Classic Audiobook Collection - Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu ~ Full Audiobook [horror]

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu audiobook. Genre: horror In a lonely corner of Styria, a sheltered young woman named Laura lives with her widowed father in an old estate surrounded by forest and superstition. Their quiet routine is broken when a carriage accident delivers a mysterious, elegant stranger into their care: Carmilla, a girl of Laura's age who seems both fragile and strangely commanding. As the two grow inseparable, Laura is drawn into a relationship that feels like friendship, infatuation, and something darker all at once. Then unsettling changes begin to spread through the household and nearby villages - exhausted servants, fearful neighbors, and a pattern of illness that no doctor can explain. Laura herself starts to suffer vivid dreams and a weakening that deepens with Carmilla's nightly visits and cryptic confessions. With the help of a determined general, a skeptical physician, and a learned investigator of old legends, Laura's father is forced to confront the possibility that the threat is not a natural disease but an ancient predator hidden behind a beautiful face. Gothic, intimate, and charged with forbidden longing, Carmilla explores desire, secrecy, and the danger of trusting what you most want to believe. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:14:16) Chapter 02 (00:32:32) Chapter 03 (00:49:41) Chapter 04 (01:14:12) Chapter 05 (01:23:12) Chapter 06 (01:33:06) Chapter 07 (01:46:58) Chapter 08 (01:55:12) Chapter 09 (02:06:38) Chapter 10 (02:13:47) Chapter 11 (02:25:12) Chapter 12 (02:36:21) Chapter 13 (02:48:00) Chapter 14 (02:59:07) Chapter 15 (03:08:04) Chapter 16 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFano. Read by Elizabeth Clette. Prologue. Upon a paper attached to the narrative which follows, Dr. Hesalius has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to his essay on the strange subject which the manuscript illuminates. This mysterious subject he treats, in that essay,

with his usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation, it will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary man's collected papers. As I publish the case in this volume, simply to interest the laity, I shall forestall the intelligent lady who relates it in nothing, and after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain from presenting any pracey of the learned doctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subject which he describes as involving not improbably some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence and its intermediates i was anxious on discovering this paper to reopen the correspondence commenced by dr hessalia so many years before with a person so clever and careful as his informant seems to have been much to my regret however i found that she had died in the interval.

She probably could have added little to the narrative which she communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce, such conscientious particularity. Chapter 1 An Early Fright Insteria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle or Schloss. A small income in that part of the world goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough, ours would have answered among wealthy people at home.

My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would be at all materially adding to our comforts, or even luxuries. my father was in the austrian service and retired upon a pension and his patrimony and purchased this feudal residence and the small estate on which it stands a bargain nothing can be more picturesque or solitary it stands on a slight eminence in a forest the road very old and narrow passes in front of its straw-bridge never raised in my time and its moat stocked with perch and sailed over by many swans and floating on its surface white fleets of water-lilies over all this the schloss shows its many windows front, its towers, and its Gothic chapel. The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque

glade before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a stream that winds in deep shadow through the wood. I have said that this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the forest in which our castle stands extends 15 miles to the right and 12 to the left. The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the left. The nearest inhabited Schloss of any historic associations is that of old General Spilsdorf nearly 20 miles away to the right. I have said the nearest inhabited village, because there is only three miles westward, that is to say, in the direction of General Spieldorf Schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint little church, now roofless,

in the aisle of which are the moldering tombs of the proud family of Karnstein, now extinct, who once owned the equally desolate chateau, which, in the thick of the forest, overlooks the silent ruins of the town. Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time. I must tell you now how very small is the party who constitute the inhabitants of our castle. I don't include servants,

or those dependents who occupy rooms in the buildings attached to the Schloss. Listen and wonder. My father, who was the kindest man on earth, but growing old. And I, at the date of my story only 19. Eight years have passed since then. I and my father constituted the family at the Schloss.

My mother, Asterian lady, died in my infancy, but I had a good-natured governess, who had been with me from, I might almost say, my infancy. I could not remember the time when her fat, benignant face was not a familiar picture in my memory. This was Madame Perodon, a native of Beaudon, a native of Bern, whose care and good nature now in part supplied to me the loss of my mother, whom I do not even remember, so early I lost her.

She made a third at our little dinner-party. There is a fourth, Mademoiselle de la Fontaine, a lady such as you term, I believe, a finishing governess. She spoke French and German, Madame Parodon French and broken English, to which my father and I added English, which, partly to prevent its becoming a lost language among us, and partly from patriotic motives, we spoke every day. The consequence was a babble, at which strangers used to laugh, and which I shall make no attempt to reproduce in this narrative. And there were two or three young lady friends besides, pretty nearly of mine own age, who were occasional visitors

for longer or shorter terms, and these visits I sometimes returned. These were our regular social resources. But of course there were chance visits from neighbors of only five or six leagues distance. My life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one I can assure you. My guvernan had just so much control over me as you might conjecture such sage persons would have in the case of a rather spoiled girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty nearly her own way in everything. The first occurrence in my existence, which produced a terrible impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has been effaced, was one of the very earliest incidents of my life which I can

recollect. Some people will think it's so trifling that it should not be recorded here. You will see, however, by and by, why. I mention it. The nursery, as it was called, though I had it all to myself, was a large room in the upper story of the castle with a steep oak roof. I can't have been more than six years old, when one night I awoke, and looking round the room from my bed, failed to see the nursery maid. Neither was my nurse there, and I thought myself alone. I was not frightened, for I was one of those happy children who are studiously kept in ignorance of ghost stories, of fairy tales, and of all such lore as makes us cover up our heads when the door cracks suddenly, or the

flicker of an expiring candle makes the shadow of a bedpost dance upon the wall nearer to our faces. I was vexed and insulted at finding myself, as I conceived, neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of roaring. When to my surprise, I saw a solemn but very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady who was kneeling with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling.

I felt immediately delightfully soothed and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a sensation, as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid herself under the bed. I was now, for the first time, frightened, and I yelled with all my might and main. Nurse, nursery-maid, housekeeper, all came running in, And hearing my story they made light of it,

soothing me all they could meanwhile. But, child as I was, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwanted look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the bed and about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards, and the housekeeper whispered to the nurse, "'Lay your hand along that hollow in the bed.

Someone did lie there, so sure as you did not, the place is still warm i remember the nursery made petting me and all three examining my chest where i told them i felt the puncture and pronouncing that there was no sign visible that any such thing had happened to me the housekeeper and the two other servants who were in charge of the nursery remained sitting up all night and from that time a servant always set up in the nursery until i was about fourteen i was very nervous for a long time after this a doctor was called in he was pallid and elderly how well i remember his long saturnine face slightly pitted with smallpox and his chestnut wig For a good while, every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated. The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and cannot bear to be left alone, daylight though it was, for a moment. I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside and talking cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number of questions, and laughing very heartily at one of the answers, and patting

me on the shoulder and kissing me, and telling me not to be frightened, that it was nothing but a dream, and could not hurt me. But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was not a dream, and I was awfully frightened. I was a little consoled by the nursery maids assuring me that it was she who had come and looked at me and laying down beside me in the bed, and then I must have been half dreaming not to have known her face.

But this, though supported by the nurse, did not quite satisfy me. I remembered in the course of that day, a venerable old man in a black cassock, coming into the room with the nurse and housekeeper, and talking a little to the room, to them, and very kindly to me. His face was very sweet and gentle, and he told me they were going to pray, and joined my hands together, and desired me to say softly while they were praying,

Lord, hear all good prayers for us, for Jesus' sake. I think those were the very words, for I often repeated them to myself, and my nurse used for years to make me say them in my prayers. I remembered so well the thoughtful, sweet face of that white-haired old man in his black cassock, as he stood in that rude, lofty, brown room with the clumsy furniture of a fashion three hundred years old about him, and the scanty light entering its shadowy atmosphere through the small lattice. He kneeled, and the three women with him, and he prayed aloud with an earnest, quavering voice for what appeared to me a long time. I forget all my life preceding that event, and for some time after it is all obscure also.

But the scenes I have just described stand out, vivid as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria surrounded by darkness. End of Chapter 1 Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFano Chapter 2 A Guest I am

now going to tell you something so strange that it will require all your faith in my veracity to believe my story. It is not only true, nevertheless, but truth of which I have been an eyewitness. It was a sweet summer evening, and my father asked me, as he sometimes did, to take a little ramble with him along that beautiful forest vista which I have mentioned as lying in front of the Schloss. General Spielsdorf cannot come to us so soon. as soon as I had hoped, said my father, as we pursued our walk. He was to have paid us a visit of some weeks, and we had expected his arrival next day. He was to have brought with him a young lady, his niece and ward, Mademoiselle Rinefeld, whom I had never seen, but whom I had

heard described as a very charming girl, and in whose society I had promised myself many happy days. I was more disappointed than a young lady living in a town or a bustling neighborhood can possibly imagine. This visit, and the new acquaintance it promised, had furnished my daydream for many weeks. And how soon does he come? I asked. Not till autumn. Not for two months, I dare say, he answered. And I am very glad now, dear, that you never knew, Mademoiselle Rinefeld. And why, I asked, both mortified. and curious. "'Because the poor young lady is dead,' he replied.

"'I quite forgot I had not told you, but you were not in the room when I received the General's letter this evening.' "'I was very much shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his first letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not so well as he would wish her, but there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion of danger.' "'Here is the General's letter,' he said, handing it to me. I am afraid he is in great affliction. The letter appears to me to have been written very nearly in distraction. We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees. The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendor behind the sylvan horizon,

and the stream that flows beside our home, and passes under the steep old bridge I have mentioned, wound through many a group of noble trees, almost at our feet, reflecting in its current the fading crimson of the sky. General Spielsdorf's letter was so extraordinary, so vehement, and in some places so self-contradictory, that I read it twice over, the second time allowed to my father, and was still unable to account for it, except by supposing that grief had unsettled his mind. It said,

I have lost my darling daughter, for as such I loved her. During the last days of dear Bertha's illness I was not able to write to you. Before then I had no idea of her danger. I have lost her, and now learn all too late. She died in the peace of innocence, and in the glorious hope of a blessed futurity, The fiend who betrayed our infatuated hospitality has done it all. I thought I was receiving into my house innocence, gaiety, a charming companion for my lost bertha. Heavens! What a fool have I been!

I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the cause of her sufferings. She is gone without so much as conjecturing the nature of her illness and the accursed passion of the agent of all this misery. I devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a monster. I am told I may hope to accomplish my righteous and merciful purpose. At present there is scarcely a gleam of light to guide me. I curse my conceited incredulity, my despicable affectation of superiority, my blindness, my obstinacy,

all too late. I cannot write or talk collectively now. I am distracted. So soon as I shall have a little recovered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which may possibly lead me as far as Vienna. Sometime in the autumn, two months hence, or earlier if I live, I will see you.

That is, if you permit me. I will then tell you all that I scarce dare put upon paper now. Farewell. Pray for me, dear friend. In these terms ended this strange letter. Though I had never seen Bertha Reinfeld, my eyes filled with tears at the sudden intelligence, I was startled, as well as profoundly disappointed. The sun had now set, and it was twilight by the time I had returned the general's letter to my father. It was a soft, clear evening, and we loitered, speculating upon the possible meanings of the violent and incoherent sentences which I had just been reading. We had nearly a mile to walk before reaching the road that passes the Schloss in front, and by that time the moon was shining brilliantly.

At the drawbridge we met Madame Perodon and Mademoiselle de la Fontaine, who had come out without their bonnets to enjoy the exquisite moonlight. We heard their voices gabbling in animated dialogue as we approached. We joined them at the drawbridge, and turned about to admire with them the beautiful scene. The glade through which we had just walked lay before us. At our left, the narrow road wound away under clumps of lordly trees, and was lost to sight amid the thickening forest. At the right the same road crosses the steep and picturesque bridge, near which stands a ruined tower which once guarded that pass, and beyond the bridge in abrupt eminence rises covered with trees, and showing in the shadows some grey ivy-clustered rocks.

Over the sward and low grounds a thin film of mist was stealing like smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil, and here and there we could see the river faintly flashing in the moonlight. No softer, sweeter, sweeter scene could be imagined. The news I had just heard made it melancholy, but nothing could disturb its character of profound serenity and the enchanted glory and vagueness of the prospect. My father, who enjoyed the picturesque, and I stood looking in silence over the expanse beneath us. The two good governesses, standing a little way behind us, discoursed upon the scene, and were eloquent upon the moon.

