Wuthering Bites (5 page)

‘Gypsy!' taunted Hindley, cuffing him heartily when his father walked away. ‘Orphan, gypsy.'

‘Tell him to let me go with them,' Heathcliff insisted, allowing himself to be pummeled again and again, ‘or I will speak of these blows and you'll get them from your father with interest.'

‘Off with you, dog!' cried Hindley, threatening him with an iron weight used for weighing potatoes and hay in one of the market stalls.

‘Throw it,' Heathcliff replied, standing still, ‘and then I'll tell how you boasted that you will turn me out of doors as soon as he dies, and see whether he will not turn you out directly.'

Hindley threw it, hitting Heathcliff on the breast. The boy fell, but staggered up immediately, breathless and white. The master did come along at that very moment and, taking pity, sent young Earnshaw home and allowed Heathcliff to catch up to the gypsies and go along.

I do not know what the boy did that day and night with the gypsies, but I can tell you he returned a different boy. He somehow seemed darker, but carried a confidence I sometimes found frightening. As he entered the barn upon his return, Hindley demanded to know where he had been and what the gypsies had told him of his parentage. When Heathcliff did ignore the request, Hindley knocked him off his feet. I was surprised to witness how coolly the child gathered himself and sat down on a bundle of hay to overcome the qualm which the violent blow occasioned, before he entered the house to announce his return. I persuaded him easily to let me lay the blame of his bruises on a new horse purchased only the day before at the fair: he minded little what tale was told since he had gotten what he wanted in going with the strangers. He complained so seldom, indeed, of such stirs as these with Hindley that I really thought him not vindictive.”

Again, Mrs. Dean met my gaze. “I was deceived completely, as you will later hear.”

I
n time, of course, Mr. Earnshaw began to fail. He had been active and healthy, yet his strength left him suddenly, and when he was confined to a chair in the corner, he grew grievously irritable. He became preoccupied by the growing number of vampires in the countryside and worried what would become of his children. We understood that the vampires were flooding into England and Scotland from their native land of Transylvania, where human blood was becoming scarce, but none knew what to do about it. Mr. Earnshaw could not sleep or eat for his obsession with the bloodsuckers. All day he filled journals with plans for strengthening the defenses at Wuthering Heights, and at night he burned candle after candle to the nub. By then, he was barely able to walk without the steady arm of a companion. His temper flared over the smallest things, and even though his body had grown weak, he could still rage with the roar of a charging bull. Nothing would make him so furious as some suspected slight of his authority.

This was especially true concerning Heathcliff. He had come to believe that the orphan lad could do no wrong, and he believed that the rest of the household was jealous. In his sickness, he became certain that because he liked Heathcliff, all hated him and longed to do him ill. In truth, the master's favor did more harm to the boy than good. To have peace in the house, we all humored Heathcliff. That is never best for any child. Giving him what he demanded without question turned a gentle, grateful lad to a youth full of pride and black tempers. As expected, Heathcliff and Hindley clashed. Perhaps there was jealousy of the love Mr. Earnshaw showered on the foundling, but denied his own son. We'll never know. But our peaceful home became a battleground as Hindley defied his father again and again, rousing the old man to fury. In a fit of rage, Mr. Earnshaw would seize his cane to strike Hindley, and his son would heap scorn on him, moving out of range of the ivory-handled weapon. More than once, we feared the master's terrible wrath would be the death of young Earnshaw.

It was a bad time for all. Two households of our small church were ravished by the bloodsuckers. The small son of the butler at Grievegate Hall, not fifteen miles from here, was sent to fetch cheese from their well house at twilight. Six years of age was all he possessed. The child had run the distance a thousand times, yet on that night, he was snatched up by a heartless vampire. When they found poor Georgie, he was as pale as clabber, and two great wounds gaped on his throat.”

“The child was dead?” I asked, horrified and fascinated in the same blink of an eye. “Murdered by vampires?”

“Worse,” the woman hissed. “Shortly after his recovery, he was found sinking his teeth into pigeons. Then it was rats and larger animals. The family did all they could, but little Georgie was lost to the darkness. When he sucked a parlor maid dry and went for his little sister, his own father surrendered him to the authorities.”

“To be imprisoned?” I pleaded, although I knew what the penalty for murder was, even for a child.

“Not that.” She shrugged her shrunken shoulders. “What else could be done? Once they get the taste of human blood, even a servant's blood, they will hunt. And even a six-year-old vampire has the strength of three human men. Sadly, it is kill or be killed.”

“Sadly,” I echoed. Then raised my gaze to her again. “Go on.”

