“Assume, at starting, a territory perfectly free from that pest.  How does it begin, and how does it multiply itself?  I will tell you.  A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself.  A suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire.  That specter visits living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires.  This happened in the case of the beautiful Mircalla, who was haunted by one of those demons.  My ancestor, Vordenburg, whose title I still bear, soon discovered this, and in the course of the studies to which he devoted himself, learned a great deal more.

“Among other things, he concluded that suspicion of vampirism would probably fall, sooner or later, upon the dead Countess, who in life had been his idol.  He conceived a horror, be she what she might, of her remains being profaned by the outrage of a posthumous execution.  He has left a curious paper to prove that the vampire, on its expulsion from its amphibious existence, is projected into a far more horrible life; and he resolved to save his once beloved Mircalla from this.

“He adopted the stratagem of a journey here, a pretended removal of her remains, and a real obliteration of her monument.  When age had stolen upon him, and from the vale of years, he looked back on the scenes he was leaving, he considered, in a different spirit, what he had done, and a horror took possession of him.  He made the tracings and notes which have guided me to the very spot, and drew up a confession of the deception that he had practiced.  If he had intended any further action in this matter, death prevented him; and the hand of a remote descendant has, too late for many, directed the pursuit to the lair of the beast.”

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 Mircalla 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 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 reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.

* * * * *

Other books by J. Sheridan LeFanu

The Cock and Anchor
Torlogh O’Brien
The House by the Churchyard
Uncle Silas
Checkmate
Carmilla
The Wyvern Mystery
Guy Deverell
Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery
The Chronicles of Golden Friars
In a Glass Darkly