Author's Notes: Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good fic!
Disclaimer: I do not own "Carmilla", Dracula, Hellsing or Santa Clause. (But if I did, there would be some changes around here.)
It would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with which, even now, I recall the occurrence of that night. It was no such transitory terror as a dream leaves behind it. It seemed to deepen by time, and communicated itself to the room and the very furniture that had encompassed the apparition.
I could not bear next day to be alone for a moment. I should have told my father, but for two opposite reasons. At one time I thought he would laugh at my story, and I could not bear its being treated as a jest; and at another I thought he might fancy that I had been attacked by the mysterious complaint which had invaded our neighborhood. I had myself no misgiving of the kind, and as he had been rather an invalid for some time, I was afraid of alarming him.
I was comfortable enough with my good-natured butler, Walter, and even my brooding uncle Richard. They both perceived that I was out of spirits and nervous, and at length I told them what lay so heavy at my heart.
My uncle scoffed, but I fancied that Walter looked anxious.
After Alucard's jest the night before, my uncle suspected that it had been my lover I spoke of, the one who was the father of my natural child, and when I told him passionately—with tears in my eyes, I dare say—that that had not been the case, Walter soothed me and assured that he believed every word I said.
"By-the-by," said Walter, smiling, "I suppose it should be a comfort for you to know the long lime tree walk, behind Alucard's bedroom window, is haunted."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed my uncle, who probably thought the theme rather inopportune, "and who tells that story?"
"Martin says that he came up twice, when the old yard gate was being repaired, before sunrise, and twice saw the same tall male figure walking down the lime tree avenue."
"So he well might, as long as there are livestock to tend in the river fields," said my uncle.
"I dare say; but Martin chooses to be frightened, and never did I see fool more frightened."
"You must not say a word about it to Alucard, because she can see down that walk from her room window," I interposed, "and she is, if possible, a greater entrepreneur than I. She would walk right down that walk from her window, unattended, just to catch a glance at the phantom.
"And who knows what ruffians might be prowling about at night?" Walter added. "Never mind the existence of phantoms."
"Exactly," I agreed, "so we cannot risk loosing her to her own daring."
Alucard came down rather later than usual that day.
"I was so frightened last night," she said, so soon as were together, "and I am sure I should have done something dreadful if it had not been for that charm I bought from the poor little hunchback whom I called such hard names. I had a dream of being something black coming round your bed, and I awoke in a perfect horror, and I really thought for some seconds I saw your terrified face looking at mine, but I felt under my coat for my charm, and the moment my fingers touched it your face disappeared, and I felt quite certain I would have throttled you, as I did those poor people we heard of, only that I had it by me."
This did not alarm me completely, for Alucard often had many strange dreams of being anything from a wolf, mist to bats. And she dreamed of having many such adventures in those forms as well, flying along the Borgo Pass or shifting through key holes, having strange encounters with unknown village folk and daring adventures with traveling gypsies in the area. Still, her vivid narrative did draw out a small shudder from myself.
"Well, listen to me," I began, and recounted my adventure, at the recital of which she appeared horrified.
"And had you the charm near you?" she asked, earnestly.
"No, I had dropped it into a china vase in the drawing room, but I shall certainly take it with me tonight, as you have so much faith in it."
At this distance of time I cannot tell you, or even understand how I overcame my horror so effectually as to lie alone in my room that night. I remember distinctly that I pinned the charm to my pillow. I fell asleep almost immediately, and slept even more soundly than usual all night.
Next night I passed as well. My sleep was delightfully deep and dreamless.
But I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy, which, however, did not exceed a degree that was almost luxurious.
"Well, I told you so," said Alucard, when I described my quiet sleep, "I had such delightful sleep myself last night; I pinned the charm to the breast of my nightdress. It was too far away the night before. I am quite sure it was all fancy, except the dreams. I used to think that evil spirits made dreams, but my doctor told me it is no such thing. Only a fever passing by, or some other malady, as they often do, he said, knocks at the door, and not being able to get in, passes on, with that alarm."
"And what do you think the charm is?" said I.
"It has been fumigated or immersed in some drug, and is an antidote against the malaria," she answered.
"Then it acts only on the body?"
"Certainly; you don't suppose that evil spirits are frightened by bits of ribbon, or the perfumes of a druggist's shop? No, these complaints, wandering in the air, begin by trying the nerves, and so infect the brain, but before they can seize upon you, the antidote repels them. That I am sure is what the charm has done for us. It is nothing magical, it is simply natural."
I should have been happier if I could have quite agreed with Alucard, but I did my best, and the impression was a little losing its force.
For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and ideas that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome, possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet.
Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.
I would not admit that I was ill; I would not consent to tell my father, or to have the doctor sent for.
Alucard became more devoted to me than ever, and her strange paroxysms of languid adoration more frequent.
"My darling, you look absolutely dreadful," She would say, gloating on me with increasing ardor the more my strength and spirits waned.
