CARMILLA'S JOURNAL

August 31, 1899

It's been a year to date since Moeder's death. I remember the events that followed as though it were yesterday. Vader had become obsessed with finding a cure for what he at first considered to be a rare blood disease.

Fortunately we want for nothing. Moeder is -- was -- a Van Duivenvoorde and inherited a small fortune when her father died. Vader's family is also quite well situated, and he has done well for himself in his own right.

Family connections combined with his fame as one of the most advanced scientists of his day, not to mention his upstanding character in the medical community, have attracted wealthy patrons from all over the Western world to support his research. One of our patrons even agreed to fund his trip to Vienna to discuss with Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud their poorly received book, Studies on Hysteria.

At first I was proud of my father's dedication and thrilled with the many opportunities he was given to research rare diseases of the blood. As his assistant, I am privy to some of the most intriguing cases in medical history. Few students of medicine are granted such an opportunity as mine!

When he started locking himself away for days, hardly taking time to eat or sleep, however, that was my first clue to how strange a turn his research had taken. Then he joined the Society for Psychical Research in London and began pouring over dusty old volumes on vampirism and other sinister occult anomalies. At first I wanted to laugh. His ideas were simply beyond reason! But he insisted I listen, and I became impatient.

"How can a man of science be taken in by such rubbish?" I railed at him one night.

"I will show you," he sighed and had me stay up late with him.

We sat in the glass solarium watching the stars, one of my greatest joys in life. The moon was full and caused the grounds around the manse to shimmer a bluish-silver. Then I saw her. A pale lady in a long flowing gown floated down the garden path and stopped right in front of us. When she turned her head, I could not believe my eyes. It was my own mother! How could this be? I turned away and looked again. She was still there. The terrible longing in her eyes matched the longing in my heart. I wanted to go to her, but Father forbade.

"No!" he commanded. "She is not alive."

"But she must be! You can see for yourself she's not dead," I sobbed and ran to the window. We touched palms through the glass.

"You must come away, child! She is not dead, or alive, and she is no longer your mother. She is Undead! A hungry fiend that has risen from the grave to suck the blood of the living."

With those words, he flew at the apparition before me waving a huge cross as if he were an Arthurian Knight of the Round Table. The lady gave a blood-curdling scream and backed away. Shaken, I followed my father to the kitchen, demanding explanations of his back.

"Hush child. I will make us a pot of tea and tell you all I know."

That night he revealed all the arcane secrets he had unearthed of the undead. It was when he told me I had to help him open my mother's tomb tomorrow so he could drive a stake through her heart, behead her and sew holy wafers into her mouth that I thought he'd gone completely mad. I did as he requested against my better judgment. What daughter in her right mind wishes to spend her birthday digging up her dear mother's grave? I was shocked to see her corpse still fresh and the linen over her head stained with blood. I helped my father do his gruesome deed. Now I fear there's no turning back.

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Moeder - mother (Dutch)
Vader - father (Dutch)
Geëindigd - finished (Dutch)