carmilla

Part 24 : Here is the lady

  'That Moravian man was not, in fact, Moravian. He came from Upper Styria and his name was ... Count Vordenburg. Of course, I am from the same family. He wrote many notes and papers, and I have most of them. Some of the most interesting papers describe his visit to Karnstein. 'When he was very young, he fell in love with the beautiful Mircalla, Countess of Karnstein.

' 'Excuse me,' said my father. 'I am just going to find something.' My father left the room, but soon returned with the painting of Mircalla. He placed it on the table.

'Here is the lady,' said my father. The picture was so like Carmilla - of course, it was Carmilla - that my blood ran cold. 'The Countess died young,' Herr Vordenburg continued, 'and it broke Count Vordenburg's heart.

Let's imagine that Styria had no vampires at that time. So how does it all begin? I will tell you. It begins when an evil person kills himself or herself. That monster becomes a vampire and starts to visit living people. It bites them when they are asleep and drinks their blood.

Then they die. In the grave, they become vampires too. The beautiful Mircalla was visited by one of these monsters. Count Vordenburg, like me, studied vampires, and he learned a lot about them. And he realised that even after her "death", Countess Mircalla was in danger. "People will discover that she is a vampire," he thought. "They will try to push a stake through her heart. What terrible place will she go to then?" He wanted to save Mircalla, his great love, from more suffering. 'So he came here. Everybody saw him destroy her grave. "'I have destroyed her!" he told the villagers. But he did not really destroy her! He saved her.  

  'Many years later, when he was an old man, he looked back at this act. He realised how wrong it was. By that time, there were a lot of vampires in Styria, and many people were losing their lives.

The villagers destroyed as many vampires as they could. But they could never kill the last one. They could never find Mircalla's grave. The Count made the drawings and notes that brought me to Countess Mircalla's grave. 'The General wrote to me after poor Bertha died. And then I knew.

It was time to destroy the last vampire.' My father borrowed some of Herr Vordenburg's books about vampires, and I read some too. I learned from them, but of course I already knew a lot. First, vampires are not pale. When they live with people, they have a healthy colour. They look like you or me.

Carmilla always looked quite beautiful — never pale.