Tóth Panna

Budapesti Metropolitan Egyetem

Séllei Nóra Valéria

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Képzőművészeti stúdiumok 4.
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Békés Rozália
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 CARMILLA
BY
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU

BRAN, ROMANIA
DRACULA AND COMPANY
1897
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Carmilla complained of dreams and feverish sensations, but by no means of so alarming a
kind as mine. I say that mine were extremely alarming. Had I been capable of comprehending
my condition, I would have invoked aid and advice on my knees. The narcotic of an unsuspected
influence was acting upon me, and my perceptions were benumbed.

I am going to tell you now of a dream that led immediately to an odd discovery.

One night, instead of the voice I was accustomed to hear in the dark, I heard one, sweet and ten-
der, and at the same time terrible, which said, “Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin.”
At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw Carmilla, standing, near the foot of
my bed, in her white nightdress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood.

I wakened with a shriek, possessed with the one idea that Carmilla was being murdered. I
remember springing from my bed, and my next recollection is that of standing on the lobby,
crying for help.

Madame and Mademoiselle came scurrying out of their rooms in alarm; a lamp burned al-
ways on the lobby, and seeing me, they soon learned the cause of my terror.

I insisted on our knocking at Carmilla’s door. Our knocking was unanswered.

It soon became a pounding and an uproar. We shrieked her name, but all was vain.
We all grew frightened, for the door was locked. We hurried back, in panic, to my room. There
we rang the bell long and furiously. If my father’s room had been at that side of the house,
we would have called him up at once to our aid. But, alas! he was quite out of hearing, and to
reach him involved an excursion for which we none of us had courage.

Servants, however, soon came running up the stairs; I had got on my dressing gown and slip-
pers meanwhile, and my companions were already similarly furnished. Recognizing the voi-
ces of the servants on the lobby, we sallied out together; and having renewed, as fruitlessly, our
summons at Carmilla’s door, I ordered the men to force the lock. They did so, and we stood,
holding our lights aloft, in the doorway, and so stared into the room.

We called her by name; but there was still no reply. We looked round the room. Everything was
undisturbed. It was exactly in the state in which I had left it on bidding her good night.

But Carmilla was gone.

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In silence, slowly we walked down to the drawbridge, where the beautiful landscape
opened before us.

“And so you were thinking of the night I came here?” she almost whispered.

“Are you glad I came?”

“Delighted, dear Carmilla,” I answered.

“And you asked for the picture you think like me, to hang in your room,” she murmured
with a sigh, as she drew her arm closer about my waist, and let her pretty head sink upon my
shoulder. “How romantic you are, Carmilla,” I said. “Whenever you tell me your story, it will
be made up chiefly of some one great romance.”

She kissed me silently.

“I am sure, Carmilla, you have been in love; that there is, at this moment, an affair of the
heart going on.”

“I have been in love with no one, and never shall,” she whispered, “unless it should be with you.”

How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!

Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair, with tu-
multuous sighs, that seemed almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that trembled.

Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. “Darling, darling,” she murmured, “I live in
you; and you would die for me, I love you so.”

I started from her.

She was gazing on me with eyes from which all fire, all meaning had flown, and a face color-
less and apathetic.

“Is there a chill in the air, dear?” she said drowsily. “I almost shiver; have I been dreaming?
Let us come in. Come; come; come in.”

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You have heard, no doubt, of the appalling superstition that prevails in Upper and Lower
Styria, in Moravia, Silesia, in Turkish Serbia, in Poland, even in Russia; the superstition, so
we must call it, of the Vampire.

If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity, judicially, before commissions
innumerable, each consisting of many members, all chosen for integrity and intelligence,
and constituting reports more voluminous perhaps than exist upon any one other class of
cases, is worth anything, it is difficult to deny, or even to doubt the existence of such a phen-
omenon as the Vampire.

For my part I have heard no theory by which to explain what I myself have witnessed and
experienced, other than that supplied by the ancient and well-attested belief of the country.

The next day the formal proceedings took place in the Chapel of Karnstein.

The grave of the Countess Mircalla was opened; and the General and my father recognized
each his perfidious and beautiful guest, in the face now disclosed to view. The features,
though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral, were tinted with the warmth
of life. Her eyes were open; no cadaverous smell exhaled from the coffin. The two medical
men, one officially present, the other on the part of the promoter of the inquiry, attested
the marvelous fact that there was a faint but appreciable respiration, and a corresponding
action of the heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin
floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed.

Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampirism. The body, therefore, in ac-
cordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart
of the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects such as might
escape from a living person in the last agony. Then the head was struck off, and a torrent of
blood flowed from the severed neck. The body and head was next placed on a pile of wood,
and reduced to ashes, which were thrown upon the river and borne away, and that territory
has never since been plagued by the visits of a vampire.

My father has a copy of the report of the Imperial Commission, with the signatures of all who
were present at these proceedings, attached in verification of the statement. It is from this
official paper that I have summarized my account of this last shocking scene.

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