Chapter Text
I awoke in darkness, cognizant of two things: One, there was no apparent reason for my rising at so late an hour, and two I was not alone. I felt the presence before I saw it, peering bleary-eyed at the foot of my bed where it paced silent as the nightfall that allowed it entry to my chambers.
Never did I see its arrival, nor, for that matter, its departure. Never did I hear its smoky paws upon the floor. When I locked the door and closed the window and settled beneath my covers to sleep, I was by myself. When I awoke to golden fingers of sunlight stretching across the room I was by myself. Only in the phantasmagorical heart of dark night did strange company materialize.
Given that, I should have dismissed it as a fantasy. Its impossibilities and unnatural traits were the stuff of dreams, a composite image of faceless worries that languish in the corners of the mind.
Perhaps I could have more heartily convinced myself of this if I had not already received an inexplicable guest. I recall its qualities in vivid detail even now more than a decade later. I spoke to the cherubic apparition and she to me, her companionship more real and warm than any fallacy I could create.
One cannot gaze into the eyes of an imagined spectre and see anything other than themselves. The girl I did not dream had eyes with far too many mysteries behind them for her to be a rough-hewn reflection of my own psyche.
So too, does this visitor.
It is a thing of darkness, the allure of the unknown. Its feline body cut from the sable sky on a cloudy night with whorls of inky fog curling at its edges. I could not say its precise state of matter. Its particulars evaded memory save for the unfathomably black depths of its mesmeric eyes.
How could I invent such a thing? A hypnotic caller, with motives that don’t bear considering, who nightly paced as though awaiting some command, or signal I did not know, and disappeared when the light of day returned.
It filled me with apprehension, how could it not? But I cannot truthfully say it caused me “fear”. I had every right to be affrighted of this mysterious figure, looming quiet by my bed. Yet, as the weeks passed, I found myself grow accustomed, if not tolerant, to its presence.
Perhaps I was merely lonely. Mad as it was, perhaps I so longed for company that even a feline spectre was some comfort. How very bleak that would be.
I confided in no one regarding these visits, of course – save for Carmilla. I did not wish to worry my father, or the others, and knew very well besides that they would dismiss it as nothing more than a nightmare.
But Carmilla and I talked of everything, save for the details of her murky past she swore I would one day know.
“You must believe me, dearest Laura, when I tell you that I want nothing more than to share with you my storied history!” She lamented, casting her arms about me and resting her head on my shoulder. “You are a living Saint for so patiently enduring the ignorance of my circumstances. That you would speak with me and keep my company, still, is a blessing; you, my darling, are a blessing.”
I found I never knew how to best respond to such vehement outbursts. It did vex me that she was not forthcoming about her origins, especially given the odd manner in which she arrived. But are we not all entitled to our privacy? Perhaps on learning the reasons for her secrecy I would be ashamed of my own petty impatience.
“Storied history?” I responded, gingerly reciprocating. She sighed languidly, leaning on me with even greater zeal. I was beginning to grow warm. “You and I must have near the same amount of years – hardly enough time for an epic.”
She giggled, then, shuddering gently with dainty peals of laughter, eventually drawing back so we were face to face, her arms still about me. The impish glint in her eye twinkled all the brighter against the darkness of her iris, indistinguishable from her pupil. She caught her lower lip in her pearly teeth coyly, and cocked her head, then tucked a strand of my hair she had shaken loose on embracing me behind my ear, raising gooseflesh on my arms.
“I may surprise you yet, dearest,” she said, her fingers lingering at my temple. Then she pressed a fleeting kiss to my cheek and giggled again, retreating.
Exchanges to that effect were common between us, her bemoaning the necessity of her concealment as often as I endeavoured to discover it.
One such way I did so, was to give freely of my own thoughts, that I might encourage her to follow my example. Besides the fact she made an excellent audience, seeming to hang on my every word no matter how dull the subject, I had lived a life requiring little secrecy, and therefore had little to hide.
My “dream” as a child of the mysterious girl, and my conviction as to its veracity was my biggest confidence. But since laying eyes on Carmilla the fateful night of her arrival and knowing in my soul it was she who visited me all those years ago, there was no need to conceal my thoughts on the matter.
We were well into the summer months when at last I broached the subject of my visitor with her.
“Carmilla, have you been sleeping well?” I asked tentatively. She was brushing my hair and paused mid-stroke.
“Yes, dear one, haven’t you?” She lay the tool aside, placing a delicate hand on my shoulder with concern.
“I am...troubled,” I admitted, unsure how best to sum up my experiences. She began to idly rub soothing circles with her thumb.
