Originally published by Tor Horror in 1988, Elizabeth Engstrom’s unusual and compelling vampire novel, Black Ambrosia, has been republished (with an introduction by Grady Hendrix) by Vallencourt Books as part of their new Paperbacks from Hell series. Unfolding as an insular journey into the heart of darkness, Engstrom’s sophomore novel is as seductive as it is unsettling; every turn of a page beckons the reader ever further into dark, lurid realms of twisted psychology and sensual, bloody violence. It tells of Angelina, a troubled young woman who, after the death of her mother, sets off on a journey across the United States. To where, she isn’t sure; but she is curious to find a place for herself in the world and to know what it feels like to belong somewhere.
The story, populated with lost souls and sinister predators, unfolds within a lonely world of desolate highways, small towns, shadowy apartments, truck stops and dingy diners. Angelina lives a transitory life, only ever briefly knowing the kind of security and stability she believes she should crave. Her isolated journeys through small towns, acquiring various companions for a short time before setting out alone again, speaks to the purgatorial, liminal realms she inhabits. We’re privy to her internal world, her thoughts conveyed to us via the first-person narrative, and so we come to understand her motives, her desperation, her euphoria. Despite the horrific acts she commits, we are still invited to consider her vulnerability, as Engstrom ensures she is rendered a complex and sympathetic - if extremely flawed and unreliable - narrator.
While Angelina develops an aversion to daylight, sleeps in a homemade coffin, and kills several people by biting their necks and gorging herself on their blood, Black Ambrosia is not a typical vampire novel. Engstrom maintains focus on Angelina’s inner life, exploring her motivations as well as her reactions to the transgressions she commits. It’s never clear why or how Angelina becomes a vampire, she simply seems to will it so or just believe it to be so. The catalyst is when she kills a man in self-defence and then afterwards contemplates how this makes her feel before she eventually claims her next victim. And then another, and another…
Engstrom eases us into Angelina’s thought process but always ensures a sense of ambiguity remains throughout. We are provided with the perspective of other characters who interact with her, their perceptions (relayed to us at the end of each chapter) usually offer a very different take on proceedings, and this creates tension throughout. Angelina's actions and reasoning could be the result of a decline in her mental health, instigated by her mother’s death and her subsequent decision to leave home. She has difficulty interacting and connecting with people, and maintaining relationships, which could also stem from her grief. Engstrom’s characterisation of Angelina enshrouds proceedings with a real sense of introspection and ambiguity, as the character’s inner conflict is explored and always to the fore. While she is by turns resilient, self-reliant, lonely, and desperate, a temptress and a murderer, she’s also a teenager, and a vulnerable one at that.
Engstrom offers up moments of sensual carnality and abject horror, grounded in a sense of unavoidable tragedy and without ever descending into overwrought melodrama. Angelina may be a creature of the night but she is also all too human in her longing for a sense of normalcy, security, belonging and purpose. Engstrom subtly parallels vampirism with ideas regarding addiction and self-destruction as Angelina is driven by a constant, innate need, exuding a reckless self-destruction matched only by a sense of self-preservation, a willingness to sacrifice everything she has built for herself when her desires must be sated. She’s driven by a voice only she can hear. The voice of someone who whispers to her, compels her. The disembodied voice she hears, referred to only as ‘Her’, could be herself, it could be a sense of disassociation, though Engstrom teases us with ideas of an outside influence, perhaps an individual or even a cult, maintaining a strong level of ambiguity which taunts and tantalises throughout.
Overshadowed by the popularity of Anne Rice’s vampire novels at the time, with their melancholy characters and opulent Gothic melodrama, Engstrom’s novel takes a very different approach, grounding her story in drab, working class communities with people going about their mundane lives unknowing of the predator in their midst. She uses Angelina’s plight to ruminate on themes such as addiction and abuse. It’s kitchen-sink vampirism. Angelina’s ‘lair’ is a small, one bedroom basement flat, where her homemade coffin sits on her kitchen table and the place is overran with cats and rats. That said, there are ambiguous hints of the supernatural throughout, and several nods to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, specifically in the seemingly psychic connection Angelina shares with former lover and nemesis Boyd, as they appear to momentarily and sporadically see things from each other’s eyes. He assumes the role of vampire hunter, tracking her across the country.
With its enticing amalgamation of character study and haunting, cross-country odyssey, as Angelina encounters humanity in all its shades and varieties, Black Ambrosia is a striking and unusual novel. It is as much about a lonely vampire as it is about a lost and directionless young woman whose life has slipped through the cracks of society and into the mire of addiction and hopelessness.