Skip to main content

Short story about a man donating a rare blood type who learns that the donation is for a vampire


When I was a child, I read a number of Alfred Hitchcock's anthologies. One of them included a short story involving a man with a rare blood type who answers an advertisement for people paying for his blood type. I remember that he had a short aside about how people would criticize him for asking for payment, but that he felt that he should be compensated for his time and inconvenience, particularly since most blood donation places would just turn around and sell the blood to the patients who needed it. Anyhow, partway through the donation, he comes to a realization that the man he is providing the donation to is, in fact, a vampire, and one with a genetic condition that means that he can only drink rare blood types. I remember the narrator was disabused of a few traditional bits of vampire folklore by the vampire; I particularly remember the vampire claiming that the whole "catches fire in sunlight" thing was more along the lines of a really bad sunburn, raising blisters upon contact. At the end, the narrator agreed to come back for more donations. I remember the story's illustrating involved an IV bag of blood with a vampire's face imposed upon it.


When I was last home, I looked through Witch's Brew and Spellbinders in Suspense (although I am told that this may have been a generic name for several of his collections) and did not find the story in them. I was fairly certain that we had a third book, but I could not find it in the time I had. Based on eliminating the anthologies that I did browse at home, it might have been in a volume that included two other stories. One involved a crystal bell that could bring people back to the life in exchange for the loss of another's life (initially, the bell didn't work, but someone realized that they had the clapper on their necklace) which ended with someone falling on the bell and having a shard pierce their heart. The other about a man who somehow bought two "knacks", in his case the ability to compose rhymes at any time (and, in fact, he couldn't stop rhyming) and the ability to "make money" which translated to him doodling out perfectly detailed dollar bills whenever his thoughts drifted. Faced with legal problems from accidentally counterfeiting, and his wife becoming increasingly annoyed at the rhyming, he somehow exchanged the gift of "making money" for the gift of silence, and started working for a greeting card company. I do believe those two stories were in the same anthology, but I am not 100% certain that it was with the same one as the vampire and the blood donor.



Answer



The story is called "Blood Money", and according to this site it's in Witch's Brew.


*Witch's Brew* book cover




M. Timothy O'Keefe - Blood Money: Ashbury, possessed of a rare blood group, makes his living from regular donations to the Hospital and Blood Bank. Comes the day when he answers an advertisement placed in the newspaper and finds himself strapped to a bed, a vampire doctor hovering over him with a syringe. The undead have learned to adapt with the times.



According to this site it states the original "Blood Money" was in Witch's Brew from 1965, and the book I mentioned is a reprint I think in 1977.


http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/M._Timothy_O'Keefe



"Blood Money" in Alfred Hitchcock's Witches' Brew (1965)



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...