Best Horror Novels

Chapter 6 A Very Strange Agony

Chapter 6 A

Very Strange AgonyWhen we got into the drawing room, and had sat down to our

coffee and chocolate, although Carmilla did not take any, she

seemed quite herself again, and Madame, and Mademoiselle De

Lafontaine, 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 tomorrow, 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

should herself 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 chatted

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 nun 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 colours 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 wherever 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 baptised, 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 antipathy 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, of 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

and 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 hearthrug as it passed over it; and it continued

to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, 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.