“What is it that troubles you?” She asked, sadly, genuinely bereaving my distress. The kindness she emanated was so potent that I was abruptly overcome with grief at having never known such an aura until now. As though her warmth made the previous years seem all the colder for her absence.
Tears welled up I vainly tried to blink away, frustrated both that an articulate description of my emotions so eluded me, and that I had come undone so quickly from so small a gesture. I must have been more addled from lack of sleep than I previously thought.
My sudden despair did not escape Carmilla, my shoulders quavering beneath her little hand. She gasped softly, taking that hand away; which – though her presence was never far, and she had only done so to reposition herself before me instead of behind – only served to accentuate my anguish. I was wracked by a heaving sob that seemed to originate in the very core of my being.
“Oh, Laura, Laura sweet one...” Her voice was faint through the fog of my own misery. “Hush now, shh, shh...”
Her unmistakable touch drew aside the pale curtain of hair that had fallen across my face. Slender fingers pressed gently on the underside of my chin, coaxing me to raise my heavy head.
I obliged, seeing through watery eyes her lovely face, an abstracted blur of tender worry.
She swept still-falling tears from my cheeks with the pad of her thumb, occasionally vanishing them with feather-light kisses until I had calmed.
“I cannot stand to see you so, dearest, I would rather walk a league on broken glass than have you so distraught. Tell me what troubles you that I may make it better.”
“You will think me a fool,” I muttered weakly.
“Nonsense. There is nothing foolish about your sorrow, even less so about its cause.”
“I...I am being haunted, visited...In the night. It is no dream, I swear it, it is as real as when you and I first met.”
Carmilla stilled.
“What haunts you, sweet one?”
“I don’t know. I know only the form it takes, and that it paces endlessly at the foot of my bed.”
“What...what is it’s form?” Her voice was thin, her fingers trembling against my jaw.
“A creature of smoke and shadow with eyes like blackness I have never known.” The macabre description poured from me in a hysterical rush.
“No...oh, Laura, darling, no...” My vision cleared, I saw her delicate features contort into an expression of utter horror, colour draining from her rosy cheeks.
“And it frightens you.” She intoned, voice hollow, and trembling with the fragility of a butterfly’s wings.
“Yes. No. Sometimes. I don’t know. I don’t know why it’s there, I don’t know.”
“But...you want it gone.”
“I want...I don’t know!” I cried again, turning away and pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes so I did not have to see the worry on her face that made my speaking all the more difficult. “I wonder if it has been sent to make a mockery of my isolation. Laura may have company, but only the company of monsters!” I laughed ruefully, stars blossoming under my eyelids.
A horrid silence fell on the room as my laughter died, and a nagging discomfort gnawed at me, a lump of lead sinking my stomach. I peeked through the cracks in my hands at the silent, sullen Carmilla, wilting like a dying flower.
“Oh, no, no, how beastly of me, I didn’t...” I stammered, mortified. “Not you. Of course, not you. I didn’t mean...I...I’m so sorry.”
I could not see Carmilla clearly, her head turned down and away from me. She wrung her hands in her lap and I realized I had never seen a display of such extreme reticence from her until now.
But moments ago she had thought nothing of touching me in all manner of ways and now she could not bring herself to so much as look at me.
“Carmilla?” I said, dread clawing my innards to ribbons.
I felt as though I were askant a precipice I had not realized was there. I teetered at its edge, perilously close to plunging into whatever horror would engulf me whole, never to be found, mourned by precious few. Had I been standing so close all my life and truly never known?
Panic overtook my sadness and I reached for her impulsively, clasping her hands with my own that it might entice her to stay despite my awful comments. She went as still as stone at the impetuous gesture, turning her head ever so slightly back towards me. I caught a glimpse of a dark, wet eye, too quick to enlighten me as to her mood.
“Do you want it gone?” She queried, her tone indecipherable.
“I...do not want to be alone. I fear that when your mother returns and you both depart I will have nothing but this silent shadow for a friend.” I spoke with conviction I did not know I possessed until the words left my mouth.
“You would call it your friend?”
“I suppose...it takes an intimidating shape, but it has done me no harm. The only other visitation of its ilk that I have experienced – that is, an encounter much too real to be a dream – was with you. And I would call you friend.”
She gently squeezed my fingers and then slipped from my grasp, rising to her feet with her head still turned away.
“Where are you going?” My voice was small, already fearing the answer.
“I may have misjudged...I will see if there is anything I can learn about your visitor that may help to ease your slumber,” she replied haltingly.
“Oh.”
With hardly a rustle of her gown she padded quietly from the room leaving me to wallow in my guilt and gloom.
