Wuthering Bites Page 2

  “Were you invited?” she repeated.

  “No.” I half smiled. “You’re proper to ask, though. No telling what sort of strangers will try to make their way into your home these days. A cousin of mine told me that only last week a vampire pretending to be an old acquaintance tried to invite himself into my cousin’s household for tea.”

  She flung the tea back, spoon and all, and returned to her chair in a pout, her under-lip pushed out, like a child’s ready to cry.

  Meanwhile, the young man had slung on a decidedly shabby upper garment, stained with blood. I wondered if, like many young men in the country, he was training to fight the dark devils. I nearly asked him myself, but then he looked at me from the corner of his eyes as if there were some mortal feud unavenged between us, and I swallowed my question. His thick brown curls were rough and uncultivated, his whiskers encroaching bearishly over his cheeks, and his hands were embrowned like those of a common laborer. Yet I began to wonder if he was a servant or not. His dress and speech were entirely devoid of the superiority one could observe in Mr. and Mrs. Heathcliff, but his bearing was free, almost haughty, and he showed no respect to the lady of the house.

  In absence of clear proof of his place in the household, I deemed it best to abstain from noticing his curious behavior; five minutes later, the entrance of Heathcliff relieved me from my uncomfortable state.

  “You see, sir, I’ve returned as promised,” I exclaimed. “But I fear I shall be weather-bound. I trust you can afford me shelter.” Then I cleared my throat, feeling it my duty to warn him. “Are you aware of the creatures that presently linger on your property?”

  “Afford you shelter? For the night?” he said, seeming to ignore my reference to a possible vampire infestation, the more pressing issue of the conversation, I thought.

  “I wonder you should select a snow-storm to ramble about in. Do you know that you run the risk of being murdered in the marshes? People far more familiar than you with these moors often miss the road on such a day and are never seen again.”

  So he was aware…. “If staying here would be an imposition, perhaps I can get a guard from among your lads to escort me home, and he might stay at the Grange until morning. With weapons, perhaps? I fear I’m not so good with a sword.” I laid my hand on the tiny silver dagger I wore on my belt. Little protection should a swarm descend upon me. Perhaps I should reconsider the benefits of a garlic necklace. Who was I to question wiser heads who had known and feared vampires for generations?

  “No, I could not.”

  “Indeed?” I drew back, surprised by his reply. “You would turn me out to certain death?”

  “Are you going to make the tea?” demanded he of the shabby coat.

  “Is he going to have any?” she asked, appealing to Heathcliff. “I see no need to waste good tea if he’s to walk out into the moors and be drained of every drop of—”

  “Get it ready!” Heathcliff uttered so savagely that I felt no longer inclined to call him a capital fellow. I wondered if I needed to consider the rumors again. Had I stepped from fang to fang?

  When the tea preparations were finished, he invited me to join the others around the table. There was an austere silence while I watched Mrs. Heathcliff make a separate pot of tea from a second container for Mr. Heathcliff. I wanted to sniff it for garlic, fearing it contained naught, but I dared not. Instead, we all digested our meal: a dry wedge of cheese that bore teeth marks of mice, a crock of jellied eels, hardtack at least as old as Joseph, and a splendid length of blood sausage.

  Afraid I had caused the cloud of grim silence, I thought I should make an effort to dispel it, and after a false start, I began. “It is strange,” I said between swallowing the last of one cup of tea and receiving another. Heathcliff, I noted, took food on his plate and added sugar to his tea, but he neither drank nor ate. “Odd,” I continued, “how custom can mold our tastes and ideas. Many could not imagine the existence of so isolated a society, surrounded by hostile hives of vampires, Mr. Heathcliff. Yet I venture to say, that surrounded by your family and your amiable lady—”

  “My amiable lady!” he interrupted with an almost diabolical sneer.

  For a moment, I feared he would bare fangs.

  “Where is she, my amiable lady?”

  “Mrs. Heathcliff, your wife, I mean.”