At last, our curate, who taught the little Lintons and Earnshaws their numbers and letters, advised that Hindley should be sent away to college to be educated and to learn skills in fighting the vampires. All knew the threat would be greater as time passed, and this was becoming a necessary part of a young man's education. Mr. Earnshaw agreed, though with a heavy spirit, for he said—

‘Hindley will never succeed no matter how many schools we send him to. It isn't in his nature to defend those who cannot defend themselves. He is my son and it shames me to utter such words,' the old man muttered. ‘But Hindley will be nearly useless should the vampires sweep the moors and invade Wuthering Heights. He doesn't have it in his soul in the manner that Heathcliff does,' he insisted, rapping his stick. ‘Heathcliff is the one who will save our immortal souls in the end!'

With the boy gone, I hoped heartily we would have peace. It hurt me to think the master would regret his own good deed by bringing the gypsy orphan home. And we might have got on tolerably, notwithstanding, but for two people, Miss Cathy and Joseph. You saw old Joseph, I dare say, up yonder. He was more religious in those days. He used the word of God to heap praise on his own head and flung curses on his neighbors.

Mrs. Dean waggled her finger. “I was suspicious of him, even then. There was something about Joseph's manners that smelled of the undead. The way he never seemed to fear the beasties the way the rest of us did. The way the animals began to regard him, too. It was if he knew what was to come.”

“What was to come?” I echoed.

Mrs. Dean shook her head, ignoring my question, pressing on. “Joseph was relentless about ruling the children rigidly. He encouraged Mr. Earnshaw to regard Hindley as a reprobate, and, night after night, he regularly grumbled out a long string of tales against Heathcliff and Catherine. He took care to flatter the master's weakness for the gypsy by heaping the heaviest blame on Catherine.

Certainly, the girl tried our patience fifty times a day. From the hour she came downstairs till the hour she went to bed, we had not a minute when we didn't suspect she was into mischief. She was always speaking nonsense, stuff I think Heathcliff secretly poured into her head. She spoke of a day when women would defend their homes and children against the vampires at their places beside the men. Her spirits were always high, her tongue always going—singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody who would not do the same. A wild, wicked slip she was, and as daring as the devil himself, but she had the bonniest eyes and the sweetest smile.

She was much too fond of Heathcliff, even then. All day long they were about in the moors. They were seen fighting with wooden swords, she playing a victim strayed from the path, attacked by a vampire, and he was always the savior. It was then that young Heathcliff began to slip away some nights. Gone a day or two at a time, and her worrying herself sick over his whereabouts.”

Mrs. Dean leaned closer. “With the gypsies is where I think he was. Taking up training far superior to what the young master was learning in college. And learning not just ways to fight them, but to outsmart them, to command them, to coax them into doing his bidding. But Miss Cathy didn't like Heathcliff gone, not even for a night. The greatest punishment we could invent was to separate them, yet she got chided more than any of us on his account.

Now, Mr. Earnshaw did not understand jokes from his children; he had always been strict and grave with them. His peevish reproofs wakened in her a naughty delight to provoke him. She was never so happy as when we were all scolding her at once, and she defying us with her bold, saucy look and her ready words. She would turn Joseph's religious curses into ridicule, baiting me, feigning to have been chased by vampires, or worse, bitten by them. She would pretend to be possessed by the spirit of them, be one of them. Back then, we barely even knew such a curse was possible; all remembered the fate of the butler's son at Grievegate Hall. We knew all too well that if you were misfortunate enough to be caught and fed on for too long, you died or were turned into one of them. And as was with poor Georgie, who could know if our dear Catherine had been bitten? She was a constant handful and a worry. After behaving as badly as possible all day, she sometimes came sweetly to make it up at night. And who could deny her…who but her own father?

‘Nay, Cathy,' the old man would say. ‘I cannot love thee; thou'rt worse than thy brother. Go, wipe the blood that I know is not really blood from your neck, say thy prayers, child, and ask God's pardon. I doubt thy mother and I must rue that we ever reared thee!' That made her cry, at first; and then, being continually rejected hardened her, and she laughed if I told her to say she was sorry for her faults.

But the hour came, at last, that ended Mr. Earnshaw's troubles on earth. He died quietly in his chair one October evening, seated by the fireside. A high wind blustered round the house and roared in the chimney. It sounded wild and stormy, yet it was not cold. We were all together—I, a little removed from the hearth, busy at my knitting, and Joseph reading on vampires near the table. Miss Cathy had been sick, and that made her still; she leant against her father's knee, and Heathcliff was lying on the floor with his head in her lap.

I remember the master, before he fell into a doze, stroking her bonny hair—it pleased him rarely to see her gentle—and saying, ‘Why canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?'