"I am pleased to find that my dwindling energy has created such amusement for you," I would say, unable to force myself to use the word health. I suppose, in hind sight, some part of me was still terrified of my father sending for the special doctor that haunted my childhood.
"Amusement? Oh no, dear Integra, nothing could be further from the truth." Alucard would say, holding my cold hand with her white one and kissing my knuckles gleefully. "How can I be pleased when your natural warmth has rescinded to frost, and your rich complexion withered like a rose at the first touch of winter? A rose does thrive in the summer, yet wilts at the first touch of winter, and the winter is everlastingly in his repetative attempt to take the flowers for his own, yet the rose, unable to withstand the harsh winter's rough caresses, never does last."
"What are you saying, Alucard?" I would ask, in barely a whisper.
"What am I saying?" she would reply, with her heated eyes focused so intently on mine. "Is that the winter adores the flowers and wishes to have one of his own, and yet the flower cannot survive the winter, for it is her nature. If the rose is not equipped to withstand the winter, then the rose must be plucked and preserved—no, immortalized!—like a flower in a book so she may retain her beauty, and last with the winter forever."
When she spoke to me thus, I had the terrible feeling she beheld me as that very flower to be "plucked and preserved" for her own enjoyment.
This always shocked me like a momentary glare of insanity.
Without knowing it, I was now in a pretty advanced stage of the strangest illness under which mortal ever suffered. There was an unaccountable fascination in its earlier symptoms that more than reconciled me to the incapacitating effect of that stage of the malady. This fascination increased for a time, until it reached a certain point, when gradually a sense of the horrible mingled itself with it, deepening, as you shall hear, until it discolored and perverted the whole state of my life.
The first change I experienced was rather agreeable. It was very near the turning point from which began the descent of Avernus.
Certain vague and strange sensations visited me in my sleep. The prevailing one was of that pleasant, peculiar cold thrill which we feel in bathing, when we move against the current of a river. This was soon accompanied by dreams that seemed interminable, and were so vague that I could never recollect their scenery and persons, or any one connected portion of their action. But they left an awful impression, and a sense of exhaustion, as if I had passed through a long period of great mental exertion and danger.
After all these dreams there remained on waking a remembrance of having been in a place very nearly dark, and of having spoken to people whom I could not see; and especially of one clear voice, of a female's, very deep, that spoke as if at a distance, slowly, and producing always the same sensation of indescribable solemnity and fear. Sometime there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became unconscious.
It was now three weeks since the commencement of this unaccountable state.
My sufferings had, during the last week, told upon my appearance. I had grown pale, my eyes were dilated and darkened underneath, and the languor which I had long felt began to display itself in my countenance.
My father asked me often whether I was ill; but, with an obstinacy which now seems to me unaccountable, I persisted in assuring him that I was quite well.
In a sense this was true. I had no pain, I could complain of no bodily derangement. My complaint seemed to be one of the imagination or the nerves, and, horrible as my sufferings were, I kept them very nearly to myself with a morbid reserve.
It could not be that terrible complaint which the peasants called the oupire, for I had now been suffering for three weeks, and they were seldom ill for much more than three days, when death put an end to their miseries.
Alucard complained of dreams and feverish sensations, but by no means of so alarming a kind as mine. I say that mine were extremely alarming. Had I been capable of comprehending my condition, I would have invoked aid and advice on my knees. The narcotic of an unsuspected influence was acting upon me, and my perceptions were benumbed.
I am going to tell you now of a dream that led immediately to an odd discovery.
One night, instead of the voice I was accustomed to hear in the dark, I heard one, deep and tender, and at the same time terrible, which said, "Your father warned you to beware the Empire." At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw the gentleman from Bistritz, standing near the foot of my bed, in naught but dirty old trousers, bathed, from his chin to his feet, in one great stain of blood.
I wakened with a shriek, possessed with the one idea that Alucard was being murdered. I remember springing from my bed, and my next recollection is that of standing on the lobby, crying for help.
Walter and a maid came scurrying out of their rooms in alarm; a lamp burned always on the lobby, and seeing me, they soon learned the cause of my terror.
I insisted on our knocking at Alucard's door. Our knocking was unanswered.
It soon became a pounding and an uproar. We shrieked her name, but all was vain.
We all grew frightened, for the door was locked. Walter hurried back to my room and rang the bell quickly and earnestly. If my father's room had been at that side of the house, we would have called him up at once to our aid. But, alas! he was quite out of hearing, and to reach him involved an excursion for which we none of us had time.
Servants, however, soon came running up the stairs; and having renewed as fruitlessly our summons at Alucard's door, I ordered the men to force the lock. They did so, and we stood in the doorway, holding our lights aloft, and so stared into the room.
We called her by name; but there was still no reply. We looked round the room. Everything was undisturbed. It was exactly in the state in which I had left it on bidding her good night. But Alucard was gone.