A very souped-up version of the entry on the old board.
Miss Fangy at the height of her powers
Forged out of the ashes of the Damned's
Flashman Society, under Carole Bohanon's leadership the Vampyre Society managed ten chaotic, often inspired and yet, I guess, frequently traumatic years as arguably the UK's premier club for devotees of our fang-faced friends. At a time when the few English vampire outfits neither catered for, nor seemed particularly aware of the younger, punky-goth element, the group brought together countless disparate fellow enthusiasts, many of whom, taking Carole's lead, got up off their own backsides and set their own madcap schemes in motion.
The emphasis being on celebration - on fun, on dressing up and living out your own particular Anne Rice/ Hammer/
Lost Boys/
The Crow derived fantasies ensured, of course, that it all got taken way too seriously by the self-appointed moral guardians of the "scene" and gave them plenty to wring their pious hands about.
The Society's magazine,
The Velvet Vampire was a classy effort, with contributions from Brian Stableford, D. F. Lewis and ex-Sisters' bassist Patricia Morrison, but my favourite issues were the early, ramshackle quarterlies when the mag was simply
Vampires. They were certainly endearing. There was Carole, on the 125th Anniversary of Highgate Cemetery, a fascinating series of letters from a (patently bogus) undead, John Vellutini, as close as
that to smithereening the ludicrous K*rkl*es "Vampire" bandwagon before it had even lumbered out of its coffin, and some of the oddest fan fiction:
A Short Story memorably introduces a protagonist who has the hots for the comely figurehead of a ... Vampire club.
The later, glossy "Velvet Vampire" certainly looked the part with an abundance of photo's and the occasional excellent written or illustrative contribution, but by then catering for the social side of things had become the
raison d'être of the caper, so most of the energy went into that.
Kenneth King - They Must Feed: Boris Kaledin, Captain of the Red Guard, arrives with his men at the snowbound village of Slovod during a blizzard, intent on dragging it into the 20th century and claiming it for the USSR. For this purpose the peasants are rounded up and herded to the tavern where Kaledin addresses them. The meeting is interrupted by Tzarist nobleman Gulganin who, outraged at this intrusion on his land, wages terrible war on the invaders.
Dr. Marie Roberts - The Vampire Plague: Beautiful vampire is responsible for the AIDs virus according to the voice on the tape. The inspector is horrified when the dream the dying patient relates is identical to the one he's been having of late ....
Anon - The Victim: Girl posing as a vampire in the cemetery becomes the willing victim of one. As with so much of this type of fan fiction, it would appear that the author is living out their personal fantasy in this two-pager.
Mike Dunford - A Short Story: A young orphan, obsessed with Dracula films on TV, meets his destiny in the shapely form of Bella, a beautiful young goth who runs a Vampire Society. See previous comment
Deverill Weekes - The Lover: Age old story of the lure of the vampire as told from the perspective of her expiring victim.
Rick Hutson - Parasites: Shape-changer who can adopt the form of the partner of your dreams and then drain your blood. He invades a tower block and seduces first the porn-fiend Morgan, then his broken wife.
Kenneth King - Eternal Darkness: The starship
Lupera prepares to colonise earth. The Varlans are a race of vampires eager to replenish their blood supplies with human cattle. Commander Nydal leads his half dozen men out of the capsule .... and into the sunlight!
Karen Kensall - Misfit: Thea Lyman, beautiful, put upon wife of a successful businessman, is attracted by a stranger in the shadows as she attends yet another convention.
Tina Rath - A Short Story: Samantha is obsessed with ... you get the picture.
"She said she'd become a vampire expert and go on Mastermind
taking 'vampires' as her specialist subject." When she begins dating the man from the library Samantha falls ill and disappears shortly before the Halloween disco. The next time the narrator sees her, Samantha is floating outside her bedroom window begging to be admitted. Fine story which even a disastrous print job can't completely ruin.
Rick Hutson - Reflections Of A Vampire: Merseyside. As a young man he lightly accepted the vampire's 'gift', now he realises "I've not gained eternal youth, I've merely been preserved".
Raymond K. Avery - A Bowl Of Borscht: History of Ivan, servant to the Count of Castle Churst in the Ukraine. When his master dies his nephew Peter arrives to take over his affairs and from the first Ivan is drawn to him as he never was his lecherous predecessor. The new Count decides a castle-warming party is what's called for and consequently invites all his mates from the old country for a revel. During the ensuing orgy Ivan finds himself sharing his bed with a beautiful young creature who swiftly sinks her fangs in his neck. Ivan tells us the castle was destroyed by a lightening bolt in 1776. Now he and his master reside in New York's notorious Chelsea Hotel. We leave him in St. Marks cemetery taking his fill of a voluptuous blonde's blood and kisses. Contains gratuitous "Leonard Cohen is a miserable bastard" reference.
Kenneth King - From Out Of The Darkness It Comes: Armstrong and Todd are holed up at Hillcrest farm following their successful robbery of a mail train. Amongst their haul, a shiny black coffin destination Ukraine. Return of Gulganin from
They Must Feed.
Finally (for now?) from the Spring 1993 issue of
The Velvet Vampire:
D. F. Lewis - Nightstokers
She had her back to Thomas - and dressed by darkness, or, rather, in darkness. Yet he knew who she was: the creature who had haunted his dreams - assuming it were not rude to call a lady a creature. Not only in his dreams but also in waking life, causing both to be infiltrated by the other: dream masquerading as waking life and vice versa: all shades and permutations of real and unreal reality, to such an extent that even Thomas had to doubt his own existence - which, he guessed, would end up his only way out.
She slowly turned toward him. Yet her front was no different from her back, except he discerned a slit-smile of darkness where he would have positioned her mouth, given a free hand. Yes, her mouth, with two lip-hooks that must have been so blindingly white their night spawned negative caused blackness that appeared dark red. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to waking, they locked to hers: and he wondered whether his were similarly tinged with a self-lit spirit of spiteful playfulness.
"You knew I would come in person, one day." The voice of seething honey bees moved the black mouth - with lips that began to glisten as Thomas tutored his eyes further in wakefulness. He nodded: a ludicrous action in the circumstances, until it dawned on his full consciousness that his subconscious must have known that she could see in the dark.
"Come nearer." She tried to mimic Thomas's voice: she knew it was unseemly for a lady to make all the running, hence this strangely transparent ploy. This time he shook his head: to clear it of waking-induced inhibitions or, perhaps, as a sign that whatever they had done during dreams, he would not now countenance a heavy handed dalliance, nor even grant an inconsequentially light petting of their various sensitive zones. Whatever the case, he dare not even dwell on the true nature of the creature. And in a saner world, the most acceptable outcome was he haunted himself.
Yet, as the creature's mouth moved away from its eyes by the space of a feasible torso, Thomas experienced the real relativity of sanity. He told the night-shaped formlessness that he not only doubted his own and the creature's existence.
Such doubts lasted until, empurpled enough to outdo the darkness, my single-hooked chimney mouth, one not unaccustomed to the moon-slow rhythm of blood-flow, yawned awake - them sucked them both up.
