Bride of the Vampire

 

by Brett Rutherford

After a ballad by Felix Dahn

Gladly would I, as the other
     dead, my grave in quiet keep;
Yet a curse, a ban eternal
     makes me roam while mortals sleep.

Peaceful in the azure moonbeams
     stand the vaults where others rest,
yet I, beneath my marble tombstone,
     a burning pang within my breast

flow out and up, my dusty pinions
     shaking as they set me free,
over hill and dale to wander,
     unslaked yearnings driving me

to where my tender bride reposes,
     in her dreams of a living lover.
I will hover, bat and shadow,
     lightly falling from above her.

Now my black eyes, forever open
     lock on her closed orbs, lashed shut;
now the candle flickers lower
     as my wing-beat snuffs it out. 

I nearly faint from undead passion,
     yet from here I cannot go.
She must join me ’ere the sunrise
     join me in the realms below!

Well she knows my bite’s destruction.
     Twice have I been here and gone.
In vain, in vain, the others warned her;
     outside they pray, and watch for dawn.

Slowly I feed, and take my pleasure,
     vein to lips, and blood to throat.
Now I press the fatal signet
     upon her breast, Undead,

unblessed, unsoul’d, unmourned,
I carry her off on night’s last zephyr,
so pale, so cold, forever-more.
Only an empty bed discover’d,

a drop of blood upon the floor,
a taper snuff’d, an unread prayer,
the garland of protective herbage,
the crucifix she shunned to wear.

Now hark! Beware! The cock is crowing.
     They are calling out her name!
And though she whispers, “Father! Mother!”
     She is far beyond their finding,

Back into my grave I burrow,
     sliding aside my marble roof.
At sunset, on the hungry morrow,
     side by side we’ll issue forth.

 

 

An Exeter Vampire

by Brett Rutherford

Here is another little lesson in how line length can be used to create a special effect. This poem is about the famous Rhode Island vampire, Sarah Tillinghast, who comes back to kill off her family members one by one. (The family members most likely died of tuberculosis.) I wanted to create the effect of weakness, being out of breath, and suffocation. So instead of writing in the customary blank verse (10 syllables per line), I experimented by having the poem's lines being nine syllables long. They are cut short. The opening line, "She comes back ----- in the rain --- at midnight" is halting, 3 x 3, supporting the idea of being short of breath.

She comes back, in the rain, at midnight.

Her pale hand, not a branch, taps the glass.

Her thin voice, poor Sarah Tillinghast

whines and whimpers, chimes and summons you

to walk in lightning and will’o wisp

to the hallowed sward of the burial ground,

to press your cheek against her limestone,

to run your fingers on family name,

to let the rain inundate your hair,

wet your nightclothes to a clammy chill,

set your teeth chattering, your breath a

tiny fog within the larger mist.

You did not see her go before you,

and yet you knew she was coming here.

Soon her dead hand will tap your shoulder.

Averting your eyes, you bare your throat

for her needful feeding, your heat, your

heart’s blood erupting in her gullet.

You will smell her decay, feel the worms

as her moldy shroud rubs against you.

Still you will nurse the undead sister,

until her sharp incisors release you

into a sobbing heap of tangled hair,

your heart near stopped, your lungs exploding,

wracked with a chill that crackles the bones.

The rain will wash away the bloodstains.

You will hide your no more virginal

throat like a smiling lover’s secret.

Two brothers have already perished—

the night chill, anemia, swift fall

to red and galloping consumption.

Death took them a week apart, a month

beyond Sarah’s first night-time calling.

Honor Tillinghast, the stoic mother,

sits in the log house by the ebbing fire,

heating weak broth and johnny cakes.

One by one she has sewn up your shrouds—

now she assembles yet another.

She knows there is no peace on this earth,

nor any rest in the turning grave.

Storm ends, and bird songs predict the sun.

Upstairs, in garret and gable dark,

the children stir, weak and tubercular,

coughing and fainting, praying for breath.

The ones that suck by night are stronger

than those they feed on, here where dead things

refuse the Lord's sleep in Exeter,

sing their own epitaphs in moon-dance,

and come back, in the rain, at midnight.

_____

Exeter, Rhode Island’s “vampire” case of 1799 ended with the exhumation and destruction of the corpse of Sarah Tillinghast after four siblings followed her in death by consumption. They burned Sarah’s heart and reburied all the bodies.

The Vampire Victims' Club - A Short Short Story

by Brett Rutherford

I meet a group of middle-aged ladies at the diner. I cannot tell you their names, or what they look like. I am good at details, but I cannot describe them. Except that there are four. I don’t even see them sitting there at first until one of them calls my name.

