XVI. Conclusion

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

I write all of this, as you might imagine, with a sense of calm. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Just thinking about it fills me with unease. It’s only your persistent and earnest requests that have compelled me to take on this task, which has left my nerves frayed for months and has brought back a shadow of the unspeakable horror that haunted my days and nights long after I thought I had escaped it. The solitude I once found unbearable now feels like a weight I can hardly bear.

Let me share a few words about the eccentric Baron Vordenburg, whose fascinating knowledge led us to uncover the grave of Countess Mircalla.

He had settled in Graz, living on a meager income that was all that remained of his family’s once-grand estate in Upper Styria. He dedicated himself to the meticulous study of the well-documented traditions surrounding vampirism. He was well-versed in all the major and minor works on the subject.

He had read everything from “Magia Posthuma” to “Phlegon de Mirabilibus,” and “Augustinus de cura pro Mortuis,” as well as “Philosophicae et Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris” by John Christofer Herenberg, among countless others. I can only recall a few of the titles he lent to my father. He had compiled an extensive digest of judicial cases, from which he had derived a set of principles that seemed to govern the condition of vampires—some consistently, others only occasionally.

It’s worth noting that the deathly pallor often associated with these creatures is nothing more than a dramatic embellishment. In their graves, and when they appear among the living, they look perfectly healthy. When exposed to light in their coffins, they show all the signs that prove the vampire existence of the long-dead Countess Karnstein.

How they manage to escape from their graves and return without disturbing the earth or leaving any trace of their presence has always been a mystery. The vampire’s strange existence is sustained by a daily return to slumber in the grave. Its horrific thirst for living blood fuels its waking life. Vampires often become obsessively infatuated with certain individuals, pursuing them with a relentless patience and cunning, since access to their chosen victims can be obstructed in many ways. They will not stop until they have satisfied their desire and drained the very life from their prey. In these cases, they seem to savor the experience, prolonging their enjoyment with the finesse of a connoisseur, often enhancing it through a slow and artful seduction. In other instances, they go straight for their target, overpowering them with violence, often exhausting them in a single encounter.

It appears that vampires are subject to unique conditions in certain situations. In the case I’ve shared with you, Mircalla seemed bound to a name that, if not her true one, at least had to reproduce the letters exactly—an anagram, as we would say.

Carmilla did this; so did Millarca.

After Carmilla’s departure, my father shared with Baron Vordenburg the story of the Moravian nobleman and the vampire at the Karnstein churchyard. He then asked the Baron how he had pinpointed the location of the long-hidden tomb of Countess Mircalla. The Baron’s peculiar features twisted into a mysterious smile as he looked down at his worn spectacles, fiddling with the case. Then he looked up and said:

“I have many journals and papers written by that remarkable man. The most intriguing among them recounts the visit you mentioned to Karnstein. Of course, the tradition has been embellished and distorted over time. He might have been called a Moravian nobleman, as he had moved to that territory and was indeed of noble birth. But in truth, he was from Upper Styria. It’s enough to say that in his youth, he was a passionate and favored lover of the beautiful Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Her untimely death plunged him into deep sorrow. Vampires, as you know, tend to multiply, but only according to a certain ghostly law.”

"Let’s start with a place completely untouched by that curse. How does it begin, and how does it spread? I’ll explain. A person, whether good or bad, decides to end their own life. Under certain conditions, that suicide can turn into a vampire. This ghostly figure visits the living in their dreams; they die, and almost always, when they’re buried, they rise again as vampires. This was the fate of the beautiful Mircalla, who was tormented by one of those creatures. My ancestor, Vordenburg, the name I still carry, soon uncovered this truth, and through his studies, he learned much more.

"Among other revelations, he realized that suspicion would eventually fall on the dead Countess, who had been his idol in life. He was horrified at the thought of her remains being desecrated by a posthumous execution. He left behind a fascinating document arguing that when a vampire is expelled from its half-life, it is cast into a far more dreadful existence. He resolved to save his once-beloved Mircalla from this fate.

"He devised a plan that involved a journey here, a fake removal of her remains, and a genuine erasure of her monument. As he aged and reflected on the life he was leaving behind, he viewed his actions with a different perspective, and a deep horror consumed him. He made notes and sketches that guided me to the exact location, and he wrote a confession about the deception he had carried out. If he had intended to take further action, death intervened, and it was left to a distant descendant to direct the search to the monster’s lair, though it was too late for many.

We talked a bit more, and among other things, he mentioned this:

"One sign of a vampire is the strength of its grip. Mircalla’s slender hand closed around the General’s wrist like a steel vice when he raised the hatchet to strike. But its power goes beyond just the grip; it leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes, a numbness that is slow to heal, if it ever does."

The following spring, my father took me on a trip through Italy. We were away for more than a year. The fear from recent events lingered for a long time; even now, the image of Carmilla flickers in my mind, shifting between the playful, languid, beautiful girl and the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church. Often, I would snap out of a daydream, convinced I heard the light footsteps of Carmilla at the drawing room door.