag you into history a moment. Mine, and the seemingly impossibile existence of another whose very reality was about to shape my existence forever. As I stood upon that curling, ever-descending ivory staircase, looking down through the tumbling mist and out at the underground vista that rolled on and on unto a distant horizon, my thoughts began tumbling over themselves, jostling for prominence. Right then, all the pieces of a jigsaw I'd been trying to piece together for as long as I could remember seemed to take shape, and form the big picture all at once.
To understand how those individual pieces came to be, allow me to give you an insight into the fascination that facilitated both Billy's initial courting of my soul and my subsequent transition into a vampire so seamlessly.
During the years I spent as a human (how easy it is to think of that in the past tense, already), I studied vampires with the gusto of a bumble bee fizzing at a fresh summer bloom, or at a highly polished window it refuses to see, despite bouncing off the glass a half dozen times before it realises its going to have to find another way back to the hive.
As a child, a pre-teen, I spent hours buried in the musty, forest-floor aroma of my local library and its limited offering of Gothic horror material. At that time, we lived in a small suburb whose populace's aspirations scarce reached beyond a pint after the 9-5 or working the five-day shift, plus overtime on Saturday mornings (when the economy could support it) to afford a break in the sun once a year. The demand for 100-year old horror was negligible against that background, and I soon exhausted the scant supply in the children's section.
During those junior school years, between 8-11 years old (Key Stage 2, Years 3 to 6 in today's money), I'd also spend Saturday nights with my nan (she on babysitting duty) in front of her small black and white TV. We'd watch Tales of the Unexpected followed by a dip into the Hammer House of Horror vaults, she with her Bushmills, me with tea laced with a drop of that golden Irish elixir.
As soon as we heard granddad's key (eventually) find it's way into the front door lock as he, my mom and dad returned from 'The Rose', either my nan or I would leap up to quickly switch over to Match of the Day. Buoyed with booze, my parents were never any the wiser to my nan and I's secret, indulged quite innocently as my sister slept soundly in her cot in the other half of the long walk-through living and dining room of their post-war end terrace.
The fact that being caught watching these films by my parents scared me more than any of those films and shorts themselves at that tender age said it all. Yet make an impression, enthrall me with their legends they surely did. They were the hook that snagged my imagination and tugged me on this lifelong journey into the macabre.
But even back then, I realised I had to get more creative if I was to satisfy this itch, whose root seemed to live directly beneath my skin. Yet, no matter how many times I reread the limited material at my disposal, or watched the repeats with my nan, the itch never permeated the upper epidermis far enough for me to satisfy it, no matter how hard I scratched.
Based on the scant supply of (often censored) source material I could access to guide me, I felt that there was something 'off' with Pinewood's and Tinseltown's renditions of vampires on the big screen. Thus, utterly convinced there was more to those myths, I decided to branch out. But how could I get at such material? This was, if I've not mentioned it, many years before the Internet. More Starsky & Hutch and Northern Soul than Google, Facebook and Twitter.
I needed to look beyond the Makt Myrkranna (as yet unknown beyond Iceland) and its predecessor, which shaped the perception of the vampire for the whole of the 20th century. As insightful, ground-breaking and romantic as Bram Stoker's novel is, he undoubtedly penned it 'of the time', and was driven (at least in part) by a sense of commercialism. To rely solely on that text would seriously blinker my perception.
I have no doubt that Bram had a genuine desire to interpret the tales and legends from the mythical north—the land of the Vikings, their gods and spirits that fuelled enviable supernatural anecdotes, to which he travelled more than once—to a new audience. His genius lay in that he chose a real Eastern European monster to relate the essence of those Nordic legends. But, having found the perfect template in Vlad Țepeș, how could he not mix the romantic north and barbaric east in his mind once The Impaler had sank his teeth into Stoker's psyche?
I am also not in the least sorry that my formative years were too early for the shiny, chiselled 21st century vampires, whose eyelashes are longer than their fangs, who possess cheekbones you could peal potatoes on and flaunt bodies that have spent more time in a gymnasium than the entire Ottoman army put together. Thankfully, back when I was at junior school, those vampires were still a long way off, the figment of an as-yet unborn marketing executive who held scant regard for the traditional blood-sucking ghoul.
At the time of my innocent, if not engrossed and burgeoning, passion for research, the type of vampires de rigeur in Hollywood ported receding hairlines that were scraped back into a fang-shaped 'V' above their forehead, waxed, bushy eyebrows and svelte midriffs held in tight by both cummerbunds and covert camera angles.
A little sexier than Nosferatu, mayhap, those Hammer vampires. But they'd never hold a candle in the sex appeal department to the uber-buff Buffys', twinkling True Bloods' and voluptuous Vampire Diaries' vampires who would dominate the YA market at the turn of the 21st century as Dracula's descendents went dynamically and downloadably digital.
When these 21st century vampires came along, they became instantly forgetable. Had Bram Stoker needed to reduce his anti-hero to a powder-puffed Adonis to sell his story? Absolutely not. To me, 21st century vampires were little more than cheap vehicles whom schedulers used to carry adverts on commercial channels. Sordid, turgid, vapid, insipid and never should've did, in my humble opinion.
13. b, I've got a cute face and I'm not afraid to use it
But back to the past; one Saturday morning in the library, I found I'd read and reread all the material I cared to that was availed of minors. After much consideration over what to do about it, as only a 10-year old can ponder such things, I ambled up to the reception desk. As soon as one of the librarians was free, I asked her if I could see the 'adult' books on vampires.
