Wuthering Bites (11 page)

W
hile Isabella moped about the house, always silent, and almost always in tears, her brother shut himself up in his study. He waited, expecting Miss Catherine would come to him and ask his pardon. But Miss Catherine continued to fast, expecting Mr. Linton would throw himself at her feet and beg her forgiveness. I went about my household duties, convinced that the Grange had but one sensible soul in its walls, and that was me.

Mrs. Linton, on the third day, opened her door and requested fresh water and a bowl of gruel; she believed she was dying. I was certain her declaration was meant for Mr. Linton. I believed no such thing; I knew what dying women looked like. I had seen them on the road to the market, lying in the ditch, the blood drained from their veins. It seemed no one died anymore of the good pox or influenza; it was always from vampire attacks. Knowing Miss Catherine to be nowhere close to death, I kept her opinion to myself, and brought her some tea and dry toast.

She ate and drank eagerly, and sank back on her pillow again, clenching her hands and groaning. ‘Oh, I will die,' she exclaimed, ‘since no one cares anything about me.'

Then a good while after, I heard her murmur, ‘No, I'll not die—he'd be glad—he does not love me at all—he would never miss me!'

‘Did you need anything, ma'am?' I inquired, still preserving my composure, in spite of her ghastly countenance and strange, exaggerated manner.

I began to wonder if I was wrong. What if she
was
dying…no, suffering from the fate worse than death? What if she had been feasted on by vampires? What if she was becoming one of them? That would certainly account for her odd behavior. There seemed never to be any rhyme or reason as to who they merely murdered and who they made into one of their own. Only the week before I had run into an old friend of mine from my younger days. Gertude Putty told me that her sister's parson had behaved perfectly normally one week on the pulpit, then quite mad the following week. A week after that, he was discovered in the parsonage, hanging upside down from the rafters, feasting on a young altar boy. Later, they discovered half the choir, dead and sucked dry, hanging like salted hams in the belfry.

‘What is my husband doing?' Miss Catherine demanded, pushing the thick, entangled locks from her pale, thin face. ‘Has he fallen into lethargy, or is he dead?'

‘Neither,' replied I, keeping my distance just in case my fears turned out to be correct. Once a human turned, they would feast on anyone, even a faithful servant. ‘He's tolerably well, I think.' I had my garlic necklace and a stiffly starched white collar, but I was taking no chances with my throat.

‘Among his books in his study, I suppose!' she cried. ‘And I dying! I on the brink of the grave! My God! Does he know how I'm altered?' she continued, looking at her haggard reflection in a hand mirror. ‘Can this be Catherine Linton?' She looked back at me. ‘Is he actually so utterly indifferent for my life?'

‘Why, ma'am,' I answered, ‘the master has no idea of you being deranged, and of course he doesn't fear that you will let yourself die of hunger.'

‘You think not? Can you tell him I will?'

‘You forget, Mrs. Linton,' I suggested, ‘that you have eaten some food and should be feeling better by tomorrow.'

She flung the mirror on the bed. ‘If I were only sure it would kill him, I'd kill myself directly! These three awful nights, I've never closed my lids—and oh, I've been tormented! I've been haunted, Nelly!'

I took a step back. ‘Haunted?' I asked, clutching at the garlic round my neck. Gooseflesh pricked along my spine.
Haunted
was not a word I cared to hear beneath this roof.

‘Nelly, what's wrong with you? Why do you withdraw from me? I'm beginning to think you don't like me. That none of you like me. And I thought while others hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me!'

I stayed out of her reach as I watched her tossing about until she increased her feverish bewilderment to madness, and tore the pillow with her teeth. I tried not to let her see me staring. Had her teeth grown longer? Had they always been so pointed?

Both the expressions flitting over her face, and the changes of her moods, began to alarm me terribly. A minute previously she was violent. Now, supported on one arm, she seemed to find childish diversion in pulling the feathers from the tears she had just made in the pillowcase, and arranging them on the sheet.

‘That's a drop of blood,' she murmured to herself. ‘And this is a coffin, and this…this a little vampire baby.' She peered up at me now pressed against the door with fright. ‘I have never seen a vampire infant, but surely they must exist, don't you think?'