  “So you suggest her spirit has taken the post of ministering angel and guardian of Wuthering Heights, even when her body is drained of blood and gone? Is that it? She watches us from the grave?”

  Perceiving my blunder, I attempted to correct it. I should have seen that there was too great a disparity of years between them. He was forty. She looked no more than seventeen. Then it flashed upon me. The clown in the bloody coat was her husband. Heathcliff, junior, of course.

  “Mrs. Heathcliff is my daughter-in-law,” said Heathcliff, corroborating my surmise. He turned as he spoke, a look of hatred in his eyes as he gazed at her.

  “Ah, certainly,” I stumbled on, turning to my neighbor. “I see now; you are the favored possessor of the beauteous lady.”

  This was worse than before; the youth grew crimson and clenched his fist and I began to have second thoughts as to whose blood it was upon his coat. Rather than a vampire’s, did it belong to the last neighbor who came for tea?

  “Poor conjecture, again, sir!” observed my host. “Neither of us have the privilege of owning your fair lady. Her husband is deceased.”

  “And this young man is…”

  “Not my son, assuredly!”

  “My name is Hareton Earnshaw,” growled the young man.

  “I meant no disrespect,” I said, noting the dignity with which he announced himself. Perhaps he was a vampire slayer, a good one, and thus the conceit.

  Earnshaw fixed his eye on me longer than I cared to return the stare for fear I might be tempted to box his ear, and then he would be tempted to run me through with a sword meant to impale blacker hearts than mine.

  The business of eating being concluded, and no one uttering another word of sociable conversation, I glanced out a window to examine the weather and take in the sights, worldly or otherwise.

  I saw before me the dark night coming in prematurely, sky and hills mingled in bitter wind and suffocating snow. It was a perfect haven for vampires in search of heat and nourishment of human blood!

  “I don’t think it possible for me to get home now, with or without a guard,” I exclaimed. “The roads are buried already, and I could scarcely distinguish a foot in front of me. I could walk right into the arms of one of those beasts and not know it until their hellish fangs pierced my throat.”

  “Hareton, drive the sheep into the barn porch. They’ll be fed upon if left in the fold all night,” Heathcliff said. “I don’t care to go out again tonight and we’ve lost two this week, already.”

  “And what must I do?” I rose with irritation. How was it that my host was so protective of the blood of sheep and not a paying tenant? “How am I to get home safely?”

  There was no reply to my question as Mrs. Heathcliff leaned over the fireplace, restoring the tea canisters to their place, and Joseph entered with a pail of porridge of sheep bones and hooves to feed the dogs.

  “I wonder how ye can stand there in idleness, when all of them gone out!” Joseph cried. “But you’ll never mend yer ill ways, but go right to the devil, like yer mother before ye!”

  For a moment, I thought this piece of eloquence was addressed to me, and enraged, I stepped toward the aged rascal, my hand upon my tiny dagger with the intention of piercing him.

  Mrs. Heathcliff, however, checked me by her answer.

  “You scandalous old hypocrite!” she replied. “Are you not afraid of being tossed among the bloodsuckers? I warn you not to provoke me, or I’ll turn you out of this house myself and then we will see how far you get.”

  “Wicked! Wicked!” Joseph declared. “May the Lord deliver me from evil.”

  “Too late for that.” She pointed to the wind
ow. “Be off, or I’ll hang you by your thumbs from the outer wall and let them feed on you until you are fully drained. They will do it if he lets them, and let them he might. You know I speak the truth!”

  The woman put a malignity into her beautiful eyes, and Joseph drew back in sincere horror and hurried out.

  I didn’t know quite what she meant by all of that, but wanting to be on my way, I pleaded, “Mrs. Heathcliff, could you point out some landmarks to guide me home?”

  “Take the road you came,” she answered, dropping into her chair. “It is as sound advice as I can give.”

