Nyx in the House of Night Read online

  Convinced that before them lay a revenant, the villagers would then proceed to kill the corpse a “second time” using whatever means was at their disposal. One such method involved piercing the heart with an actual wooden stake (a method we see used often on modern vampires). As final proof for their actions, the villagers, upon staking the suspected revenant, might have witnessed the corpse let out an audible groan, or “death cry,” while secreting simultaneously more “fresh” blood from its orifices. Most puzzling of all, the corpse—if male—might have experienced an erection, right there on the spot. If the corpse had been female, the vulva might have looked in appearance, to those present at the gravesite, both swollen and discolored.

  [6]

  Of course, nowadays we are more knowledgeable about such things and understand them to be normal postmortem processes. Nonetheless, what I find particularly striking here, in the interests of this chapter, is the apparent overlap between the House of Night series and the documented cases of village revenants. For example, we know that, in the House of Night, the hair and nails of fledgling vampyres grow exceptionally fast during the “Change.” In fact, they grow so fast that “after a little practice,” Zoey notes in Betrayed, “you can tell what year a fledgling is without checking the crest on her jacket.”

  So what about fangs, readers may well be asking? After all, fewer fangs in the movies generally meant that viewers could also expect less blood . . . and sex, since all three are often tied together metaphorically. In the case of the House of Night series, the adult and fledgling vampyres, with the exception of postmortem Stevie Rae and the other “red” fledglings, are, well, fangless, to be perfectly blunt. But that doesn’t mean they’re impotent or castrated. A fledgling’s journey into vampyre adulthood carries with it also the growing need to drink blood. More crucially, the blood-exchange ritual between adult vampyres extends decidedly beyond mere sexual metaphor. However, readers may be surprised to learn that while the vampire’s tendency to engage in erotic behavior may have prospered in the cinema (as we’ll see shortly), by no stretch of the imagination did it start there.

  Actually, it was the revenant of folklore who, despite his awful looks, was known to possess a voracious sexual appetite. What’s more, he didn’t even have (or need) fangs to earn his sordid reputation. As Barber points out, historical accounts of vampirism seldom mention the growth of teeth on exhumed bodies, and with good reason, for the teeth of the suspected revenant were generally quite normal-looking, I’m sad to say.

  [7] Again, with the exception of Stevie Rae and her dead comrades, here is another of the striking similarities between the vampyres in the House of Night series and the folkloric revenant.

  Instead, the fang-deprived revenant earned his reputation for promiscuity (postmortem erections aside) because often he went first for his own widow, whom “he [was] apt to wear out . . . with his attentions,” as Barber so elegantly puts it.

  [8] Hence, we may observe here the original necessity for black mourning cloths at funerals, especially the mourning veil worn by the widow, whose identity might thus be shielded from her late husband’s subsequent “advances.”

  [9]

  Let us turn our attention now to Stevie Rae. I have remarked previously that she and the other red fledgling vampyre creatures demonstrate some of the physical “signs” observed in the exhumed bodies of suspected revenants in eastern and central Europe. Along a similar line, it is equally telling that at the time of and in the days just prior to the death of the vampyre fledglings who don’t survive the “Change,” various other outward “signs” are given. This time around, however, the “signs” to which I refer are distinctly American. That’s right—I said American. These physical “signs” or symptoms seem to draw their origin not from continental Europe, but rather from historical accounts of vampirism based out of New England.

  Real World Red Fledglings

  Believe it or not, red fledglings have been around for centuries; the color “red,” Barber notes, has long been thought to predispose the living to a life after the grave. In Romania, for example, a child born with red hair and blue eyes, or a “red caul” or amniotic membrane (which is normally, in appearance, a clear or grayish-white) covering its head, was more likely to become a vampire. In the Kashubia region of Poland, red birthmarks indicated the same, as did ruddy (or “red”) cheeks and complexions—especially among alcoholics, whose tendency to turn red in the face indicated to local villagers at the time the “sinfulness” of excessive drinking.

