The Nosferatu Scroll (41 page)

Bela Lugosi then took over the vampire role as Hollywood latched onto the character, while in England a few decades later, Christopher Lee strutted his stuff as the suave, handsome, almost romantic, antihero. Since then,
vampires seem to have appeared almost everywhere, and in a bewildering variety of forms, from the leather-jacketed stars of
The Lost Boys
through the almost tragic hero of the Anne Rice novels, to the extreme violence of
From Dusk Till Dawn
and the sexy lighthearted exploits of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
.

At least in one sense, then, the vampire does seem to be truly immortal.

Why Venice?

Venice is a beautiful, romantic and mysterious city, with a fascinating and extremely colorful history. And vampires—in both fiction and reality—feature in that history. The 1988 film
Vampire in Venice
starred Klaus Kinski in the title role, and more recently
The Vampires of Venice
was an episode of the
Doctor Who
television series.

That’s the fiction, but this is reality.

The skull of a sixteenth-century female and supposed vampire was discovered in a mass grave—a plague pit—in Venice in March 2009. The brick jammed into her jaw was intended to stop her from feeding on the other plague victims buried with her.

So Venice seemed an ideal location for this novel. There are more than one hundred islands scattered around the Venetian lagoon, some with busy, populous settlements, others far too small to live on, and still others on which ancient ruined houses stand as stark reminders of the difficulties of establishing a viable habitation in the salty, marshy waters.

Venice itself can be spooky enough on a fine day. When the mist rolls in from the Adriatic, even small figures can cast giant shadows in the narrow streets and across the canals. Out in the lagoon, the islands become isolated worlds of their own where, in my imagination, almost anything could—and in this novel did—happen.

James Becker

Principality of Andorra, 2011