Wuthering Bites (15 page)

I don't know how much time passed before I heard the sound of the first servants returning up the lane, followed soon by the creak of carriage wheels. ‘My master returns!'

Heathcliff groaned a curse, and strained Catherine closer. She never moved.

‘Now he is here,' I exclaimed. ‘For heaven's sake, hurry out. Go through the window into the garden. Be quick and stay among the trees till he is inside.'

‘I must go, Cathy,' said Heathcliff, seeking to extricate himself from his companion's arms. ‘But if I live, I'll see you again before you are asleep. I won't stray five yards from your window.'

‘You must not go!' she answered, holding him as firmly as her strength allowed. ‘You shall not, I tell you.'

‘For one hour,' he pleaded earnestly.

‘Not for one minute,' she replied.

‘I
must
—Linton will be in immediately.'

He must have risen, and unfixed her fingers by the act—she clung fast, gasping. There was mad resolution in her face.

‘No!' she shrieked. ‘Oh, don't, don't go. It is the last time! Edgar will not hurt us. Heathcliff, I shall die! I shall die!'

‘Damn the fool! There he is,' cried Heathcliff, sinking back to the floor in front of her. ‘Hush, my darling! Hush, hush, Catherine! I'll stay. If he shot me so, I'd expire with a blessing on my lips.'

‘Are you going to listen to her ravings?' I said passionately, hearing my master's footsteps and the whining of his dogs. ‘She does not know what she says. Will you ruin her, because she has not wit to help herself? Get up! You could be free instantly. That is the most diabolical deed that ever you did. We are all done for—master, mistress, and servant.'

I wrung my hands and cried out, and Mr. Linton hastened his step at the noise. In the midst of my agitation, I was sincerely glad to observe that Catherine's arms had fallen relaxed, and her head hung down.

She's fainted, or dead,
I thought.
So much the better. Far better that she should be dead, than lingering a burden and a misery-maker to all about her.

Edgar entered the parlor and sprang to his unbidden guest, blanched with astonishment and rage. What he meant to do, I cannot tell, but Heathcliff stopped him by lifting Catherine and placing the lifeless-looking form into her husband's arms.

‘Look there!' Heathcliff said. ‘Unless you be a fiend, help her first—then you shall speak to me!'

Mr. Linton summoned me and we took her up the stairs. We managed to restore her to consciousness, but she was bewildered. She sighed, and moaned, and knew nobody. Edgar, in his anxiety for her, forgot her hated friend. I did not. I went downstairs, at the earliest opportunity, and besought him to depart, affirming that Catherine was better, and he should hear from me in the morning.

‘I shall not refuse to go out of doors,' he answered, ‘but I shall stay in the garden.'

‘Ye'd be better off chasing down the beasties who did this to her and putting silver stakes in their black hearts,' I flared, unable to control my emotion.

‘I will see to them,' he vowed blackly. ‘But not tonight. Tonight I wait in the garden and you, Nelly, mind you keep your word tomorrow. I shall be under those larch trees. Mind! Or I pay another visit, whether Linton be in or not.'

He sent a rapid glance in the direction of the staircase still stained with her blood, and, ascertaining that what I stated was apparently true, delivered the house of his luckless presence.

“T
hat night, the young Catherine you saw at Wuthering Heights was born a puny, seven months' child. Two hours later, her mother of the same name died, a terrible, clawing, screaming death, a forewarning of what was to come.”

“What was to come?” I asked. I half expected Nelly to tell me that infant had been born with fangs and a tail, neither of which I had noticed on the young woman.

“What was to come, Mr. Lockwood. You see, Master Linton's lady was dead, but not dead. The beasties had done such a measure upon her that she could not fully die as human because she was not fully human. She was caught somewhere between heaven and hell.”

I stared at her, I know, mouth gaping, with eyes as round as tea saucers.

“But I'll get to that in my own time.” Nelly folded her hands and continued the story.

Catherine never recovered sufficient consciousness to miss Heathcliff or know Edgar. The widower's bereavement is a subject too painful to be dwelt on; its aftereffects showed how deep the sorrow sank. A great addition, in my eyes, was his being left without an heir. As I gazed on the feeble orphan, I mentally abused old Linton for leaving his estate to Isabella and her offspring, should Edgar not have a son. This wretched infant was to be penniless as well as bereft of a mother's love.

The next morning—bright and cheerful out of doors—Edgar Linton lay with his head on the pillow and his eyes shut. His young and fair features were almost as deathlike as those of the form beside him, and almost as fixed as the dead wife beside him.

