Carmilla

Carmilla became more devoted to me than ever, and her strange paroxysms

of languid adoration more frequent. She used to gloat on me with

increasing ardor the more my strength and spirits waned. This always

shocked me like a momentary glare of insanity.

Without knowing it, I was now in a pretty advanced stage of the

strangest illness under which mortal ever suffered. There was an

unaccountable fascination in its earlier symptoms that more than

reconciled me to the incapacitating effect of that stage of the malady.

This fascination increased for a time, until it reached a certain point,

when gradually a sense of the horrible mingled itself with it,

deepening, as you shall hear, until it discolored and perverted the

whole state of my life.

The first change I experienced was rather agreeable. It was very near

the turning point from which began the descent of Avernus.

Certain vague and strange sensations visited me in my sleep. The

prevailing one was of that pleasant, peculiar cold thrill which we feel

in bathing, when we move against the current of a river. This was soon

accompanied by dreams that seemed interminable, and were so vague that

I could never recollect their scenery and persons, or any one connected

portion of their action. But they left an awful impression, and a sense

of exhaustion, as if I had passed through a long period of great mental

exertion and danger.

After all these dreams there remained on waking a remembrance of having

been in a place very nearly dark, and of having spoken to people whom I

could not see; and especially of one clear voice, of a female's, very

deep, that spoke as if at a distance, slowly, and producing always the

same sensation of indescribable solemnity and fear. Sometimes there came

a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck.

Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and longer and

more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed

itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and

full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation,

supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses

left me and I became unconscious.

It was now three weeks since the commencement of this unaccountable

state.

My sufferings had, during the last week, told upon my appearance. I had

grown pale, my eyes were dilated and darkened underneath, and the

languor which I had long felt began to display itself in my countenance.

My father asked me often whether I was ill; but, with an obstinacy which

now seems to me unaccountable, I persisted in assuring him that I was

quite well.

In a sense this was true. I had no pain, I could complain of no bodily

derangement. My complaint seemed to be one of the imagination, or the

nerves, and, horrible as my sufferings were, I kept them, with a morbid

reserve, very nearly to myself.