When Jessica* fell in love with James, she became entangled in a dangerous relationship that makes Twilight seem like child’s play.
I met James when I was 17. We were at a friend’s place for New Years Eve. My mate, Nick, told me a long-time friend was stopping over in Sydney on his way through to Hobart. There was a knock at the door and in walked James, although he preferred to be called Corvus which means crow. He looked like a normal guy. Very tall and very thin, long brown hair with blue eyes. He was wearing black jeans, a red button-up shirt and a leather jacket with a big snow leopard painted across the back. He kept his dark sunglasses on because he said he “couldn’t take the sun”. He was 24 but he seemed really nice. We all sat around all afternoon and evening chatting and watching the fireworks.
After New Year he went back to Tasmania and I thought I’d never see him again. But after a couple of emails he called me about two weeks later and told me he loved me. He asked if I felt the same way. Flattered, I thought, “sure, why not!” I had been in the depths of an eating disorder and felt extremely vulnerable. I’d only had one boyfriend, he dumped me at the formal, so I was willing to take the first person who showed interest. Besides, he was really intriguing and intense.
We started a long distance relationship and I soon discovered how addictive his personality was. James was an amazing story teller and would make me feel like I was the most important person in the whole world. He was extremely funny, which I found really attractive, and he’d send me into giggling fits with his funny voices. He was also very persuasive and charming and you’d do anything for him on first meeting because you would be so dazzled by how easy it was to get on with him. James seemed so wise and so sure of himself it was hard not to take his advice and believe his every word. He eventually convinced me to run away from home to be with him in Hobart. He paid for my flight down and my family didn’t know where I was for months.
James had mentioned how he believed he was a vampire before I moved to Hobart but once I got there I realised how much he was into it. He even had a group of followers who believed the same. There didn’t seem to be any specific reason why he believed this. He would play role-playing games like dungeons and dragons and Vampire: The Masquerade and I guess he just loved the idea of vampires so much that he decided he was one. He was also very interested in magic and he always thought things around him were signs. He’d say things like he stopped the rain coming down so he could get to the bus stop. If the rain coincidentally stopped he believed it was because he was blessed with amazing powers and was being favoured by Lilith who is said to be the first wife of Adam (that’s Adam of Adam and Eve), though vampire lore believed a very different version of the tale and that Lilith was actually the first vampire.
He met with his followers all the time. They would come over to our house and stay there for days on end. I spent a lot of time in my room because I was so frightened of them. They would regularly drink blood from each other and spend a lot of time discussing the unique powers they had such as being able to read minds, auras and “call” each other using only mental abilities. They referred to people who weren't vampires as “mundanes” and “blood bags”, becoming more and more obsessed with the idea that people were nothing more than food.
They would talk vampires for most of the time they were over, performing group rituals on special occasions, like if one of the members turned 21. James would conduct a ceremony making them an “elder” of the house. A “vampire house” was what they called their particular groups. They made up sigils (a symbol that’s created for magical purposes) to wear for their house so other houses would know which group they belonged to.
When they were at our place, they’d swap spells and potions they'd brewed, or just hang out like regular people and play Playstation. They stayed up all night and slept all day. I soon had to adapt to their body clocks because I was frightened they would do something to me in my sleep. I developed black and red circles under my eyes and I was chronically depressed all the time without sufficient vitamin D from never being in the sun. Sometimes I cooked meals for them in the hopes they’d be grateful and leave me alone, but they just made jokes about putting blood in the meals to liven up the taste.
Most of his followers were female and only a few males. I think other men intimidated James because he wanted to be the alpha male. He hated anyone who might threaten his position. The thing that was most troubling was that these were intelligent, seemingly together people. One girl was studying law with dreams of being Chief Justice, another was doing an arts degree. But they obviously suffered such low self-esteem and didn’t have many friends. I think they felt they belonged when they were with the group.