Madame Perodon was fat, middle-aged, and romantic, and talked and sighed poetically. Mademoiselle de la Fontaine, in right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical, and something of a mystic, now declared that when the moon shone with the light so intense it was well known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams. It acted on lunacy. It acted on nervous people. It had marvelous physical influences connected with life. Mademoiselle related that her cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side, and his countenance had never quite recovered his equilibrium. The moon this night, she said,

is full of idyllic and magnetic influence, and see when you look behind you at the front of the Schloss how all its windows flash and twinkle with that silvery splendor, as if unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive fairy guests. There are indolent styles of the spirits, in which, indisposed to talk ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears, and I gazed on, pleased with the tinkle of the lady's conversation. "'I have got into one of my moping moods to-night,' said my father, after a silence,

and quoting Shakespeare, whom, by way of keeping up our English he used to read aloud, he said, "'In truth, I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me. You say it, it wearies you, but how I got it, came by it, I forget the rest. But I feel as if some great misfortune were hanging over us. I suppose the poor general's afflicted letter has had something to do with it. At this moment, the unwanted sound of carriage-wheels and many hoofs upon the road arrested our attention. They seemed to be approaching from the high ground overlooking the bridge, and very soon the equipage emerged from that point. Two horsemen first crossed the bridge,

then came a carriage drawn by four horses, and two men rode behind. It seemed to be the traveling carriage of a person of rank, and we were all immediately absorbed in watching that very unusual spectacle. It became, in a few moments, greatly more interesting, for just as the carriage had passed the summit of the steep bridge, One of the leaders, taking fright, communicated his panic to the rest, and after a plunge or two, the whole team broke into a wild gallop together, and dashing, between the horsemen who rode in front, came thundering along the road towards us with the speed of a hurricane. The excitement of the scene was made more painful by the clear, long-drawn screams of a female voice from the carriage window.

We all advanced in curiosity and horror, me rather in silence, the rest with various ejaculations of terror. Our suspense did not last long. Just before you reach the castle drawbridge, on the route they were coming, there stands by the roadside a magnificent lime-tree, on the other stands an ancient stone cross, at sight of which the horses, now going at a pace that was perfectly frightful, swirved so as to the wheel over the projecting roots of the tree. I knew what was coming. I covered my eyes, unable to see it out, and turned my head away. At the same moment I heard a cry from my lady

friends who had gone on a little. Curiosity opened my eyes, and I saw a scene of utter confusion. Two of the horses were on the ground. The carriage lay upon its side with two wheels in the air. The men were busy removing the traces, and a lady with a commanding air and figure had gotten out, and stood with clasped hands, raising the handkerchief that was in them every now and then to her eyes. Through the carriage-door was now lifted a young lady, who appeared to be lifeless. My dear old father was already beside the elder lady, with his hat in his hand, evidently tendering his aid and the resources of his sloss. The lady did not appear to hear him, or to have eyes for anything but the slender girl who was being placed against

the slope of the bank. I approached. The young lady was apparently stunned, but she was certainly not dead. My father, who piqued himself on being something of a physician, had just had his fingers on her wrist, and assured the lady, who declared herself her mother, that her pulse, though faint and irregular, was undoubtedly still distinguishable. The lady clasped her hands and looked upward, as if in a momentary transport of gratitude, but immediately she broke out again in that theatrical way, which is, I believe, natural to some people. She was what is called a fine-looking woman for her time of life, and must have been handsome. She was tall, but not thin, and dressed in black velvet, and looked rather pale,

but with a proud and commanding countenance, though now agitated strangely. "'Who was ever being so born to calamity?' I heard her say with clasped hands as I came up. Here am I, on a journey of life and death, in prosecuting which to lose an hour is possibly to lose all. My child will not have recovered sufficiently to resume her route for who can say how long. I must leave her. I cannot, dare not delay. How far on, sir, can you tell as the nearest village? I must leave her there, and shall not see my darling, or even hear of her till my return three months hence. I plucked my father by the coat, and whispered earnestly in his ear,

"'Oh, Papa, pray ask her to let her stay with us. It would be so delightful. Do pray!' "'If Madame will entrust her child to the care of my daughter, and of her good gubernante, Madame Perodon, and permit her to remain as our guest under my charge until her return, it will confer a distinction and an obligation upon us, and we shall treat her with all the care and devotion which so sacred a trust deserves. I cannot do that, sir. It would be to task your kindness and chivalry too cruelly, said the lady,

distractedly. It would, on the contrary, be to confer on us a very great kindness at the moment when we most need it. My daughter has just been disappointed by a cruel misfortune, in a visit from which she had long anticipated a great deal of happiness. If you confide this young lady to our care, it will be her best consolation. The nearest village on your route is distant, and affords no such in as you could think of placing your daughter at. You cannot allow her to continue her journey for any considerable distance without danger. If, as you say, you cannot suspend your journey, you must part with her to-night,

and nowhere could you do so with more honest assurances of care and tenderness than here. there was something in this lady's air and appearance so distinguished and even imposing and in her manner so engaging as to impress one quite apart from the dignity of her equipage with a conviction that she was a person of consequence by this time the carriage was replaced in its upright position and the horses quite tractable in the traces again the lady threw on her daughter a glance which i fancied was not quite so affectionate as one might have anticipated from the beginning of the scene and then she beckoned slightly to my father and withdrew two or three steps with him out of hearing and talked to him with a fixed and stern countenance not at all like that with which she had hitherto spoken i was filled with wonder that my father did not seem to perceive the change and also unspeakably curious to learn what it could be that she was speaking almost in his ear with so much earnestness and rapidity Two or three minutes at most, I think, she remained thus employed. Then she turned, and a few steps brought her to where her daughter lay, supported by Madame Peridon. She kneeled beside her for a moment, and whispered, as Madame supposed, a little benediction

in her ear. Then, hastily kissing her, she stepped into her carriage, the door was closed, the footmen and stately liveries jumped up behind, the outriders spurred on, the postions cracked their whips, the horses plunged and broke suddenly into a furious canter that threatened soon again to become a gallop, and the carriage whirled away, followed at the same rapid pace by the two horsemen in the rear. End of Chapter 2. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit www.librovox.org. by J. Sheridan LaFano.

Read for Libravox by Elizabeth Clette. Chapter 3 We compare notes. We followed the cortege with our eyes until it was swiftly lost to sight in the misty wood, and the very sound of the hoofs and the wheels died away in the silent night air. Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an illusion of a moment, but the young lady, who just at that moment opened her eyes. I could not see, for her face was turned from me, but she raised her head evidently looking

about her, and I heard a very sweet voice ask complainingly, Where is Mama? Our good, Madame Perodon answered tenderly, and added some comfortable assurances. I then heard her ask, Where am I? What is this place? And after that, she said, I don't see the carriage. And Matzka, where is she?

Madame answered all her questions insofar as she understood them, and gradually the young lady remembered how the misadventure came about, and was glad to hear that no one in, or in attendance on the carriage was hurt, and on learning that her mamma had left her here till her return in about three months, she wept. I was going to add my consolations to those of Madame Peradon. when Mademoiselle de la Fontaine placed her hand upon my arm saying, Don't approach. One at a time is as much as she can at present converse with.

A very little excitement would possibly overpower her now. As soon as she is comfortably in bed, I thought, I will run up to her room and see her. My father, in the meantime, had sent a servant-a-horseback for the physician, who lived about two leagues away, and a bedroom was being prepared for the young lady's reception. The stranger now rose, and leading on Madame's Arne, walked slowly over the drawbridge and into the castle gate. In the hall, servants waited to receive her, and she was conducted forthwith to her room.

The room we usually sat in, as our drawing-room is long, having four windows, that looked over the moat and the draw-bridge, upon the forest scene I have just described. It is furnished in old carved oak, with large carved cabinets, and the chairs are cushioned with crimson utrecht velvet. The walls are covered with tapestry, and surrounded with great gold frames, the figures being as large as life, in ancient and very curious costume, and the subjects represented are hunting, hawking, and generally festive. It is not too stately to be extremely comfortable, and here we had our tea. For with his usual patriotic leanings, he insisted that the national beverage should make its appearance regularly with our coffee and chocolate. We sat here this night, and with candles lighted, we're talking over the adventure of the evening. Madame Perodon and Mademoiselle de la Fontaine were both part of our party. The young stranger had hardly lain down in her bed when she sank into a deep sleep, and those ladies had left her in the care of a servant.

"'How do you like our guest?' I asked, as soon as Madame entered. "'Tell me all about her.' "'I like her extremely,' answered Madame. "'She is, I almost think, the prettiest creature I ever saw, about your age, and so gentle and nice.' "'She is absolutely beautiful,' threw in Mademoiselle, who had peeped for a moment into the stranger's room. "'And such a sweet voice,' added Madame Perodon. "'Did you remark a woman in the carriage after it was set up again who did not get out?' inquired Mademoiselle, but only looked from the window.

"'No, we had not seen her.' Then she described a hideous black woman, with a sort of coloured turban on her head, and who was gazing all the time from the carriage window, nodding and grinning derisively toward the ladies, with gleaming eyes and large white eyeballs, and her teeth set as if in fury. Did you remark what an ill-looking pack of men the servants were? asked Madame. Yes, said my father, who had just come in. Ugly, hang-dog-looking fellows as ever I be held in my life. I hope they mayn't rob the poor lady in the forest. They are clever rogues, however. They got everything to rights in a minute.

I dare say they are worn out with too long travelling, said madame. Besides looking wicked, their faces, were so strangely lean, and dark, and sullen. I am very curious, I own, but I dare say the young lady will tell you all about it to-morrow if she is sufficiently recovered. "'I don't think she will,' said my father, with a mysterious smile, and a little nod of his head as if he knew more about it than he cared to tell us. This made us all the more inquisitive as to what had passed between him and the lady in black velvet, in the brief but earnest interview that had immediately preceded her departure.

We were scarcely alone when I entreated him to tell me. He did not need much pressing. There is no particular reason why I should not tell you. She expressed a reluctance to trouble us with the care of her daughter, saying she was in delicate health, and nervous, but not subject to any kind of seizure, she volunteered that, nor to any illusion, being, in fact, perfectly sane. How very odd to say all that, I interpolated, it was so unnecessary. At all events it was said, he laughed, and as you wish to know all that passed, which was very little indeed, I tell you. She then said, I am making a long journey of vital importance, she emphasized the word, rapid and secret. I shall return for my child in three months. In the meantime, she will be silent as to who we are,

whence we come, and whither we are travelling. That is all she said. She spoke very pure French. When she said the word secret, she paused for a few seconds, looking sternly her eyes fixed on mine. I fancy she makes a great point of that. You saw how quickly she was. was gone. I hope I have not done a very foolish thing in taking charge of the young lady. For my part, I was delighted. I was longing to see and talk to her, and only waiting till the doctor should give me leave. You who live in towns can have no idea how great an event the introduction of a new friend is in such a solitude as surrounded us. The doctor did not arrive till nearly one o'clock, but I could no more have gone to my bed and slept than I could have overtaken

on foot the carriage in which the princess in black velvet had driven away. When the physician came down to the drawing-room, it was to report very favourably upon his patient. She was now sitting up, her pulse quite regular, apparently perfectly well. She had sustained no injury, and the little shock to her nerves had passed away quite harmlessly. there could be no harm certainly in my seeing her if we both wished it and with this permission i sent forthwith to know whether she would allow me to visit her for a few minutes in her room the servant returned immediately to say that she desired nothing more you may be sure i was not long in availing myself of this permission our visitor lay in one of the handsomest rooms in the schloss it was perhaps a little stately there was a sombre piece of tapestry opposite the the bed, representing Cleopatra with the Asps to her bosom. And other solemn classic scenes were displayed, a little faded, upon the other walls. But there was gold carving, and rich and varied

color enough in the other decorations of the room, to more than redeem the gloom of the old tapestry. There were candles at the bedside. She was sitting up, her slender, pretty figure enveloped in the soft silk dressing-gown, embroidered with flowers, and lined with thick quilted silk, which her mother had thrown over her feet as she lay on the ground. What was it that, as I reached the bedside and had just begun my little greeting, struck me dumb in a moment, and made me recoil a step or two from before her? I will tell you. I saw the very face, which had visited me in my childhood at night,

and which remained so fixed in my memory, and on which I had for so many years so often ruminated with horror when no one suspected of what I was thinking. It was pretty, even beautiful, and when I first beheld it wore the same melancholy expression. But this almost instantly lighted into a strange, fixed smile of recognition. There was a silence of fully a minute, and then at length she spoke.

I could not. How wonderful, she exclaimed. Twelve years ago I saw your face in a dream, and it has haunted me ever since. Wonderful, indeed, I repeated, overcoming with an effort the horror that had for a time suspended my utterances. Twelve years ago, in vision or reality, I certainly saw you. I could not forget your face.

It has remained before my eyes ever since. Her smile had softened. Whatever I had fancied strange in it was gone, and it and her dimpling cheeks were now delightfully pretty and intelligent. I felt reassured, and continued more in the vein which hospitality indicated, to bid her welcome, and to tell her how much pleasure her accidental arrival had given us all, and especially what a happiness it was to me. I took her hand as I spoke.