I berated myself the rest of the day, my appetite all but gone and no activity providing a powerful enough distraction to lift my spirits in any significant way. I saw hide nor hair of Carmilla, and retired early, depressed and exhausted by my thoughtlessness.
I could not say when exactly I fell asleep, but I know that when I blinked awake it was, as had become custom, the dead of night. I knew before I fixed my gaze at the foot of my bed that nothing but dust motes dancing in a shaft of moonlight would be there. I was alone.
I sank back down, curling inwards on myself beneath the blankets, and drawing them over my head completely so I was encased in a melancholy cocoon. My anxieties from earlier in the day sprung to life with renewed vigour, feasting on my despair and dragging me even further into inconsolable depths. My sobs were so clamorous they could have woken the dead.
When at last I succumbed to a merciful, if fitful, sleep once more, I was set upon by a strange and colourful dream. Perhaps it had been kept at bay by my visitor, for I could not recall anything of its ilk confusing my rest when my supernatural companion had been present.
I recall drifting through an indistinct environment, sometimes through what appeared to be a forest, and sometimes indoors, a facsimile of the schloss. It changed constantly, though I never saw the transformations occur.
I neither walked nor flew. I hovered lackadaisically, ushered along by some unseen current. The sky was a mottled purple-blue, sometimes cloudy, sometimes clear, with the stars shifting places as they pleased.
I do not know where I was going, only that it seemed perfectly logical for me to be heading that way...until I felt something pulling at my shift. I glanced downwards to see a little, shadowy hand retract into the underbrush. A pair of dark eyes stared up at me from beneath a writing desk and beckoned me closer.
I was struck by the realization that I had never considered the possibility of straying. Were there other paths? Could I change direction of my own accord? How would I go about trying? Some sensible portion of my brain reminded me that I knew perfectly well how to move where I pleased in waking life, but it was quickly quelled by the surreal laws that govern the realm of dreams.
My limbs were heavy, sluggish. I could move them, but I was afraid that doing so might bring down judgement upon me. How silly my sensible mind scolded faintly. What persecution could come from rising a hand, or moving a leg?
I felt something brush my arm, the figure from before now materialized on my other side and beckoned me again. I felt a thrill of excitement that I was to be invited anywhere, even if by a shadowy creature, and a stranger besides. I felt my face grow hot, and as it did, the current swelled and pushed me forward with more insistence.
That pattern repeated itself through the night; drifting, a touch, beckoning, being swept away. I became gradually aware that I did not feel so enthusiastically inclined to go where the current said anymore. Why was it so stringent, why would it not let me explore? Who, or what, controlled it?
And through that, the little touches grew more frequent, and more urgent, no longer simply trying to catch my attention, now actively trying to remove me from the path on which I travelled. In its onyx eyes I saw flashes of other pathways – so there were more! The current forbade knowledge of them but each time a hand settled on my shoulder, or took my arm, or smoothed my hair, and I turned that way the glimpses of paths I saw revealed themselves to be so much more to my liking.
I began to wonder if I belonged where I was, growing fearful that there had been some terrible mistake. My doubts only made the current stronger, asserting its authority by buffeting me about more forcefully.
I flailed, desperate to get my bearings, or exert some control over the frightening velocity along which I was being shunted. That figure had ruined the pleasant journey, tempting me elsewhere and bringing punishment on my head. I resented the figure with its dark eyes showing me things I had no business seeing...
Pressure, suddenly, at my back. Not just a little hand this time, but a body flush against mine. Its warmth shocked me, it’s closeness unexpected though not unwelcome. I felt the point of a chin on my shoulder, balancing there playfully even as the current objected, jettisoning me wildly to shake the figure free.
I shrieked, tossed every which way, my sense of direction completely gone. But the figure held tight, clinging to my shoulder and my waist, and I knew she was smiling.
Faster and faster I was pulled along, my only comfort the warmth of whoever was behind me, her grasp sliding from my shoulder all the way down to my hip, and from my waist up to my collarbone, her fingers splayed and steady.
I was molten hot, like a comet hurtling through directionless space, growing more fearful of the current even as I sank farther into the blissful comfort of the woman behind me, her head tilted and her reassuring smile at my neck.
The hand at my hip trailed slowly inwards, along my abdomen and the instant I understood what was happening was the instant she was ripped away from me.
The current laughed, I think, taunting its victory by throwing me about, and I realized I hated it. I don’t know why it wanted me, but wherever it was going was not for me. A different path zipped by in my peripheral vision, and I struggled towards it madly, hot, and scared, and desperate, until I wrenched myself from the clutches of the current and plummeted, the heat of the shadow woman’s touch still lingering as I fell through the indigo sky; terrified, but free.