AtoZ Day 23: W is for Wall, Wurdulac, Waxwork

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Wall

One of the vampire images that sticks in my mind is Dracula crawling down the wall in the 1979 version with Frank Langella. I remember being very scared when I first saw it and it stays with me so well because my darling twin screamed a lot and we had to turn it off. My forays into vampire films did not begin again until The Lost Boys came out :).

There is something about a creature that can scale walls that are supposed to keep the enemy out that is very frightening. Our fortresses and homes are vulnerable so we have to take other precautions.

Vampires also break down our metaphorical walls as well and make us question our own reality. If vampires are real death is not a limit and they are constantly associated with social taboos like wanton sex and stealing the life of others.

Do you have a mental image from a vampire film or book that has always stuck with you like Dracula on his wall did for me?

Creature Feature:

Wurdulac/Wurdalak

Now this creature from Russia deserves pity because it is cursed to consume the blood of all its loved ones to convert its entire family. V.I. Tolstoy wronte a story about one of these vampires which was later turned into a film. (Wikipedia, Enchanted Doorway, Encyclo)

Movie Recommendation:

Title: Waxwork
Rating:18
Summary: Mark and his friends visit a private wax museum and one by one become trapped in the exhibits, completing them. When all are finished the evil they contain will be unleashed on the world.
Why you should watch this: Another 80s horror movie and just as fun as the others. It has humour and gore and a clever plot. We still in the era of wax special effects and models so the plot had to fill in the gaps CGI so often patches over these days. Only one of the exhibits has vampires, but this still counts :). You'd be surprised how many of the cast you recognise.

Up and At 'Em 

(#23 in The Diverse Life of Ianthe Jawara, Vampire)

by Natasha Duncan-Drake

With all the information she had extracted from Ren it was embarrassingly easy to track down where the priest was staying once Ianthe put her mind to it. She had never hunted anything before. It was part of her vampire nature she had refused to acknowledge, but she was beginning to understand why the others loved it. It was also becoming obvious why those who crossed vampires very rarely survived.

She stood looking up at the nondescript four storey town house and she knew it was the place from her dream. It wasn't anything she could put her finger on, but it felt right and it also felt right to go up. Following her instincts had seen her right so far in the hunt, so she obeyed them this time as well.

"Round the back," she said in little more than a whisper as she looked down at Lilith.

The hellhound currently looked like a black Labrador, but as they walked to the small alley at the side of the house, Lilith grew into her larger form, although not the largest.

It took a matter of seconds to slip over the garden wall into what was an overgrown mess of a forgotten corner. Lilith joined her with barely a sound, landing as lightly as a creature an eighth of her size. No one had bothered with this place in a while. There was still a to-let sign out the front, so she assumed someone was having problems selling it and had gone with renting it out instead. Crossing to the house she made no noise in the long grass, passing like a ghost; Alex would have been proud.

As soon as she skirted the side of the building the light from the street dimmed considerably. It wasn't completely dark, but she knew no one could have seen her as she lurked in the shadows.

There was one window at the attic level on the back of the house and the design looked familiar. She remembered seeing it out of the corner of her eye when she had dreamed. It had been in the altar room. A priest would not expect a vampire to enter that way.

Placing her hand against the red brick wall of the house, she allowed her human mask to fall away.

"Guard," she told Lilith and the hound's eyes glowed.

It was not a matter of using her talons to grip the brickwork or slip between the crumbling mortar as she began to climb. It wasn't fine hairs or sticky residue either that allowed her to move upwards smoothly and steadily. It was simply a matter of circumventing the laws of physics, or at least that was how Ianthe always thought of it. She grinned to herself; her father, ever a practical man, would have hated that explanation. Of course, it wasn't as if anyone had ever scientifically studied vampires.

The window had no latch or hinges when she got there; it was simply stuck in its frame. That caused her to grin again as she used one long nail to flick out the grout on the old window frame, just like she had seen Dracula do in a film once. She really was going for all the clichés this evening.

There was still anger bubbling under her skin, but the excitement of the hunt had taken over. She had no fear; she was the predator, her adversary the prey. He would fall to her and it was as simple as that.

As the pane of glass fell from its frame she caught it with lightning reflexes and placed it in the valley gutter to the side.

It was not a large window and she was not a sylphlike individual, but she was flexible. Not having to worry about gravity was also a major advantage as she pushed herself inside. As she dropped to the floor she took stock of the room and it seemed bigger than she remembered from the dream. The altar was to the left of the window and there was far more space than she had been expecting. Everything was in place as she expected, but it was as if the size had been affected by the priest's perception.

That worried her slightly, because she wondered what else she might have missed; but it was too late now.

Standing up straight she was ready; now all she had to do was find her prey. She really hoped he was home.

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A few of us discovered that we all had supernatural themes for the AtoZ so we got together and did a mini list. If you also have a supernatural theme (ghosts, monsters, witches, spells etc), please feel free to add yourself to the list.

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