‘I…I think no such thing,' I stammered. ‘They don't need to make babies, not when they have the opportunity to turn perfectly useful kitchen maids and parsons into vampires! Now give me that!' Braving drawing closer to her, I dragged the pillow away and held it at arm's length. ‘Lie down and shut your eyes. You don't know what you're saying.'

‘I see in you, Nelly,' she said dreamily, ‘an aged woman. You have gray hair and bent shoulders. You are walking among the graves. And there is mine. Why do you weep for me so, Nelly?'

‘There will be no grave,' I said, thinking the alternative, a ghoulish life-without-end, even more tragic. ‘Now hush and sleep,' I told her, taking a seat on the far side of the room.

‘Do you see them?' she went on, staring into the empty air. ‘Oh! Nelly, the room is haunted! They come for me, only he is not among them. Only with him would I go. Nelly, please don't leave me alone with them!'

Her cry was so pitiful that I forced back my own fears. Once I ascertained we were alone in the room, I rose from my chair and took her hand in mine.

‘There's nobody here!' I insisted.

Her fingers clutched her nightdress, then she covered her eyes with them.

‘Oh, dear! I thought I was at home,' she sighed. ‘I thought I was lying in my chamber at Wuthering Heights. I thought he had come for me at last.'

I didn't know for sure who
he
was, but I guessed it wasn't Mr. Linton she was pining for.

‘Stay with me, Nelly. I dread sleeping; my dreams appall me, for
they
come to me in my dreams. And worse yet, I consider going with them, for I think they might lead me to him.'

‘Go with who?' I asked, feeling both fearful for her and pitying her at the same time.

But she didn't seem to hear me. ‘Oh, if I were but in my own bed in the old house!' she went on bitterly, wringing her hands. ‘And that wind sounding in the fir trees. Do let me feel it—it comes straight down the moor—they bring it with them. Oh, Nelly, do let me have one breath of that wind!'

To pacify her, I held the casement ajar a few seconds. A cold blast rushed through, and fearing I might let one of the beasties in with it, I closed it and returned to my post beside the bed.

She lay still now, her face bathed in tears. ‘How long is it since I shut myself in here?' she asked.

‘It was Monday evening,' I replied. ‘This is Thursday night, or rather Friday morning.'

‘Has Heathcliff called on me? Sent a message?'

I did not answer her, for what would have been the sense in it? Of course the blackguard hadn't called on her. He didn't even know she was ill, as if it would have mattered. Too busy congregating with the vampires, I imagined.

‘Open the window again wide,' Miss Catherine ordered, not seeming to notice that I had not answered her. ‘Fasten it open! Quick, why don't you move?'

‘Because I won't give you your death of cold,' I answered.

‘You won't give me a chance of life, you mean,' she said sullenly. ‘You will not let him in. However, I'm not helpless yet. I'll open it myself.'

And sliding from the bed before I could hinder her, she crossed the room, walking very uncertainly, threw it back, and bent out, careless of the frosty air that cut about her shoulders as keen as a knife.

I entreated, and finally attempted to force her to retire. But I soon found her delirious strength much surpassed mine.

There was no moon, and everything beneath lay in misty darkness. Not a light gleamed from any house, far or near.

‘Look!' she cried eagerly. ‘That's my room with the candle in it, and the trees swaying before it…and the other candle is in Joseph's garret…Joseph sits up late, doesn't he? He's waiting till I come home that he may lock the gate. Well, he'll wait awhile yet. We've braved its ghosts often together, you and I, Heathcliff. And dared each other to stand among the vampires and ask them to come…. But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture out? If you do, I'll wait for you. I won't rest until you are with me. I never will!'

She paused, and resumed with a strange smile. ‘He's considering it—but he'd rather I'd come to him! Find a way, then! he tells me.'

Perceiving it vain to argue against her insanity, or the silly notion that she could see a candle from so far away, I looked about for a quilt to wrap around her to keep her from catching her death. I kept hold of her, not quite trusting her alone in the open window, half afraid she would let something in or fly out to join them. At that moment, I heard the rattle of the door handle, and Mr. Linton entered.

