Hallowe'en: originally a festival marking the end of the Celtic harvest, it was considered to be a night when the boundary between the living and the dead grew thin. On that basis, it seems fitting to celebrate Hallowe'en with a discussion of vampires, creatures that also span the line between life and death.There was no colour upon her cheek, not even upon her lip; yet there was a stillness about her face that seemed almost as attaching as the life that once dwelt there: -- upon her neck and breast was blood, and upon her throat were the marks of teeth having opened the vein: -- to this the men pointed, crying, simultaneously struck with horror, "A Vampyre! a Vampyre!"
John Polidori, The Vampyre'What have you done to us?!' Lacrimosa screamed. 'You've taught us how to see hundreds of the damned holy things! They're everywhere! Every religion has a different one! You taught us that, you stupid bastard! Lines and crosses and circles. . . Oh, my. . .' She caught sight of the stone wall behind her astonished brother and shuddered. 'Everywhere I look I see something holy! You've taught us to see patterns!' she snarled at her father, teeth exposed.Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
Although the story of the vampire can be traced back to medieval Eastern European folklore, the vampire as modern mythology knows it originates in one place: the 1897 novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker. In the interests of accuracy, John Polidori's The Vampyre precedes it by 78 years, but Time has made its statement, and only a few hard-core fans of the nosferatu are aware of the earlier work, however influential it may have been upon Stoker.
Stoker's novel lays out the basic pros and cons of vampirism quite clearly. The powers of the vampire are legion: immortality, inhuman strength and speed, the ability to regain youth, control over vermin, the power to dissolve into a mist or dust and flow through the smallest crack, or to become a wolf or bat, to see in the dark, to control the minds of his victims, to create new vampires - an impressive array of allies, all in all.
Sadly, balancing that out is a set of rules covering the conduct and vulnerabilities of vampires that make the regulations for major league baseball sound simple. There are, of course, the things that everyone knows about: sunlight, garlic, crosses, holy water, stakes through the heart and beheading. Then there are the less well known regulations, the infield fly rules, if you will. For example, a vampire is unable to enter a dwelling unless someone has invited them in, in which case they are able to enter at will. A vampire must sleep upon the earth of their homeland, and can only cross running water at high or low tide.
I mentioned the running water rule to someone, and they said, "High tide where? Doesn't high tide sort of, move around? What if a vampire was in the middle of Canada, which coast do they have to worry about high tide at?" This takes us to the basic problem of the vampire myth. Originally laid out by a presumably Catholic Irish author in the heart of the Victorian era, it suffers from all sort of holes and flaws.Sunlight? Okay, how about sun lamps? What portion of the solar spectra actually harms vampires? (In the first Blade movie, a full vampire is out in daylight wearing a thick coating of sunblock - but what about his eyeballs and the inside of his mouth?)
Holy water and the Cross? There's a non-vampire story by Larry Niven in which a character asks if a Moslem vampire would be afraid of a copy of the Koran, which is a perfectly reasonable question. The Terry Pratchett novel quoted above raises the strong possibility that if a vampire was vulnerable to the full range of religious symbology, they wouldn't be able to walk five feet without seeing something that was holy to someone at some point in time. And would a vampire who was an atheist before joining the undead give a damn about any of it?
What constitutes a dwelling? Could a vampire enter a public library without permission? Does a welcome mat that says, "COME ON IN" count as an invitation?
Some authors take this sort of nitpicking into account, and a lot of good stories have been written that deal with the hidden issues of vampirism. In recent years, AIDS has been a large factor, since, obviously, anyone who lives on a diet of blood is at particular risk. But does a vampire have to drink human blood to survive? There are lots of stories wherein a weakened vampire chows down on nearby rats or what have you, but I was really thinking more in terms of blood substitutes, plasma and so forth.
Finally, the question that really puts the nail in the coffin (sorry) for vampirism as a working concept is that of the predator-prey relationship. Population control for creatures at the top of the food chain is generally dealt with by the population of prey: if there are a lot of antelope running around, there can be a suitable ratio of lions. Too many lions, not enough antelope to go around, the excess lions either starve or move to another part of the veldt. What makes this problem worse for vampires is the ability to create new vampires, the ultimate pyramid scheme gone bad. A serious outbreak of vampirism would make an ebola epidemic look like a bad case of acne by comparison. Not only that, but they're immortal, so not even old age would cull the population. So where does the blood come from when everyone is a vampire?
In spite of the heavy hand of logic, vampirism has legions of fans. Vampires have become the supreme anti-heros of popular culture, with their combination of power and hidden - or not so hidden - sexuality. However, unlike UFOs and alien visitors, there doesn't seem to be any sort of substantial lunatic fringe convinced that there is a vast international conspiracy designed to hide the fact that fanged creatures actually do stalk the night in search of blood. Of course, if I were a vampire, that's exactly what I'd want people to think as well - until it was too late...
- Sid
