Okay, this is part two of a post that I started last week. We're
connecting whatever dots we can find to figure out a way (not THE
way) that people might have come up with the vampire myth. If you're
just joining us, go back one entry. We'll wait for you.
So that person lying there in the dark is going to be thinking in
terms of what they already know. Maybe I'm cynical, but I do think a
lot of us look down on the folks who lived back then, judging them to
be ignorant and superstitious. After all, they didn't know about
germs, or electricity, and most of them couldn't read. How smart
could they have been? Well, smart enough to grow their own food,
know how to deliver their own children, and the poorer ones even had
to build their own homes. Could you do that? For that matter, can
you say that you would know about bacteria and viruses if multiple
people hadn't told you about them? Have you ever seen either?
(Here's a hint. You can't see viruses, not even with a microscope.
They're too small)
So that's you and me lying there in the dark, feeling the cold night
air where ever it gets in through the covers. We're hoping that
Aunty Em won't die, but we're hoping even harder that whatever is
slowly killing her won't come after us. Then we hear something.
Sure, it's probably just the house settling, like it has a thousand
times before. But now we're afraid, and we've had lots of time to
wonder just what is making Aunty Em sick. Is it an animal? A man?
Something that only looks like a man?
We might also think about Aunt Bea, who died not too long ago. She
and Aunty Em were so close. Remember that one of the original
legends about vampires was that they were people who came back from
the dead and preyed on members of their former families. But how is
it getting to Aunty Em? Everyone keeps an eye on her during the day,
so it must be something that comes out at night, when everyone is
asleep. Her door is kept closed, and the front door is kept closed
and bolted. Can it become a mist, and just seep in through the gaps
in the windowpane? Can it change its shape and so that it's narrow
enough to slide between the door and the jamb? It has to be able to
do something, right?
But just what is it doing? How is it weakening her? Our family
member has probably seen people die from blood loss before, either in
an accident or by violence (remember the time period that we're
dealing with). Some of the similarities would probably stand out:
turning pale, sluggishness, delirium, falling unconscious, then
dying. Is that what's happening to Aunty Em, they might wonder? But
if whatever is attacking her is bleeding her, where does the blood
go? What is it doing, swallowing it?
Now here I'm going to take a bit of a jump. Because I work with
fiction, I'm allowed to take reasonable jumps, especially if they get
me someplace interesting.
A while back I picked up the King James version of the bible,
determined to go through it from Genesis to Revelation. While I was
trying to get through the old testament, one thing stuck out. Blood
is important. I don't mean blood in terms of being related, I mean
blood that is spilled. When the details and the procedures for the
sacrifices are lain out, we see over and over that the blood belongs
to God. The people might get some of the meat, and the priests
usually got their cut, but the blood was sprinkled on the horns of
the altar. The symbolism of the blood of Christ is important, but
it's human blood we're thinking about. How many makes and remakes of
'Dracula' have used the 'blood is the life' line? That goes back to
Leviticus 17:11.
So if the thought of blood-stealing occurs to us while we're lying
alone in the dark (and we are alone. Even if someone is sharing the
room or the bed, they're probably asleep or too afraid of what's
happening to talk about it. If you can't talk about what's scaring
you, you're alone), that's going to scare us even more, isn't it?
This thing, whatever it is, isn't just killing us. It's tampering
with something sacred, something that may as well have 'Property of
God' stamped on it. What happens to us if we let it take our blood?
There's also a bit in the bible (Leviticus 19:28, among others) about
mutilating ourselves, reminding us that we don't own this flesh and
blood, we're just the caretakers. If we don't stop this intruder
from stealing our blood, is God going to be upset, are we going to
end up damned? End up becoming one of those things and coming back
to the house to attack Uncle Owen? There's a dark sort of symmetry
to that.
These are the kinds of thoughts that might occur to our family member
if they have a sick relative. Now let's change it just a bit.
Remember, these people live with all kinds of phenomenon that they
have no understandable explanation for. Diseases, decay, and
conditions like epilepsy. Again, where no one that we can trust
provides an explanation, we make up our own. Some of the recorded
explanations seem eerily similar to what we've been talking about
here. Demons that posses people and make them fall on the ground,
foaming at the mouth, or who sneak into your dreams night after night
and distract you with naughty visions while stealing your other
bodily fluids, and who even come in male and female varieties. We
don't hear as much about incubi and succubi these days, partly
because we've sort of blended them in with vampires due to their
common characteristics, and partly because we've got a little more
knowledge of human biology and psychology. The form is different,
but the function is the same.
Like I said last week, just a train of thought. Follow it at your
own peril.
I'm slowly slogging through the rewrite of In the Dark, as well as
laying down the first chapter of Red Man Burning. The first chapter
of the latter has our Protagonist as a young boy, and pulling up
relevant chunks of my younger days feels odd, in a good but creepy at
the same time way.
And I'm writing about it.
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