‘Oh, sir!' I cried. ‘My poor mistress is ill, but she is quite strong still and I cannot get her into bed.'

‘Catherine ill?' he said, hastening to us. ‘Shut the window, Nelly! Catherine! Why…' He went silent, the haggardness of his wife's appearance making him speechless.

‘She's been fretting here,' I continued, ‘and eating scarcely anything.'

He took his wife in his arms and looked at her with anguish.

At first she gave him no glance of recognition, but slowly it seemed to come to her who he was. ‘Ah! you are come, are you, Edgar Linton?' she said with angry animation. ‘You are one of those things that are ever found when least wanted, and when you are wanted, never found! I suppose we shall have plenty of lamentations now…I see we shall…but they can't keep me from my grave, where I'm bound before spring is over! There it is, not among the Lintons, mind you, but in the open air, outside the fence, where people of my ilk must be buried. Who will you come with, Edgar? Your parents or me?'

‘Catherine, what have you done?' begged my master. ‘Am I nothing to you anymore? Do you love that wretch Heath—'

‘Hush!' cried Miss Catherine. ‘Hush, this moment! You mention that name and I will throw myself out that window!' She looked toward the window I had closed. ‘He didn't come. I waited, but he did not come.'

‘Her mind wanders, sir,' I interposed. ‘She has been talking nonsense the whole evening, but a little garlic tea and I'm sure she'll rally.'

‘I desire no further advice from you,' answered Mr. Linton. ‘The doctor. She has need of Mr. Kenneth.'

Feeling no reason to tarry longer, I quit the chamber and went in haste to get the doctor, making the gardener take me in the wagon so I would be less likely to be ravaged by the beasties of the night.

I found Mr. Kenneth just coming from seeing a patient in the village, and my account of Catherine Linton's malady induced him to accompany me back immediately, despite the hour.

‘Nelly Dean,' said he, ‘I can't help fancying there's something behind this illness. What's been going on at the Grange? We've odd reports up here. A stout, hearty lass like Catherine does not fall ill over nothing. You must tell me, have you seen more vampires than usual lurking about the place?'

Obviously he was thinking the same as I, that she had not just been bled, but put under the spell of the vampires, but hearing it come from his mouth made me deny such a possibility vehemently.

‘Certainly not. Some. Every house has some, but you know very well, even before the vampires came to these moors, the Earnshaws were taken to violent dispositions. All madness cannot be lain at the feet of the undead. I may say this: It commenced in a quarrel. She was struck during a tempest of passion with a kind of fit. That's her account, at least; for she flew off in the height of it, and locked herself up. Afterward, she refused to eat, and now she alternately raves and remains in a half-dream. She knows everyone around her, but her mind is filled with all sorts of strange ideas and illusions.'

‘Mr. Linton will be sorry?' observed Kenneth, interrogatively.

‘Sorry! It'll break his heart should anything happen!' I replied. ‘Don't alarm him more than necessary.'

‘Well, I told him to beware,' said my companion. ‘Hasn't he been thick with Mr. Heathcliff lately?' The good doctor lifted a straggly brow. ‘I have heard in the village that Mr. Heathcliff treats the vampires differently, now that he has returned. They say the beasties come to him for advice, financial and otherwise, and that he is invited to their social gatherings, an honored guest. Some call him the king of the vampires.'

‘Some in that village also call themselves the Queen of England, Scotland, and Wales. It does not make it true.'

‘But you have seen much of Mr. Heathcliff?'

‘Heathcliff frequently visits at the Grange,' answered I. ‘Though more on the strength of the mistress having known him when a boy, than because the master likes his company.' Whatever thoughts I might have in private, I would do naught to injure my mistress or her family in public. And the doctor was a known gossip and a carrier of tales. Did I give the slightest hint of what I suspected, he would have us all in league with the bloodsuckers, myself included. ‘At present, Mr. Heathcliff is not in the best favor of the master. Some minor disagreement that will no doubt be soon mended.'

‘And does Miss Linton turn a cold shoulder on him?' was the doctor's next question.