Vlad by Carlos Fuentes reinvents Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula in Mexico City, where the count makes the journey from the Old World to the New World with a specific goal in mind.
Before he joined the undead, turned by a ten-year-old vampire girl, he was the fifteenth-century Romanian ruler Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula. If you don’t know Vlad, his unspeakable crimes are listed here. But they are not what terrifies you in this well-written short novel filled with graphic imagery.
It is the earnest attorney Yves Navarro who is tasked with arranging Vlad’s move to Mexico. Dark humor pervades the new tenant’s many odd requests, such as blackened windows, an escape tunnel, and multiple drains.
Yves’s domestic life appears tranquil, despite the loss of his eleven-year-old son, who disappeared in the ocean during a beach outing. Yves, his wife, Asunción, and their little girl live a middle-class life. But it is the loss of their son that has opened the door for evil to enter the family.
This tale is more than a horror story; it also reveals the danger of ignoring or failing to notice problems until it is too late. The reader always knows more than the clueless Yves. The vampire has his eyes on Yves’s wife and little girl.
The book is comical at times, with Vlad’s toupee and fake mustache, but this novella is truly scary and horrifying. Fuentes is an amazing stylist, and the story will creep you out and fill you with terror. This may not be Fuentes’s greatest work, but Vlad has the fingerprints of a master all over it.
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