Author's Notes: This is a crossover between J. Sharidan LeFanu's novella "Carmilla," Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, and Kohta Hirano's manga Hellsing. "Carmilla" actually predated and inspired much of Dracula, which in turn predated and inspired much of Hellsing. All are Gothic horror vampire stories, all are connected to each other, and so this three-way crossover is actually very appropriate.
Disclaimer: I do not own "Carmilla," Dracula or Hellsing.
In Transylvania we, by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income goes a great way in that part of the world. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name--or perhaps it is a corruption of Dutch, because my paternal grandfather was a Dutchman by the name of Abraham Van Helsing--although I never saw England or Amsterdam. But here in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.
My father was in the Austrian service, whose border lies just north of here, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and shortly thereafter purchased this feudal residence and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain.
Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence over Borgo Pass, a countryside which, I must confess, is full of beauty of every kind, from green sloping land, to farmhouses, to fruit orchards. You coming from England would no doubt take the Oriental Express through a series of small villages dotted along the "Birgau," or Borgo valley before finally starting the ascent into the Pass itself. Not for nothing Transylvania is Latin for "the land beyond the forests," for as you travel through the cultivated land you shall pass a river, tall and straight trees, and higher wooded mountains in the distance.
Over all this, save the mountains, the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.
Geographically, the Borgo Pass is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian Mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe.
In the population of Transylvania there are many distinct nationalities. Among many others, there are: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachians, who I am told are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. Our schloss is located more toward the later, my father's reasons being further from the Magyar influence of the West and nearer our "Szekelys allies" to the East and Northern Austrian border.
But really, it makes little difference to me what sorts of people inhabit this territorial crossroads, because our schloss is conspicuously far from any sort of human dwelling. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the hill on which our castle stands descends into miles of desolate fields covered in mist, surrounded by distant mountains covered in forests. The nearest city is Bistritz to the west, which is practically on the other side--for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina. The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the west. The nearest inhabited schloss is that of General Spielsdorf nearly twenty miles away in the same direction.
I have said "the nearest inhabited schloss," because there is, at a respectable distance, a ruined castle. It stands to the east on a mountain higher than our own. It is Gothic in design, positively Medieval in structure, with its high crumbling walls, its great spires, now roofless, towering over the equally desolate fortress which, lording over jagged steps, overlooks the silent mists of the Borgo Pass.
Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time.
I must tell you now how very small is the party who constitute the inhabitants of our castle. I don't include servants, or those dependents who occupy the fiefs attached to the schloss, because I was never permitted to associate with any of them. Listen, and wonder! There is my father, who is the kindest man on earth, but growing old; and I, at the date of my story, only twelve. Ten years have passed since then. I and my father constituted the family at the schloss, as well as my uncle, who often brooded and made himself unwelcome. My mother, a Transylvanian lady, unfortunately died in my infancy. I had no real governess to speak of, because my father did not trust the local women, and could not solicit anyone of "desirable heritage" to come out for very long, and so I relied heavily upon my father for my education.
My life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can assure you.
I did, however, have a good-natured butler, named Walter C. Dornez, who had been with me from my infancy. I could not remember a time when his wrinkled, benign face was not a familiar picture in my memory. Walter had just so much control over me as you might conjecture such a sage person would have in the case of a rather spoiled girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty nearly her own way in everything.
The first occurrence in my existence produced a terrible impression upon my mind. Some people will think it so trifling that it should not be recorded here. You will see, however, by-and-by, why I mention it. The nursery, as it was called, though I had it all to myself, was a large room in the upper story of the castle, with a steep oak roof. I can't have been more than three years old when one night I awoke, and looking round the room from my bed, failed to see the nursery-maid or my nurse; and I thought myself alone. I was not frightened, for I was one of those happy children who are studiously kept in blissful ignorance of ghost stories, of fairy tales, and of all other such lore as to make us cover our heads in fright.
I was vexed and insulted at finding myself, as I conceived, neglected. I then began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of roaring; when to my surprise I saw a very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a very young lady, who was kneeling with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her cool hands, lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling. I felt delightfully soothed, and fell asleep immediately. I was awakened by the sensation of two needles ran very deep into my breast, and I cried loudly. The young lady started back, with her red eyes fixed on me, then slipped down to the floor and, it seemed to me, hid herself under the bed.
I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all my might and main. Nurse, nursery-maid, housekeeper, all came running in, and hearing my story, they made light of it, soothing me all they could meanwhile. But, child as I was, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted look of anxiety, and I watched them look under the bed, about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards. I heard the housekeeper whisper to the nurse: "Lay your hand along that hollow in the bed; some one did lie there, as sure as you did not; the place is still warm."
I remember the nursery-maid petting me, and all three examining my chest where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing: "There is no sign visible that any such thing has happened to you."
Shortly thereafter Walter came running in, and demanded to know the situation and what had gone on. The nursery-maid tried to assure him that the situation was under control, but he would have none of it, and interrogated them fiercely. Walter led a thorough investigation, but in the end he was forced to draw the same conclusion as the women: "Some one was here in this nursery, but there is no physical evidence to indicate that any such a thing did happen to Integra."
Walter remained sitting up with me all night, an action which has distilled for him a profound and eternal fondness in my heart; but from that time a servant always sat up in the nursery until I was about twelve.
I was very nervous for a long time after this. A doctor was called in, he was pallid and elderly. How well I remember his long saturnine face, slightly pitted with smallpox, and his chestnut wig. For a good while, every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated.
I remember my father and uncle discussing the situation outside my nursery door. Their voices were slightly muffled, so I did not hear the whole thing, until my father said: "It all seems so occult, something that none of our doctors can explain… Perhaps, you don't think… we should call in… that doctor?"
My uncle rebuked the idea savagely.
It would not be for many years that I would learn of whom they were talking about. Still, hearing of a special doctor put my nerves on end, and the morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and could not bear to be left alone for a moment, daylight though it was.
I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside, and talking cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number of questions, and laughing very heartily at one of the answers. When I asked him uneasily about the special doctor, he laughed again, and patted me on the shoulder, and kissed me, and told me, "You need not be frightened my dear girl. No special doctor will be called in, because what transpired last night was nothing but a dream and can not hurt you."
But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was not a dream; and I was awfully frightened.
Certainly my uncle was not so supportive, for he let me know of his disbelief with rude opposition and loud tirades. When he was pulled from my nursery, he said to my father, "You coddle her too much Arthur! This is obviously just a ploy for attention, leave her be and see how miraculously she recovers!"
Ten years later my uncle was still singing the same tune, and when I finally ceased keeping a servant by my bedside, he perceived it as proof that I was lying all along.
In the mean time I was a little consoled by the nursery-maid's assuring me: "It was I who came in and looked at you, and lay down beside you in the bed. You must have been half-dreaming not to have known my face."
Of course I knew this to be a lie.
I also remember, in the course of that day, a venerable old man in a black cassock coming into the room with the nurse and housekeeper. He told me they were going to pray, and joined my hands together, and desired me to say, softly, while they were praying, "Lord hear all good prayers for us, for Jesus' sake." I think these were the very words, for I often repeated them to myself, and for years my nurse used to make me say them in my prayers.
I forget all of my life preceding that event, and for some time after is obscure also, but the scenes I have just described stand out vivid as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria surrounded by darkness.
