The Vampire and the Cross

Let’s define a few things going into this section. I am talking about the literary worlds in which a vampire is either harmed by, or pushed away from a faithful believer, or a non-believer who is holding a cross. There are many, many worlds created by authors who presume the cross won’t work unless the holder is faithful and believes in the truth the symbol represents. And just as many in which the cross works independent of the holder’s beliefs. Then there are those whose vampires laugh at a cross; those thoroughly modern, secular, or differently beliefed ones. So, what does the symbol represent? It represents the crucifixion of Christ – through whose body/blood and assistance the sinner can be made whole and Holy, capable of entering Heaven to be with God the Father. Note that as such it is representing the idea that the son of the Deity would not only choose to sacrifice himself to save sinners, but that the Deity would allow the sacrifice and the handing off of the sinner’s sin to be laid on the back of a sinless Christ. (Please remember that we are engaging our brains in a discussion, so don’t be yelling at the page that the idea is unsound. Engage brain … not mouth.) The cross represents the offer of life-eternal. Of course, just as the eternal life offered by the vampire comes with a cost, so does this offer. To embrace the offer represented by this symbol, the sinner must not only forsake his sin, but recognize that there is nothing he can do to save himself. It is to embrace humbleness, not depression; there is a difference. To attain this salvation through the cross, the believer must forsake self; the opposite of what a vampire offers (eternal self-hood and self-importance).

Thus the symbol of the cross, by its inherent representation, opens a door to the place God dwells when it is held up (held up as in believed in) by a follower of that faith. Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot demonstrates what a cross can do when the holder believes in the connection between the symbolic representation and reality – even if it is just a toy cross or perhaps two sticks tied together into a cross shape; note that both characters believe here when Mark’s friend Danny Glick (one of the vampire’s first victims) talks talk Mark into opening the window and inviting him in. Mark has been putting together a model graveyard for a model Frankenstein, and his eyes fall upon the monument shaped like a cross:“With no pause for consideration… he swept up the cross and curled it into a tight fist....” As soon as the vampire enters the room he “brought the plastic cross around in a vicious swipe and laid it against Danny Glick’s cheek. His scream was horrible, unearthly, and silent… Smoke spurted from the pallid flesh, and for just a moment, before the creature twisted away and half dived, half fell out the window, Mark felt the flesh yield like smoke. Then it was over, as if it had never happened.”

In this authorially created world, even the plastic model of the cross is enough to defend the holder who recognized the power implicit in the symbol. It drives the vampire from the room and saves the life of Mark.

Of course, later in the same book the Priest falls when his faith falters. One can only suspect that for that one vital second, his knowledge of his humanity severed his belief that he was worthy of Christian salvation.

So why would a cross work when it is in the hands of someone whose symbols are different or whose symbols don’t exist? One can only speculate, but perhaps it is because faith is transferable, or perhaps the symbol surmounts its borders and it becomes in some way MORE than the representation of that symbolized, becoming the thing itself? Perhaps there is a reality that attaches itself to symbols, and they become closer to real than representational? I know one thing for certain though; if I meet a vampire in a darkened, deserted parking structure one night, I hope that the cross will indeed protect me. I have no desire to live in the Thirty-Days of Night world where there is nothing to drive back the stronger, immoral (can something utterly alien be held to the same, human idea of moral?) vampire. Without a supernatural deity to ward us, we are utterly overmatched by the supernatural vampire; nothing more than meat.

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