Laura's second dream and Carmilla's disappearance
One night, instead of the voice Laura was accustomed to hearing in the dark, she heard one, sweet and tender, and at the same time terrible, which said, "Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin." At the same moment a light unexpectedly sprang up, and Laura saw Carmilla, standing near the foot of her bed, in her white nightdress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood. Laura wakened with a shriek, possessed with the one idea that Carmilla was being murdered. She remembered springing from her bed, and her next recollection was of standing on the lobby, crying for help.
The Alarm and the Search
Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine came scurrying out of their rooms in alarm; a lamp burned always on the lobby, and seeing Laura, they soon learned the cause of her terror. Laura insisted on their knocking at Carmilla's door. Their knocking was unanswered. It soon became a pounding and an uproar. They shrieked her name, but all was vain. They all grew frightened, for the door was locked. They hurried back, in panic, to Laura's room. There they rang the bell long and furiously. If Laura's father's room had been at that side of the house, they would have called him up at once to their aid. But he was quite out of hearing, and to reach him involved an excursion for which none of them had courage. Servants, however, soon came running up the stairs; Laura had got on her dressing gown and slippers meanwhile, and her companions were already similarly furnished. Recognizing the voices of the servants on the lobby, they sallied out together; and having renewed, as fruitlessly, their summons at Carmilla's door, Laura ordered the men to force the lock. They did so, and they stood, holding their lights aloft, in the doorway, and so stared into the room.
The Empty Room
They called Carmilla by name; but there was still no reply. They looked round the room. Everything was undisturbed. It was exactly in the state in which Laura had left it on bidding her good night. But Carmilla was gone. At sight of the room, perfectly undisturbed except for their violent entrance, they began to cool a little, and soon recovered their senses sufficiently to dismiss the men. It had struck Mademoiselle De Lafontaine that possibly Carmilla had been wakened by the uproar at her door, and in her first panic had jumped from her bed, and hid herself in a press, or behind a curtain, from which she could not, of course, emerge until the majordomo and his myrmidons had withdrawn. They now recommenced their search, and began to call her name again. It was all to no purpose. Their perplexity and agitation increased. They examined the windows, but they were secured. Laura implored of Carmilla, if she had concealed herself, to play this cruel trick no longer—to come out and to end their anxieties. It was all useless. Laura was by this time convinced that she was not in the room, nor in the dressing room, the door of which was still locked on this side. She could not have passed it. Laura was utterly puzzled. Had Carmilla discovered one of those secret passages which the old housekeeper said were known to exist in the schloss, although the tradition of their exact situation had been lost? A little time would, no doubt, explain all—utterly perplexed as, for the present, they were.
Aftermath and the Return
It was past four o'clock, and Laura preferred passing the remaining hours of darkness in Madame Perrodon's room. Daylight brought no solution of the difficulty. The whole household, with Laura's father at its head, was in a state of agitation next morning. Every part of the chateau was searched. The grounds were explored. No trace of the missing lady could be discovered. The stream was about to be dragged; Laura's father was in distraction; what a tale to have to tell the poor girl's mother on her return. Laura, too, was almost beside herself, though her grief was quite of a different kind. The morning was passed in alarm and excitement. It was now one o'clock, and still no tidings. Laura ran up to Carmilla's room, and found her standing at her dressing table. She was astounded. She could not believe her eyes. Carmilla beckoned her to her with her pretty finger, in silence. Her face expressed extreme fear. Laura ran to her in an ecstasy of joy; she kissed and embraced her again and again. She ran to the bell and rang it vehemently, to bring others to the spot who might at once relieve her father's anxiety. Carmilla explained that she had gone to sleep as usual in her bed, with her doors locked, and had woken just now on the sofa in the dressing room, finding the door between the rooms open and the other door forced. She could not account for how this had happened without her being wakened. Laura's father, upon hearing this, proposed the theory that Carmilla had walked in her sleep, a habit she admitted to having had when very young. He suggested she had unlocked the door, taken the key, and wandered to another room, eventually returning to the dressing room where she awoke. This explanation, though accepted, did little to dispel the underlying unease, and the event marked a deepening of the strange and terrifying pattern that had begun to envelop Laura's life.
