Chapter 1. Carmilla

It was a sweet summer morning, my father asked me, as he sometimes did, to take a short walk with him along the beautiful path in the forest that is in front of the castle, we arrived near the lake we stopped to talk

"Soon you will be twenty" exclaims my father "you know that, even if you don't have much money, you can ask me anything you want" he said.

I, thought about what to say then I replied "I would like to spend time with my friend Sophie"

Sophie was a friend of mine who lived in France, but who came to Austria every summer to visit her uncle, General Leroy, a man my father knew for his work that I was always convinced was some kind of government job and who lived in the village not too far from here, so every year she and her uncle visited us and spent two or three weeks at the castle, only last year and the year before that she had stayed home to take care of the exiled soldiers of the Franco-Prussian war

My father's face darkened and he didn't answer right away "I forgot I hadn't told you, but last night, when you weren't there, I received a letter from General Leroy, in which he informed me that the damsel Sophia died of an unknown disease" he said.

I was devastated to hear these words, also because I hadn't heard from Sophie for a long time.

The first afternoon I asked my father to come home, when we returned I decided to take a bath, Madame Perrodon prepared everything I needed and I undressed in front of her, I am not ashamed to show myself naked in front of her because for me she has always been a sort of mother, yet for the first time taking a bath I felt observed as if a great misfortune was hanging over us.

Madame Perrodon, given her inclination towards psychology, metaphysics and perhaps also mysticism, tried to find a natural explanation for my shock "Tonight there will be a full moon" she said while moving her hands on my body to soap me "In this circumstance the moon emits a particular spiritual activity, it is known that its effect acts on nervous people, on dreams and has extraordinary influences on life"

I was not convinced by those words but they certainly managed to distract me from the news of Sophie's death, after the bath Madame Perrodon helps me dry myself and get dressed, just at that moment I hear the unlikely noise of the wheels of a carriage and many clogs on the road, I looked at the scene at the window and saw my father talking to a man I had never seen and who was carrying a girl of my age in his arms.

I dressed quickly and went closer to understand what was happening, but what shocked me was not only that the girl had apparently fainted, but that she looked incredibly like the girl from my dream.