Category: vampires

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“”Yes,” continued my friend, his eyes still fixed on the spot. “But the strange thing is that I see the body lying on the top of it. Of course,” continued Holger, turning his head on one side as artists do, “it must be an effect of light. In the first place, it is not a grave at all. Secondly, if it were, the body would be inside and not outside. Therefore, it’s an effect of the moonlight. Don’t you see it?”—Francis Marion Crawford (The Blood is the Life)

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“Where’s…the…blood?!
The music—especially that fiery jazz, the cries of laughter, and the aroma of cloves and cayenne kicking up spicy foods, have kept the blood flowing in New Orleans for hundreds of years. For hundreds of years, the blood—the Life, has flowed down the mighty Mississippi into the dark rues, and alleys of the Quarter. And…on more than one occasion, in the city that never sleeps, a fool or the foolhardy has perished.”—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Devil of Black Bayou (Comedic Short)

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“Where’s…the…blood?
The music—especially that fiery jazz, the cries of laughter, and the smell of cloves and cayenne emanating from spicy foods, have kept the blood flowing in New Orleans for hundreds of years. For hundreds of years, Life has flowed down the mighty Mississippi into the dark rues, and alleys of the Quarter. And…on more than one occasion, in the city that never sleeps, a fool or the foolhardy has perished.”—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Devil of Black Bayou (Comedic Short)

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“I’m starting my journey across the waves of time! The blood is my time machine and my portal to the dimensions beyond. I see my loving, raven-haired wife. She is bathed in the foam of sea spray and blood. Lightning flashes around us in arcs of blistering white. Lightning etches around us in emerald green, A final blast paints us in a shade of deep blue. In the moments, between light and darkness, giant pinchers have grasped Marie’s flesh pulling her below! A glowing mauve pool of slime remains. A single hand floats above the sea and then submerges into depths below.

I float back to the present lashing out at the night air. I wrestle with imaginary phantoms who lurk back into that accursed moment in time when my wife was lost to me. I curse and send a glass breaking roar as I fight the ghost of an oozing leviathan who dissipates into mist.”
–Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Devil of Black Bayou Special Edition)

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And each and every thing was transfigured in his vision, and in my vision—the vision he gave now to me—to the exquisite essence of itself. A wordless and eternal voice spoke from the starry veil of heaven, it sang in the wind that rushed through the broken timbers; it sighed in the flames that ate the sooted stones of the hearth.–Anne Rice (The Master of Rampling Gate)

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“It was the eyes that grew dim. Little by little he came to know that some day the dream would not end when he turned away to go home, but would lead him down the gorge out of which the vision rose. She was nearer now when she beckoned to him. Her cheeks were not livid like those of the dead, but pale with starvation, with the furious and unappeased physical hunger of her eyes that devoured him. They feasted on his soul and cast a spell over him, and at last they were close to his own and held him. He could not tell whether her breath was as hot as fire or as cold as ice; he could not tell whether her red lips burned his or froze them, or whether her five fingers on his wrists seared scorching scars or bit his flesh like frost; he could not tell whether he was awake or asleep, whether she was alive or dead, but he knew that she loved him, she alone of all creatures, earthly or unearthly, and her spell had power over him.”–Francis Marion Crawford (For the Blood is the Life)

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‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;”–Walter de la Mare (The Listeners)

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“Suppose Jack the Ripper didn’t grow old? Suppose he is still a young man today?

“It’s a crazy theory, I grant you,” he said. “All the theories about the Ripper are crazy. The idea that he was a doctor. Or a maniac. Or a woman. The reasons advanced for such beliefs are flimsy enough. There’s nothing to go by. So why should my notion be any worse?”

“Because people grow older,” I reasoned with him. “Doctors, maniacs, and women alike.”
–Robert Bloch (Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper)

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“The cold, heavy cloth hung draped about Henderson’s shoulders. The faint odor rose mustily in his nostrils as he stepped back and surveyed himself in the mirror. The lamp was poor, but Henderson saw that the cloak effected a striking transformation in his appearance. His long face seemed thinner, his eyes were accentuated in the facial pallor heightened by the somber cloak he wore.–Robert Bloch (The Cloak)