Thursday, February 11, 2010

The Black Vampyre: a Legend of St. Domingo by Uriah Derick D'Arcy

This short pamphlet contains the story of a vampire, imported to Haiti at some point in the far past (certainly before the Haitian revolution), who was killed immediately upon purchase by his master for being a weakling, but who refused to die. He turns the master's newborn son into a vampire and then the master dies two. Two husbands later, he marries the master's wife, and on their wedding night, introduces her son, whose skin and hair and nails she had buried years ago, and digs up and reanimates his former master and the two other husbands. After a battle, those husbands are dead again. There's a scene where the vampires and slaves gather, but turn against each other, and by the end the master and his wife both take a potion which renders them human again--although the master hasn't aged the sixteen intervening years, much to his wife's delight, and her first child after the incident is the son of the vampire. If it's not clear from my description, the story is somewhat of a ridiculous romp. After this tale, D'Arcy makes a point of commenting that vampirism isn't just sucking blood, but happens when people steal labor of others (a Marxist point). Then there's a long poem at the very end. Very intriguing. I wish it were more widely available.

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