I was a little shy, as lonely people are, but the situation made me eloquent, and even bold. She pressed my hand, she laid hers upon it, and her eyes glowed, as looking hastily into mine she smiled again, and blushed. She answered my welcome very prettily. I sat down beside her still wondering, and she said, I must tell you my vision about you. It is so very strange that you and I should have had Each of the other so vivid a dream That each should have seen, I, you, and you me,

Looking as we do now, When of course we were both mere children. I was a child, about six years old, And I awoke from a confused and troubled dream, And found myself in a room, unlike my nursery, Wayne scutted clumsily in some dark wood, and with cupboards and bedsteads and chairs and benches placed about it. The beds were, I thought, all empty,

and the room itself without any one but myself in it, and I, after looking about me for some time, and admiring especially an iron candlestick with two branches, which I should certainly know again, crept under one of the beds to reach the window. But as I got from under the bed, I heard someone crying. And looking up, while I was still upon my knees, I saw you, most assuredly you, as I see you now.

A beautiful young lady, with golden hair and large blue eyes, and lips. Your lips. You as you are here. Your looks won me. I climbed on the bed and put my arms about you, and I think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a scream. You were sitting up screaming. I was frightened, and slipped down upon the ground, and it seemed to me lost consciousness for a moment, and when I came to myself I was again in my nursery at home. Your face, I have never forgotten since. I could not be misled by the mere resemblance. You are the lady whom I saw then. It was now my turn to relate my corresponding vision. which I did to the undisguised wonder of my new acquaintance. I don't know which should be most afraid of the other, she said again, smiling. If you were less pretty, I think I should be very much afraid of you. But being as you are, and you and I both so young,

I feel only that I have made your acquaintance twelve years ago, and have already a right to your intimacy. At all events it does seem as if we were definitely, from our earliest childhood to be friends. I wonder whether you feel as strangely drawn towards me as I do to you. I have never had a friend. Shall I find one now? She sighed, and her fine, dark eyes gazed passionately on me.

Now the truth is, I felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful stranger. I did feel, as she said, drawn towards her. But there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me. She was so beautiful, and so indescribably engaging. I perceived now something of languor and exhaustion stealing over her, and hasten to bid her good-night. The doctor thinks, I added, that you ought to have a maid sit up with you tonight.

One of ours is waiting, and you will find her a very useful and quiet creature. How kind of you! But I could not sleep. I never could with an attendant in the room. I shan't require any assistance. And shall I confess my weakness? I am haunted with a terror of robbers.

Our house was robbed once. and two servants murdered, so I always lock my door. It has become a habit. And you look so kind I know you will forgive me. I see there is a key in the lock. She held me close in her pretty arms for a moment, and whispered in my ear, Good night, darling. It is very hard to part with you. But good night. Tomorrow, but not early. I shall see you again. again. She sank back on the pillow with a sigh, and her fine eyes followed me with a fond and melancholy gaze, and she murmured again, good-night, dear friend. Young people like, and even love, on impulse. I was flattered by the evident, though as yet undeserved, fondness she

showed me. I liked the confidence with which she at once received me. She was determined that we should be very near friends. Next day came and we met again. I was delighted with my companion, that is to say, in many respects. Her looks lost nothing in daylight. She was most certainly the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and the unpleasant remembrance of the face presented in my early dream

had lost the effect of the first unexpected recognition. She confessed that she had experienced a similar shock on seeing me, and precisely the same faint antipathy that had mingled with my admiration of her, we now laughed together over our momentary horrors. End of Chapter 3. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit www.librivox.org.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFano Read for Libravox by Elizabeth Clette Chapter 4 Her habits A saunter I told you that I was charmed with her in most particulars There were some that did not please me so well She was above the middle height of women

I shall begin by describing her She was slender and wonderfully graceful. Except that her movements were languid, very languid. Indeed, there was nothing in her appearance to indicate an invalid. Her complexion was rich and brilliant. Her features were small and beautifully formed. Her eyes large, dark, and lustrous.

Her hair was quite wonderful. I never saw hair so magnificently thick and long when it was down about her shoulders. I have often placed my hands under it and laughed with wonder at its weight. It was exquisitely fine and soft, and in color a rich, very dark brown, with something of gold. I loved to let it down, tumbling with its own weight, as in her room she lay back in her chair talking in her sweet low voice. I used to fold and braid it, and spread it out and play with it.

Heavens! If I had but known all! I said there were particulars which did not please me. I have told you that her confidence, me the first night I saw her. But I found that she exercised with respect to herself, her mother, her history, everything, in fact, connected with her life, plans, and people, an ever-wakeful reserve. I dare say I was unreasonable. Perhaps I was wrong. I dare say I ought to have respected the solemn injunction laid upon my father by the stately lady in black velvet.

But curiosity is a restless and unscrupulous passion. And no one girl can endure with patience that hers should be baffled by another. What harm could it do anyone to tell me what I so ardently desired to know? Had she no trust in my good sense or honour? Why would she not believe me when I assured her so solemnly that I would not divulge one syllable of what she told me to any mortal breathing? There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years, in her smiling, melancholy, persistent refusal to afford me the least ray of light.

I cannot say we quarreled upon this point, for she would not quarrel upon any. It was, of course, very unfair of me to press her, very ill-bred, but really I could not help it, and I might just as well have let it alone. What she did tell me amounted, in my unconscionable estimation, to nothing. It was all summed up in three very vague disclosures. First, her name was Carmilla. Second, her family was very ancient and noble. Third, her home lay in the direction of the West.

She would not tell me the name of her family, nor there are memorial bearings, nor the name of their estate, nor even that of the country they lived in. You are not to suppose that I worried her incessantly. on these subjects. I watched opportunity, and rather insinuated than urged my inquiries. Once or twice indeed I did attack her more directly, but no matter what my tactics, utter failure was invariably the result. Reproaches and caresses were all lost upon her. But I must add this, that her evasion was conducted with so pretty a melancholy in deprecation, with so many and even passionate declarations of her liking for me, and trust in my honor, and with so many promises that I

should at last know all, that I could not find it in my heart long to be offended with her. She used to place her pretty arms around my neck, draw me to her, and, laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, dearest, your little heart is wounded. Think me not cruel, because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakly. If your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation, I live in your warm life, and you shall die, die sweetly die into mine. I cannot help it.

As I draw near to you, you in your turn will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty which yet is love. So for a while seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit. And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips and soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek. Her agitations and her language were unintelligible to me. From these foolish embraces which were not a very frequent occurrence, I must allow I used to wish to extricate myself, but my energies seemed to fail me. Her murmured words sounded like a lullaby in my ear, and soothed my resistance into a trance, from which I only seemed to recover myself

when she withdrew her arms. In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a strange, tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and an on, mingled with a vague sense of fear and distrust. I had no distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence. This I know is paradox, but I can make no other attempt to explain the feeling. I now write, after an interval of more than than ten years, with a trembling hand, with a confused and horrible recollection of certain occurrences in situations, in the ordeal through which I was unconsciously passing, though with a very vivid and sharp remembrance of the main current of my story.

But, I suspect, in all lives there are certain emotional scenes, those in which our passions have been most wildly and terribly roused, that are of all others the most vaguely and dimmed. remembered. Sometimes, after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again, blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover. It embarrassed me. It was hateful, and yet overpowering. And with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips traveled along my cheek and kisses, and she would whisper almost in sobs, You are mine. You shall be mine. You and I are one forever. Then she had thrown herself back in her chair, with her small hands over her eyes, leaving me trembling. Are we related? I used to ask. What can you mean by all this? I remind you, perhaps of someone whom you love. But you must not. I hate it.

I don't know you. I don't know myself when you look so and talk so. She used to sigh at my vehemence, then turn away and drop my hand. Respecting these very extraordinary manifestations, I strove in vain to form any satisfactory theory. I could not refer them to affectation or trick. It was unmistakably the momentary breaking out of suppressed instinct and emotion. Was she, notwithstanding her mother's volunteered denial, subject to brief visitations of insanity, or was there here a disguise and a romance? I had read in old story-books of such things.

What if a boyish lover had found his way into the house, and sought to prosecute his suit in masquerade with the assistance of a clever old adventurous? But there were many things against this hypothesis, highly interesting as it was to my vanity. I could boast of no little attentions, such as masculine gallantry delights to offer. Between these passionate moments there were long intervals of commonplace, of gaiety, of brooding melancholy, during which, except that I detected her eyes so full of melancholy fire, following me, at times I might have been as nothing to her. Except in these brief periods of mysterious excitement, her ways were girlish, and there was

always a languor about her, quite incompatible with a masculine system in a state of health. In some respects her habits were odd, perhaps not so singular in the opinion of a town lady like you, as they appeared to us rustic people. She used to come down very late, generally not till one o'clock. She would then take a cup of chocolate, but eat nothing. We then went out for a walk, which was a mere saunter, and she seemed almost immediately exhausted, and either returned to the Schloss, or sat on one of the benches that were placed here and there among the trees. This was a bodily languor in which her mind did not sympathize. She was always an animated talker, and very intelligent. She sometimes alluded for a moment to her own home, or mentioned an adventure or situation,

or an early recollection which indicated a people of strange manners, and described customs of which we knew nothing. I gathered from these chance hints that her native country was much more remote than I had at first fancied. As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees, a funeral passed us by. It was that of a pretty young girl, whom I had often seen, the daughter of one of the rangers of the forest. The poor man was walking behind the coffin of his darling. She was his only child, and he looked quite heartbroken. Peasants walking two and two came behind. They were singing a funeral hymn. I rose to mark my respect as they passed, and joined in the hymn they were very sweetly singing.

My companion shook me a little roughly, and I turned surprised. She said brusquely, Don't you perceive how discordant that is? I think it very sweet, on the contrary, I answered, vexed at the interruption, and very uncomfortable, lest the people who composed the little procession should observe and resent what was passing. I resumed, therefore, instantly, and was again interrupted. "'You pierce my ears,' said Carmilla, almost angrily, and stopping her ears with her tiny fingers. "'Besides, how can you tell that your religion and mine are the same? Your forms wound me,

and I hate funerals. What a fuss! Why, you must die! Everyone must die! and all are happier when they do. Come home. My father has gone on with the clergyman to the churchyard. I thought you knew she was to be buried today. She? I don't trouble my head about peasants. I don't know who she is, answered Carmilla,

with a flash from her fine eyes. She is the poor girl who fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight ago, and has been dying ever since, till yesterday when she expired. Tell me nothing about ghosts. I shan't sleep tonight if you do. I hope there is no plague or fever coming. All this looks very like it, I continued. The swineherd's young wife died only a week ago,

and she thought something seized her by the throat as she lay in her bed and nearly strangled her. Papa says some horrible fancies do accompany some forms of fever. She was quite well the day before. She sank afterwards, and died. before a week. Well, her funeral is over, I hope, and her hymn sung, and our ears shan't be tortured with that discord and jargon.

It has made me nervous. Sit down here, beside me. Sit close. Hold my hand. Press it hard. Hard. Hard. We had moved a little back and had come to another seat.

She sat down. Her face underwent a change that alarmed and even terrified me for a moment. It darkened and became horribly livid. Her teeth and hands were clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips, while she stared down upon the ground at her feet, and trembled all over with a continued shudder as irrepressible as ague. All her energy seemed strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly tugging,

and at length a low, convulsive cry of suffering broke from her, and gradually the hysteria subsided. There, that comes of strangling people with hymns, she said at last. Hold me, hold me still. It is passing away. And so gradually it did, and perhaps to dissipate the somber impression which the spectacle had left upon me, she became unusually animated and shatty, and so we got home. This was the first time I had seen her exhibit any definable symptoms of that delicacy of health which her mother had spoken of. It was the first time also I had seen her exhibit anything like temper.

Both passed away like a summer cloud, and never but once afterwards did I witness on her part a momentary sign of anger. I will tell you how it happened. She and I were looking out of one of the long drawing-room windows, when there entered the courtyard over the the drawbridge, the figure of a wanderer whom I knew very well. He used to visit the Schloss generally twice a year. It was the figure of a hunchback, with the sharp, lean features that generally accompany deformity. He wore a pointed black beard, and he was smiling from ear to ear, showing his white fangs. He was dressed in buff, black, and scarlet, and crossed with more straps and belts than I could count, from which hung all manner of things. Behind he carried a magic

lantern, and two boxes which I well knew, in one of which was a salamander, and the other a mandrake. These monsters used to make my father laugh. They were compounded of parts of monkeys, parrots, squirrels, fish and hedgehogs, dried and stitched together with great neatness and startling effect. He had a fiddle, a box of conjuring apparatus, a pair of foils and masks attached to his belt, several other mysterious cases dangling about him, and a black staff with copper for rules in his hand. His companion was a rough, spare dog that followed at his heels, but stopped short, suspiciously at the drawbridge, and in a little while began to howl dismally. In the meantime, the mountebank, standing in the midst of the courtyard, raised his grotesque cat and made us a very ceremonious bow, paying his compliments very volubly inexecurable French, and German not much better.