  “Then if you hear of me being discovered dead in a bog or pit of snow, sucked dry of my fluids, your conscience won’t whisper that it is partly your fault?”

  “Certainly not. Do you expect me to provide you safe passage, wielding my sword?” she mocked.

  As if women carried swords!

  “Surely there are men here in training who can fend off if not kill, should the necessity arise,” I questioned.

  “Who are these men in training? There is himself, Earnshaw, Zillah, Joseph, and I, and I guarantee you the master of this abode would not step across the lane to save your neck.”

  “Are there no trained boys at the farm? Living in such an isolated place, surely—”

  “No trained boys. Just us.”

  “What of Joseph? He knows the way.”

  “Not Joseph!” Her head snapped up. “Not after dark. Nay, you do not want Joseph after dark. Trust me, good sir.”

  Her remark was odd, but I was entirely too vexed to consider her meaning. “Then, welcome or not, I am compelled to stay.”

  “That you must settle with your host. I have nothing to do with it.”

  “I hope it will be a lesson to you, to make no more rash journeys on these hills, without first finding your own guard,” cried Heathcliff’s stern voice from the kitchen entrance. “As to staying here, I don’t keep accommodations for visitors; you must share a bed with Hareton.”

  “I can sleep on a chair in this room,” I replied.

  “No, no. A stranger is a stranger, be he rich or poor. It will not suit me to permit anyone to roam my home in the middle of the night!”

  My patience was at end. In disgust, I pushed past him into the yard, running against Earnshaw in my haste. It was so dark I could not see the means of exit, but I smelled the blood upon his coat, thick and cloying.

  At first, the young man appeared about to befriend me.

  “I’ll go with him as far as the park,” Hareton said. “Past the worst of them.”

  “And you’ll go with him to hell!” Heathcliff flung back. “You are not up to the fight of such numbers. You never will be! And who is to look after the horses, then, eh?”

  I drew myself up indignantly. “A man’s life is of more consequence than those of horses.”

  Heathcliff did not seem to hear me, for he was still upon the boy. “They will not kill you, you know; they will make you one of them!”

  “Well, somebody must go,” murmured Mrs. Heathcliff, more kindly than I expected. “For this is poor hospitality to a neighbor and tenant.”

  “Not at your command!” retorted Hareton.

  “Then I hope his pale ghost will haunt you; and I hope Mr. Heathcliff will never get another human tenant, till the Grange is a ruin and swarming with the devils!” she answered sharply.

  Joseph, toward whom I had been steering, muttered something under his breath. He sat within earshot, milking the cows by the light of a lantern, which I seized unceremoniously. Calling out that I would send it back on the morrow, I rushed to the nearest door.

  “Master, he’s thieving the lantern!” shouted the ancient.

  On opening the little door, two cloaked vampires flew at my throat, bearing me down and extinguishing the light. As I flailed on the ground, trying to protect my neck, I heard a mingled guffaw from Heathcliff and Hareton.

  Fortunately, the creatures seemed more bent on taunting me and tearing at my clothing than devouring me alive. Well-fed vampires at Wuthering Heights?

  But, oh, the stench of the creatures! When recounting a tale of attack and escape, victims fail to mention the foul scent of rotting flesh, putrid blood, and black, wet humus that wafts from them. “Help me!” I managed. Tucking in a ball to further protect my jugular, I was forced to lie till the malignant master of the abode pleased to deliver me. One bark of Heathcliff’s voice and the beasts leapt off me and disappeared into the snow-driven swirl of darkness, curls of smoke, gone as fast as they had come. Then, hatless and trembling with a mixture of fear and wrath, I ordered the miscreants to let me out—on their peril to keep me one minute longer.

  The vehemence of my agitation brought on copious bleeding at the nose, and still Heathcliff laughed, and still I scolded, made bold by my first true escape from death. I don’t know what would have concluded the scene had there not been one person at hand rather more rational than myself, and more benevolent than my entertainer. This was Zillah, the stout housewife, who entered the room to inquire into the nature of the uproar.

