Chapter 15 Ordeal and Execution
1181 Words
Chapter 15
Ordeal and ExecutionAs 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 their 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 sidewall, which they began to examine with
great minuteness; pulling off the ivy that clung over it, and
rapping the plaster with the ends of their sticks, scraping here,
and knocking there. At length they ascertained 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 Mircalla, Countess
Karnstein.
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, Silesia, 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
Karnstein.
The grave of the Countess Mircalla 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.
- Writer