James and his vampire house believed drinking blood kept them looking young and made them strong. They thought they felt something called “the hunger” where they had to drink blood or they “vamped out”. Vamping out seemed to involve something between a panic attack and a tantrum. James would go feral and sit in a corner growling like a cat and attack anything that came near him if he didn’t drink blood. They believed drinking blood brought you closer together as two beings on a level even higher than love or lust or any other emotion and they’d drink from each other as often as they could. Asking for it seemed a bit like asking for sex really. They were all shy about it, but all wanted it. The scary thing is that they reused razors, let razors go rusty before using them and didn’t get blood tests for any diseases they already had.
I warned them about the dangers and of diseases they could get from sucking each others blood, like hepatitis, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. They would usually only stick to one “donor” because they believed the donor/vampire relationship was a very special one and went by the rule “a drink for a drink”, meaning that when someone drinks from you, you buy them a beverage next time you were out. I admit their donor/vampire relationships were very close, to the point that the donor's partners would get jealous of the bond even if they didn’t believe in the whole thing. Donors were called ‘black swans’, a pretty name, further romanticising the whole lifestyle.
I was very frightened of them and disgusted by what they were doing, but I wanted to make James happy so I tried to get involved as much as possible by making food for them and sewing robes. I would research books that might interest them and dictate letters from James. I quickly realised to survive in the relationship I was going to have to make out that I was a vampire. By this stage I was breaking down. I was away from my family, I didn’t know anyone besides James and his vampire family and I was so stressed because the conditions we were living in were terrible. We had very little money, so when I wanted to eat, I usually couldn’t. Faking being a vampire wasn’t hard. I observed their behaviors and imitated them. Nobody realised I was faking it. All it took was a couple of coincidences like pretending I had dreams predicting the future. I never believed any of it.
I was blood donating for him, which has left me with permanent scars on my forearms, something I’m very ashamed of. He was so happy he had turned me and he loved me all the more for it and I loved the love he gave me, but hated myself. It was a dangerous and very scary situation. James became more controlling and kept insisting I blood let for him and become his “vampire bride”.
When we were alone he made me feel wonderful. He would be sweet and read to me, and we played the part of the perfect couple. But when he was with his vampire house he would ignore me or treat me as a maid. I finally decided I had to get out. I started hiding cash from him for months and months until I had enough to fly home to Sydney. I told him I was leaving and he could either come with me or I would go alone. He decided to come with me. I was so embarrassed; he kept urging me to come out to my family as a vampire. I couldn’t tell my family anything about him because it all sounded so insane, I covered for him saying he had a job when he didn’t and that he took care of me.
He soon found other “vampires” to hang out with in Sydney. He would go online and look for others, we'd all meet up and if Corv liked them, he'd ask them to join him. I guess the turning point was that he became more and more engrossed in this lifestyle and wasn’t letting up and i decided "I don’t want to play anymore". One night I was messaging a friend what Corv was saying to me, he called and told me I deserved better and that I was a good person. That’s when I knew it was time. Corvis had become insanely jealous he locked me in the house so I was unable to see anyone. Finally I ended it and moved in with my sister.
He texted me wanting to meet up but I ignored them. After I knew he’d moved back to Hobart I went round to the house we used to live to pick up some final things. My flat mate handed me a pile of about 60 letters that had come for me in the mail saying Corvus had kept them all trying to entice me to come see him. There were pictures of me up all over our old room, like some sick shrine. I found cuttings of my hair next to letters he was writing me but never sent. It was awful. The room smelt putrid, and I realised what foul conditions i had been living in.
It was a dark time in my life, but I’ve learnt you should never do anything you’re not comfortable with. Some people will to play on your insecurities to get what they want from you. These vampire people are dangerous and believe they can do anything they want to you. They look like regular people; some of them have regular jobs and families and maybe even children. If people are making you hurt yourself, then they are not really your friends. I have a lifetime of scars on my arms and will never be able to wear short sleeves again. But they’re also a reminder that I got through all that terrible stuff and came out of it a much stronger person. I give blood to the Red Cross blood bank every three months, I’m lucky I didn’t contract any diseases. Now I give blood for good causes, not bad ones. Forget Buffy, I’m a vampire slayer by being strong enough to leave the vampire house and continue on with a life of normality.
*Model is in no way associated with this story*