Then, disengaging his fiddle, he began to scrape a lively air to which he sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and activity that made me laugh in spite of the dog's howling. Then he advanced to the window with many smiles and salutations, and his hat in his left hand, his fiddle under his arm, and with a fluency that never took breath, he gabble. a long advertisement of all his accomplishments, and the resources of the various arts which he placed at our service, and the curiosities and entertainments which it was in his power at our bidding to display. "'Will your ladyships be pleased to buy an amulet against the oo-pire?'

"'Which is going like the wolf I hear through these woods,' he said, dropping his hat on the pavement. "'They are dying of it right and left, and here is a charm that never fails. only pinned to the pillow, and you may laugh in his face. These charms consisted of oblong slips of vellum, with cabalistic ciphers and diagrams upon them. Carmilla instantly purchased one, and so did I. He was looking up, and we were smiling down upon him, amused.

At least I can answer for myself. His piercing black eye as he looked up in our faces seemed to detect something that fixed for a moment his curiosity. in an instant he unrolled a leather case full of all manner of odd little steel instruments. See here, my lady, he said, displaying it and addressing me. I profess, among other things less useful, the art of dentistry. Plague take the dog! he interpolated. Silence, beast, he howled so that your ladyships can scarcely hear a word.

Your noble friend, the young lady at your right, has the sharpest tooth long thin pointed like an all like a needle with my sharp and long sight as i look up i have seen it distinctly now if it happens to hurt the young lady and i think it must here am i here are my file my punch my nippers i will make it round and blunt if her ladyship pleases no longer the tooth of a fish but of a beautiful young lady as she is. Hey, is the young lady displeased? Have I been too bold? Have I offended her? The young lady indeed looked very angry as she drew back from the window.

How dare that mountebank insult us so? Where is your father? I shall demand redress from him. My father would have had the wretch tied up to the pump and flogged with a cart-whip and burnt to the bones with the cattle-brose. end. She retired from the window a step or two, and sat down, and had hardly lost sight of the offender, when her wrath subsided as suddenly as it had risen, and she gradually recovered her

usual tone, and seemed to forget the little hunchback in his follies. My father was out of spirits that evening. On coming in he told us that there had been another case, very similar to the two fatal ones which had lately occurred. The sister of a young peasant on his estate, only a mile away, was very ill, had been, as she described it, attacked very nearly in the same way, and was now slowly but steadily sinking. All this, said my father, is strictly referable to natural causes. These poor people infect one another with their superstitions, and so repeat in imagination the images of terror that have infested their neighbors. But that very circumstance frightens one horribly, said Carmilla. How so? inquired my father. I am so afraid of fancying I see such things. I think it would be as bad as reality.

We are in God's hands. Nothing can happen without his permission, and all will end well for those who love him. He is our faithful creator. He has made us all, and will take care of us. "'Creator! Nature!' said the young lady, in answer to my gentle father. "'And this disease that invades the country is natural? Nature. All things proceed from nature, don't they? All things in the heaven, in the earth, and under the earth, act and live as nature ordains? I think so.'

"'The doctor said he would come here today,' said my father, after a silence. "'I want to know what he thinks about it, and what he thinks we had better do.' "'Doctors never did me any good,' said Carmilla. "'Then you have been ill?' I asked. "'More ill than ever you were,' she answered. "'Long ago?' "'Yes, a long time. "'I suffered from this very illness.

but I forget all but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad as are suffered in other diseases. You were very young, then. I dare say, let us talk no more of it. You would not wound a friend. She looked languidly in my eyes, and passed her arm round my waist lovingly, and led me out of the room.

My father was busy over some papers near the window. "'Why does your papa like to frighten us?' said the pretty girl with a sigh in a little shudder. "'He doesn't, dear Carmilla, it is the very furthest thing from his mind.' "'Are you afraid, dearest?' "'I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger of my being attacked as those poor people were. "'You are afraid to die.' "'Yes, everyone is.' "'But to die as lovers may.'

to die together so that they may live together girls are caterpillars while they live in the world to be finally butterflies when the summer comes but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae don't you see each with their peculiar propensities necessities and structure so says monsieur buffon in his big book in the next room Later in the day the doctor came and was closeted with Papa for some time. He was a skillful man of sixty and upwards. He wore powder and shaved his pale face as smooth as a pumpkin. He and Papa emerged from the room together, and I heard Papa laugh and say as they came out, Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to hippogriffs and dragons?

The doctor was smiling and made answer shaking his head. nevertheless life and death are mysterious states and we know little of the resources of either and they walked on and i heard no more i did not then know what the doctor had been broaching but i think i guess it now end of chapter four this is a libervox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit www dot Libravox.org Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFanoe Read for Libravox by Elizabeth Clette Chapter 5

A Wonderful Likness This evening there arrived from Grots The grave dark-faced sun of the picture-cleaner With a horse and cart laden with two large packing cases Having many pictures in each It was a journey of ten leagues And whenever a messenger arrived at the Schloss From our little capital of Grots

we used to crowd about him in the hall to hear the news. This arrival created in our secluded quarters quite a sensation. The cases remained in the hall, and the messenger was taken charge of by the servants till he had eaten his supper. Then, with assistance, and armed with hammer, ripping, chisel, and turn-screw, he met us in the hall, where we had assembled to witness the unpacking of the cases. Carmilla sat looking listlessly on, while one after the other the old pictures, nearly all portraits which had undergone the process of renovation were brought to light. My mother was of an old Hungarian family, and most of these pictures, which were about to be restored to their places,

had come to us through her. My father had a list in his hand from which he read, as the artist rummaged out the corresponding numbers. I don't know that the pictures were very good, but they were undoubtedly very old, and some of them very curious also. They had, for the most part, the merit of being now seen by me, I may say, for the first time, for the smoke and dust of time had all but obliterated them. "'There is a picture I have not yet seen,' said my father. "'In one corner at the top of it is the name, as well as I could read, Marcia Carnstein, and the date 1698, and I am curious to see how it has turned out.

I remembered it. It was a small picture about a foot and a half high, and nearly square, without a a frame, but it was so blackened by age I could not make it out. The artist now produced it with evident pride. It was quite beautiful. It was startling. It seemed to live. It was the effigy of Carmilla. Carmilla, dear, here is an absolute miracle. Here you are living, smiling, ready to speak in this picture. Isn't it beautiful, Papa? And see, even the little mole on her throat. My father laughed and said,

Certainly it is a wonderful likeness. But he looked away, and to my surprise seemed but little struck by it, and went on talking to the picture-cleaner, who was also something of an artist, and discoursed with intelligence about the portraits or other works, which his art had just brought into light and color, well, I was more and more lost in wonder

the more I looked at the picture. Will you let me hang this picture in my room? room, Papa, I asked. Certainly, dear, he said, smiling, I am very glad you think it's so like. It must be prettier even than I thought if it is. The young lady did not acknowledge this pretty speech, did not seem to hear it.

She was leaning back in her seat, her fine eyes under their long lashes gazing on me in contemplation, and she smiled in a kind of rapture. And now you can read quite plainly the name that is written in the corner. It is not Marcia. It looks as if it was done in gold. The name is Mercala, Countess Carnstein, and this is a little coronet over and underneath AD, 1698. I am descended from the Carnstein's,

that is, Mama was. Ah, said the lady languidly, so am I, I think, a very long descent, very ancient. Are there any Carnstein's living now. None who bear the name, I believe. The family were ruined, I believe, in some civil wars long ago, but the ruins of the castle are only about three miles away. How interesting, she said languidly. But see what beautiful moonlight! She glanced through the hall door which stood a little open. Suppose you take a little ramble around the court, and look down at the road and river. It is so like the night you came to us, I said.

She sighed, smiling. She rose, and with each her arm about the other's waist, we walked out upon the pavement. 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 Carmen. 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 strained was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair with tumultuous 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 colourless 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. You look ill, Carmilla. A little faint. You certainly must take some wine, I said. Yes, I will. I'm better now. I shall be quite well in a few minutes. Yes, do give me a little wine, answered Carmilla as we approach the door. Let us look again for a moment. It is the last time, perhaps, I shall see the moonlight with you.

"'How do you feel now, dear Carmilla? "'Are you really better?' I asked. "'I was beginning to take alarm, "'lest she should have been stricken "'with the strange epidemic "'that they said and invaded the country about us. "'Papa would be grieved beyond measure,' I added, "'if he thought you were ever so little ill,

"'without immediately letting us know. "'We have a very skillful doctor near us, "'the physician who was with Papa today.' "'I'm sure he is. "'I know how kind you all are. But, dear child, I am quite well again. There is nothing ever wrong with me but a little weakness. People say I am languid.

I am incapable of exertion. I can scarcely walk as far as a child of three years old, and every now and then the little strength I have falters, and I become as you have just seen me. But after all, I am very easily set up again. In a moment I am perfectly myself. See how I have recovered. So indeed she had, and she and I talked a great deal, and very animated she was,

and the remainder of that evening passed without any recurrence of what I call her infatuations. I mean her crazy talk and looks, which embarrassed and even frightened me. But there occurred that night an event which gave my thoughts quite a new turn, and seemed to startle even Carmilla's languid nature into moment. Momentary Energy. End of Chapter 5. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, visit www.libravox.org. Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFanoe. Read for Libravox by Elizabeth Clette. Chapter 6 A Very Strange Agony When we got into the drawing-room and it sat down to our coffee and chocolate, although Carmilla did not take any, she seemed quite herself again, and Madame and Mademoiselle de la Fontaine joined us, and made a little card party, in the course of which Papa came in for what he called his dish of tea.

When the game was over he sat down beside Carmilla on the sofa, and asked her a little anxiously whether she had heard from her mother since her arrival. She answered no. He then asked whether she knew where a letter would reach her at present. "'I cannot tell,' she answered ambiguously. "'But I have been thinking of leaving you. You have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage to-morrow

and post in pursuit of her. I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not yet tell you.' "'But you must not dream of any such thing,' exclaimed my father, to my great relief. We can't afford to lose you so, and I won't consent to your leaving us, except under the care of your mother, who was so good as to consent to your remaining with us till she herself should return. I should be quite happy if I knew that you heard from her. But this evening the accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has invaded our neighborhood grow even more alarming. And my beautiful guest, I do feel the responsibility,

unaided by advice from your mother, very much. But I shall do my best, and one thing is certain that you must not think of leaving us without her distinct direction to that effect. We should suffer too much in parting from you to consent to it easily. Thank you, sir. A thousand times for your hospitality, she answered, smiling bashfully. You have all been too kind to me. I have seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful chateau, under your care,

and in the society of your dear daughter. So he gallantly in his old-fashioned way, kissed her hand, smiling and pleased at her little speech. I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and shouted with her while she was preparing for bed. "'Do you think,' I said at length, "'that you will ever confide fully in me?' She turned round, smiling, but made no answer,

only continued to smile on me. You won't answer that, I said. You can't answer pleasantly. I ought not to have asked you. You were quite right to ask me that, or anything. You do not know how dear you are to me, or you could not think any confidence too great to look for. But I am under vows,

no none half so awfully, and I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish, the more ardent, the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death, or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature. Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again, I said hastily.

Not I. Silly little fool as I am and full of whims and fancies. For your sake I'll talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball? No, how you do run on. What is it like? How charming it must be. I almost forget it is years ago.

I laughed. You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet. I remember everything about it, with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture and made its colors faint. I was all but assassinated in my bed.

Wounded here, she touched her breast, and never was the same since. Were you near dying? Yes, very. A cruel love. Strange love that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood.

Let us go to sleep now. I feel so lazy. How can I get up just now and lock my door? She was lying with her tiny hands buried in her rich, wavy hair, under her cheek. Her little head upon the pillow and her glittering eyes followed me whenever I moved, with a kind of shy smile that I could not decipher. I bid her good night, and crept from the room with an uncomfortable sensation. I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her prayers.

I certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night she never left the drawing-room to attend our brief evening prayers in the hall. If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our careless talks that she had been baptized, I should have doubted her being a Christian. Religion was a subject on which I had never heard her speak a word. If I had known the world better, this particular neglect or antipathe. would not have so much surprised me. The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons

of a like temperament are pretty sure after a time to imitate them. I had adopted Carmilla's habit of locking her bedroom door, having taken into my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling assassins. I had also adopted her precaution of making a brief search through her room, to satisfy herself that no lurking assassin or robber was ensconced. These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light was burning in my room. This was an old habit, a very early date, and which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with.

Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace, but dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths. I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony. I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep. But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed precisely as I actually was.

I saw, or fancied I saw, the room in its furniture just as I had seen it last, except that it was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sooty black animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long, for it measured fully the length of the hearth-rug as it passed over it, and it continued towing and froing with the life,

sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although, as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted an inch or two apart deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. The room was lighted by the candle that

burnt there all through the night, and I saw a female figure standing at the foot of the bed a little at the right side. It was in a dark, loose dress, and its hair was down and covered its shoulders. A block of stone could not have been more still. There was not the slightest stir of respiration. As I stared at it, the figure appeared to have changed its place, and was now nearer the door, then close to it, the door opened, and it passed out. I was now relieved, and able to breathe and move. My first thought was that Carmilla had been playing me a trick. and that I had forgotten to secure my door. I hastened to it, and found it locked as usual on the inside.