Knowing the connotation of 'adult' now, I realise in hindsight why the young female attendant gave me such a shocked, if not amused, look in response. I didn't know that she'd interpret 'adult' in an altogether different sense, just as I didn't know that if I'd have garnered a similar response from said female just a year later upon having been thrust amongst gaggles of new ones at senior school, I may have blushed the colour of a Remembrance Day poppy at her raised eyebrow and crooked little smile. But like stardust on a twilight moon, her coy little look's sentiment was away, way, way over my young, Gothic horror-filled head.
To my good fortune, an older lady librarian—who 'did The Jumble' with my nan to raise funds for the Catholic church—overheard and understood what I wanted. She finished with her customer and turned to look at me, not without concern, and asked, "What would your nan say about you reading that heathen nonsense, young Sebastian?"
I hesitated—only a second—before answering, "Actually, my nan has lots of books about horror. James Herbert, Guyenne Smith, Rambey Camsell. 'Better the devil you know', is what she says, Mrs. Rogers." (Apologies to Guy N. Smith and Ramsey Campbell, but being in the spotlight at that moment confuddled my tongue.) (Also, apologies to my nan, may she rest in peace, if my admission there got her into trouble with the church committee.)
Mrs. Rogers could tell I hadn't quite finished what I wanted to say by the shaping and reshaping of the muscles on my innocent little face. She let me get my words in order and I eventually offered, "But I don't think nan lets my mom know I read them. No, I don't think mommy would be very pleased at all if she knew. You're not going to tell, are you, Mrs. Rogers?" I flashed her my best blue-eyed, blond-haired smile, hoping to get her on board.
Mrs. Rogers, real name Kathleen, whispered something to her young colleague, whence they both tittered. She then walked around the ancient, scarred grainy brown wood reception desk, her leading hand first, pointing palm down in my direction.
"Here's what we're going to do," she said, taking my hand in hers, "if you can promise to sit and stay in the quiet section of the children's library," (a newish room, a new initiative, but on the opposite side of the building to the main library), "and keep very, very quiet, you tell me what it is you want to read about, and I'll see what we've got and fetch it for you. How does that sound?"
I nodded and bowed my head, as shy as you like and let her lead me away. I am sure that the younger girl behind the counter saw me tuck a smug smile into my t-shirt pocket as I followed Mrs. Rogers out of the main room.
But there it was: the beginning of a learning curve of infinite proportions to scale between those New English Library and Pan paperbacks to where my journey of discovery would take me, to the here and now. It would give you a nose bleed just thinking about it.
13, c. Getting the taste for it
My passion for vampires, beyond those creations warped by the minds of authors and directors alike, had to be satisfied somewhere. The journey I eventually embarked upon forced me down the road of ancient tales and transcripts, those of the less documented histories of the vampire.
The first successful scratch that got beneath my skin did eventually happen in that little library in a town that's now all but a name on a junction on The Black Country Route spine road. The foundation had lain in the volumes that Kathleen Rogers, true to her word, stole into the children's section for me. Bless. But the cornerstones were about to be set in concrete forever.
Over those two years between 10 and 11, I must have read the very basics about every type of vampire, from almost every country in Europe. Surface knowledge, nothing too in depth or, well, scary.
I also learned about a whole host of other supernatural beings whose legends were so deeply entrenched in the subcultures of the world's longest surviving tribes that they'd managed to survive almost to the end of the second millennium Anno Domini in tact, remaining as well known today as at their myth's inception.
What Mrs. Rogers fed me was enough to keep my interest alive, but deviated little from those monochrome Saturday nights sat with my nan in 'The House' or with Roald Dahl. I built on those tales with books bought for me for birthdays and Christmas presents, a new direction that was neither football nor The Jam, so surprised my parents.
These gifts included, amongst others, collections of Poe and Lovecraft and a couple of St. Michaels' collections of '65 classic tales of the mysterious and supernatural' (the exact titles escape me), all written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before the outbreak of the Great War.
Then there were the novels by new authors, the aforementioned Smith (werewolves, bats and crabs), Campbell (the supernatural, supported by the super application of simile, I mean, the absolute best) and Herbert (Rats, Fog and Rats again).
Then, when age 12 happened, everything changed, 'went up a gear', in the parlance of 21st century office managers everywhere. I was thus allowed into the 'adult' section of the local library of my own accord and presented with a new library card confirming as much. Oh, happy day!
I had, of course, seen the expanse of the adult section of the library from the reception desk many times over the years as I'd been checking out books from the children's section. But it wasn't until I began wandering along its aisles on that glorious day that the true extent of its potential fell upon my shoulders like a comfort blanket (or 'sucky sheet', in the case of my sister).
Rows and rows of spines, mostly spinell black in the 'Fiction » Horror' section, glistened in their protective dust jackets beneath the stark fleet of industrial lighting that ever sailed, suspended high above, on an intermittent sea of a trillion dust motes.
Each author was not only offering a story, but also promising a whole new world, an invitation to the reader to step off this planet and into that author's very own mind.
For anyone to allow strangers that very personal privilege, I began to believe that all fiction authors must be a tad mad. Especially horror writers, whose words spilled onto the page (mostly) from the sheer depths of their imagination for both reading pleasure and scrutiny alike.
True, something in real life must have planted the seed of their idea into their psyche. But it was their imagination that nurtured that seed. And then these authors allowed readers (and critics - boooo!) to see into that soup of intellect, the ingredients thereof a heady mix of the author's real life experiences and their interpetation of tales from the very depths of human depravity and twilight worlds. To be judged on those bases? Absolutely barking, all of them.
« « Chapter 12
Updated 2nd June, 2020
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