And she turned her face up to his, and laughed, and answered, ‘Why cannot you always be a good man, father?'

But as soon as she saw him vexed again, she kissed his hand and said she would sing him to sleep. She began singing very low, till his fingers dropped from hers and his head sank on his breast. Then I told her to hush, and not stir, for fear she should wake him. We all kept as mute as mice a full half-hour; and should have done longer, only Joseph, having finished his reading, got up and said that he must rouse the master for prayers and bed. He stepped forward, and called him by name, and touched his shoulder, but he would not move, so he took the candle and looked at him.

I thought there was something wrong as Joseph set down the light, and seizing the children each by an arm, whispered them to go upstairs.

‘I shall bid Father good night first,' said Catherine, putting her arms around his neck before we could stop her.

The poor thing discovered her loss directly and she screamed out, ‘Oh, he's dead, Heathcliff! Father's dead!'

And they both set up a heartbreaking cry.

I joined my wail to theirs, loud and bitter, but Joseph asked what we could be thinking of to roar in that way over a saint in heaven.

He told me to put on my cloak and run for the doctor and the parson, taking care. Vampires had been seen lurking at dusk, and the previous night a goat had gone missing. I could not guess of what use either the doctor or the parson would be then. However, I went, through wind and rain, looking forever over my shoulder, praying I would not be devoured, and brought the doctor back with me. The parson said he was not traveling the roads with the vampires flying about and that he would come in the morning.

Leaving Joseph to explain matters, I ran to the children's room. Their door was ajar. I saw they had never lain down, though it was past midnight, but they were calmer and did not need me to console them. The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have offered. No parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk of slaying vampires all over the world until there were none left to bedevil good folk. And, while I sobbed and listened, I could not help wishing we were all there in their make-believe world, safe together.

M
r. Hindley came home to the funeral and set the neighbors gossiping right and left. He brought a wife with him. What she was, and where she was born, he never informed us, but she probably had neither money nor a name, or he would never have kept the union from his father.

The wife didn't disturb the house much on her own account. Every object she saw and every circumstance that took place around her appeared to delight her—except the preparations for the old master's burial, and the presence of so many mourners to be fed and entertained. It seemed like everyone in the county came to the funeral, mostly neighbors, and a few strangers. The strangers were the ones I kept an eye on. It was just around that time that enterprising vampires began to take the part of Godly folk; one mistake and you could wind up having a new acquaintance for afternoon tea, and them having a sip of your blood for supper.

But back to the young missus. In my opinion, sir, I thought the woman half silly in her behavior. She ran into her chamber, and made me come with her, and there she sat shivering and clasping her hands, and asking repeatedly, ‘Are they gone yet?'

Then she began describing with hysterical emotion the effect it produced on her to see black, and she fell a-weeping. I asked what was the matter and she said she was afraid of dying herself. She greatly feared death at the hands of the vampires that she had heard plagued the moors! Her dear mother warned her not to come, forbidding her to marry young Earnshaw, and now she feared her good mother might have been right.

I imagined her as little likely to die of an attack as myself. The wife was rather thin, but young, and fresh complexioned, and her eyes sparkled as bright as diamonds. We could both run, if it was a dire necessity. In those days, it was only the sickly or elderly or feeble-minded the vampires preyed upon. Would that were the case now, for these are a cunning, diabolical race of bloodsuckers that hunt us now.

Why, only three Sundays past, the strangest case did unfold in the village of Crumpton-on-Ween, not two days' walk from here. I had the whole tale from my sister Bess, who had it from the butcher's wife, who had the misfortune to live in the town. She's not a Quaker, you understand, but good Church of England, but there are Quakers in Crumpton-on-Ween. 'Tis said that the Quakers have an odd sort of service. Mostly they sit in silence and pray, on occasion rising to speak aloud some thought that has come to them.

“Do you not think it unnatural, Mr. Lockwood?”

“No, I do not,” I piped in. “I have in my scope of acquaintances several men of the Quaker persuasion, and I find them quite sensible and pious gentlemen.”

“Perhaps these be a different lot,” Mrs. Dean suggested diplomatically. “In any case, the butcher's wife's niece said that two strangers in black entered a service whilst it was in progress and took seats on the back bench near the door. The meeting house lay in shadows that day, the weather being inclement and the Quakers quite sparing of their candles, so the congregation was unable to see their visitors clearly. And by and by, an elderly gentleman sitting on the very same bench, a wool merchant by trade, was seen to fall into a deep sleep. Then the two strangers moved forward, taking places directly in front of the slumbering wool merchant.”

