Both voices are synthetic. I designed them, auditioned them against the text, and keep them; where the breath falls is directed here, line by line.
Carmilla, chapter four
Chapter five is the one with the painting, and it is where the book stops being a story about a houseguest.
A messenger brings the family portraits back from Gratz, restored. Among the old faces is a small square canvas, unframed, the paint black with age. Cleaned, it is Carmilla down to the mole on her throat, dressed as Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, and dated 1698. Laura is delighted and asks to hang it in her room. Her father calls it a wonderful likeness, and then does not look at it. He is the only one in the room who already knows something.
Afterward Carmilla asks Laura to walk out with her, because the moonlight is beautiful. On the drawbridge she is tender and terrible in the same breath: she has loved no one and never shall, unless it should be with you. Then, into Laura’s neck, that she lives in her and Laura would die for her, she loves her so. Laura starts away. It is not a lover’s line. It is a fact stated plainly, and Le Fanu lets Laura hear it, feel afraid, and let it go.
Then Carmilla’s face empties. She is cold, she says, she has been dreaming, and ten minutes later she is flawlessly herself again. The chapter closes on Laura noticing that for one night the moonlight seemed to startle even Carmilla’s languid nature into energy.
Eight minutes, fifteen seconds. The cast is the same as the first three chapters: Laura narrating, Carmilla speaking. Press play.
Le Fanu’s novel is in the public domain.