"For the Blood Is the Life" (1905)

This vampire tale by F. Marion Crawford, the special effects specialist of yore and master of the florid title ("The Dead Smile," "The Screaming Skull"), starts with an interesting optical illusion, which transmutes into ghostly trappings and various impossible events, and then finally here comes mayhem the way only vampires can deliver it. The scene is an ancient tower on the Mediterranean in a section of Italy reputed to be the birthplace of Judas Iscariot. Here a couple of globe-trotting colonialists have dinner in the fresh air of the rooftop at sunset and attempt to figure out the mystery. On the side of a faraway hill which they can see from the tower there appears to be a burial mound and a body lying on top of it. It only appears in moonlight, the host notes, and when the guest obligingly hikes over to it some distance away he sees that the vision changes when you approach, and the body disappears. The host, watching from afar, sees the body take the form of mist, embracing his guest and clinging to him, though the guest is well able to make the hike back. Among other things, it sounds like a long night. Well, it's quite a phenomenon, and yes, now that guest asks, there are local stories and legends about it, and please don't mind me the host if I tell it in two parts without quotation marks. Both of these embedded stories are quite busy, about stolen treasure, legacies denied, murder most foul, a vampire creature, and inevitably ruby-red lips, blood-sucking, and a wooden stake produced and utilized. I never quite understood why Cristina here suffers such a terrible end. No proper Christian burial following her murder is probably the answer but I'm also talking about the murder itself. She already had a vaguely vampiric look even when she was alive, "more like a gipsy than any girl I ever saw about here. She had very red lips and very black eyes, she was built like a greyhound, and had the tongue of the devil ... but she was a good girl." Whatever you say, boss. She never seems to get a break here. After a while the story is full-on vampire hunting and we all know what a bloody mess that can lead to. I can't make up my mind about the strange way the story is set up. It's almost so awkward that's what I like, backing into itself with the optical illusion and long hike, followed by story hour. I also wished Crawford or the storyteller had a little more sympathy for Cristina, whose main crime appears to be only that she looks like a gipsy and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are plenty of good details here and it is always competent, but it dares yet does not always transcend the many ruts of the vampire tale.

The Big Book of the Masters of Horror, Weird and Supernatural Short Stories, pub. Dark Chaos
Vampire Tales: The Big Collection, pub. Dark Chaos
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