Once I am seated, the waitress comes over. She gives me a menu.

One of the women says, “May we have menus, too?”

The waitress starts, says, “Oh my goodness, I didn’t see you all sitting there. Just a minute.”

The women tell me this happens all the time. “We feel invisible,” one says.

I joke about us all getting older. But honestly, I cannot tell one from another. They are middle-aged, nondescript. Only their differently-colored coats mark them apart.

“It’s not that. It’s because of him,” one says. They all nod.

What we are here to talk about is that they have a Meetup group. It’s called The Vampire Victims’ Club.

The founder tells me that they first met when one of them placed an online ad asking:
Has a famous celebrity sucked your blood? Me too, let’s talk.

Soon six were in touch, but all afraid to meet. They knew there were others, so the four brave enough to meet in person started this Meetup group with the more generic name, The Vampire Victims Club.

“We got a lot of Goth girls at first. To them it was play. You know, bad boyfriends who cut them with knives, or used a little dainty syringe. Blood-dabblers.

“When they saw us, how we were pale without make-up. When we told them what anemia really was, and how we were slowly wasting away, well, off they went, back to their boys with little fake vampire teeth.

“What we all came to realize is that there’s only one in mid-town. ”

“One what?” I ask.

“Why, vampire, of course. It’s always him, him all the time. He must have driven the others like him away.”

“No one will ever believe you,” he says to all of us. “Oh, such alibis he has. His limo drops him off at some fancy club or fund-raiser. Then halfway through, he slips away, men’s room and then a back doorway. Then he’s a few blocks away at the kind of place a divorced woman or a single mother goes, dim-lit and quiet. Slow drinks and flirts. Married men who want a secret girlfriend, mostly. Or sad widowers – you hope to meet one of those with money.

“Then in comes Mister Billionaire, discreetly, hat drooping low in that pretend-you-don’t-know-who-I-am mode.

“So he buys you a drink, and you talk, and you pretend not to know who he is. And he flirts and you say Oh, come on now, I know who you are. You have your pick of all those showgirls. Porn stars even. Why do you want to hurt a poor girl’s feelings? And then he says he’s just enjoyed talking to someone who didn’t want to play sugardaddy games, and he felt very at home with you and would like to, you know, get to know you.”

“And all the time his limo is sitting outside the charity ball?” I ask.

“Oh, even worse. Sometimes his wife is sitting back there. You know, the famous model. And she’s looking at her watch and fuming, and putting on fake smiles and the little ‘who knows’ shrug when someone asks her ‘Where is your husband?’

“And over there, three streets away, he’s led you out through a back door and you think you’re going to be in his limo for a joyride around the island, maybe a bad time, or maybe a story you’ll tell your girlfriends about for years, or maybe, just maybe, he actually sees something in you …”

“And?”

“And instead you turn a corner into an alleyway and you say, “I don’t think we should walk this way.”

And he says, “Not to worry, I know this street like the back of my hand. And then you’re up against a brick wall all cold and clammy and he’s got your legs apart and think he’s going to. And then, no, he’s at your throat and it burns and surges and the life is going out of you. And then he stops, and laughs, and waves his hands in front of your face in a peculiar way and says, “Be here tomorrow. This place, at midnight. And he puts something in your purse, and when you look later, its enough to pay your rent for half a year.”

“Was it just once, then, I ask?”

Another woman chimes in. “It’s never just once. I’m his Monday victim.” Pointing: “She’s every Wednesday.”

“And I am Friday’s victim,” the first woman says. Every Friday. In that alley, three blocks from the most expensive restaurant in New York.”

“We’re just his cafeteria,” the fourth one chimes in. “I’m the youngest, as you can see. Weekends I have to wait, in a suite in his office tower, for whenever he can get away.”

“She’ll outlive the rest of us,” one says bitterly. “She just gets him through Sunday. He hardly takes a thimbleful. A snack.”

“Or maybe he’s grooming me to be his next wife,” says Number Four. “Like in the movies.”

In answer, dark laughter and the shaking of heads.

“And none of you have gone to the police? Is that why you invited me here, to get the word out?”

There is a long silence.

“Each of us has tried to go to the police. You see the station, the one on 57^th Street. You turn the corner. You start walking. Your steps get tinier and tinier. You’re walking like an old lady. And then you’re hanging on to a lamp-post, almost fainting. And you reel for a trashcan, vomiting.”

