𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐀 ━ 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐧 𝐋𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐧𝐮

𝙊𝙧𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙡 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝙀𝙭𝙚𝙘𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣

AS HE SPOKE one of the strangest looking men I ever beheld entered the chapel at
the door through which Carmilla had made her entrance and her exit. He was tall,
narrow-chested, stooping, with high shoulders, and dressed in black. His face was
brown and dried in with deep furrows; he wore an oddly-shaped hat with a broad leaf.
His hair, long and grizzled, hung on his shoulders. He wore a pair of gold spectacles,
and walked slowly, with an odd shambling gait, with his face sometimes turned up to
the sky, and sometimes bowed down towards the ground, seemed to wear a perpetual
smile; his long thin arms were swinging, and his lank hands, in old black gloves ever so
much too wide for them, waving and gesticulating in utter abstraction.
“The very man!” exclaimed the General, advancing with manifest delight. “My dear
Baron, how happy I am to see you, I had no hope of meeting you so soon.” He signed
to my father, who had by this time returned, and leading the fantastic old gentleman,
whom he called the Baron to meet him. He introduced him formally, and they at once
entered into earnest conversation.

The stranger took a roll of paper from his pocket,
and spread it on the worn surface of a tomb that stood by. He had a pencil case in his
fingers, with which he traced imaginary lines from point to point on the paper, which
from their often glancing from it, together, at certain points of the building, I
concluded to be a plan of the chapel. He accompanied, what I may term, his lecture,
with occasional readings from a dirty little book, whose yellow leaves were closely
written over.
They sauntered together down the side aisle, opposite to the spot where I was
standing, conversing as they went; then they began measuring distances by paces,
and finally they all stood together, facing a piece of the sidewall, which they began to
examine with great minuteness; pulling off the ivy that clung over it, and rapping the
plaster with the ends of their sticks, scraping here, and knocking there. At length they
ascertained the existence of a broad marble tablet, with letters carved in relief upon
it.
With the assistance of the woodman, who soon returned, a monumental
inscription, and carved escutcheon, were disclosed. They proved to be those of the
long lost monument of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein.

The old General, though not I fear given to the praying mood, raised his hands
and eyes to heaven, in mute thanksgiving for some moments.
“Tomorrow,” I heard him say; “the commissioner will be here, and the Inquisition
will be held according to law.”
Then turning to the old man with the gold spectacles, whom I have described, he
shook him warmly by both hands and said: “Baron, how can I thank you? How can we all thank you? You will have delivered
this region from a plague that has scourged its inhabitants for more than a century.
The horrible enemy, thank God, is at last tracked.”
My father led the stranger aside, and the General followed. I know that he had led
them out of hearing, that he might relate my case, and I saw them glance often
quickly at me, as the discussion proceeded.
My father came to me, kissed me again and again, and leading me from the chapel,
said:
“It is time to return, but before we go home, we must add to our party the good
priest, who lives but a little way from this; and persuade him to accompany us to the
schloss.”

In this quest we were successful: and I was glad, being unspeakably fatigued when
we reached home. But my satisfaction was changed to dismay, on discovering that
there were no tidings of Carmilla. Of the scene that had occurred in the ruined
chapel, no explanation was offered to me, and it was clear that it was a secret which
my father for the present determined to keep from me.
The sinister absence of Carmilla made the remembrance of the scene more
horrible to me. The arrangements for the night were singular. Two servants, and
Madame were to sit up in my room that night; and the ecclesiastic with my father
kept watch in the adjoining dressing room.
The priest had performed certain solemn rites that night, the purport of which I
did not understand any more than I comprehended the reason of this extraordinary
precaution taken for my safety during sleep.
I saw all clearly a few days later.
The disappearance of Carmilla was followed by the discontinuance of my nightly
sufferings.

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 phenomenon 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 accordance 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.