Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs
of vampirism. The body, therefore, in accordance
with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp
stake driven through the heart of the vampire, who
uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects
such as might escape from a living person in the last
agony. Then the head was struck off, and a torrent
of blood flowed from the severed neck. The body
and head was next placed on a pile of wood, and reduced
to ashes, which were thrown upon the river and borne
away, and that territory has never since been plagued
by the visits of a vampire.
My father has a copy of the report of the Imperial
Commission, with the signatures of all who were present
at these proceedings, attached in verification of
the statement. It is from this official paper
that I have summarized my account of this last shocking
scene.
Conclusion
I write all this you suppose with composure.
But far from it; I cannot think of it without agitation.
Nothing but your earnest desire so repeatedly expressed,
could have induced me to sit down to a task that has
unstrung my nerves for months to come, and reinduced
a shadow of the unspeakable horror which years after
my deliverance continued to make my days and nights
dreadful, and solitude insupportably terrific.
Let me add a word or two about that quaint Baron Vordenburg,
to whose curious lore we were indebted for the discovery
of the Countess Mircalla’s grave.
He had taken up his abode in Gratz, where, living
upon a mere pittance, which was all that remained
to him of the once princely estates of his family,
in Upper Styria, he devoted himself to the minute and
laborious investigation of the marvelously authenticated
tradition of Vampirism. He had at his fingers’
ends all the great and little works upon the subject.
“Magia Posthuma,” “Phlegon de Mirabilibus,”
“Augustinus de cura pro Mortuis,” “Philosophicae
et Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris,” by
John Christofer Herenberg; and a thousand others, among
which I remember only a few of those which he lent
to my father. He had a voluminous digest of all
the judicial cases, from which he had extracted a
system of principles that appear to govern—some
always, and others occasionally only—the
condition of the vampire. I may mention, in passing,
that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants,
is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present,
in the grave, and when they show themselves in human
society, the appearance of healthy life. When
disclosed to light in their coffins, they exhibit all
the symptoms that are enumerated as those which proved
the vampire-life of the long-dead Countess Karnstein.