“I tried by phone. I dialed the police. When someone answered, all I could do was squeak, “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I didn’t mean to call this number.’”

“Post hypnotic suggestion?” I speculate.

“The other thing is, mister, is that no one can see us. You noticed that when you came in. No one comes up to any of us and says, ‘You’re looking terrible. Let me get you to a doctor.’ It’s getting worse as the life drains out of us. When one of us dies, they might not even find our bodies, just husks behind the dumpsters, stuff no one would touch or even try to name.”

“I find that hard to believe.” I wonder if this was an elaborate hoax.

“Show him Mildred!” the third one intones.

“We were five originally,” the first explained. Her weary hands reach into a shopping bag. “Mildred was oldest, and weakest. Once, she was a Rockette, then a cocktail waitress. She was the first one he made a ‘regular.”

She pushes aside the coffee cups and menus, and lays a thing before me.

It smells of whisky, beer, sawdust and vomit, the reek of an alley behind a sodden bar.
Its mottled color is that of fungus, newspapers yellowed in cat urine, and soot.

It weighs almost nothing, the lint of laundromat, the clot of forgotten spiderweb, a bird’s nest.

It has no shape I can name, a tapestry of shreds and sticks and filth.

Except for the woman’s face dead center in its fractals of trash, it is nothing.

Nothing, nothing at all, I chant as I flee, stunned as though hypnotized, and when I look back the diner booth is empty.

New Expanded Version of "Son of Dracula."

This is one of my most personal poems, from childhood memories and fantasies. It begins in Scottdale PA, then moves to the nosebleed year in West Newton PA, and a scene in McKeesport Hospital. Recently, I made this into a prose piece, and in the process, additional lines came to be. Now I unfold those new revisions back into the poem. It is better now.

ANNIVERSARIUM XVI:

SON OF DRACULA

I was the pale boy with spindly arms
     the undernourished bookworm
     dressed in baggy hand-me-downs
     (plaid shirts my father wouldn’t wear,
     cut down and sewn by my mother),
old shoes in tatters, squinting all day
for need of glasses that no one would buy.

At nine, at last, they told me
     I could cross the line
to the adult part of the library
those dusty classic shelves
which no one ever seemed to touch.
I raced down the aisles,
     to G for Goethe and Faust
          reached up for Frankenstein
                  at Shelley, Mary
               (not pausing at Percy Bysshe!)
          then trembled at lower S
               to find my most desired,
               most dreamt-of —
     Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Dracula! His doomed guest!
The vampire brides! His long, slow
spider-plot of coming to England
to drain its aristocratic blood!
His power over wolves and bats,
and a red-eyed vermin horde!
To be, himself, a bat
     or a cloud of mist,
to rest in earth
throughout the classroom day!

This was the door to years of dreams,

     and waking dreams of dreams.
I lay there nights,
the air from an open window chilling me,
waiting for the bat,
          the creeping mist,
                 the leaping wolf
the caped, lean stranger.

Lulled by the lap of curtains, the false
sharp scuttle of scraping leaves,
I knew the night as the dead must know it,
waiting in caskets, dressed
in opera-house clothes
that no one living could afford to wear.

But I was not in London. Not even close.
The American river town
of blackened steeples,
     vile taverns and shingled miseries
had no appeal to Dracula. Why would he come
when we could offer no castle,
no Carfax Abbey, no teeming streets
from which to pluck a victim?

My life--it seemed so unimportant then —
lay waiting for its sudden terminus,
its sleep and summoning to an Undead
sundown. How grand it would have been
to rise as the adopted son of Dracula!

I saw it all:
how no one would come to my grave
to see my casket covered with loam.
My mother and her loutish husband
would drink the day away at the Moose Club;
my brother would sell my books
    to buy new baseball cards;
my teachers’ minds slate clean
    forgetting me, the passer-through.

(Latin I would miss,
but would Latin miss me?)

No one would hear the summoning
     as my new father called me:
Nosferatu! Arise! Arise! Nosferatu!
And I would rise,
     slide out of soil
          like a snake from its hollow.
He would touch my torn throat.
The wound would vanish.
He would teach me the art of flight,
the rules of the hunt
     the secret of survival.

I would not linger
     in this awful town for long.
One friend, perhaps,
     I’d make into a pale companion,
another my slave, to serve my daytime needs
(guarding my coffin,
     disposing of blood-drained bodies) —
what were friends for, anyway?