  Like their brethren across the Atlantic, New Englanders also believed in the revenant, and like the Europeans they, too, took similar precautionary measures to protect themselves against the “dangerous dead,” including exhumations. In the first two installments of the House of Night series, for example, readers may recall the persistent cough, pallor, and rapid wasting away that occur just before a fledging vampyre dies. These outward symptoms mirror the same cough and deteriorative health New Englanders would have observed in (what they believed were) dying revenant victims.

  The invisible scourge inflicting these unfortunate New Englanders was most likely pulmonary tuberculosis (TB), known then as “consumption.” On the subject of New England vampirism, folklorist Dr. Michael E. Bell notes that the symptoms of TB have many parallels to vampire folklore. For example, New Englanders dying of consumption, according to Bell, suffer mostly at night; they experience an unrelenting cough and severe chest pain (described sometimes as a heavy weight upon the chest); color, strength, and appetite quickly diminish, as well; and worse yet, the cough begins to produce a mucus discharge, or “sputum,” that with time grows to become quite thick and bloodied; followed then by bodily emaciation. “A consumptive’s appearance,” Bell concludes, “ties him to death—and to the vampire.”

  [10]

  Bell’s description of the physical effects of consumption on the body is reflected as early as the first few chapters of Marked. For example, readers may recall the manner in which Zoey describes her physical state after being Marked and beginning the physical Change to vampire. Zoey notes in Marked: “I was snotting. I don’t mean just sniffling a little. I mean I was wiping my nose on the sleeve of my hoodie (gross). I couldn’t breathe without opening my mouth, which made me cough more, and I couldn’t believe how badly my chest hurt!” It is interesting, too, that Bell’s description surfaces again in Stevie Rae’s and Elliot’s final moments in Betrayed (i.e., the coughing up of blood). Until finally, at the point of death, “blood trickled down from her [Stevie Rae’s] mouth, her eyes, nose, and ears,” a scene that, looking back to an earlier discussion of ours, is eerily reminiscent of what villagers observed in European burial exhumations.

  While we’re on the subject of European folklore again, let us take a moment to note the characteristic way in which the dead fledgling vampyres are seen wandering about, generally on or close to the night following their deaths. Curiously, these scenes mirror quite closely the “eyewitness” accounts of the European revenant, whose behavior is similarly described in surviving documentation. But while this particular behavior in the House of Night series is explained easily enough vis-à-vis the historically documented cases of European revenants, Stevie Rae and the other red fledglings’ lack of a soul does not have so simple, or consistent, an antecedent.

  Because beliefs about revenants and souls in folklore have varied greatly according to geography and culture, their full survey here would require far lengthier an explanation than space will allow. However, one avenue to consider briefly is that some European villagers believed that more than one kind of soul occupied the human body simultaneously, and that one of these souls, the “less human” side, stayed behind following death in order to facilitate the decomposition of the body. This, of course, is but one interpretation of the “soul dilemma” in vampire mythology, and if readers dig a little deeper, they’re likely to find a cache of bizarre explanations. In brief, some cultures believed, for example, that a malevolent
spirit-turned-squatter had commandeered, as it were, the empty space that the villager’s departed soul had previously occupied in a sort of postmortem demonic possession. Still others believed that it was actually the deceased’s very own soul (in corrupt form) that occupied the body after death, refusing to go to the afterworld because of an untimely demise like suicide, murder, or accidental death, though a sinful life—even alcoholism—could just as easily have been the culprit.

  Another quality we observe in Stevie Rae and the red fledglings is a foul smell or offensive body odor, which seems to be a variation on the beliefs surrounding odor and vampirism in folklore (though we later learn that much of the issue with the red fledglings had been due to a lack of showering). During the decompositional process, a foul, gaseous odor is produced by the body, and as I remarked previously, the presence of odor in a corpse was representative of vampirism to villagers in geographically warmer areas. In those days, it was believed that foul odors literally brought with them contagion or plague, similar in nature to the way in which many of us today believe a cold draft can carry illness. Villagers resorted to using garlic, most notably, but also perfumes or other such pungent-smelling substances as a defensive measure to ward off (though in truth they only masked) such threats.

