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Of late, the figure of the vampire has seemed less thoroughly frightening, at least on television, than used to be the case in the good old days of Bram Stoker and Bela Lugosi. Softened, romanticized, almost wholesomely eroticized, he has sometimes appeared almost a bad boyfriend who might be reformed rather than a being that can kill or even worse, condemn you to an eternity of half-life.
In his brief introduction to this collection of twenty short stories, the editor, Christopher Golden, states his objective in calling for new vampire tales from contemporary writers with an interest in the genre was to reinvigorate the vampire as a figure of fear. In short, he says, "what matters is the terror." And, by and large, there is terror in these tales, and a good helping of horror as well.
On the whole, however, what is lacking are the creaky trappings of the old-fashioned Gothic vampire story. No castles, no bats, no garlic necklaces, no stark white makeup and staring dark eyes. Most of these tales take place in the United States and in thoroughly wholesome environments, though some writers look back to ancient origins, like Seanan McGuire, who, in a kind of vampire melting pot connects her Indiana vampire in "Something Lost, Something Gained," with "the vampires the Europeans had brought with them, and later the jiangshi of the Chinese and the patasola of the South Americans."
Some of the writers generate fear by placing events in the most ordinary of settings. Scott Smith's "Up in Old Vermont," for example, takes place in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom where a woman in her early thirties in desperate straits has gone to live as housekeeper with an elderly couple. All goes well until it doesn't and in true Shirley Jackson fashion, the town and all in it are revealed to be maintaining their placid existence through a terrible bargain. Charlaine Harris' "Miss Fondevant" is also set in the most pedestrian of places, a classroom in a southern town in 1970, where the sixth-grade teacher has a remarkable ability to elicit good behaviour from the most rebellious of children.
Michael Koryta's vampire in "On the Dark Side of Sunlight Basin" has no European antecedents, however. Here an obnoxious trophy hunter somewhere near Yellowstone Park offends his Native guide, Native traditions, and the law of Nature itself and pays a terrible price.
Despite Golden's desire to return the vampire to its traditional place as a source of pure terror, a number of the stories reflect contemporary concerns. Several authors imagine vampirism as a kind of plague, like, say, Ebola - but far worse. Kelley Armstrong's "We Are All Monsters Here" provides the most detailed picture of a society collapsing under the twin onslaughts of vampire attacks and, far worse, fear of vampire attacks. The political reference is evident but not overwhelming.
The world in Brian Keene's "The Last Supper" is one in which few vampires survive because few humans do The vampire protagonist is a lonely being indeed and a starving one at that. The ending of this one is particularly chilling. It is told from the vampire's point of view as are the final two in the volume and these are among the strongest of the lot. John Ajvide Lindqvist's Swedish truck driver tells us how he got to be a vampire, how he feels about his new condition and how little control he has over what it makes him do. There is, as he says, nothing romantic about it and the reader must sympathize with him, which quite takes the edge off the horror. But David Wellington's "Blue Hell" restores it in full force. We may sympathize with the vampire here as well, but the images of the blue lake and what lies beneath its surface are very hard to shake.
§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, October 2015
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