Carmilla, chapter five

Chapter six is where the affection stops sounding like affection.

Her mother has still not written. The questions come and Carmilla answers them like doors: she cannot tell where a letter would reach her; she has been thinking of leaving; she knows where she shall ultimately find her mother, though she dare not yet say. She had a destination all along. The leaving is theatre. Laura’s father, all chivalry, keeps her installed.

Then, alone in her room: I am under vows. The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish. And the line the chapter turns on, said plainly, without heat: you must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come with me. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.

She is never seen to kneel at prayers. That she was baptised comes out in a careless talk, and no one asks twice. Laura takes up her habit of locking the bedroom door, and by night the locked door means nothing: a sooty-black animal the length of the hearthrug, two broad eyes, then two needles an inch or two apart, deep into the breast. She wakes to the candle and a figure that does not breathe, and it is gone through a door locked from the inside.

Nine minutes and six seconds. The cast is the same as the first four chapters: Laura narrating, Carmilla speaking. Press play.

Le Fanu’s novel is in the public domain.