“Mrs. Dean, I don't see how—”

“Did I mention they were all in black?” She bunched up the nightcap she was stitching in her hands in her excitement to tell the story. “Black hats, black cloaks, black boots and trousers. Their hair, their eyes, the deepest black. Anyway, the service was a long one, and halfway through, after the visitors had moved up three rows, another stranger entered the meeting house. He took a seat at the back of the room, near to the sleeping wool merchant, but within the space of two minutes, he gave a cry that brought the worshipers to their feet. Down went the elderly wool merchant, a Mr. Uriak Wittlebalm by name, not sleeping but dead. Every drop of his blood drained out of him! Out came the most recent arrival's sword, and he—a gypsy vampire slayer in disguise—fell upon the two strangers with great shouts and the flashing of blades.”

“My word,” I breathed. “So the two visitors were—”

“How clever you are, sir, to see at once what they were,” she said, not allowing me to voice my deduction. “They'd not have pulled the wool over your eyes, had you been there, I'm certain. But as I was saying, the strangers leapt up and sprang at the gypsy slayer, fangs bared. A terrible battle ensued, and before the end came, it was discovered that not one, but five of the Quakers had been murdered by the two fiends. Five dead, including Mr. Wittlebalm, and a master thatcher near to dead from loss of blood.”

“And did this slayer succeed? Did he destroy the foul villains?”

“Such strength they had! Only by a stroke of luck that the wool merchant was oft to take a drop of spirits for his health did the slayer have a chance. The vampires had drunk so much of his blood and the blood of other parishioners who must have had a nip or two to fight the cold that the creatures became so in their cups that they could not put up their usual show of strength.”

“So the gypsy slayed them both?”

Mrs. Dean rose to shovel more coal into the fire. “One through the heart with his silver-bladed sword. The second, he would have but the beastie leapt from a window and vanished into the chestnut woods. The slayer tried to assemble a group to go after him, but none of the parishioners had the fortitude.”

“The nerve of them, to enter a house of worship,” I observed. “Five dead in such a short time.”

She peered at me over her shoulder from where she crouched before the fire. “Aye, sir, come to dinner, as it were. If not for the gypsy slayer, they might have drained the entire congregation.”

“And you take this tale to be the truth?” Mrs. Dean, being the sort she was, I wondered if her stories needed to be taken with a grain of salt.

“True as earth, word for word as I heard it.” She settled back in her chair and picked up her stitching again.

“Frightening that the vampires should be so bold as to invade a place of worship on a Sunday,” I pronounced.

“Indeed. It makes me nervous to sit through service ever since.” She snipped a bit of thread between her sharp little incisors and I took note that she seemed to have unusually fine teeth for a woman her age. None blackened or broken, and none missing that I could see. It was a rare condition among those of her class.

“I'll sit by no strangers, I wager that.” She touched her throat. “Sad, indeed, that one cannot even feel safe in church.”

“But you were telling me about Mr. Hindley's new wife.” I redirected her back to the tale that interested me most. “When she first arrived at Wuthering Heights.”

That I was. I must say I had no impulse to sympathize with her. We don't take to foreigners, here, Mr. Lockwood, unless they take to us first. If that's one thing we've learned from the infestation, and the tales that come from towns like Crumpton-on-Ween, it's that the unknown should not be welcomed. That's how they first got in, you know, though few care to admit it. From their own ravaged countryside they came, making noises of changed ways and feeding off animals. But it's still humans they prefer, though in a pinch they will take a sheep or two, even dogs.

Young Earnshaw was altered considerably in the three years of his absence. He had grown sparer, and lost his color, and spoke and dressed quite differently, so differently that some whispered with wonder if he had already fallen under the spell of the beasties. They were in the cities as well, you know, despite what the young missus might have said. But I never thought he had been made vampire. Nor did I think he had followed with the training to fight them that his good father—God rest his soul—had sent him to obtain.

On the very day of his return, Hindley told Joseph and me we must thenceforth quarter ourselves in the kitchen, and leave the house for him. The young missus expressed pleasure, at the beginning, at finding a sister among her new acquaintance. She prattled to Catherine and ran about with her, and gave her all sorts of presents. Her affection tired very soon, however, when she learned how the young miss traipsed about the moors, near daring the vampires to take her, even lifting a sword, on occasion. Eventually the wife withdrew her affection from Catherine and grew peevish, and then Hindley became tyrannical. A few words from her were enough to rouse in him all his old hatred he held for Catherine and Heathcliff. He drove the boy from their company to the servants', deprived him of his school books, and allowed him only pease porridge, the rinds of cheese, and stale crusts at supper. The lad who had led the life of a gentleman's favored child was put to coarse labor outside, compelled to muck stalls, skin and butcher livestock, clear fields of stones, and dig fresh pits for the necessary. From dawn until night, poor Heathcliff had to work harder than any other lad on the farm, and him not fed more table scraps than would keep a stoat alive.

