A Very Strange Agony

On Saturday, word spread abroad through Avonlea that Josie Pye was dead. To make matters worse, Jane Andrews and Gertie Pye had sunk ever deeper into hysterical fits, insisting to anyone who would listen that they were plagued in the night by beasts that prowled and spectres that hovered around their beds. They complained of the most awful pains in the neck and breast, as if they were pierced by knitting needles. Reports came that Tillie Boulter and Em White had fallen ill as well, their symptoms beginning just as the others had.

In the afternoon, Mr. Allan came to Orchard Slope on horseback and called for Father, but refused to stay for tea.

"I'm sorry, George," he said. "I just came by to tell you that I'm cancelling church services for tomorrow. Dr. Blair has begun to wonder whether the distemper might be contagious after all and I don't want to take any chances."

"What about the Pye girl's funeral?" Mother asked.

Mr. Allan shook his head sorrowfully. "After I've spread word about the services, I'll be going over to the Pye farm to bury her. But no visitors, I'm afraid, only family. You understand, of course."

"Of course," Mother echoed.

Father walked Mr. Allan back to the horse he had left tied to the gate. From the window, I could not hear what they said, but I saw that Father looked very grave and Mr. Allan very sorrowful. Before he mounted his horse, Mr. Allan paused and placed his hand on my father's shoulder, both of them bowing their heads in a brief prayer.

Accordingly, we spent the day at home, and Sunday as well. Carmilla slept very late, as usual, and thus did not sit with us in the parlor as Father read from the Bible and Mother heard my Sunday School lesson.

Carmilla did appear for Sunday dinner, picking morosely at her food. I was at once alert to any possible sign of illness, imagining in the space of a moment the hundred different horrors of her imminent demise.

"Anne, are you feeling well?" Mother asked, evidently in sympathy with my own fears.

"Perfectly well, thank you," Carmilla answered.

Father cleared his throat. "I have been thinking that we might contact your guardian, in light of the current . . . uh . . . difficulty in Avonlea. Do you know where we might address a letter to her?"

"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."

Father and Mother exchanged surprised looks that were nothing to my own horror at the prospect of losing my bosom friend.

"I can't let you do that, Anne," Father said. "I promised to take responsibility for you, and I can't let you leave until your guardian returns. I merely wished to inform her of the . . . uh . . . situation here. But you must not leave us. First because it is not safe and second because we would miss you terribly."

"Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality," Carmilla 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 home, under your care, and in the society of your dear daughter."

That evening, I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with her while she was preparing for bed. I counted myself fortunate beyond all measure that my dear friend would unpin her hair before me and let me comb and brush it, sometimes with the silver-backed brush from the dresser, and sometimes with my own fingers. In those moments, I felt so wonderfully free with her that I could hardly bear to think that she still kept secrets from me. Certainly I kept none from her, and told her all my past and all my little dreams and fancies, inconsequential though they were.

On this night, Carmilla augmented our evening conversation by producing two glass tumblers and a bottle brimming with a ruby liquid that gleamed in the candlelight.

"I found this raspberry cordial in the pantry," she said, uncorking the bottle. "I don't suppose your mother will mind if we have just a little."

"Is suppose not," I answered, though I was not entirely convinced on that point. "Are you sure it is raspberry cordial? I don't remember seeing a bottle in the pantry."

Carmilla smiled. "You wouldn't have. It was on the top shelf, away in the back. I dare say your mother won't miss it either."

Just what, exactly, our guest was doing rummaging through the far recesses of the pantry is a question that I did not even think to ask, so delighted was I by the prospect of sharing a secret toast with my bosom friend. There was something dreadfully wicked and sacramental about the proposition. With a wine-dark drink in my hand, I could imagine away the prim tidiness of Orchard Slope and fancy myself instead in some candle-lit cathedral, lulled by the mysterious chanting of hooded figures wreathed in incense.

"I love bright red drinks, don't you?" said Carmilla. "They taste twice as good as any other color."

I agreed enthusiastically. The cordial was the nicest I had ever tasted, and soon we were laughing together more freely than ever we had before.