  [11]

  A Clove of Garlic a Day Keeps the Vampire Away

  Some scholars have argued that you can see these beliefs about odor’s ability to carry disease, and the protection afforded by sweeter smells, in a popular children’s nursery rhyme from the eighteenth century: “Ring around the rosy / Pocket full of posies.” [italics mine] The “posie,” or “nosegay” (literally to keep the nose “gay” or “happy”), is a bouquet of flowers that has for centuries been used for its fragrant quality. So, there could not have been a more useful charm for protecting oneself against the Black Death,

  [12] as this children’s playful rendition of the danse macabre (French) or totentanz (German) suggests.

  I wish to conclude our discussion of the House of Night series’ folkloric ancestry by referencing briefly two other motifs of interest in the series: cats and tattoos. Cats, which are discussed at length elsewhere in this book, have shared in their history various superstitions and connections to otherworldly beings, most recognizably the witch. However, readers may be surprised to discover that the cat and the revenant go back a very long way, as well. Hence, it becomes clearer why in various places throughout Europe cats were—and in some cases still are—kept away from dead bodies. This unlikely connection between the witch and the revenant may at first seem unrelated, but these two outcasts have not always been seen as separate species, as Barber and others have been keen to point out.

  [13]

  Finally, there are the striking tattoos that adorn fledgling and adult vampyres. This, admittedly, I found rather perplexing at first, until quite suddenly it struck me that revenants, too, share an odd connection with strange, un/natural marks. In the House of Night, of course, the tattoos serve to “mark” those who are becoming vampyres, and they become more intricate on those who have survived the Change and become full-fledged adult vampyres. Similarly, “marks” of a sort (e.g., ordinary birthmarks, a pronounced mole, a birth defect, etc.) were to European villagers of centuries past a “sign” that the bearer would more than likely survive the grave. The bearers of strange marks in the House of Night have, in effect, survived a death, as well—that of their human selves.

  THE VAMPIRE OF “POPULAR” MYTH

  Let us consider now the series’ “nuts and bolts” as it were: the more popular variety of conventions one has come to expect—even depend on—in the vampire genre. In fact, it might even be said that without these conventions, the vampire would seem less real, like seeing a ghost in a shopping mall as opposed to a run-down old house. They are what make the vampyres of the House of Night series recognizable as vampires.

  Readers will likely remember, in the initial chapters of Marked for example, the foreboding, “Gothic” atmosphere in which Zoey finds herself as she explores, for the first time, the grounds of the House of Night school. After all, the entire place is, to Zoey, “like something out of a creepy dream”: for hung overhead against the night is a “brilliant moon shining above the big old oaks,” while the main building, “red brick and black rock” in aspect, is a presence not to be taken lightly at “three stories tall . . . [with] a weirdly high roof that pointed up and then flattened off at the top.” The main building is further highlighted by a round tower, which adds to “the illusion that the place [is] much more castle-like than school-like.” At this, Zoey begins to wonder whether “a moat would have looked more like it belonged there.”

  This is a familiar scene to fans of the vampire genre, but contrary to popular belief the mythical revenant or vampire who haunted folklore didn’t usually do so from the safety of a scary castle or tower. Nor, I’m afraid, did he or she take a fancy to gnarly trees, owls, bats, or full moons any more than the next ghoul. Such is the product of Gothic literature, whose accepted conventions we have learned over time to recognize and associate with monstrous and deviant representations. As David Pirie remarks in his seminal work The Vampire Cinema: “If there is one magic ingredient of the vampire genre in literature or in the cinema, one that sometimes even supersedes the vampire himself, it is the landscape he inhabits.”