I was afraid to open it. I was horrified. I sprang into my bed and covered my head up in the bedclothes, and lay there, more dead than alive, till morning. End of Chapter 6. This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer,

visit w w w w hibrovox dot org carmilla by j sheridan la fanu read for librivox by elizabeth clet chapter seven descending it would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with which even now i recall the occurrence of that night it was no such transitory terror as a dream leaves behind it it seemed to deepen by time and communicated itself to the room and the very furniture that had encompassed the apparition. I could not bear next day to be alone for a moment. I should have told Papa, but for two opposite reasons. At one time I thought he would laugh at my story, and I could not bear its being treated as a jest. And at another, I thought he might fancy that I had been attacked by the mysterious complaint which had invaded our neighborhood. I had myself no misgiving of the kind, and as he had been rather an invalid for some time,

I was afraid of alarming him. I was comfortable enough with my good-natured companions, Madame Peradon, and the vivacious Mademoiselle La Fontaine. They both perceived that I was out of spirits and nervous, and at length I told them what lay so heavy at my heart. Manoiselle laughed, but I fancied that Madame Perodon anxious. By the by, said Mademoiselle, laughing, the long lime-tree walk behind Carmilla's bedroom window is haunted. "'Nonsense!' exclaimed Madame, who probably thought the theme rather

inopportune. And who tells that story, my dear? Martin says he came up twice when the old yard gate was being repaired before sunrise, and twice saw the same female figure walking down the Lime Tree Avenue. So well he might, as long as there are cows to milk in the river-fields, said Madame. I dare say, but Martin chooses to be frightened, and never did I see fool more frightened. You must not say a word about it to Carmilla, because she can see down that walk from her room window, I interposed, and she is, if possible, a greater coward than I. Carmela came down rather later than usual that day. I was so frightened last night, she said, so soon as we were together.

And I am sure I should have seen something dreadful, if it had not been for that charm I bought from the poor little hunchback who I called such hard names. I had a dream of something black coming round my bed, and I awoke in perfect horror, and I really thought for some seconds I saw a dark figure near the chimney-piece. but I felt under my pillow for my charm, and the moment my fingers touched it, the figure disappeared, and I felt quite certain, only that I had it by me, that something frightful would have made its appearance, and perhaps throttled me as it did those poor people we heard of. Well, listen to me, I began, and recounted my adventure, at the recital of which she appeared

horrified. "'And had you the charm near you?' she asked Ernestine. No, I had dropped it into a china vase in the drawing-room, but I shall certainly take it with me tonight, as you have so much faith in it. At this distance of time I cannot tell you, or even understand how I overcame my horror so effectually as to lie alone in my room that night. I remember distinctly that I pin the charm to my pillow. I fell asleep almost immediately, and slept even more soundly than usual all night. Next night I passed as well.

My sleep was delightfully deep and dreamless. But I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy, which, however, did not exceed a degree that was almost luxurious. Well, I told you so, said Carmilla, when I described my night's sleep. I had such delightful sleep myself last night. I pinned the charm to the breast of my nightdress. It was too far away the night before. I am quite sure it was all fancy, except the dreams.

I used to think that evil spirits made dreams, but our doctor told me it is no such thing. Only a fever passing by, or some other malady, as they often do, he said, knocks at the door, and not being able to get in, passes on with that alarm. And what do you think the charm is? said I. It has been fumigated or immersed in some drug, and is an antidote against the malaria, she answered. Then it acts only on the body?

Certainly. You don't suppose that evil spirits are frightened by bits of ribbon, or the perfumes of a druggist's shop. No, these complaints wandering in the air begin by trying the nerves, and so infect the brain. But before they can seize upon you, the antidote repatriate. impels them. That, I am sure, is what the charm is done for us. It is nothing magical. It is simply natural. I should have been happier if I could quite have agreed with Carmilla, but I did my best, and the impression was a little losing its force. For some nights I slept profoundly, but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day.

I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking, took gentle, and somehow not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.

I would not admit that I was ill. I would not consent to tell my papa, or to have the doctor sent for. 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 joy. dreams that seemed interminable, and were so vague that I could never recollect their scenery and persons, or anyone 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 they 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. It could not be that terrible complaint which the peasants called the U-Pire, for I had now been suffering for three weeks, and they were seldom ill for much more than three days, when death put an end to their miseries. 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 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 tender, and at the same time terrible, which said, Your mother warns you to be aware 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 night-dress,

bathed from her chin to her feet in one great stain of blood. I wakened with a shriek, possessed with the 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 always 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 was 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 slippers, meanwhile, and my companions were already similarly furnished. Recognizing the voices 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. End of Chapter 7. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, visit www.librivox.org. Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFano. Read by Elizabeth Clette. Chapter 8

Search At sight of the room, perfectly undisturbed except for our violent entrance, we began to cool a little, and soon recovered our senses sufficiently to dismiss the men. It had struck Mademoiselle that possibly Carmilla had been wakened by the uproar at her door, and in her first panic had jumped from her bed,

and hid herself in a press, or behind a curtain, from which she could not, of course, emerge until the major domo in his mermodons had withdrawn. We now recommenced our search, and began to call her name again. It was all to no purpose. Our perplexity and agitation increased. We examined the windows, but they were secured. I implored of Carmilla if she had concealed herself to play this cruel trick no longer,

to come out and to end our anxieties. It was all useless. I was by this time convinced that she was not in the room, nor in the dressing-room, the door of which was still locked on this scene. side. She could not have passed it. I was utterly puzzled. Had Carmilla discovered one of those secret passages which the old housekeeper said were known to exist in the Schloss, although the tradition of their exact situation had been lost? A little time would, no doubt, explain all, utterly perplexed as for the present we were. It was past four o'clock, and I preferred

passing the remaining hours of darkness in Madame's room. Daylight brought no saluted, of the difficulty. The whole household with my father at his head was in a state of agitation next morning. Every part of the chateau was searched. The grounds were explored. No trace of the missing lady could be discovered. The stream was about to be dragged.

My father was in distraction. What a tale to have to tell the poor girl's mother on her return. I, too, was almost beside myself, though my grief was of quite a different kind. The morning was past an alarm and excitement. It was now one o'clock, and still no tidings. I ran up to Carmilla's room, and found her standing at her dressing-table. I was astounded.

I could not believe my eyes. She beckoned to me with her pretty finger in silence. Her face expressed extreme fear. I ran to her in an ecstasy of joy. I kissed and embraced her again and again. I ran to the bell and rang it vehemently to bring others to the spot who might at once relieve my father's anxiety. Dear, Carmilla, what has become of you all this time? We have been in agonies of anxiety about you, I exclaimed.

Where have you been? How did you come back? Last night has been a night of wonders, she said. For mercy's sake, explain all you can. It was past two last night, she said. when I went to sleep as usual in my bed, with my doors locked, that of the dressing-room and that opening upon the gallery. My sleep was uninterrupted, and, so far as I know, dreamless. But I woke just now on the sofa in the dressing-room there, and I found the door between the rooms open, and the other door forced.

How could all this have happened without my being wakened? It must have been accompanied with a great deal of noise, and I am particularly easily wakened. and how could I have been carried out of my bed without my sleep having been interrupted, I whom the slightest stir startles. By this time, Madame, Mademoiselle, my father, and a number of the servants were in the room. Carmilla was, of course, overwhelmed with inquiries, congratulations and welcomes. She had but one story to tell, and seemed the least able of all the party to suggest any way of accounting for what had happened.

My father took a turn up and down the room, thinking, I saw Carmilla's eye follow him for a moment with a sly, dark glance. When my father had sent the servants away, Mademoiselle having gone in search of a little bottle of Valerian, and sell volatile, and there being no one now in the room with Carmilla, except my father, madame, and myself, he came to her thoughtfully,

took her hand very kindly, and led her to the sofa and sat down beside her. Will you forgive me, my dear, if I risk a conjecture, and ask a question. Who can have better right? She said. Ask what you please, and I will tell you everything.

But my story is simply one of bewilderment and darkness. I know absolutely nothing. Put any question you please, but you know, of course, the limitations Mama has placed me under. Perfectly, my dear child. I need not approach the topics on which she desires our silence. Now, the marvel of last night consists

and your having been removed from your bed and your room, without being wakened, and this removal having occurred apparently while the windows were still secured, and the two doors locked upon the inside. I will tell you my theory, and ask you a question. Carmilla was leaning on her hand, ejectedly. Madame and I were listening breathlessly. Now my question is this. Have you ever been suspected of walking in your sleep?

"'Never, since I was very young, indeed.' "'But you did walk in your sleep when you were young.' "'Yes, I know I did. I have been told so often by my old nurse.' My father smiled and nodded. "'Well, what has happened is this? You got up in your sleep, unlocked the door, not leaving the key, as usual, in the lock, but taking it out and locking it on the outside. You again took the the key out, and carried it away with you to some one of the five-and-twenty rooms on this floor,

or perhaps upstairs, or downstairs. There are so many rooms and closets, so much heavy furniture, and such accumulations of lumber that it would require a week to search this old house thoroughly. Do you see now what I mean?' "'I do. But not all,' she answered. "'And how, Papa, do you account for her finding herself on the sofa in the dressing-room, which we had searched so carefully. She came there after you had searched it, still in her sleep, and at last awoke spontaneously,

and was as much surprised to find herself where she was as anyone else. I wish all mysteries were as easily and innocently explained as yours, Carmilla, he said laughing. And so we may congratulate ourselves on the certainty that the most natural explanation of the occurrence is one that involves no drugging, no tampering with locks, no burglar, or poisoners or witches.

Nothing that need alarm Carmilla or anyone else for our safety. Carmilla was looking charmingly. Nothing could be more beautiful than her tints. Her beauty was, I think, enhanced by that graceful languor that was peculiar to her. I think my father was silently contrasting her looks with mine, for he said, I wish my poor Laura was looking more like herself. And he sighed.

So our alarms were happily ended, and Carmilla restored to her friends. End of Chapter 8 This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit www.librivo.org. Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFano Read by Elizabeth Clette

Chapter 9 The Doctor As Carmilla would not hear of an attendant sleeping in her room, my father arranged that a servant should sleep outside her door, so that she would not attempt to make another such excursion without being arrested at her own door. That night passed quietly, and next morning early, the doctor,

whom my father had sent for without telling me a word about it, arrived to see me. Madame accompanied me to the library, and there the grave-lourable. little doctor, with white hair and spectacles, whom I mentioned before, was waiting to receive me. I told him my story, and as I proceeded he grew graver and graver. We were standing, he and I, in the recess of one of the windows facing one another. When my statement was over, he leaned with his shoulders against the wall, and with his eyes

fixed on me earnestly, with an interest in which was a dash of horror. After a minute's reflection, he asked Madame if he could see my father. He was sent for accordingly, and as he entered, smiling, he said, I dare say, doctor, you are going to tell me that I am an old fool for having brought you here. I hope I am. But his smile faded into shadow as the doctor, with a very grave face, beckoned to him. He and the doctor talked for some time in the same recess where I had just conferred with the position. It seemed an earnest and argumentative conversation. The room is very large,

and I and madame stood together, burning with curiosity, at the farther end. Not a word could we hear, however, for they spoke in a very low tone, and the deep recess of the window quite concealed the doctor from view, and very nearly my father, whose foot, arm and shoulder only we could see, and the voices were, I suppose, all the less audible for the sort of closet which the thick wall and window formed. After a time my father's face looked into the room. It was pale, thoughtful, and I fancied agitated. Laura, dear, come here for a moment. Madame, we shan't trouble you, the doctor says, at present.

Accordingly I approached, for the first time a little alarmed, For although I felt very weak, I did not feel ill. And strength one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please. My father held out his hand to me, as I drew near, but he was looking at the doctor, and he said, It certainly is very odd. I don't understand it quite. Laura, come here, dear. Now attend to Dr. Spielsburg and recollect yourself. You mentioned a sensation like that of two needles piercing the skin. Somewhere about your neck, on the night when you first experienced your horrible dream,

Is there still any soreness? Not at all, I answered. Can you indicate with your finger about the point at which you think this occurred? Very little below my throat. Here, I answered. I wore a morning dress which covered the place I pointed to. Now you can satisfy yourself, said the doctor. You won't mind your papa's lowering your,

address of very little. It is necessary, to detect a symptom of the complaint under which you have been suffering. I acquiesced. It was only an inch or two below the edge of my collar. God bless me! So it is! exclaimed my father, growing pale. You see it now with your own eyes, said the doctor, with a gloomy triumph. What is it? I exclaimed, beginning to be frightened. Nothing, my dear young lady, but a small blue spot, about the size of the tip of your little finger, and now, he continued, turning to Papa, the question is, what is best to be done? Is there any danger, I urged, in great trepidation? I trust not, my dear, answered the doctor. I don't see why you should not recover. I don't see why you should not immediately begin to get better. That is the point at which the sense of strangulation.

begins. Yes, I answered. And recollect as well as you can. The same point was a kind of center of that thrill which you described just now, like the current of a cold stream running against you. It may have been. I think it was. I, you see, he added, turning to my father, shall I say a word to madame? Certainly, said my father. He called Madame to him and said, "'I find my young friend here far from well. It won't be of any great consequence, I hope, but it will be necessary that some steps be taken,

which I will explain by and by. But in the meantime, madame, you will be so good as to not let Miss Laura be alone for one moment. That is the only direction I need give for the present. It is indispensable.' "'We may rely upon your kindness, madame, I know,' added my father. Madame satisfied him eagerly. "'And you, dear Laura, I know you will observe the doctor's direction.