As for the rest
of this forsaken hive of humankind,
I wouldn’t deign to drink its blood,
     the dregs of Europe

We would move on
     to the cities,
to Pittsburgh first, of course,
our mist and bat-flight
unnoticed in its steel-mill choke-smoke.
The pale aristocrat and his thin son
   attending the Opera, the Symphony,
   mingling at Charity Balls,
Robin to his Batman,
     cape shadowing cape,
     fang for fang his equal soon
          at choosing whose life
               deserved abbreviation.

A fine house we’d have
      (one of several hideouts)
     a private crypt below
          with the best marbles
              the finest silk, mahogany, brass
              for the coffin fittings,
our Undead mansion above
     filled to the brim with books and music.

I waited, I waited —
    He never arrived.

At thirteen, I had a night-long nosebleed,
as though my Undead half had bitten me,
drinking from within. I woke in white
of hospital bed, my veins refreshed
with the hot blood of strangers.
I had not been awake to enjoy it!
I would never even know from whom it came.

Tombstones gleamed across the hill,
lit up all night in hellish red
from the never-sleeping iron furnaces.
Leaves danced before the wardroom windows,
blew out and up to a vampire moon.

I watched it turn from copper to crimson,
          its bloating fall to treeline,
          its deliberate feeding
      on corpuscles of oak and maple,
          one baleful eye unblinking.

A nurse brought in a tiny radio
One hour a night of symphony
was all the beauty this city could endure —
I held it close to my ear, heard Berlioz’s
Fantastic Symphony: the gallows march,
the artist’s Undead resurrection
amid the Witches’ Sabbath —
my resurrection.

                                I asked for paper.
The pen leaped forth and suddenly I knew
that I had been transformed.
I was a being of Night, I was Undead
since all around me were Unalive.

I had turned the sounds of Berlioz
and his aural witches’ sabbath into words,
and the words, the images of night winds,
sulky witch sarabandes and wizards’ orgies,
a hilltop of animal-demon-human frenzy.

The Vampire father never had to come.
I was my own father, self-made
from death’s precipice.

I saw what they could not see,
walked realms of night and solitude
where law and rule and custom crumbled.
I was a poet.
I would feed on Beauty for blood,
   I would make wings of words,
        I would shun the Cross of complacency.

A cape would trail behind me always.

Son of Dracula (From the Book of Autumn)

I was the pale boy with spindly arms, the undernourished bookworm dressed in baggy hand-me-downs (plaid shirts my father wouldn’t wear, cut down and sewn by my mother), old shoes in tatters, squinting all day for need of glasses that no one would buy.

At nine, at last, they told me I could cross the line to the adult part of the library, those dusty classic shelves which no one ever seemed to touch.

I raced down the aisles, to G for Goethe and Faust.

I reached up for Frankenstein at Shelley, Mary (not pausing at Percy Bysshe!). 

And then I trembled at lower S to find my most desired, most dreamt-of — Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Dracula! His doomed guest! The vampire brides! His long, slow spider-plot of coming to England to drain its aristocratic blood! His power over wolves and bats and vermin! To be himself a bat, or a cloud of mist! To sleep all through the classroom day!

This was the door to years of dreams, and waking dreams of dreams. I lay there nights, the air from an open window chilling me, waiting for the bat, the creeping mist, the leaping wolf, the caped, lean stranger.

Lulled by the lap of curtains, the false sharp scuttle of scraping leaves, I knew the night as the dead must know it, waiting in caskets, dressed in opera-house clothes that no one living could afford to wear.

But I was not on London! Not even close! The American river town of blackened steeples, vile taverns and shingled miseries had no appeal to Dracula. Why would he come when we could offer no castle, no Carfax Abbey, no teeming streets from which to pluck a victim?

My life — it seemed so unimportant then — lay waiting for its sudden terminus, its sleep and summoning to an Undead sundown. How grand it would have been to rise as the adopted son of Dracula!

I saw it all: how no one would come to my grave to see my casket covered with loam. My mother and her loutish husband would drink the day away at the Moose Club; my brother would sell my books to buy new baseball cards; my teachers’ minds slate clean forgetting me as they seemed to forget all who passed beneath and out their teaching. (Latin I would miss, but would Latin miss me?)

No one would hear the summoning as my new father called me: Nosferatu! Arise! Arise! Nosferatu!

And I would rise, slide out of soil like a snake from its hollow. 

He would touch my torn throat. 

The wound would vanish. 

He would teach me the art of flight, the rules of the hunt, the secret of survival.

I would not linger in this awful town for long. One friend, perhaps, I’d make into a pale companion, another my slave, to serve my daytime needs (guarding my coffin, disposing of blood-drained bodies) — what were friends for, anyway?