  [14] Pirie goes on to say that although the vampire may be the one actively scaring us in a film or books, the implied terror—the scary “window dressing,” as it were—is the landscape itself. This component of horror stories, he adds, must be present in order to separate the vampire physically and figuratively from what is considered normal and acceptable by society.

  The literary and screen vampire is, at its core, an invention of the Gothic movement after all, and its relationship with Gothic landscape and mood is therefore intimately linked. It’s worth noting, however, that geographical “remoteness” is a quality shared literally and figuratively by the village revenant, as well. It’s perhaps unfortunate then that the revenant could not also share in the same lavish furnishings at home as enjoyed by the more conventional representations of vampires on-screen and in literature. In this respect, the House of Night is no different than its fictional predecessors. Who wouldn’t want to go to a Gothic-style boarding school whose students must divide their time between fencing, horseback riding, and flat-screen televisions?

  Another aspect in which the vampyres in the House of Night resemble the conventional vampires is in their dashing good looks, and again, we are dealing here with fiction, not folklore. As I explained earlier, the revenant of folklore is the sort one doesn’t take home to mother. Instead, it was John Polidori who gave us, in his short story “The Vampyre” (1819), the first “modern” literary vampire, which he based in part on a shorter unpublished piece by Lord Byron (for whom Polidori had worked previously as a traveling physician). Polidori’s vampire, the young and handsome Lord Ruthven, transformed the corpselike revenant that had for centuries dominated European folklore into the drop-dead gorgeous vampire that has subsequently dominated literature, film, and television.

  Another area worth consideration—one in which the House of Night vampyres break with convention—is their uncommon method of blood-drinking. Readers will undoubtedly recall the peculiar way in which Zoey’s tongue, when drinking from Heath in Betrayed, “flicked out and licked the blood from his neck.” This unusual scene stands noticeably at contrast with the neck-biting and blood-sucking commonly seen in film. Perhaps this is because the House of Night vampyres’ blood-drinking roots seem to come not from literature but from the biology of vampire bats. This particular species of bat uses its enlarged canines to mark delicately in the skin a small incision. Afterwards, the blood flows freely from the wound as a result of an anticoagulant in the bat’s saliva. Using its specially designed tongue to draw out the blood, the bat then laps it up, as a cat laps up milk.

  [15]

  The exact origin of the endorphin
s contained in the vampyres’ saliva in the House of Night series, on the other hand, is probably related in some way to human sexuality and the pleasure centers of the brain. However, with respect to screen vampires, this particular ability of Zoey’s and the adult vampyres’ saliva is, it would appear, a sort of naturalization or re-imagining (albeit a more practical one) of the erotic display between vampire and victim that started to develop on-screen in the late 1950s, after America relinquished to the United Kingdom at that time its monopoly on vampire films in general and Dracula films in particular. (The next major American Dracula film would not be released until the late 1970s.) From this point forward in film and literary history, it became customary for the vampire’s attack to elicit from victims a more sexualized response. Put simply, though the figure of the vampire itself has been sexualized since its folkloric origins, the victim’s conscious, unreserved embrace of the vampire’s attack, as in the case of Heath and Zoey, is the invention of film, not folklore.

  [16]

  Creature Feature

  Before the 1950s, vampires frequently wore cloaks or capes in the cinema, a visual cue that figures in the House of Night as well in the markedly Gothic appearance of the red fledglings, who also wear dark cloaks, in Betrayed. In keeping with production codes at the time, stage and film producers used capes to obscure or censor from viewers the perceivably erotic and sexualized act of vampiric penetration and blood (or fluid) exchange. Thus, the cape, too, has no origin in folklore, deriving instead from the first stage adaptations of Dracula during the mid to late 1920s. Afterwards, this rather useful garment in Dracula’s wardrobe carries over into film with Universal’s Dracula (1931), where it and several other motifs help to cement the image that has been associated with Dracula and vampires ever since.