“Wicked Slip”

by Blake Bell

I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I

broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so

angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of

Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.

–Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

            “Haunt me then!” Heathcliff demanded over my still body.

            For once, I had done what I was told. For years, I tickled his knees as he walked through the moors, I clung under the beds of his fingernails, and I brushed his hair back off his forehead as he walked.

***

            Let me out! What used to be my living voice blew up through the cool, loose dirt and into the mist. My spirit did not stay buried long. I sprung up and spread out towards the Heights.

            “Catherine Linton” is scrawled across a stone above a grave on a hillside next to another, but lies here does she no longer.

            I am no longer here nor there, exclusively. I am the heather, the dirt, and the wind billowing through it.

            I have watched my daughter, my namesake, grow from a babbling thing on the floor to a girl with a familiar, flighty spirit on the moors. Often, I have heard Edgar call out “Catherine!” and forgotten it was not me he called. Though someone still called for me, from restless sleep or drunken rage.

            One night of many, the cold chilled my wind fingers, and I crept icy tendrils into the glass of my old bedroom window. An intruder, a stranger, stood gawking at my things, scribbling in his notebook, and itching to tell my secrets. My cries bounced off the branches of the tree outside and into his ears, “Let me in!”

           While alive, all I had wished was to be out of doors. Now dead, I ache to be let inside. The man buckled in horror, but I was horrified at the sight of him, in my room, running his strange fingers along the carvings of my name, of Heathcliff’s.

            That name, his name. Heathcliff bore into me as he had when I was alive.

            Not so long ago, as he and Hareton walked along the road to the Heights, I followed them through the dust they kicked.

            “Linton will not live much longer,” Heathcliff said. I wondered how he steeled himself so.

            “What will happen to Catherine? They are to be married…” Hareton sounded concerned, though over what, I was unsure.

            “Do not concern yourself.” His answer was curt. He had never been much for words. He stopped and stared at the dust gathered around his heels, and I whirled around his ankles. He paused for a moment, confused, then looked up to the sky, sighed, and continued walking on.

            Tonight, a mirror of countless others, he lies in bed full of spirits. His breathing labors as I imagine he sucks me in with the stale bedroom air. He knows I am there, outside. He always does. All our lives we never parted. I could always feel him near–in my life and in my death. When we were children, I would hide during our games, and he would always find me.

            “Cathy! Cathy! Where are you, child?” Father would call. I could hear Hindley banging about, looking in closets and slamming doors. Heathcliff would find me, hiding in the open, beside the stables. He never spoke as he slunk up beside me, grinning and leaning against the wall.

            I have waited years for him to join me. For years, I have held my tongue and wrestled with breaking my silence, often teasing but never giving in. The living can only hear the dead when we choose to be heard.

            “Drive me mad!” He had languished.

            So, I had. The madder he became, the nearer to me. Our children kept me from taking him with me all these years. Not mine and his, but ours nonetheless: Catherine, Hareton, and Linton. Linton is gone from this place. I imagine him at peace with his mother, Isabella, the young fools. Catherine and Hareton are older. They do not need him anymore, but I do. They would be free without him. Our lives were cursed of freedom, maybe our children can have more.

            Perhaps the children were not the only thing keeping me from taking him. My mother is here. I have spent more time with her dead than alive. It is curious, why mother and not father, not Edgar either? Is it only the women in our family cursed to wander these moors? Mother and I are stuck in this afterlife together it seems, until Heathcliff joins me. She makes her appearances scarce and primarily to chastise me. I would have so rathered to be with father. Father would let me take Heathcliff. He would understand.

            Instead, even now, mother’s voice prattles through the branches into my leaves, disapproving.

            “Selfish child. Willful to the last.”

            “He should be here with me by now. I never...he never should have lasted this long.”

            “Maybe he has more wit than I had always assumed.”

            “All he needs is a push. Let me alone. This does not concern you.”

            “You are my daughter, willful or no. I watched you. Saw you playing in the sun in the grass and climbing wet rocks in the storm. Everything you do concerns me, child.”

            “You keep calling me child when I have not been one since your death. The children are grown now. They do not need him anymore. Not like before.”

            “A daughter is always a mother’s child. You should know. Should you not?”

            I always thought I favored my father. Perhaps I was mistaken in ways I could not have known. Mother is searing. She disapproves of my leniency with Catherine, as if she had any power over me after her death. She may have watched, yes, but she never interfered. I never heard her whispers on the wind, never felt a warm breath of air that reminded me of her. I suppose I did what she wanted me to, in the end.

            I betrayed myself for my name, for my family. I married Edgar. I became Mrs. Linton, my love for Heathcliff, my nature forsaken.

            She never mentions just how well that turned out.

            “I would, yes. Catherine is free to do as she will, like I should have been. She can marry Hareton, stay here at the Heights or better yet, they can leave this place. They can have what we lost.”