I shall have to ask your opinion upon another patient, whose symptoms slightly resemble those of my daughter, that have just been detailed to you, very much milder in degree, but I believe quite of the same sort. She is a young lady, our guest, but as you say you will be passing this way again this evening, you can't do better than take your supper here, and you can then see her. She does not come down till the afternoon.

I thank you, said the doctor. I shall be with you then, at about seven this evening. And then they repeated their directions to me and madame, and with this parting charge my father left us, and walked out with the doctor, and I saw them pacing together up and down between the road and the moat, on the grassy platform in front of the castle, evidently absorbed in earnest conversation. The doctor did not return. I saw him mount his horse there, take his leave, and ride away eastward through the forest. Nearly at the same time I saw the man arrive from Dranfield with the letters, and dismount and hand the bag to my father.

In the meantime, Madame and I were both busy, lost in conjecture as to the reasons of the singular and earnest direction which the doctor and my father had concurred in imposing. Madame, as she afterwards told me, was afraid the doctor apprehended a sudden seizure, and that without prompt assistance I might either lose my life in a fit, or at least be seriously hurt. The interpretation did not strike me, and I fancied perhaps luckily for my nerves, that the arrangement was prescribed simply to secure a companion, who would prevent my taking too much exercise, or eating unripe fruit, or doing any of the fifty foolish things to which young people are supposed to be prone. About half an hour after my father came in, he had a letter in his hand, and said, this letter had been delayed. It is from General Spielsdorf. He might have been here yesterday. He may not come until tomorrow, or he may be here today. He put the letter into my hand, but he did not look pleased, as he used when a guest, especially when so much loved as the general was coming. On the contrary,

he looked as if he wished him at the bottom of the Red Sea. There was plainly something on his mind which he did not choose to divulge. "'Papa, darling, will you tell me this?' said I, suddenly laying my hand on his arm, and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his face. "'Perhaps,' he answered, smoothing my hair caressingly over my eyes. "'Does the doctor think me very ill?' "'No, dear.' He thinks, if right steps are taken, you will be quite well again,

at least on the high road to a complete recovery in a day or two. he answered a little dryly. I wish our good friend the general had chosen any other time. That is, I wish you had been perfectly well to receive him. But do tell me, Papa, I insisted. What does he think is the matter with me? Nothing. You must not plague me with questions, he answered,

with more irritation than I ever remember him to have displayed before. And seeing that I looked wounded, I suppose, he kissed me and added, you shall know all about it in a day or two. That is, all that I know. In the meantime you are not to trouble your head about it. He turned and left the room, but came back before I had done wondering and puzzling over the oddity of all this. It was merely to say that he was going to Carnstein, and had ordered the carriage to be ready at twelve, and that I and Madame should accompany him. He was going to see the priest who lived near those picturesque grounds upon business, and as Carmilla had never seen them,

she could follow when she came down with Mademoiselle, who would bring materials for what you call a picnic, which might be laid for us in the ruined castle. At twelve o'clock accordingly I was ready, and not long after, my father, madame and I set out upon our projected drive. Passing the drawbridge we turned to the right, and follow the road over the steep Gothic bridge westward to reach the deserted village and ruined castle of Carnstein.

no sylvan drive can be fancied prettier the ground breaks into gentle hills and hollows all clothed with beautiful wood totally destitute of the comparative formality which artificial planting in early culture and pruning impart the irregularities of the ground often lead the road out of its course and cause it to wind beautifully round the sides of broken hollows and the steeper sides of the hills among varieties of ground almost inexhaustible Turning one of these points, we suddenly encountered our old friend, the general, riding towards us attended by a mounted servant. His portmanteaus were following in a hired wagon, such as we term a cart. The general dismounted as we pulled up, and after the usual greetings, was easily persuaded to accept the vacant seat in the carriage, and send his horse on with his servant to the Schloss. End of Chapter 9. This is a Libervox recording.

All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit www.librivo.org Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFano Read by Elizabeth Clette Chapter 10 Be Reeved It was about ten months since we had last seen him, but that time had sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appearance.

He had grown thinner. something of gloom and anxiety had taken the place of that cordial serenity which used to characterize his features. His dark blue eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under his shaggy gray eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually induces, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share in bringing it about. We had not long resumed our drive, when the general began to talk, with his usual soldierly directness, of the bereavement, as he termed it, which he had sustained in the death of his beloved niece and ward. And he then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, invaying against the hellish arts to which she had fallen a victim,

and expressing, with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell. My father, who saw at once that something very extraordinary had befallen, asked him if not too painful to him to detail the circumstances which he thought justified the strong terms in which he expressed himself i should tell you with all pleasure said the general but you would not believe me why should i not he asked because he answered testily you believe in nothing but what consists with your own prejudices and illusions i remember when i was like you but i have learned better. Try me, said my father. I am not such a dogmatist as you suppose. Besides which, I very well know that you generally require proof for what you believe, and am therefore very strongly predisposed

to respect your conclusions. You are right, in supposing that I have not been led lightly into a belief in the marvellous, for what I have experienced is marvellous. And I have been forced by extraordinary evidence to credit that which ran counter diametrically to all my theories. I have been made the dupe of a preternatural conspiracy. Notwithstanding his professions of confidence in the general's penetration, I saw my father at this point glance at the general, with, as I thought, a marked suspicion of his sanity. The general did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily and curiously into the glades and vistas of the woods that were opening before us.

You are going to the ruins of Karnstein, he said. Yes, it is a lucky coincidence. Do you know I was going to ask you to bring me there to inspect them? I have a special object in exploring. There is a ruined chapel, ain't there, with a great many tombs of that extinct family? So there are. Highly interesting, said my father. I hope you are thinking of claiming the title and estates.

My father said this gaily, but the general did not recollect the laugh, or even the smile which courtesy exacts for a friend's joke. On the contrary, he looked grave, and even fierce, ruminating on a matter that stirred his anger and horror. Something very different, he said gruffly. I mean to unearth some of those fine people. I hope, by God's blessing, to accomplish a pious sacrilege here, which will be a very different. relieve our earth of certain monsters and enable honest people to sleep in their beds without being assailed by murderers. I have strange things to tell you, my dear friend, such as I myself would have scouted as incredible a few months since. My father looked at him again, but this time not with a glance

of suspicion, with an eye rather of keen intelligence and alarm. The house of Carnstein, he said, "'has been long extinct. "'A hundred years, at least. "'My dear wife was maternally descended from the Carnstein's. "'But the name and title have long ceased to exist. "'The castle is a ruin. "'The very village is deserted. "'It is fifty years since the smoke of a chimney was seen there.

"'Not a roof left.' "'Quite true. "'I have heard a great deal about that since I last saw you, "'a great deal that will astonish you. "'But I had better relate everything in the order in which it occurred," said the General. "'You saw my dear Ward, my child, I may call her. No creature could have been more beautiful,

and only three months ago none more blooming.' "'Yes, poor thing. When I saw her last she certainly was quite lovely,' said my father. "'I was grieved and shocked more than I can tell you, my dear friend. I knew what a blow it was to you.' He took the General's hand. and they exchanged a kind pressure. Tears gathered in the old soldier's eyes.

He did not seek to conceal them. He said, We have been very old friends. I knew you would feel for me, childless as I am. She had become an object of very near interest to me, and repaid my care by an affection that cheered my home and made my life happy. That is all gone. The years that remained.

to me on earth may not be very long, but by God's mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind before I die, and to subserve the vengeance of heaven upon the fiends who have murdered my poor child in the spring of her hopes and beauty. You said just now that you intended relating everything as it occurred, said my father. Pray do, I assure you that it is not mere curiosity that prompts me. By this time we had reached the point at which the Drunschdal rode, by which the general had come, diverges from the road which we were traveling to Karnstein. How far is it to the ruins? inquired the general, looking anxiously forward.

About half a league, answered my father. Pray, let us hear the story you were so good as to promise. End of Chapter 10. This is a Liprovoc's recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, visit www.com.com Librevox.org. Carmilla by Jay Sheridan LaFano. Read by Elizabeth Clette. Chapter 11 The Story

With all my heart, said the general, with an effort. And after a short pause in which to arrange his subject, he commenced one of the strangest narratives I ever heard. My dear child was looking forward with great pleasure to the visit you had been so good as to arrange for her to your charm. arming daughter. Here he made me a gallant but melancholy bow. In the meantime we had an invitation to my old friend the Count Carlsfeld, who Schloss is about six leagues to the other side of Carnstein. It was to attend the series

of Fetz which, you remember, were given by him in honour of his illustrious visitor, the Grand Duke Charles. Yes, and very splendid, I believe they were, said my father. princely. But then his hospitalities are quite regal. He has Aladdin's lamp. The night from which my sorrow dates was devoted to a magnificent masquerade. The grounds were thrown open, the trees hung with colored lamps. There was such a display of fireworks as Paris itself had never witnessed. And such music. Music, you know, is my weakness. Such ravishing music. The fine. The fine finest instrumental band, perhaps, in the world, and the finest singers who could be collected from all the great operas in Europe.

As you wandered through these fantastically illuminated grounds, the moonlighted chateau throwing a rosy light from its long rows of windows, you would suddenly hear these ravishing voices stealing from the silence of some grove, or rising from boats upon the lake. I felt myself, as I looked and listened, carried back into the romance and poetry of my early youth. When the fireworks were ended, and the ball beginning, we returned to the noble suite of rooms that were thrown open to the dancers. A masked ball, you know, is a beautiful sight, but so brilliant a spectacle of the kind I never saw before. It was a very aristocratic assembly. I was myself almost the only nobody present. My dear child was looking quite beautiful.

She wore no mask. Her excitement and delight added an unspeakable charm to her features, always lovely. I remarked a young lady, dressed magnificently, but wearing a mask, who appeared to me to be observing my ward with extraordinary interest. I had seen her earlier in the evening, in the great hall. and again for a few minutes walking near us, on the terrace under the castle windows, similarly employed. A lady also masked, richly and gravely dressed, and with a stately air like a person of rank, accompanied her as a chaperone. Had the young lady not worn a mask, I could, of course, have been much more certain upon the question whether she was really watching my poor darling.

I am now well assured that she was. We were now in one of the salons. My poor dear child had been dancing, and was resting a little in one of the chairs near the door. I was standing near. The two ladies I have mentioned had approached, and the younger took the chair next my ward, while her companion stood by me, and for a little time addressed herself in low tone, to her charge. Availing herself of the privilege of her mask, she turned to me, and, in the tone of an old friend, and calling me by name, opened a conversation with me,

which piqued my curiosity a good deal. She referred to many scenes where she had met me, at court and at distinguished houses. She alluded to little incidents which I had long ceased to think of, but which, I found, had only lain in abeyance in my memory, for they instantly started into life at her touch. I became more and more curious to ascertain who she was every moment. She parried my attempts to discover very adroitly and pleasantly. The knowledge she showed of many passages in my life seemed to me all but unaccountable,

and she appeared to take a not unnatural pleasure in foiling my curiosity, and in seeing me flounder in my eager perplexity from one conjecture to another. In the meantime, the young lady, whom her mother called by the odd name of Milarka. When she once or twice addressed her, had, with the same ease and grace, got into conversation with my ward. She introduced herself by saying that her mother was a very old acquaintance of mine. She spoke of the agreeable audacity which a mask rendered practicable.

She talked like a friend. She admired her dress, and insinuated very prettily her admiration of her beauty. She amused her with laughing criticisms upon the people who crowded the ballroom and laughed at my poor child's fun. She was very witty and lively when she pleased, and after a time they had grown very good friends, and the young stranger lowered her mask, displaying a remarkably beautiful face. I had never seen it before. Neither had my dear child. But though it was new to us, the features were so very good. engaging, as well as lovely, that it was impossible not to feel the attraction powerfully. My poor girl did so.

I never saw anyone more taken with another at first sight, unless, indeed, it was the stranger herself, who seemed quite to have lost her heart to her. In the meantime, availing myself of the license of a masquerade, I put not a few questions to the elder lady. You have puzzled me utterly, I said, laughing. Is that not enough? Won't you now consent to stand on equal terms, and do me the kindness to remove your mask? Can any request be more unreasonable?

She replied. Ask a lady to yield an advantage. Besides, how do you know you should recognize me? Years make changes. "'As you see,' I said with a bow, and I suppose a rather melancholy little laugh. "'As philosophers tell us,' she said, "'and how do you know that a sight of my face would help you?' "'I should take chance for that,' I answered.