“And did he accept this turn of fate, poor lad?”

Heathcliff bore his degradation pretty well at first because Cathy taught him what she learnt, and worked or attended him in the fields when he practiced his arts of defense and attack. They both promised fair to grow up as rude as savages, the young master being entirely negligent how they behaved and what they did, so they kept clear of him. I do not believe Mr. Hindley even suspected the boy was training to defend the manor. I know for a fact that he did not take notice the days when the boy disappeared to be among his gypsy relatives, returning with even sharper skills.

It was one of Heathcliff and Catherine's chief amusements to run away to the moors on a Sabbath morning and remain there all day, playing vampire or lost maid and slayer, and the after punishment if caught grew a mere thing to laugh at. The teacher might set as many chapters as he pleased for Catherine to memorize, and Joseph might thrash Heathcliff till his arm ached, but they forgot everything the minute they were together again.

One Sunday evening, they were banished from the sitting room for making a noise or some other light offense, and when I went to call them to supper, they were nowhere to be found. We searched the house, the yard, and the stables; they were invisible. At last, Hindley told us to bolt the doors against the night, and swore nobody should let Cathy and Heathcliff in until morning for fear they might bring the beasties with them.

The household went to bed, but too anxious to lie down, I opened my shutters and put my head out to hear them, should they return. I would have let them in. I knew Heathcliff would not let the vampires inside. I had already seen how they feared him, respected him, or both. Only days before, I had seen him talk a vampire down, getting him to turn over a calf and walk down the lane without so much as a mouthful of blood.

In a while, that night, I distinguished running steps coming up the road, and the light of a lantern glimmered through the gate, a trail of vampires howling near behind. I threw a shawl over my head and ran to prevent them from waking Mr. Earnshaw with their snarls and howls. Heathcliff fought them off at the gate and sent them flying into the night, and he did enter then, by himself. It gave me a start to see him alone.

‘Where is Miss Catherine?' I cried hurriedly, stanching the blood that ran from a wound on his arm. ‘No accident, I hope?'

‘She's at Thrushcross Grange,' he answered, wiping clean the black blood from a long-bladed sword. I did not know where the sword had come from and I did not dare ask. ‘I would have been there, too, but they had not the manners to ask me to stay.'

‘Well, you will catch it!' I said. ‘You'll never be content till you're sent away for good. What in the world led you to wandering to Thrushcross Grange in the dark? You know the vampires congregate between here and there.'

‘I'm not afraid of them,' he boasted. ‘They are afraid of me.'

‘And so they were chasing you down the lane,' I muttered. Either he did not hear me or he chose to ignore my jibe.

‘Let me get off my wet clothes, and I'll tell you all about it, Nelly,' he replied, handing me the deadly sword.

I bid him beware of rousing the master, and while he undressed and I waited to put out the candle, he continued.

‘Cathy and I escaped from the wash-house to have a ramble at liberty and, getting a glimpse of the Grange lights, we thought we would just go and see whether the Lintons passed their Sunday evenings standing shivering in corners, while their father and mother sat eating and drinking, and singing and laughing.

‘We ran from the top of the Heights to the park, without stopping—Catherine completely beaten in the race, because she was barefoot. You'll have to seek her shoes in the bog tomorrow. We crept through a broken hedge, groped our way up the path, and planted ourselves on a flowerpot under the drawing-room window. The light came from there; they had not put up the shutters, and the curtains were only half closed. Both of us were able to look in by clinging to the ledge, and we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the center, and shimmering with little soft tapers. Old Mr. and Mrs. Linton were not there; Edgar and his sister had it entirely to themselves. Shouldn't they have been happy? We should have thought ourselves in heaven! And now, guess what the children were doing? Isabella—I believe she is eleven, a year younger than Cathy—lay screaming at the farther end of the room, shrieking as if the vampires were sinking their fangs into her. Edgar stood on the hearth weeping silently, and in the middle of the table sat a little dog, shaking its paw and yelping, which, from their mutual accusations, we understood they had nearly pulled in two between them. The idiots! That was their pleasure! To quarrel who should hold a heap of warm hair, and each began to cry because both, after struggling to get it, refused to take it. We laughed outright at the petted things; we did despise them! When would you catch me wishing to have what Catherine wanted? I'd not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here, for Edgar Linton's at Thrushcross Grange—not if I might have the privilege of tying Joseph to the front gate and painting the house-front with Hindley's blood to lure the beasties to him!'