            “You never learn. You cannot be and have all things at the same time. We must choose. You cannot preach of freedom and look to take a man from his life. Leave Heathcliff alone. Stand by your own professed principles. You cannot be free to do as you please and still expect society to accept you. You could not and cannot have Heathcliff. Maybe soon you will understand.”

            “Mother, you speak as if the world tolerates no contradiction. Look around you, that we even linger here! Our spirits are both bound to and break the rules of nature. Father and I knew differently. Heathcliff too. You sound like Joseph, strict, intolerant fool. What did his rigidity ever afford him? Catherine knows the truth as we did. She does not need to live by your rules. Rules ruined me, but she will be different.”

            I watched Catherine run free on the moors. As a child, now as a young woman. Her and Hareton exploring, running their fingers over the peat and heather, like me and Heathcliff used to do.

            “Rules did not ruin you. You ruined you. Your inability to live by any sensible rules made your life impossible. Do not allow your daughter to suffer under the same error. Sway her.”

            “Hush now, mother. He is stirring.” As I glance inside again, Heathcliff has started to move, sitting straight up in bed and staring out of the cracks in his window.

            “He knows I am here! Let me go in, do not follow me.”

            I blow past her and surround the window in a fog. She is muttering something as I pass, but I choose not to hear her any longer. His dark hair is long, disheveled. His face is long and thin as his body; he needs to eat. He needs a good washing. He needs to be with me. His eyes keep darting back and forth to me and then towards, something I cannot quite see. What is he looking for? I press against the fragile glass; a creak sounds and catches his attention.

            “Who is there?” he stutters drowsily.

            He sounds unsure of himself; his voice is low and dry, cracked. I have never answered his questions, and there have been many. Countless questions, curses. I wonder what would have drove him madder, the lack of answers, or if I had.

            “Speak to me!” he is louder, now.

            His voice fights for what his body cannot. He has called to me like this before, but I would not come. This time is different. The children are grown. They do not need him anymore. I could take him. I know it is what he wants. He can fill my days and I his nights. We will ride the same gusts, grow in the same blades of grass. We can be what we always wanted: natural and free. No more worry, no more death, no more misery. Mother will scatter in his presence. She will know how wrong she has been all these years. Her constant denial of our fate, her skepticism. She will see she and the rules of nature hold no power over us. We can be together; all I need to do is speak.

            “Let me in.”

            A deep, lingering howl curls out of his parted lips at my voice, a sound he lost long ago. He kneels by the pane and runs his fingers along the cracks in the glass. I breathe into them, and warmth flutters around the blood vessels pressed onto the hard, cold surface. His face searches for mine, brightening for a moment at the possibility, then fading back to darkness with my absence. His long tresses falling over his face to shade his sharp cheekbones.

            “Let me in!”

            He pulls his face away from the pane now, away from me now. He must be afraid. His eyes are darting back and forth again, but his hand is reaching toward the window. The latch is rusted and leaves grime on his fingers as he switches it open, and I fill the room, his and my room.

            My connection to this room tethers me, and I feel whole for a moment. I settle into the bedposts, the wood swelling, pregnant with my spirit. We are children again, laughing in the dark together, whispering secrets, and hoping not to wake father. He sits with his mouth agape; his eyes are softly gazing about the room as if he can see me in every speck of dust, every crease in his sheets. His breathing slows into a methodical rhythm, and I fill his lungs.

            “Come with me,” I whisper.

            He nods his heavy head and rests his arm on the sill. His eyes shine brighter than I have yet to see.

            “Cathy…” his last breath echoes me out of his body until I can feel him no longer.

            Much like father, and like Edgar, he does not linger. My anger blows the lattice, cutting his hand. My sorrow falls in drops from above, covering him and all around him.

            Nelly rushes in to touch his face, my face, moving the hair from his eyes and studying him. She calls for Joseph and Hareton now. Hareton’s cries surprise me, and I try to calm the storm to soothe Hareton’s tears. The men gather around his body and speak of illness, of burial.

            “Whear sud we tak’ him?” Joseph mutters.

            “He should be with Cathy,” Hareton sounds defensive, “he always needed to be close to her.” his face crumples; his emotion is palpable. Joseph seems annoyed, uncomfortable.

            “Soa be’t. Glory be.”

            He will never be close enough to me. No matter how long I wait, I know he will not come. I can feel him, gone. The women in our family must be damned. Damned to wander these moors. Damned to haunt.

            I rode the gust alone and wrapped myself around Catherine, standing over Heathcliff’s grave. “Get out,” I pleaded, brushing her hair away from her ears and lightly stinging the tears that hung in her eyes.

            She looked over to my grave and smiled, nodded. I watched her take Hareton’s hand and leave our graves, never looking back.

            Alone, I wander still. I brush the dirt around his grave, tossing and turning in the wind. My mother frets about me, making me feel more alone. But the people in this town speak of ghosts, of spirits, of Heathcliff and me. They see us in windows and on the roads. They see us together, finally and again. Only in their stories do we wander these moors together. Their stories make it real, make it so.

“Wicked Slip” was originally published, August, 2019, in Issue 3 of Crepe & Penn