"'It is vain trying to make yourself out an old woman. Your figure betrays you.' "'years nevertheless have passed since I saw you. you, rather since you saw me, for that is what I am considering. Melarka there is my daughter. I cannot then be young, even in the opinion of people whom time has taught to be indulgent, and I may not like to be compared with what you remember me. You have no mask to remove. You can offer me nothing in exchange. My petition is to your pity, to remove it.

"'And mine to yours, to let it stay where it is,' she replied. "'Well, then at least you will tell me whether you are French or German. You speak both languages so perfectly.' "'I don't think I shall tell you that, General. You intend a surprise, and are meditating the particular point of attack.' "'At all events you won't deny this,' I said, that being honored by your permission to converse I ought to know how to address you. Shall I say, Madame la Comtesse?' She laughed, and she would no doubt have met me with another evasion, if indeed I can treat any occurrence in an interview every circumstance of which was pre-arranged,

as I now believe, with the profoundest cunning, as liable to be modified by accident. As to that, she began. But she was interrupted, almost as she opened her lips, by a gentleman dressed in black, who looked particularly elegant and distinguished, with this drawback, that his face was the most deadly pale I ever saw, except in death. He was in no masquerade, in the plain evening dress of a gentleman, and he said, without a smile, but with a courtly and unusually low bow. Will Madame la Comtesse permit me to say a very few words which may interest her? The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in a token of silence.

She then said to me, Keep my place for me, General. I shall return when I have said a few words. And with this injunction, playfully given, she walked a little aside with the gentleman in black, and talked for some minutes, apparently very earnestly. They then walked away slowly together in the crowd, and I lost them for some minutes. I spent the interval in cuddling my brains for a conjecture as to the identity of the lady

who seemed to remember me so kindly. And I was thinking of turning about and joining in the conversation between my pretty ward and the countess's daughter, and trying whether, by the time she returned, I might not have a surprise in store for her, by having her name, title, chateau, and estates at my finger's ends. But at this moment she returned, accompanied by the pale man in black, who said, I shall return, and inform Madame la Comtesse when her carriage is at the door. He withdrew with a bow. End of Chapter 11.

This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit www.librivox.org. Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFanoe. Read by Elizabeth Clette. Chapter 12 A petition

Then we are to lose Madame La Comtesse, but I hope for only a few hours, I said with a low bow. It may be that only, or it may be a few weeks. weeks. It was very unlucky his speaking to me just now as he did. Do you now know me? I assured her I did not. "'You shall know me,' she said, but not at present. We are older and better friends than perhaps you suspect. I cannot yet declare myself. I shall in three weeks pass your beautiful Schloss, about which I have been making inquiries. I shall then look in upon you for an hour or two, and renew a friendship which I never think of without a thousand pleasant recollections. This moment a piece of news has reached me like a thunderbolt. I must set out now,

and travel by a devious route, nearly a hundred miles, with all the dispatch that I can possibly make. My perplexities multiply. I am only deterred by the compulsory reserve I practice as to my name from making a very singular request of you. My poor child has not quite recovered her strength. Her horse fell with her, at a hunt which she had written out to witness. Her nerves have not yet recovered the shock, and our physician says that she must on no account exert herself for some time to come. We came here, in consequence, by very easy stages, hardly six leagues a day.

I must now travel day and day. night, on a mission of life and death, a mission the critical and momentous nature of which I shall be able to explain to you when we meet, as I hope we shall, in a few weeks, without the necessity of any concealment. She went on to make her petition, and it was in the tone of a person from whom such a request amounted to conferring, rather than seeking, a favor. This was only in manner, and, as it seemed, quite unconsciously, then the terms of which it was expressed, nothing could be more deprecatory. It was simply that I would consent

to take charge of her daughter during her absence. This was, all things considered, a strange, not to say, an audacious request. She, in some sort, disarmed me, by stating at admitting everything that could be urged against it, and throwing herself entirely upon my chivalry, At the same moment, by a fatality that seems to have predetermined all that happened, my poor child came to my side, and in an undertone besought me to invite her new friend, Milarka, to pay us a visit. She had just been sounding her, and thought, if her Mama would allow her, she would like it extremely. At another time I should have told her to wait a little.

Until at least we knew who they were. But I had not a moment to think it. The two ladies assailed me together, and, I must confess, the refined and beautiful face of the young lady, about which there was something extremely engaging, as well as the elegance and fire of high birth, determined me, and quite overpowered, I submitted, and undertook too easily the care of the young lady whom her mother called Milarka. The Countess beckoned to her daughter, who listened with grave attention while she told her, in general terms, how suddenly and peremptorily she had been summoned, and also of the arrangement she had made for her under my care, adding that I was one of her earliest and most valued friends. I made, of course, such speeches as the case seemed to call for, and found myself on reflection in a position which I did not half like.

The gentleman in black returned, and very ceremoniously conducted the lady from the room. The demeanour of this gentleman was such as to impress me with the conviction that the Countess was a lady of very much more importance than her modest title alone might have led me to assume. Her last charge to me was that no attempt was to be made to learn more about her than I might have already guessed, until her return. Our distinguished host, whose guest she was, knew her reasons. But here, she said, neither I nor my daughter could safely remain for more than a day. I removed my mask imprudently for a moment, about an hour ago, and, too late, I fancied

you saw me. So I resolved to seek an opportunity of talking a little to you. Had I found out that you had seen me, I would have thrown myself on your high sense of honor to keep my secret some weeks. as it is, I am satisfied that you did not see me. But if you now suspect, or, on reflection, should suspect who I am, I commit myself, in like manner, entirely to your honour. My daughter will observe the same secrecy, and I well know that you will, from time to time, remind her, lest she should thoughtlessly disclose it.

She whispered a few words to her daughter, kissed her hurriedly twice, and went away, accompanied by the pale gentleman in black, and disappeared in the crowd. "'In the next room,' said Malarga, "'there is a window that looks upon the hall-door. I should like to see the last of Mama, and to kiss my hand to her.' We assented, of course, and accompanied her to the window. We looked out and saw a handsome, old-fashioned carriage, with a troop of couriers and footmen. We saw the slim figure of the pale gentleman in black, as he held,

a thick velvet cloak, and placed it about her shoulders and threw the hood over her head. She nodded to him, and just touched his hand with hers. He bowed low repeatedly as the door closed, and the carriage began to move. "'She is gone,' said Malarka, with a sigh. "'She is gone,' I repeated to myself. For the first time, in the hurried moments that had elapsed since my consent, reflecting upon the folly of my act. She did not look up, said the young lady, plaintively. The Countess had taken off her mask, perhaps, and did not care to show her face, I said, and she could not know that she were in the window. She sighed and looked in my face.

She was so beautiful that I relented. I was sorry I had for a moment repented of my hospitality, and I determined to make her amends for the unavowed churlishness of my reception. The young lady, replacing her mask, joined my ward and persuading me to return to the grounds, where the concert was soon to be renewed. We did so, and walked up and down the terrace that lies under the castle windows. Milarka became very intimate with us, and amused us with lively descriptions and stories of most of the great people whom we saw upon the terrace. I liked her more and more every minute.

Her gossip, without being ill-natured, was extremely diverting to me, who had been so long out of the great world. I thought what life she would give to our sometimes lonely evenings at home. This ball was not over until the morning sun had almost reached the horizon. It pleased the Grand Duke to dance till then, so loyal people could not go away, or think of bed. We had just got through a crowded saloon when my ward asked me what had become of Milarka. I thought she had been by her side, and she fancied she was by mine. The fact was we had lost her. All my efforts to find her were in vain.

I feared that she had mistaken, in the confusion of a momentary separation from us, other people for her new friends, and had possibly pursued and lost them in the extensive grounds which were thrown open to us. Now, in its full force, I recognized a new folly in my having undertaken the charge of a young lady without so much as knowing her name, and fettered as I was by promises, of the reasons for imposing which I knew nothing, I could not even point my inquiries by saying that the missing young lady was the daughter of the countess who had taken her departure in a few hours before. Morning broke. It was clear daylight before I gave up my service.

search. It was not till near two o'clock next day that we heard anything of my missing charge. At about that time a servant knocked at my niece's door, to say that he had been earnestly requested by a young lady, who appeared to be in great distress, to make out where she could find the general Baron Spilsdorf and the young lady his daughter, in whose charge she had been left by her mother. There could be no doubt, notwithstanding the slight inaccuracy, that our young friends had turned up, and so she had. Would to heaven we had lost her. She told my poor child a story to account for her having failed to recover us for so long.

Very late, she said, she had got to the housekeeper's bedroom in despair of finding us, and had then fallen into a deep sleep, which, long as it was, had hardly sufficed to recruit her strength after the fatigues of the ball. That day, Milarka came home with us. I was only too happy, after all, to have secured so charming a companion for my dear girl. End of Chapter 12. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information, or to volunteer, visit www.librivo.org. Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFano. Read by Elizabeth Clette Chapter 13 The Woodman There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place, Milarka complained of extreme languor, the weakness that remained after her late illness,

and she never emerged from her room till the afternoon was pretty far advanced. In the next place, it was accidentally discovered, although she always locked her door on the inside, and never disturbed the key from its place till she admitted the maid to assist at her toilet, that she was undoubtedly sometimes absent from her room in the very early morning, and at various times later in the day, before she wished it to be understood that she was stirring. She was repeatedly seen from the windows of the Schloss, in the first faint grey of the morning, walking through the trees, in an easterly direction, and looking like a person in a trance.

This convinced me that she walked in her sleep. But this hypothesis did not solve the puzzle. How did she pass out from her room, leaving the door locked on the inside? How did she escape from the house without unbarring door or window? In the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of a far more urgent kind presented itself. My dear child began to lose her looks and health, and that in a man manner so mysterious and even horrible that I became thoroughly frightened. She was at first visited by appalling dreams.

Then, as she fancied by a specter, sometimes resembling Melarca, sometimes in the shape of a beast, indistinctly seen walking round the foot of her bed from side to side. Lastly came sensations. One, not unpleasant, but very peculiar, she said, resembled the flow of an icy stream against her breast. At a later time she felt something like a pair of large needles pierce her, a little below the throat, with a very sharp pain. A few nights after followed a gradual and convulsive sense of strangulation. Then came unconsciousness. I could hear distinctly every word the kind old general was saying, because by this time we were driving upon the short grass

that spreads on either side of the road as you approach the roofless village, which had not shown the smoke of a chimney for more than half a century. You may guess how strangely I felt, as I heard my own symptoms so exactly described in those which had been experienced by the poor girl, who, but for the catastrophe which followed, would have been at that moment a visitor at my father's chateau. You may suppose also, how I felt, as I heard him detail habits and mysterious peculiarities, which were, in fact, those of our beautiful guest, Carmel. A vista opened in the forest. We were on a sudden under the chimneys and gables of the ruined

village, and the towers and battlements of the dismantled castle, round which gigantic trees are grouped, overhung us from a slight eminence. In a frightened dream I got down from the carriage, and in silence, for we had each abundant matter for thinking. We soon mounted the ascent, and were among the spacious chambers, winding stairs and dark corridors of the castle. And this was once the palatial residence of the Karnstein's, said the old general at length, as from a great window he looked out across the village, and saw the wide, undulating expanse of forest. It was a bad family, and here its blood-stained annals were written, he continued.

It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human race with their atrocious lusts. That is the chapel of the Karnstein's, down there. He pointed down to the grey walls of the Gothic building, partly visible through the foliage, a little way down the steep. And I hear the axe of a woodman, he added, busy among the trees that surround it. He possibly may give us the information of which I am in search,

and points out the grave of Mercala, Countess of Carnstein. These rustics preserve the local traditions of great families, whose stories die out among the rich and titled so soon as the families themselves become extinct. We have a portrait, at home of Mercala, the Countess Carnstein. Should you like to see it? asked my father. Time enough, dear friend, replied the general.

I believe that I have seen the original, and one motive which has led me to you earlier than I first intended, was to explore the chapel which we are now approaching. What? See the Countess Mercala? exclaimed my father. Why she has been dead more than a century. Not so dead as you fancy, I am told, answered the general. I confess, General. You puzzle me utterly, replied my father, looking at him, I fancied for a moment with a return of the suspicion I detected before. But although there was anger and detestation at times in the old general's manner, there was nothing flighty. "'There remains to me,' he said, as we passed under the heavy arch of the Gothic Church,

for its dimensions would have justified its being so styled. but one object which can interest me during the few years that remain to me on earth, and that is to wreck on her the vengeance, which I thank God may still be accomplished by a mortal man. What vengeance can you mean? asked my father, in increasing amazement. I mean to decapitate the monster, he answered, with a fierce flush and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the hollow ruin, and his clenched hand was at the same moment raised, as if it grasped the handle of an axe, while he shook it ferociously in the air. "'What?' exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered.

