3 Surprising Things I Learned About Monsters While Writing My Novel

When I started writing Devils Kill Devils I knew that I wanted it to be, in part, a vampire story, and also that I wanted to lean into older vampire lore that I had stumbled across at various points when I was younger. The first text I dove into as part of this process was Dissertations upon the apparitions of angels, demons, and ghosts, and concerning the vampires of Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, written by the Benedictine monk Augustin Calmet in 1746. 

(How to Write Monsters in Fiction.)

From there I found so much more, from a variety of sources, than I could ever hope to use in one book. But here are just a few of the things that stood out to me.

1. There are many, many ways to become a vampire, werewolf, or other creature of the night

Generally, it feels like biting is the usual method of transferring a preternatural ailment from an afflicted person to someone else. The dreaded bite mark is now a famous symbol of doom, portrayed in too many pieces of horror media to be counted (well, not literally, but I don’t have the time to track down and count every instance of its use). Whether it’s the relatively demure sight of two punctures near the neck, or the more gruesome aftermath of teeth ripping a chunk out of someone’s forearm, we all know that this means—the bitten person will soon be among the undead in some capacity, whether they were bitten by a wolf, a vampire, or a zombie.

I knew before diving into Devils Kill Devils that there were things beyond the bite that could “turn” someone, but the variety and specificity of methods surprised me. For example, the 11th edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica said, “persons who turn [vampire] are generally wizards, witches, suicides and those who have come to a violent end or have been cursed by their parents or by the church. But anyone may become a vampire if an animal (especially a cat) leaps over his corpse or a bird flies over it.”

Bear in mind, I don’t think they mean “big cat” in the “sub-category of the genus Panthera” sense, but any cat that somebody thinks is sizable enough to probably turn you into a bloodsucking revenant.

The same edition states that, “There are women…who in consequence of deadly sins are condemned to pass seven years in the form of a wolf.”

According to Richard Verstegan’s 1628 publication Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, werewolves were sorcerers who used an ointment to enchant a girdle that allows them to be seen as wolves by others, while also taking on the mentality of a violent wolf (which seems to indicate they don’t actually transform).

Meanwhile, the liver-craving ghoul called a vrykolakas—effectively a proto-zombie—was said to be the reanimated corpse of a person excommunicated by the Greek church according to Montague Summers in his book The Vampire, His Kith and Kin.

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2. These creatures might not be able to starve to death

Not that these evils are immune to starvation; clearly they feel hunger and it can weaken them and have seemingly debilitating effects. I set out to find examples of starvation actually killing any such monster, however, and came up empty. It’s possible I overlooked something—I’m hardly a scholar—but I feel like I conducted a reasonably thorough search through the books, journals, and any other resource I could think of.

This factors into the background and character motivations for some of my villains in Devils Kill Devils, and might be something I return to in future books. It fascinates me. Being immortal and susceptible to the ravages of extreme hunger that can’t kill you sounds like a recipe for torture, and something for dreadful beings to dread.

Nobody would want to be stranded on a deserted island and starve to death, for instance, but imagine being in that same position and having to starve for a lifetime without end?

3. There are so many ways to be rid of these monsters it all feels like guesswork

Following up on the subjects of variety and ways to dispatch the monsters, it’s almost overwhelming trying to keep up with how to kill or cure someone cursed with one of these evil -isms.

Returning to the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1911, “To kneel in one spot for a hundred years…to be saluted with the sign of the cross, or addressed thrice by baptismal name, [or] to be struck three blows on the forehead with a knife, or to have at least three drops of blood drawn,” could all alleviate lycanthropy.

Kneeling for a hundred years, you say? Somehow I’m dubious of the discipline of a person possessed by a wolf’s worst instincts. Or even the most committed penitent alive. I wouldn’t put full faith in a statue to stay kneeling in the same place for a century.

For vampires, merely staking them through the heart might not work if you don’t use wood from the right tree, such as aspen, whitethorn, or hawthorn, at least according to certain traditions. You might try—either alternatively or additionally—cutting its head off, tearing the heart out, burning the body, or pouring boiling water and vinegar over the grave. These are just a handful of the ways to kill, or at least subdue, a vampire, and you get the sense that some of these are just hopeful, speculated remedies as opposed to tried and true methods, so try any of them at your own risk.

Or maybe just think ahead and make sure no corpses are hurdled by hefty house cats to avoid the problem in the first place.

Check out Johnny Comptons’ Devils Kill Devils here:

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