With the master asleep, I ventured outside soon after sunrise to steal a breath of refreshing air. I'd gone out to shake off my drowsiness, but in reality, my chief motive was seeing Mr. Heathcliff. If he had remained in the garden all night, he would have heard nothing of the stir at the Grange.

I wished, yet feared, to find him. I felt the terrible news must be told, and I longed to get it over, but
how
to do it, I did not know.

He was there, leant against an old ash tree, his hat off and his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded branches. He had been standing a long time in that position, for I saw a pair of ouzels passing and repassing scarcely three feet from him, busy in building their nest, and regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber. They flew off at my approach, and he raised his eyes and spoke:

‘She's dead!' he said. ‘I've not waited for you to learn that. Put your handkerchief away—don't snivel before me. Damn you all! She wants none of your tears!'

I was weeping as much for him as her, for when I first looked into his face, I perceived that he had already sensed she was gone. A foolish notion struck me that his heart was quelled and he prayed, because his lips moved and his gaze was fixed on the ground.

‘Yes, she's dead!' I answered, checking my sobs and drying my cheeks. ‘Gone to heaven, I hope where we may, everyone, join her, if we take due warning and leave our evil ways to follow good!'

‘How did—' He endeavored to pronounce her name, but could not manage it. Compressing his mouth in inward agony, he resumed. ‘How did she die?'

Poor wretch!
I thought.
You really do have a heart and nerves the same as others!
I'll not say that I haven't wondered, sir, but I could see his genuine grief.
Why should you be anxious to conceal them? Your pride cannot blind God!

‘Quietly as a lamb!' I answered aloud. ‘She drew a sigh, and stretched herself, like a child reviving, and sinking again to sleep. Five minutes later, I felt one little pulse at her heart, and nothing more!'

‘And—did she ever mention me?' he asked, hesitating, as if he dreaded the answer to his question.

‘Her senses never returned. She recognized nobody from the time you left her,' I said. ‘She lies with a sweet smile on her face. Her life closed in a gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world!'

‘May she wake in torment!' he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. ‘Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not
there
—not in heaven—not perished—where? I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered
do
haunt their murderers. I believe—I know that ghosts
have
wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! Only
do
not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I
cannot
live without my life! I
cannot
live without my soul!'

He dashed his head against the knotted trunk, lifting up his eyes, and howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death with knives and spears.

I observed several splashes of blood about the bark of the tree, and his hand and forehead were both stained. It hardly moved my compassion—it appalled me. This was beyond decent mourning; this was something unclean. The moment he recollected himself enough to notice me watching, he thundered a command for me to go, and I obeyed.

Back upstairs I went to prepare her body, and that was when I really noticed something was amiss.

“Amiss?” I asked, unable to stop myself from interrupting even though I knew Nelly preferred I did not.

“Mr. Linton had awoken, you see, and I urged him to go and wash and dress and prepare for the day. He moved like a man asleep with his eyes open, but did as I suggested. When I was left alone with what remained of the lady, I went to her with a basin of water and washrag, thinking to bathe her. It was the wounds on her neck that I first noticed. Healed. Healed they were! Closed up!

At first, I thought I was mistaken. The lack of sleep, the anguish of the night. I thought my eyes deceived me, but they did not. Everywhere I looked upon her still, pale body, I found that the wounds of her previous night's attacks had healed over. Then I saw the fangs.”

Again, I could not help myself. I gulped. I sat straight upright on the seat of my chair. “The fangs?”

Mrs. Dean lifted her upper lip for me to view yellowed, but solid teeth. “Fangs, Mr. Lockwood. Little budding fangs where they had not been before.”

“Frightened by the sight,” she continued, “I rose from the bed, backing away in horror. When Mr. Linton entered a moment later, I was unable to speak, only point. He sat gently on the edge of the bed and observed the healed wounds.

‘What…what is wrong with her?' I cried, clasping the belt of garlic I wore round my waist.

He drew up the nightdress, adjusting the white lace ruffle around her neck just so, so that the white lines of wounds were no longer visible. ‘Nothing is wrong with her, Nelly.'

‘But…but the fangs, sir! Don't you see them?'

He didn't even look! He only smoothed her brow, kissed it, and rose from the bed. ‘I see no fangs, Nelly, and you will say no more of this.' And with that he walked out of the room! Now, Master Linton was a gentleman, and I knew my place. 'Tis not for such as me to argue with him over what we saw, but fangs is fangs, and I tell you, sir, what I saw was fangs on that corpse, fangs that had not been there while she breathed.

“Go on,” I urged.

