Carmilla

The vampire is, apparently, subject, in certain situations, to special

conditions. In the particular instance of which I have given you a

relation, Mircalla seemed to be limited to a name which, if not her real

one, should at least reproduce, without the omission or addition of a

single letter, those, as we say, anagrammatically, which compose it.

Carmilla did this; so did Millarca.

My father related to the Baron Vordenburg, who remained with us for two

or three weeks after the expulsion of Carmilla, the story about the

Moravian nobleman and the vampire at Karnstein churchyard, and then he

asked the Baron how he had discovered the exact position of the

long-concealed tomb of the Countess Mircalla? The Baron's grotesque

features puckered up into a mysterious smile; he looked down, still

smiling on his worn spectacle case and fumbled with it. Then looking

up, he said: "I have many journals, and other papers, written by that remarkable man;

the most curious among them is one treating of the visit of which you

speak, to Karnstein. The tradition, of course, discolors and distorts a

little. He might have been termed a Moravian nobleman, for he had

changed his abode to that territory, and was, beside, a noble. But he

was, in truth, a native of Upper Styria. It is enough to say that in

very early youth he had been a passionate and favored lover of the

beautiful Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Her early death plunged him into

inconsolable grief. It is the nature of vampires to increase and

multiply, but according to an ascertained and ghostly law.

"Assume, at starting, a territory perfectly free from that pest. How

does it begin, and how does it multiply itself? I will tell you. A

person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under

certain circumstances, becomes a vampire. That specter visits living

people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave,

develop into vampires. This happened in the case of the beautiful

Mircalla, who was haunted by one of those demons. My ancestor,

Vordenburg, whose title I still bear, soon discovered this, and in the

course of the studies to which he devoted himself, learned a great

deal more.

"Among other things, he concluded that suspicion of vampirism would

probably fall, sooner or later, upon the dead Countess, who in life had

been his idol. He conceived a horror, be she what she might, of her

remains being profaned by the outrage of a posthumous execution. He has

left a curious paper to prove that the vampire, on its expulsion from

its amphibious existence, is projected into a far more horrible life;

and he resolved to save his once beloved Mircalla from this.

"He adopted the stratagem of a journey here, a pretended removal of her

remains, and a real obliteration of her monument. When age had stolen

upon him, and from the vale of years, he looked back on the scenes he

was leaving, he considered, in a different spirit, what he had done, and

a horror took possession of him. He made the tracings and notes which

have guided me to the very spot, and drew up a confession of the

deception that he had practiced. If he had intended any further action

in this matter, death prevented him; and the hand of a remote descendant

has, too late for many, directed the pursuit to the lair of the beast."