Carmilla's Disappearance

Carmilla's disappearance is the first major crisis in Laura's narrative, a scene that shatters the household's fragile normalcy and forces the characters to confront the inexplicable. The event begins with a dream of such vivid horror that it blurs the line between sleep and waking, and it ends with a mystery that Laura's father can only resolve through a strained theory of sleepwalking. The episode serves as a turning point, accelerating Laura's physical decline and deepening the atmosphere of dread that pervades the schloss.

The Dream and the Discovery

The disappearance is precipitated by a dream that Laura experiences on the night of the card party. In the dream, a voice—sweet, tender, and terrible—warns her: "Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin." At that moment, a light springs up, and Laura sees Carmilla standing near the foot of her bed, bathed from chin to feet in one great stain of blood. Laura wakens with a shriek, possessed by the idea that Carmilla is being murdered. She springs from her bed and finds herself on the lobby, crying for help. Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine come scurrying out of their rooms in alarm; a lamp burns always on the lobby, and seeing Laura, they soon learn the cause of her terror. Laura insists on knocking at Carmilla's door, but their knocking is unanswered. It soon becomes a pounding and an uproar. They shriek Carmilla's name, but all is vain. The door is locked. They hurry back in panic to Laura's room, where they ring the bell long and furiously. Laura's father's room is on the other side of the house, quite out of hearing, and to reach him would involve an excursion for which none of them has the courage.

The Forced Entry and the Empty Room

Servants soon come running up the stairs. Laura has put on her dressing gown and slippers, and her companions are similarly furnished. Recognizing the voices of the servants on the lobby, they sally out together. After renewing their summons at Carmilla's door as fruitlessly as before, Laura orders the men to force the lock. They do so, and the group stands, holding their lights aloft, in the doorway, staring into the room. They call Carmilla by name, but there is still no reply. The room is perfectly undisturbed, exactly in the state in which Laura left it on bidding her good night. But Carmilla is gone. The windows are secured. The dressing room door is still locked on this side. She could not have passed it. Laura is utterly puzzled, wondering whether Carmilla has discovered one of those secret passages which the old housekeeper says are known to exist in the schloss, although the tradition of their exact situation has been lost.

The Aftermath and the Return

The whole household, with Laura's father at its head, is in a state of agitation the next morning. Every part of the chateau is searched. The grounds are explored. No trace of the missing lady can be discovered. The stream is about to be dragged; Laura's father is in distraction, dreading the tale he will have to tell the poor girl's mother on her return. Laura, too, is almost beside herself, though her grief is of a quite different kind. The morning passes in alarm and excitement. At one o'clock, still without tidings, Laura runs up to Carmilla's room and finds her standing at her dressing table. She is astounded, unable to believe her eyes. Carmilla beckons her with her pretty finger, in silence, her face expressing extreme fear. Laura runs to her in an ecstasy of joy, kissing and embracing her again and again, then runs to the bell and rings it vehemently to bring others to the spot. Carmilla explains that she went to sleep as usual in her bed, with her doors locked, and woke just now on the sofa in the dressing room, finding the door between the rooms open and the other door forced. She claims to have been neither wakened nor stirred by any noise. Laura's father, after hearing the story, proposes the theory that Carmilla walked in her sleep, unlocking the door, taking the key out, and locking it on the outside before wandering through the house. He suggests that she returned to the dressing room after the search, still asleep, and awoke spontaneously. Carmilla admits that she walked in her sleep when she was very young. The explanation is accepted, and the household's alarms are happily ended, but the episode leaves an unspoken residue of unease, a sense that the mystery has been papered over rather than solved.