  “Are you going to allow folk to be murdered on our very door-stones? Look at the lad, he’s fair choking! Wisht, wisht!” She waved to me. “Come in, and I’ll see to that. There now, hold ye still.”

  With these words she splashed a pint of icy water into my face and pulled me into the kitchen. Mr. Heathcliff followed, his accidental merriment expiring quickly in his habitual moroseness.

  I was dizzy and faint, realizing I had not even drawn my dagger to defend myself. What man was I! In this state, I was compelled to accept lodgings under Heathcliff’s roof. He told Zillah to give me a glass of brandy, and then passed on to the inner room, whereby I was somewhat revived and ushered to bed.

  Chapter 3

  While leading the way upstairs, Zillah recommended that I should hide the candle and not make a noise, for her master had an odd notion about the chamber she would put me in, and he never willingly let anybody lodge there.

  I asked the reason.

  She didn’t know for certain, but the girl in the kitchen had told her that the ghost of a lady vampire haunted it. Zillah doubted the story because the silly chit was a known liar. Zillah said she’d only lived at Wuthering Heights a year, and they had so many queer goings-on with the vampires hanging about the outbuildings and peering in the windows that she wasn’t sure she cared to know the truth about the room. She said this position was far better than her last near London, where the vampires actually entered the dwelling and killed a kitchen maid and the master’s ugliest daughter. Zillah went on further to tell me, as we climbed the dark, dank-smelling stairwell, that it had been her experience that the vampires here at Wuthering Heights rarely attacked, and when they did, the injury was almost never fatal. There were whispers that the Master Heathcliff had some nature of power over them.

  “Of course, then there is the matter of Joseph to keep them somewhat content,” she uttered, glancing over her shoulder at me.

  I held a rag to my bloody nose. “What of Joseph?”

  “Some things are better left alone.”

  And alone she left me. Zillah took her leave and I fastened my door and glanced round for the bedchamber, wondering if I should expect a coffin. But surely she would have warned me had there been a coffin instead of a bed. Fortunately, the whole furniture consisted of a chair, a clothespress, and a large oak case, with squares cut out near the top, resembling coach windows. The chamber had a thick dampness about it, and deep shadows draped in folds against the walls. My candle cast a feeble light against the gloom. I held it high and peered around me, fearing the worst.

  No coffin.

  Approaching the odd structure, I looked inside and discovered it to be a singular sort of old-fashioned couch, very conveniently designed. The clever piece formed a little closet, and the ledge of a window, which it enclosed, served as a table.

  I slid back the paneled sides, got in with my light, pulled them together again, and felt s
ecure against the vigilance of Heathcliff and anyone and everyone who might be lurking. I couldn’t call the space cozy, but I liked it far better than the parlor. Here, no hounds were ready to rip me apart, and no Joseph with who knows what evil plot simmering in his black heart. And here, I had shelter both from the snow and the ever-present danger of the vampires that apparently roamed at will here in the moors.

  The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in one corner, and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small—Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton.

  Listlessly, I leaned my head against the window. My nose having ceased bleeding, I tucked away the rag for possible later need. Staring at the writing in the paint, I continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw—Heathcliff—Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters, dripping blood, started from the dark, as vivid as specters—the air swarmed with Catherines. Rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered my candlewick reclining on one of the antique volumes and perfuming the place with an odor of roasted calfskin.

  I snuffed it off, and, very ill at ease under the influence of cold and lingering nausea, sat up and spread open the injured tome on my knee. It was a Testament, in lean type, and smelling dreadfully musty: a flyleaf bore the inscription “Catherine Earnshaw, her book,” and a date some quarter of a century back.

  I shut it, and took up another, and another, till I had examined them all. Catherine’s library was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to have been well used, though not altogether for a legitimate purpose. Scarcely one chapter had escaped a pen-and-ink commentary—at least, the appearance of one—covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left.