"Do you think," I said at length, "that you will ever confide fully in me?"

"What do you wish to know?" she replied, pouring me another tumblerful.

"Everything!" I said, throwing myself across the bed. "Anything! I wish to know something about you that is true and not imagined. I wish to know you!"

Carmilla took my hand with infinite gentleness. "Darling Diana," she said, "you do not know how dear you are to me. 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 with me."

I drew my hand away, thinking myself terribly wronged. "How you wound me, Carmilla," I murmured.

She regarded me for a moment, something wild and dangerous playing in the depths of her eyes, which, I was started to find, were glowing green as emeralds, with none of their usual tinge of gray.

"You are right, dearest," she said, her voice low and sweet as honey. "I will tell you something true about myself because I love you so and trust you with my very life, nay, with more than my life."

"Really and truly?"

"Really and truly."

She patted the pillows and bid me lay against them. Then she unpinned my hair and drew it through her hands as she spoke, the dark torrent of my tresses flowing through the white spikes of her fingertips.

"Have you ever been to a ball?" she asked.

"I've been to a New Year's dance at the Avonlea hall," I answered, knowing this was patently insufficient. "The Americans hold grand balls at White Sands in the summer, but Mother and Father say I must wait until I am 18 before I can attend one, and then only if some proper gentleman asks me."

Carmilla smiled. "I will tell you about my first ball. It was years ago, so that I must think very hard to call it to mind."

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." She paused a moment, as if chasing her words carefully. "Something occurred that night that 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."

I was surprised to hear that she had experienced such a thing, particularly in light of the pain I still associated with my own childhood dream, and with the reports we had heard of Jane and Gertie. Curiosity surged through me.

"Were you near dying?" I asked.

"Yes, very — a cruel love — strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood."

She was lying with her tiny hands buried in my rich wavy hair, her little head upon the pillow, and her glittering eyes following me, with a kind of shy smile that I could not decipher.

"I . . . I . . ." I stammered under the intensity of her gaze, "I am very glad that you are not dead."

"Are you?"

"Of course." All of a sudden I felt terribly shy under her eyes and wished to divert her to a new line of conversation. "The ball?" I asked. "Did you dance?"

She laughed prettily, throwing back the river of her flaming hair and exposing her milk-white throat. "Of course I danced, you goose! It was a lovely ball, with ladies in their finest silks and gentlemen attending them. I remember ice sculptures of swans and horses that melted over the course of the night and kept the platters of oysters and strawberries cool."

"What a magnificent occasion!" I exclaimed, picturing it in my mind. "Surely something so wonderful would never take place in poky little Avonlea."

"No," she said, her eyes sorrowful. "It is true that I have traveled a great deal these many years. And yet, Avonlea has always felt like home to me."

"Always?" I was perplexed, for surely she had only known our village a few weeks.

Carmilla smiled her entrancing smile. "It certainly feels like always," she said, eyes atwinkle. "Darling Diana, I could wander the earth for a century and never be happier than I have been with you these last weeks."

She sealed this declaration with a kiss which I, agreeing wholly that life seemed to have begun only scant weeks ago, returned most ardently.

Some time later, I bid her good night, and crept from the room.

I had, by this time, adopted several of Carmilla's habits, not least of which was the custom of locking my bedroom door at night, having taken into my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling assassins.

Thus fortifed 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 was in my room, in my very bed, of that I was quite sure. In the dark, I perceived something moving at the foot of my bed, and soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat, to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I was petrified and could not cry out, though its pace grew faster and faster and the room grew darker and darker. When 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 sat up with a scream. The room was still dark, but only the ordinary dark of nighttime, not the unnatural blackness of the nightmare. I began to relax, knowing myself to be awake and in my own bed, alone and safe.

Or so I thought.

In the next moment, I saw a female figure standing at the foot of the bed. It was in a dark loose dress, and its hair — which was no earthly color, but a fantastical, shining silver — 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.

Author's Note:

This story will have 12 chapters. The original Carmilla has 16, but I'm consolidating a lot of General Spielsdorf's story, which does go on a bit.