Carmilla

Now that cold weather is returning, curl up this weekend with a cozy gothic novella, one of my very favorite vampire stories, Carmilla.

The story is told by the adolescent Laura, who lives with her widower father in a castle in a remote forest. Injured in a carriage accident outside their home is a young girl, Carmilla, about Laura's age. The family cares for Carmilla during her recovery. The recognition is instaneous for the girls. Both claimed to have dreamed of the other during their respective childhoods.

Soon, the girls become romantically close friends, despite Carmilla's extreme languor, unstable moods, and habit for rising late in the day. Eventually, Laura dreams of a mysterious cat biting her chest, but leaving her room in the form of a womon. Laura's health soon suffers.

One day, a shipment of family heirloom portraits is delivered to the castle. The subject of one of those portraits, Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, identically resembles Carmilla. You can guess the rest.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu first published Carmilla 1872, twenty-five years before Bram Stoker's Dracula. Some scholars feel Carmilla heavily influeced Stoker's novel. Read it and see for yourself. Carmilla is available for free on my online sites.