ren’s Reviews > Carmilla > Status Update

"And to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to my memory with ambiguous alternations--sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church. Sometimes, I start from a reverie, certain I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.

THE END"

"One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The slender hand of Mircalla closed like a vice of steel on the general's wrist when he raised the hatchet to strike. But its power is not confined to its grasp; it leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever, recovered from."

"A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire. That specter visits living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave, they develop into vampires."

so is suicide no longer a sin and an obligation? does suicide send you to hell or make you an immortal bloodsucker?

"Her early death plunged him into inconsolable grief. It is the nature of vampires to increase and multiply, but according to an ascertained and ghostly law."

"... It will never desist until it has satiated its passion and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of a connoisseur, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases, it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent."

vamps are so hanni-coded

"The amphibious existence of the vampires is sustained by daily renewed slumber in the grave. It's horrible lust for living blood supplies the vigor of its waking existence.
The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons. In pursuit of these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem..."

"Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampirism. The body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart of the vampire. It uttered a piercing shriek at that moment, in all respects such as might escape from a living person in the last agony. Then the head was struck off, and a torrent of blood flowed from the severed neck."

"Her features, though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral, were tinted with the warmth of life. Her eyes were open; no cadaverous smell exhaled from the coffin. The two medical men attested to the marvelous fact that there was a faint but appreciable respiration and corresponding action of the heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic, and the leaden coffin filled with blood."

"'Carmilla, yes,' I answered.
'Aye,' he said, 'that is Millarca. The same person who long ago was called Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Depart from this accursed ground, my poor child, as quickly as you can. Drive to the clergyman's house and stay there till we come. Begone! May you never behold Carmilla more; you will not find her here.'"

"Under a narrow, arched doorway, surmounted by one of those demoniacal grotesques in which the cynical and ghastly fancy of old Gothic carving delights, I saw the beautiful face and figure of Carmilla enter the shadowy chapel."