Shadow Lord by Tony-Paul de Vissage
The Second
Species: Vampires based in Fact
It was a
lovely Southern summer afternoon—late afternoon, in fact. What the townspeople called “evening,” that
time when day is turning into night and the sun begins to dim. It was around six o’clock when Warene de
Vissage stepped from the dining room of the house onto the back porch, calling
to her child to come in for dinner. The
sinking sun was shining over the front of the house and Warene was sheltered
from its rays by four walls and a roof.
Nevertheless, she could see the heat rising in shimmering waves from the
sidewalk fifteen feet away on the other
side of the running rose-covered picket fence.
She could also feel that same heat touching her skin.
Wrapping
her arms protectively across her chest, she hurried back inside not waiting for
the child to obey.
The next
morning, Warene awoke in agony. Her skin
burned, felt hot and tight. Staggering
out of bed and to the mirror above her vanity,
she stared at the startling and horrific image before her…skin crimson
and scorched, edges curled and inflamed, blisters and scales…as if someone had
held her over an open fire. To touch her
face brought excruciating pain…to look at it brought tears…it itched, it
burned, and the most awful part was…but she knew why.
The sun…reflecting
off the pavement. Hadn’t she felt its
heat? She’d dared step outside during
daylight, thinking just this once, it wouldn’t matter…just this once, so late
in the day, she wouldn’t suffer. Though she hurried back inside, that damnable
sun still found her, and did its work.
It would
be weeks before she healed.
This may sound like the beginning of a vampire story, but
it’s a true episode, taken from my own mother’s life. Maman suffered from PMLE…polymorphic
light eruption…a condition in which an individual’s DNA cannot repair the
damage done to the skin by ultraviolet
rays. Even on the most overcast
days, she was never able to go out during daylight without being completed
covered from head-to-toe. Long pants,
knee socks, a long-sleeved shirt, gloves, a neck scarf, a wide-brimmed hat, and
an umbrella were her usual attire when leaving the house…and still, she could
be burned by sunlight reflecting from the pavement or any surface, going
through her clothes to cause near-first degree burns.
PMLE appears to be hereditary. I was lucky, however; even
with my blond hair and fair skin, I can walk in sunlight with no more than the
normal fear of getting a sunburn. SPF-70
sunblock and I are old friends, nevertheless, and I use it faithfully. A little
caution is a prudent thing.
For most sufferers, PMLE simply causes an annoying rash but
a small percentage are stricken with a much more severe case, in which they
appear to have been actually cooked. It is the less painful form of a
condition called XP—Xeroderma pigmentosum. This is, in medical terms, “a
skin cancer-prone autosomal recessive disease characterized by inability to
repair UV-induced DNA damage.” XP
suffers never come out in daylight; they live their entire lives after
dark.
What does this have to do with vampires? The inference is obvious, and may be one of
the ways the vampire myth began. If you
were a superstititious person living in a primitive time when it was believed
the sun sank into the sea every night at the edge of the world, and you saw
someone actually burned by that same sun…someone who was only comfortable after
dark and only felt he could safely come out of his dwelling at night, what
would you think? Other opinions have been offered: premature burials, porphyria,
lycanthropy. I’m certain all these—plus
PMLE and XP—attributed to the legend a good many of us who are writers have
used to our advantage, and I am one of them.
When I began my series The
Second Species, I wanted my vampires to be different, not the usual Undead,
sleeping-in-a-coffin type. So I made
them a living people, a second species of Mankind, divorced from their
human brothers because of their differences.
They have many characteristics of the Undead but I’ve given acceptable
reasons for them: the entire group
suffers from XP, therefore they can’t emerge into sunlight; they have
allergies—the most powerful one being to garlic and certain herbs; their
refusal to look at crosses, etc., is not because they are repulsed by them but
because their own religion demands they not look on the sacred objects
of other faiths, and so on.
Understanding how humans fear them, they have hidden themselves away in
the cloud-covered peaks of the Carpathians where the sun never penetrates. If
and when they emerge into the land of humans, tragedy inevitably follows.
That is the story behind the creation of my “vampires,”
based in fact, elaborated in fiction.
The first novel in the series, Shadow
Lord, is expected to be in the next two months by Double Dragon
Publishing. Look for it…you will enjoy
it…and feel a little sympathy for those true suffers who are “deprived of God’s
holy sunlight.”
BLURB:
In 1794, everything
changes… Their Prince’s assassin is murdered. His son demands revenge.
Marek Strigoi’s quest
for justice will take him from his Transylvanian homeland to the Hellfire clubs
of Vienna, and the boudoir of a Parisian Marquise, but not even love will stop
his vengeance.
Mircea Ravagiu must
die.
When both the hunter
and the hunted are vampires, not even Hell can stand in the way!
Shadow Lord, Book One of the Second Species, is scheduled for
an October release from Double Dragon Publishing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
A writer of French Huguenot extraction, Tony-Paul de Village saw his first vampire
movie on television at age 6--the old Universal horror flick, Dracula's Daughter--and was scared
sleepless. He’s now paying his very permissive parents back by writing about
the Undead.
MORE ABOUT TP AT:
Twitter: @tpvissage