Mrs. Linton's funeral was appointed to take place on the Friday following her decease. Till then, her coffin remained uncovered, and strewn with flowers and scented leaves, in the great drawing room. Can you imagine? Her lying right there in the house with her little fangs! I did not sleep a wink those days for fear she would rise from her coffin and take me in my bed…for fear I should hear the gnawing of those little fangs on the coffin lid. Linton seemed not to fear her and spent his days and nights there, a sleepless guardian.

The babe spent its days in screaming, such a noise from such a wrinkled and skinny scrap of flesh. It wailed at dawn; it wailed through the nooning. It wailed through supper and into the night, such a high-pitched squeal, half between that of a pig caught in a fence and a screech owl.

Heathcliff spent his days and nights far more violently. Only I knew the reason for his unbridled rage. Hip and thigh he did smite those vampires. They say he moved across the moors beheading them, splattering their black blood over half the properties in the county. Took him less than the week, and when he was done, what local vampires he had not killed had fled for safer ground. We poor folk were the safest we had been in years.

I held no communication with him as he rained terror upon the county, but on the night before she was to be buried, Mr. Linton took himself to bed and I went and opened one of the windows. I could feel Heathcliff out there in the garden, and moved by his perseverance, and thankful for his mowing of the vampires, I gave him the chance of bestowing on the fading image of his idol one final adieu.

He did not show himself that night. Indeed, I shouldn't have discovered that he had been there, except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse's face, and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver thread. On examination, I ascertained it to have been taken from a locket hung round Catherine's neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them with a black lock of his own. I twisted the two, and enclosed them together.

So caught up in his grief was Mr. Heathcliff that he apparently did not take notice of the healed wounds on her body, nor the little fangs. Too bad the parson was more observant, else to this day, I think we might have gotten away with burying her in the churchyard, and all might have been different had she been covered with holy ground.

“They didn't bury her in the churchyard?” I inquired, horrified and fascinated at the same time.

“They did not. Apparently others had tried to pull the same sleight of hand as Mr. Linton. Only weeks before, the high sheriff's brother's sister-in-law had attempted to have her nephew buried in the same churchyard, a Willy Rigby by name and smuggler by trade. This Rigby spent most of his time tearing around the country in the dead of night trying to dispose of his ill-gotten gains and had, as a matter of course, fallen in with a nest of young vampires. They'd buried him to his waist in a cave and feasted on him for weeks. When his wife finally realized that he was not off drunk with some tavern slut or taken aboard one of the Royal Navy ships as a swabby, she insisted on a search. To make a long story short, sir, they found him, still alive by the grace of God, but as white as cat puke. Beggin' your pardon, sir. Once they dug him up, he died. Sometimes that happens. Before they're full vampire, I think, they're still vulnerable to earthly ailments. Anyway, the aunt, having ties to the high sheriff, they made up this story for the blacksmith and tried to have the fellow pull out the telltale fangs, so that Willy could be buried in the family plot. Alas, it did not work.”

“Why not?” I demanded, fascinated by another of Nelly's tales.

“The teeth would not come out. Rather, fangs, I should say. When the blacksmith seized the fangs with his horseshoe tools, the fangs only got longer. They then tried to hold the man's wake with a cheese in his mouth, to cover the fangs. A farmers cheese it were, one of Dame Mildred's, and she makes the most foul cheese you have ever tasted, so 'twas no waste of good food. But the good cleric was too wily for them. He snatched the stinky cheese out of Willy's mouth, and all the funeral party were party to viewing the fangs—which were now longer and sharper than before. So poor Willy was packed off to the paupers' field and buried with the contents of Farmer Doug's pigsty piled on top of his grave to keep away any other vampires that might come to investigate. So the good cleric was prepared to watch for deception, you see.

“The parson walked right up to Catherine's coffin at the funeral, lifted the lid, opened her mouth, and slammed the coffin shut! He ordered the pallbearers to carry her outside the churchyard at once and then went off to have his tea.”

“And Mr. Linton did not protest?” I asked.

“What good would it have done him? The fangs were plain to see. Fortunately, since she was, or rather had been, born gentry, there was no question of mutilating the corpse, so she was packed away as she was, fangs and all.”

Mr. Earnshaw was, of course, invited to attend the remains of his sister to the grave. He sent no excuse, but he never came. Isabella was not asked. Besides her husband, the mourners were wholly composed of tenants and servants, so off we trudged to the plots reserved for those poor souls who met the unfortunate fate of being killed by the bloodsuckers. They were considered unholy, whether they had grown fangs or not, and could not rest on hallowed ground.

The place of Catherine's interment was dug on a green slope off the far west corner of the kirkyard. There, the heath and bilberry plants have crept down from the moor. Quite a pretty place for a damned soul to rest.