Devendra P. Varma - Voices From The Vaults: Authentic Tales Of Vampires And Ghosts (Key Porter, 1987)
Introduction - Devendra P. Varma
Margaret L. Carter - The Count's Soliloquy (Verse)
Peter Allen - Domdaniel
F. G. Loring - The Tomb Of Sarah
E. F. Benson - The Room In The Tower
Theophile Gautier - The Beautiful Vampire
Vlad Kinkopf - Nellie's Grave
Peter Underwood - The Italian Count
Rabindranath Tagore - The Hungry Stones
Margaret L. Carter - A Call In The Blood
Robert Bloch - The Cloak
P'u Sung-Ling - The Painted Skin
F. Marion Crawford - For The Blood Is The Life
J. S. Le Fanu - Shalken The Painter
Bram Stoker - The Judge's House
Perceval Landon - Thurnley Abbey
M. R. James - Count Magnus
Amelia B. Edwards - The Phantom Coach
Anonymous [Montague Summers] - The Man On The Stairs
Alexis Tolstoy - The Family Of The Vourdalak
[Malcolm J. Rymer] - Varney The Vampyre [extracts]
Not 'American' at all, but Canadian (i really should do something about that section heading). The "authentic" is stronging it a touch, but this is still a handsome antho and well worthy of your time for Varma's intro and the handful of lesser-known stories, each of which are memorable in their own right. None more- so than:
Peter Underwood - The Italian Count; Allegedly an incident in the life of Montague Summers as told to the author by the great man himself at Richmond in 1947.
Northern Italy, 1909. Monty, possessed of his famous 17th century vampire talisman, investigates several strange deaths in the area, each of the bodies having been drained of blood.
As he drew near the wild and mountainous countryside that was the centre of the reputed visitation, Summers ... had an overwhelming impression of entering a bewitched area ... although it was daylight a large bat swooped above him as he trudged along a dusty and deserted path. As dusk falls he arrives at an Inn where he's greeted by a young girl - clearly a vampire victim - who drops dead at his feet. Her final act in this life is to dip her finger in a pool of her blood and write the name of her assailant; "The Count".
Laying her body on an ottoman and covering it as best he can, the travel-weary Summers festoons his room with garlic and dozes off. At dawn he is awoken by a knocking sound and discovers a huge bat at the window - "its tiny blood-stained teeth clearly visible" - which just as suddenly flies off in the direction of the castle perched on the mountainside.
When the dead girls parents arrive at the Inn they bury her in the garden and roll a heavy stone over the grave, covering the whole with garlic bulbs and a crucifix. Summers learns from them that the Count is Lord over the entire region and that his word is the law. The only persons who ever meet him are those he sends for, all of whom happen to be young and pretty girls who, once they've entered the castle, are never seen again.
Summers, his suspicions aroused, secures an interview with the Count, ostensibly to explore the architecture of the old ruin, but is warned beforehand: "I am an old man and you must forgive my eccentric ways. Many years ago I was attacked with a crucifix. It appears impolite, but I must ask you not to carry a crucifix ... on your person during the visit."
The stalwart vampire hunter shows up at dusk.
Arriving at the dark door with its heavy surround in the shape of a bat with outstretched wings, Summers reached for the bell pull, a plaited rope which felt suspiciously like human hair, and at the end of which hung what could have been a baby's skull ... as he entered a strikingly beautiful woman appeared from nowhere. She was dressed in a long black velvet dress that clung to her figure ... "The Master will see you at the top of the stairs." It was such an odd voice, almost as though the speaker had a mouthful of thick liquid, but already the girl had turned away. He noticed her entrancing figure in clinging velvet, and her long blonde hair hanging to her waist.
She paused at the foot of the stairs and pointed the way to Summers up the stairs. He nodded to her and began to mount and then, on impulse, he turned to glance at her again. But she had not expected him to look back and now she stood boldly glaring at him, her eyes gleaming and mouth open - revealing enormous blood-stained fangs! Behind a door "all covered with some material like dark skin or leather, and studded with what looked like human teeth" Summers at last meets his host. During their tete-a-tete - in which the Count lets on that he is fully aware of the identity of his English visitor - a mob storms the castle and sets it ablaze. While we are still marvelling at how these subjugated peasants decided on this very moment to rebel, our man is being attacked. Just in time he whips out his talisman and thrusts it in the faces of his assailants, and is finally helped to safety by the old couple whose daughter was killed at the Inn. The Castle is burnt to the ground.
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, irrefutable evidence that vampires exist.
And people say that 'dear Monty' was mad!
And that Peter Underwood is credulous.
Also includes:
Vlad Kinkopf - Nellie's Grave: All Hallows Eve at a Rhode Island cemetery. Narrator visits the grave of suspected vampire Nellie Vaughan who died of consumption in 1889, aged nineteen. When darkness falls he hears muffled sounds issuing from below the soil, then:
"Out of the tomb rose the faint outline of a young woman. She glided toward me with a smile on her pock-marked face and outstretched her arms." Our hero slashes his arm with a knife and, after drinking his blood, Nellie cheerfully recounts a brief history of vampirism on Rhode Island from 1636 culminating in the details of her own exploits and those of a childhood friend, Mercy Brown, whom she preyed upon.
Some of this material is allegedly factual.
Margaret L. Carter - A Call In The Blood: Trad vampirism in the Blue Ridge Mountains, told from the viewpoint of the classically beautiful Laura who is far than enamoured of her condition. She picks up Victor at the Halloween ball and reluctantly goes about draining him.
Peter Allen - Domdaniel: Trad vampire, Scottish setting: superstitious villagers urge the narrator and his family to pass on their way, but, of course, they seek shelter in the big house where they encounter Henrock and his master, Damon Domain. Hero's wife and daughter fall victim to the fiends, and tale ends on a grim note as he struggles for the strength to impale his loved ones in their coffins. Splendid tosh.
