Sea Sickness

By June Pulliam

02/01/2006

Parish Damned. Lee Thomas. Tolworth, Surry, U. K.: Telos, 2005. 79 p.

In Parish Damned, Lee Thomas has invented a new sort of vampire, one that is a sea-faring creature, making it all the more difficult for it to be found and killed since it is far easier to stake something that must sleep in the earth than it is to find something concealed in the vastness of the ocean. In this respect, Thomas’s narrative is highly original. Other elements of his vampire novella are derivative of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, including the creature’s ability to either feed on humans outright, in a bloody fashion as reminiscent of Jaws as it is of Blade, as well as its ability to “reproduce” by infecting a human who then wastes away before going to a watery grave in Davy Jones’ locker.

Sounds interesting, right? But alas, Thomas’ narrative would be better told in full-blown novel form. Because he is not covering well-known ground, the reader wants to know more of the monster. Where did it come from? What in particular allows it to survive in a watery environment? Are these vampires amphibious? These questions aren’t really answered, or even addressed in Parish Damned, since the story is so short.

Also lacking is character development and setting. Parish Damned leans more towards action adventure, a mode which in my experience, anyway, usually precludes character development. Of course, one expects the monster’s victims to be flat characters, but I found myself getting rather annoyed that the protagonist and his closest friends were similarly flat. One also doesn’t get a clear picture of the novel’s setting, a costal Florida town that makes its living off of tourism, but nevertheless sports a tight-knit community of locals. This is a potentially interesting place, but unfortunately, Lee doesn’t adequately bring it to life.

Still, I don’t wish Parish Damned a watery grave. Instead, I hope that perhaps someone with talents in the visual arts might read it. If Lee doesn’t (or didn’t) want to develop this story into a full blown novel, then perhaps someone else might make it into a graphic novel. It’s a narrative that would lend itself well to a visual medium, where pictures could say what the author hasn’t.