Chapter Summary of Blood County, by Doris Piserchia (writing as Curt Selby)
by Tom Moody (with apologies to the author for publishing what are essentially just notes)

Chapter 1. Newark resident Clinton Breen receives a telegram from his home in Blood County, West Virginia, announcing that his brother Jared is dead. He's so distracted he steps off a curb and is hit by a car. The gaping, mortal wound on his head barely fazes him; by the time the driver, Portia Clark, tracks him to his apartment a few hours later it's healed. Clinton tells her he's fine and doesn't need her help. Sugarman Phelps, Clinton's alcoholic "surrogate mother and father" arrives at the apartment from Blood County. He reiterates that Jared is dead; Clinton says: "I don't see why you have to be so afraid of him."

Chapter 2. A train travels east carrying war casualties. Somewhere around Illinois or Pennsylvania, one of the coffins springs open and a fiend with long fangs and glowing red eyes emerges. As he prepares to bite the soldier guarding the coffins, the soldier recites the Lord's Prayer, and the fiend shows dawning awareness, relaxes his grip, and jumps from the train. (In Chapter 9 we learn this scene is a flashback to Clinton's vampire awakening.)

Chapter 3. From her hiding place under a mansion in Blood County, Gilda Lamprou watches a child, Charlie, playing. She gives him bubblegum in exchange for a few drops of "what keeps him functioning," a routine that's been going on for some time. She fears her husband, Duquieu, will be "harsh" if she "simply snatches the brat and does what she longs to do all at once."

Ch. 4. Clinton and Sugarman travel from Newark [see p. 72] to Blood, a West Virginia mountain village. The train and bus only take them so far; the rest of the journey is on foot. In flashback, we learn that Clinton and his half-brother Jared are the offspring of mortal women ravished by the vampire Duquieu. Both women died shortly after giving birth; according to Sugie, "all their red blood cells was et up." [Note: this telegraphs information that Portia learns later in the Morgantown hospital.] Clinton is ashamed to be Duquieu's son, but Sugie tells him (still in flashback) that "you're my boy and the boy of everyone in Blood who's trying to be a Christian while livin' in the middle of Beelzebub's circus." The boys often play in Duquieu's mansion, where their father day-sleeps inside an impregnable iron cage.

Ch. 5. Clinton and Sugie return to the mountain shack where Clinton spent his youth. This scene is very sad. Clinton learns that his childhood sweetheart Coley Nagl married Jared. Weird detail about the village: vegetables grow to enormous size there; everyone lives off abundant, self-canned food.

Ch. 6. Flashback: A much younger Clinton and Jared try to ride Duquieu's powerful horse, Baron. Later Jared attempts to break into Duquieu's cage and fails. He declares that one day he'll be master of the Lamprou estate.

Ch. 7. Blood resident Marsh Nagl (Coley's father) makes deliveries to the mansion, informs Duquieu that Clinton has returned to Blood. Clinton has violated "the law": anyone can leave the mountain but no one can return without permission. Obviously Duquieu rules the village like a medieval landowner.

Ch. 8. Duquieu locks Gilda in the mansion's basement and tells her she'll live on rats and cockroaches. She has evidently done something bad to the child, Charlie. She tells Duquieu he'll need her soon, because his sons are going to "bring him down."

Ch. 9. Clint and Sugie debate the serfdom of Blood's residents. We learn that Duquieu fled the old country in 1693 and has ruled the mountain village since. Sugie thinks the villagers are dependent on the abnormally large yields from the hybrid "freak seeds" that Duquieu brought with him from Europe; he defends Duquieu as a "civilized thing [who] only goes haywire once in a while." After Sugie goes to sleep, Duquieu appears to Clint and gives him 24 hours to leave town; the old vampire offers Clint some of his seeds, and says certain tribes in Mexico might welcome a savior. Clint calls Duquieu a rapist, and Duquieu taunts that it was he, Clint, who consumed his mother's body in the womb. [Second telegraphing of this info.] Clint says that Duquieu is evil, and Duquieu replies: "Imagine long, long life[...] Do you picture yourself as noble and as the perpetrator of good works or does time begin to pall on you? [...] Aye, that it does, and every little bit of diversion can lure you at any time. The flash of a slender ankle or an angle of loveliness in a cheek is enough to transport you into a frenzy of desire." We also learn here about Clint's death in the war and subsequent transformation, and that Clint is a "day man," meaning the rays of the sun don't hurt him (yet). Later, villager July West arrives and announces that Portia Clark, who injured Clint in Chapter 1, has arrived in Blood.