"'To strike her head off.' "'Cut her head off?' "'I, with a hatchet, with a spade, or with anything that can cleave through her murderous throat. "'You shall hear,' he answered. trembling with rage. And hurrying forward, he said, "'That beam will answer for a seat. Your dear child is fatigued. Let her be seated, and I will, in a few sentences, close my dreadful story. The squared block of wood, which lay on the grass-grown pavement of the chapel, formed a bench on which I was very glad to seat

myself, and in the meantime the general called to the woodman, who had been removing some bows which leaned upon the old walls, and axe in hand the hearty old fellow stood before us. He could not tell us anything of these monuments, but there was an old man, he said, a ranger of this forest, at present sojourning in the house of the priest about two miles away, who could point out every monument of the old Carnstein family, and for a trifle he undertook to bring him back with him if we would lend him one of our horses in little more than half an hour. "'Have you been long employed about this forest?' asked my father of the old man. "'I have been a woodman here,' he answered in his patois.

"'Under the forester all my days. So has my father before me, and so on, as many generations as I can count up. I could show you the very house and the village here in which my ancestors live. How came the village to be deserted? asked the general. It was troubled by revenants, sir. Several were tracked to their graves, there detected by the usual tests,

and extinguished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by burning, but not until many of the villagers were killed. But after all these proceedings, according to law, he continued, so many graves opened and so many vampires deprived of their horrible animation.

The village was not relieved. But a Moravian nobleman, who happened to be traveling this way, heard how matters were, and being skilled, as many people are in his country, in such affairs he offered to deliver the village from its tormentor. He did so thus. There being a bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the towers of the chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard beneath him.

You can see it from that window. From this point he watched until he saw the vampire come out of his grave, and placed near it the linen clothes in which he had been folded, and then glide away towards the village to plague its inhabitants. The stranger, having seen all this, came down from the steeple, took the linen wrappings of the vampire, and carried them up to the top of the tower, which he again mounted. When the vampire returned from his prowlings and missed his clothes,

he cried furiously to the Moravian, whom he saw at the summit of the tower, and who, in reply, beckoned him to ascend and take them. Whereupon the vampire, accepting his invitation, began to climb the steeple, and so soon as he had reached the battlements, the Moravian, with a stroke of his sword, clove his skull and twain, hurling him down to the churchyard, whither, descending by the winding stairs, the stranger-finger, followed and cut his head off, and next day delivered it and the body to the villagers, who duly impaled and burnt them.

This Moravian nobleman had authority from the then head of the family to remove the tomb of Mercala, Countess Carnstein, which he did, effectually, so that in a little while its sight was quite forgotten. Can you point out where it stood? asked the general eagerly. The Forrester shook his head and smiled. Not a soul living can tell you that now, he said. Besides, they say her body was removed, but no one is sure of that either. Having thus spoken, as time pressed, he dropped his axe and departed,

leaving us to hear the remainder of the General's strange story. End of Chapter 13. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit www.librivox.org. Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFanou. Read by Elizabeth Clette.

Chapter 14 The Meeting My beloved child, he resumed, was now growing rapidly worse. The physician who attended her had failed to produce the slightest impression on her disease, for such I then supposed it to be. He saw my alarm and suggested a consultation. I called in an abler physician from Grotz. Several days elapsed before he arrived.

He was a good and pious as well as a learned man. Having seen my poor ward together, they withdrew to my library to confer and discuss. I, from the adjoining room, where I awaited their summons, heard these two gentlemen's voices raised in something sharper than a strictly philosophical discussion. I knocked at the door and entered. I found the old physician from Grotz, maintaining his theory.

His rival was combating it with undisguised ridicule, accompanied with bursts of laughter. This unseemly manifestation subsided, and the altercation ended on my entrance. Sir, said my first physician, My learned brother seems to think that you want a conjurer and not a doctor. "'Pardon me,' said the old physician from Grotz, looking displeased, "'I shall state my own view of the case in my own way another time. "'I grieve, Monsieur le General, that by my skill and science I can be of no use. "'Before I go I shall do myself the honour to suggest something to you.'

He seemed thoughtful, and sat down at a table and began to write. "'Profoundly disappointed, I made my bow, and as I took to say, turned to go, the other doctor pointed over his shoulder to his companion, who was writing, and then, with a shrug significantly touched his forehead. This consultation, then, left me precisely where I was. I walked out into the grounds, all but distracted. The doctor from Grotz, and ten or fifteen minutes overtook me. He apologized for having followed me, but said that he could not conscientiously take his leave without a few words more. He told me that he could not be mistaken. No natural disease exhibited the

same symptoms, and that death was already very near. There remained, however, a day, or possibly two, of life. If the fatal seizure were at once arrested, with great care and skill her strength might possibly return, but all hung now upon the confines of the irrevocable. One more assault might extinguish the last spark of vitality, which is every moment ready to die. And what is the nature of the seizure you speak of, I entreated? I have stated all fully in this note, which I place in your hands upon the distinct condition that you send for the nearest clergyman, and open my letter in his presence, and on no account read it till he is with you. You would despise it else, and it is a matter of life and death,

Should the priest fail you then? Indeed you may read it. He asked me, before taking his leave, finally, whether I would wish to see a man curiously learned upon the very subject, which, after I had read his letter, would probably interest me above all others, and he urged me earnestly to invite him to visit him there, and so took his leave. The Ecclesiastic was absent, and I read the letter by myself. At another time, or in another case it might have excited my ridicule. But into what quackeries will not people rush for a last chance, where all accustomed means have failed, and the life of a beloved object is at stake?

Nothing, you will say, could be more absurd than the learned man's letter. It was monstrous enough to have consigned him to a madhouse. He said that the patient was suffering from the visits of a vampire. The punctures which she described as having occurred near the throat were, he insisted. the insertion of those two long, thin, and sharp teeth, which, it is well known, are peculiar to vampires, and there could be no doubt, he added, as to the well-defined presence of the small, livid mark, which all concurred in describing as that induced by the demon's lips, and every symptom described by the sufferer was an exact conformity with those recorded in every

case of a similar visitation. Being myself wholly skeptical as to the existence of any such portent as the vampire, the supernatural theory of the good doctor furnished, in my opinion, but another instance of learning and intelligence oddly associated with some one hallucination. I was so miserable, however, that rather than try nothing, I acted upon the instructions of the letter. I concealed myself in the dark dressing-room that opened upon the poor patient's room. in which a candle was burning, and watched there till she was fast asleep. I stood at the door, peeping through the small crevice, my sword laid on the table beside me as my directions prescribed, until a little after one, I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl as it seemed to me over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl's throat, where it swelled,

in a moment into a great, palpitating mass. For a few moments I had stood petrified. I now sprang forward with my sword in my hand. The black creature suddenly contracted towards the foot of the bed, glided over it, and standing on the floor about a yard below the foot of the bed, with a glare of skulking veracity and horror fixed on me, I saw Melarka.

Speculating I know not what, I struck at her instantly with my soul. but I saw her standing near the door, unscathed. Horrified, I pursued and struck again. She was gone, and my sword flew to shivers against the door. I can't describe to you all that passed on that horrible night. The whole house was up and stirring. The specter Malarka was gone, but her victim was sinking fast,

and before the morning dawned, she died. The old general was agitated. We did not speak to him. My father walked to some little distance, and began reading the inscriptions on the tombstones, and thus occupied he strolled into the door of a side chapel to prosecute his researches. The general leaned against the wall, dried his eyes, and sighed heavily. I was relieved on hearing the voices of Carmilla and Madame, who were at that moment approaching. The voices died away.

In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story, connected as it was with the great entitled dead, whose monuments were mouldering among the dust and ivy around us, and every instant of which bore so awfully upon my own mysterious gaze, in this haunted spot, darkened by the towering foliage that rose on every side, dense and high above its noiseless walls, a horror began to steal over me, and my heart sank. as I thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter and disturb this treased and ominous scene. The old general's eyes were fixed on the ground, as he leaned with his hand upon the basement

of a shattered monument. Under a narrow arched doorway, surmounted by one of those demonical rotesques in which the cynical and ghastly fancy of old Gothic carving delights, I saw very gladly the beautiful face and figure of Carmilla, entering the shadowy chapel. I was just about to rise and speak, and nodded smiling, in answer to her peculiarly engaging smile. When with a cry the old man by my side caught up the woodman's hatchet and started forward, on seeing him a brutalized change came over her features.

It was an instantaneous and horrible transformation, as she made a crouching step backwards. Before I could utter a scream, he struck at her with all his force, but she dived under his blow, and unscathed caught him in her tiny grass by the wrist. He struggled for a moment to release his arm, but his hand opened, the axe fell to the ground, and the girl was gone. He staggered against the wall. His gray hair stood upon his head, and a moisture shone over his face as if he were at the point of death. The frightful scene had passed. passed in a moment. The first thing I recollect after is Madame standing before me, and impatiently repeating again and again the question, "'Where is Mademoiselle?' I answered at length,

"'I don't know. I can't tell. She went there.' And I pointed to the door through which Madame had just entered, only a minute or two since. But I have been standing there in the passage ever since Mademoiselle Carmilla entered, and she did not return. She then began to call, Carmilla! Through every door and passage and from the windows, but no answer came. She called herself Carmilla, asked the general, still agitated. Carmilla, yes, I answered.

Aye, he said. That is Milarka. That is the same person who long ago. ago was called Mercala, Countess Carnstein. Depart from this accursed ground, my poor child, as quickly as you can. Drive to the clergyman's house and stay there till we come. Be gone! May you never behold Carmilla Moore. You will not find her here. End of Chapter 14. This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, visit www.librovo.

combe.org Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFano Read by Elizabeth Clette Chapter 15 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 there 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 side-wall, which they began to examine with great

minuteness, pulling off the ivy that clung over it, and wrapping the plaster with the ends of their sticks, scraping here and knocking there. At length they ascertain 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 Mercala, Countess Carnstein. 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, Cilicia, 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 Carnstein. The grave of the Countess Mercala 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. End of Chapter 15. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, visit www.combe.com Vaux.org.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFano Read by Elizabeth Clette. Chapter 16 Conclusion I write all this you suppose with composure, but far from it.

I cannot think of it without agitation. Nothing but your earnest desire so repeatedly expressed could have induced me to sit down to a task that has unstrung my nerves for months to come, and re-induced a shadow of the unspeakable horror, which years after my deliverance continued to make my days and nights dreadful, and solitude insupportably terrific. Let me add a word or two about that quaint Baron Vordenberg, to whose curious lore we

were indebted for the discovery of the Countess Mercola's grave. He had taken up his abode in Grots, where, living upon a mere pittance, which was all that remained to him of the once princely estates of his family in Upper Sterea, he devoted himself to the minute and laborious investigation of the marvellously authenticated tradition of vampirism. He had at his fingers' ends all the great and little works upon the subject. Magia posthuma Flagon de Mirabilibus Augustinus de Curra Promortuus

Philosophique et Christiane cogitaciones de vampiris by John Christopher Heronberg, and a thousand others, among which I remember only a few of those which he lent to my father. He had a voluminous digest of all the judicial cases, from which he had extracted a system of principles that appear to govern, some always and others occasionally only, the condition of the vampire. I may mention in passing that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenance is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present in the grave, and when they show themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life. When disclosed to light in their coffins, they exhibit all the symptoms that are enumerated as those which

proved the vampire life of the long-dead Countess Carnstein. How they escape from their graves, and return to them for certain hours every day, without displacing the clay or leaving any trace of disturbance in the state of the coffin or the seraments, has always been admitted to be utterly inexplicable. The amphibious existence of the vampire is sustained by daily renewed slumber in the grave. Its horrible lust for living blood supplies the vigor of its waking existence.

The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing venaments, resembling the passion of love by particular persons. In pursuit of these, it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will never desist, until it has satiated its passion, and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure,

and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases, it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary ones it goes direct to its object, overpowers with violence, and strangles and exhausts, often at a single feast. The vampire is, apparently, subject in certain situations to special conditions. In the particular instance of which I have given you a relation, Mercola 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 Milarka. My father related to the Baron Vordenberg, who remained with us for two or three weeks after the expulsion of Carmilla, the story about the Moravian nobleman and the vampire at Carnstein Churchyard, and then he asked the Baron how he had discovered the exact position of the long-concealed tomb of the Countess Mercala. 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 besides 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 Mercala, Countess Carnstein. 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 spectre visits living people and their slumbers. They die, and, almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires. This happened in the case of the beautiful Murcala, who was haunted by one of those demons. My ancestor, Vordenberg, 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, 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 Mercala 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 veil 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. We talked a little more, and among other things he said was this.

One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The slender hand of Mercala closed like a vice of steel on the general's wrist when he raised the hatchet to strike. But its power is not confined to its grasp. It leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever, recovered from. The following spring my father took me on a tour through Italy. We remained away for more than a year. It was long before the terror of recent events subsided, and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations.

Sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl, sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church. And often from a reverend. I have started. Fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door. End of Carmilla by J. Sheridan LaFanoe.