For the Blood is the Life

For the Blood is the Life

A narrator and his Scandinavian painter friend Holger dine at sunset on the roof of the narrator's tower, a former Charles V.-era coastal watchtower on a promontory near the Gulf of Policastro, just north of Cape Scalea. When the moon rises, Holger notices a mound on the hillside on which a misty, corpse-like female Thing appears to lie; the narrator admits he sees it too on every moonlit night. Holger goes down to investigate, stands on the mound, and feels the Thing's arms cling to him as he leaves, mirroring an experience the narrator once had there himself. Back at the table, Holger asks for the story behind it, and the narrator obliges. Old Alario, a village man who made his fortune selling sham jewelry in South America, is dying while two hired masons—a one-eyed Neapolitan and a scarred Sicilian—work on his house. His son Angelo is away, betrothed to the daughter of the village's richest man. A wild, red-lipped girl named Cristina, loved by a shepherd from Maratea but indifferent to him, is sent to fetch a doctor from Scalea as Alario worsens. After the priest pronounces Alario dead, the frightened household flees, and the two masons steal his iron-bound treasure chest, carrying it toward the tower to bury it near a boulder. Cristina, taking a shortcut, stumbles on them burying the chest; they kill her and bury her with it to silence her. The masons return to the village in time to avoid suspicion but are later chased off after being accused of the theft. Angelo returns to find his inheritance gone, his fiancée's family rejecting him, and his father's house left in debt. Impoverished and shunned, he grows melancholy and takes to wandering alone at dusk near the gorge, where he begins encountering an apparition of Cristina—pale, red-lipped, hungry-eyed—who lures him nightly, embraces him, and drinks his blood from his throat. Each night leaves him weaker; villagers assume he is pining for his lost betrothal. Antonio, the tower's caretaker, returns from a trip near Salerno, witnesses something at the mound one night, and reports to the old priest that he has seen "how the dead drink the blood of the living... the blood is the life." The priest, recalling old books on such beings, agrees to help. That evening they watch Angelo and the wraith together, then return after dark with holy water, a stole, a lantern, pick, and shovel, plus a sharpened stake Antonio has carved. They find Angelo unconscious with a bleeding throat and the vampiric Cristina feeding on him; the apparition flees at their approach. They dig open the grave; Antonio descends alone with the stake and lantern and, amid violent sounds and a woman's unearthly shriek, stakes the corpse. The iron-bound chest is thrown up from the grave, and Antonio reburies the remains, emerging bloodied and shaken—his hair turning grey from that night onward. Angelo, badly frightened, recovers his father's fortune but never marries; he emigrates to South America and is not heard from again. Back on the tower roof, Holger asks whether the body still lies in the grave and whether it is "quite dead yet." The narrator says he wonders too, but has no wish to find out, noting that Antonio has never been the same since that night.

By F. Marion Crawford · First published 1897 · Genre: Gothic Fiction, Horror, Romance · 7,703 words

First lines

We had dined at sunset on the broad roof of the old tower, because it was cooler there during the great heat of summer. Besides, the little kitchen was built at one corner of the great square platform, which made it more convenient than if the dishes had to be carried down the steep stone steps, broken in places and everywhere worn with age. The tower was one of those built all down the west coast of Calabria by the Emperor Charles V. early in the sixteenth century, to keep off the Barbary pirates, when the unbelievers were allied with Francis I. against the Emperor and the Church. They have gone to ruin, a few still stand intact, and mine is one of the largest. How it came into my possession ten years ago, and why I spend a part of each year in it, are matters which do not concern this tale.

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For the Blood is the Life is listed on Textopian as a novel by F. Marion Crawford, dated 1897 CE.

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Gothic Fiction · Horror · Supernatural · Vampire Novel · Classic Literature · Italian Renaissance · Dark Fantasy · Mystery · Suspense · Thriller · Romance · Tragedy

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