Ch. 10. Flashback: Young Clint, Jared, and Coley are diving off a rope bridge. Coley says she'll have "plenty of babies" when she marries Clint. Clint reflects that he can't stay in Blood and marry Coley (or anyone else) because his offspring will be like Duquieu.

Ch. 11. The toddler Charlie Steiner has become a vampire, thanks to Gilda. His mother Louise, still fond of him against her better judgment, keeps him in a bear cage deep in the woods. Responding to his cries of "Charlie hungwy!" she lets him out of the cage, "feeds" him, and puts him back in. He has taken too much blood; she falls to the forest floor and dies.

Ch. 12. Portia Clark spends her first night in Blood, locked by the locals in her room. The next day she walks up the mountain searching for Clint, and discovers Louise Steiner's body. Clint appears on horseback, guesses that "wolves" were responsible, and goes off to take care of the body. Portia continues climbing and has lunch in the shack with Sugie. Coley arrives looking for Clint, and is distant with Portia. This chapter is all described from Portia's POV; we learn she's a freelance writer thinking about doing a story on Blood. We see the food, customs, and countryside, all lovingly described, through her city-fied (Newark, NJ) perspective: for example, she has a breakfast of eggs and fried fatback (described as "crisp and sweet") and her host Sid has "salt fish"--fish rolled in batter and fried in lard.

Ch. 13. Searching for his wife Louise, Sam Steiner discovers a very hungry Charlie in the bear cage and lets him out. Things don't go well.

Ch. 14. Not suspecting what's going on with Sam and Charlie, Clint takes Louise's body to her home and lays it out on the floor for Sam to take care of. Later, he "sits up" with the deceased Jared's body. Jared's grandfather and surrogate Pap, a mean drunk named Sweck Brewster, shows up and taunts Clint. Sweck swears that Jared won't turn, and if he does Duquieu will kill him. Clint tells Sweck to leave town.

Ch. 15. Marsh Nagl is Blood's "milkman," meaning he has to collect a pint of blood a month from Blood residents and make nightly hauls up to the mansion. His horse-drawn wagon enters the Steiner property but he doesn't realize till too late that the family has turned. Just before they attack, he curses himself as "a fool living in hell and not constantly on the lookout for devils." After the Steiners are done with him, they gorge on his nightly run.

Ch. 16. Coley finds Clint in the church keeping watch over Jared's body. We learn that Sweck Brewster killed Jared, and that Clint became a schoolteacher after leaving Blood. Coley hopes Clint will marry her now that Jared's dead, but Clint says "Your husband isn't dead." He tells Coley to leave the church so the jealous Jared won't see the two of them together when he opens his eyes.

Ch. 17. Duquieu bursts into Sugie's shack and angrily demands that Sugie assume Nagl's duties, since "the delivery was not made tonight." Portia comes out of the shadows and sarcastically asks if Duquieu is a feudal padrone. Duquieu becomes courtly in manner and invites Portia to take a walk with him. He points out his house at the top of the mountain, and says he hopes he'll see more of her. He exits, and Sugie refuses to tell Portia anything since she'll "be leavin' tomorrow." [Among other things, Portia learns from Duquieu that he was born in France, and that his father was Greek. His last name "Lamprou" is obviously a play on lamprey, a bloodsucking eel, and in fact Piserchia never uses the word vampire in the book: the bloodsuckers are all referred to as Lamprous.] As Portia is falling asleep, she thinks she sees a face pressed against the screen door--that of a woman last seen dead in the woods.