As for the rest of this forsaken hive of humankind, I wouldn’t deign to drink its blood, the dregs of Europe.

We would move on to the cities. To Pittsburgh first, of course, our mist and bat-flight unnoticed in its steel-mill choke-smoke. The pale aristocrat and his thin son attending the Opera, the Symphony, mingling at Charity Balls, Robin to his Batman, cape shadowing cape, fang for fang his equal soon at choosing whose life deserved abbreviation.

A fine house we’d have (one of several hideouts), a private crypt below, with the best marbles, the finest silk, mahogany, brass for the coffin fittings. Our Undead mansion above filled to the brim with books and music.

I waited, I waited — but he never arrived.

At fifteen, I had a night-long nosebleed, as though my Undead half had bitten me, drinking from within. I woke in white of hospital bed, my veins refreshed with the hot blood of strangers. I had not been awake to enjoy it! I would never even know from whom it came.

Tombstones gleamed across the hill, lit up all night in hellish red from the never-sleeping iron furnaces. Leaves danced before the ward-room windows, blew out and up to a vampire moon. I watched it turn from copper to crimson, its bloating fall to treeline, its deliberate feeding on corpuscles of oak and maple, one baleful eye unblinking.

A nurse brought in a tiny radio. One hour a night of symphony was all the beauty this city could endure — I held it close to my ear, heard Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony: the gallows march, the artist’s Undead resurrection amid the Witches’ Sabbath — my resurrection.

I asked for paper. The pen leaped forth and suddenly I knew that I had been transformed. I was a being of Night now. I was Undead since all around me were Unalive.

I had turned the sounds of Berlioz's Witches Sabbath into words, and in the words, the images of night winds, witch sarabandes, wizard orgies, and a hilltop of animal-demon-human frenzy.

The Vampire Father never had to come. I was my own father, self-made from death's precipice.

I saw now what they could not see, walked realms of night and solitude where law and rule and custom crumbled. I was a poet. I would feed on Beauty for blood, I would make wings of words, I would shun the Cross of complacency. 

A cape would trail behind me always.

When the Vampire Is King

by Brett Rutherford

There are immortal beings, but they are all evil.
Whereas we live on the substance of life, eating
the root and flesh of creatures, they live
on life itself, the force and essence of being.

One of their kind has come to me, and fed.
Before each dawn he will have come and gone again,
again and forever until my last breathing.
It is a slow death he brings; he is barely
existent, paper-thin. He will be at it for months,
pin-prick and red-dot scab so quickly gone,
I barely notice. He grows more solid each night.

My friends are little help. They are being finished off.
The vampire's minions have formed a gang: red-
hatted criminals in sports attire and fast cars.
Each victim is reduced to just a pile of bones,
so that I will be left alone for his stalking.
He turns the corner — I dash inside a doorway,
an empty apartment or untenanted warehouse.
The moment I reach its back-door egress, I find
him standing there, pale as an opossum.
He wags his finger in admonition: no exit
exists except I will find him already there.

On the dread night of the Winter Solstice I die,
and on the next morn he will assume a human form —
my youthful twin, solid and mirror-bright.
He will live out the life he stole from me.
His henchmen will be no encumbrance to his plan:
having devoured everyone I know, to the bone,
they will turn cannibal and consume each other.
Only my evil twin will be inheritor
of the desolate carnage of my existence.

On the dread night of the Winter Solstice I die,
unless there be other immortals who hate
that crisped, crawling parasite enough
to rise from Tartarus to put him down.
Where is the hell-mouth, then? How to descend
into the darkness where evil hates itself
enough to foment a war of monsters
against a great and ancient foe? Old books I seek,
the magic alchemical lore of my childhood,
a gateway talisman, the key that Solomon
and Dee and the other necromancers passed on.
The stone Eleggua winks at me as I incant,
Opener of Doorways, lead the way! Hecate,
scorn not the call of one who is not a woman!
Ye Hundred-Handed slayers, lend me but one hand!

I am not lamb, I am not sacrificial ox.
A vampire should be no more than a mosquito
to my larger and more expansive new self.
I shall return from the onyx night of Hell
with bat-bane and wolf-bane and Gorgon shield,
and with the one sword that will open him
and free a thousand souls' life-force into the cosmos.

Vampire, stalk not a sorcerer!

Rev 5/2/2019
[The first draft, written in one pass upon awaking from a dream, had some irregular lines. The revisions cast this into a mixture of blank verse and 12-syllable lines.]