Page 62 of Fragile Wicked Things
I rolled my head to the side and found them staring, listening, mouths gaping open. When I didn't continue, they laughed and said I was too stoned to finish the gothic tale. Lucille, who had far more from the cigarette than I had, picked up with the story.
Later in the week, I met friends at a coffeehouse on Eighty-eighth Street where they held a performance piece on Ginsberg'sHowl, and spent the rest of the evening analyzing it. I didn't know it then since everything was new to me, but things were changing in the country. New York had a vibrancy of its own—chaotic, gritty and fast.
Still, I thought of Thornfield.
Of Thomas.
Of Rochester.
In the months following my departure from Thornfield, I heard from no one and wrote to no one, swearing to leave that world behind me. I found my rhythm, my beat, and my voice, which was far more colloquial than at Thornfield. I had picked up the jargon of those around me.
Some nights were spent alone in the apartment with a used typewriter I had picked up from a shop about ten blocks away. I had to haul that heavy machine up five flights of stairs to my place. The "u" dropped lower than the other letters, and the "p" was incomplete, leaving it to look like an "o." I wrote a poem after theHowlreading, but the next morning, when I reread my piece, I crumpled the sheet of paper and swore that poetry was not my thing.
If Rochester had put down Byron for a moment, maybe he could listen to the sound and rhythm of the poets around him, the obscenities, the harshness of the words. I knew that Rochester lived in the past and would never embrace modernity unless it was an automobile.
My schedule was terrible; I was up at all hours of the night and slept during the day, but my newfound friends swore I'd get used to it. After returning home exhausted at two o'clock one morning, I dropped into bed on top of the covers without brushing my teeth or washing the makeup off my face. Lucille had taught me how to apply makeup, but I gave up on the fake eyelashes, which always made me look like an insect was devouring my face.
The phone rang, a loud shrill. I looked at the clock by my bedside—it was almost three in the morning. It rang a second time, then a third before I got up, trudged into the kitchen and picked up the receiver.
"Hello," I said. A groggy voice escaped me.
"Is this Jane E.?" I didn't recognize the woman's voice on the line.
"Yes."
"I'm calling from Charity Hospital. There was a car accident outside of the city. Mr. Edward Rochester was driving..." She paused, and I clutched the phone closer to my ear. "...he's dead. He didn't suffer. It was instant." How did she know he didn't suffer? Was he dead or unconscious, and when they didn't get a pulse, naturally assumed him dead? "There was another person in the car who was hurt, a Thomas Fairfax Connelly. He keeps asking for you."
"How serious is it?"
"There's nothing more we can do for him. He insisted on being brought back to a place outside the city called Thornfield Hall. Do you know of it? He is being provided with around-the-clock nursing care."
The palms of my hands sweated, and I leaned my head against the wall, slid down until my knees buckled and buried my head into my available hand.
"Hello? Hello?"
"Yes, I'm here," I whispered.
"Will you come? He won’t be with us for long."
* * *
The driverand I forged ahead of the storm, desperate to outrun it; lightning fired up the night sky in quick succession, and then large raindrops hit the taxi's windshield. We drove past Thomas’s cottage, all closed up, dark, and sped forward to the lit main house. I paid the driver, grabbed my carryall beside me and stood in the rain, drenched, tired, beaten as I stared at the great house; it was not that long ago that I had found myself in the same situation, admiring it and the ancient oak trees that seemed to devour the drive.
Crack! The great oak tree closest to the house split in half, struck down by lightning, wounding the immortal tree, its vitality thrown into decay. A branch crashed down, and the sound shook me. Still, I could not move forward into the house. Thornfield had been altered in some way—colder, darker. With its master gone, it ceased to be a home, nothing more than bricks and mortar, and this unnerved me.
With the front door unlocked, I opened it and stepped inside. The darkness was palpable, filling me with more dread than when I was in the mausoleum with Rochester, locked away with death. Death was everywhere in Thornfield, silencing me, rendering me motionless until my ears perked up to music coming from the drawing room. Its door was ajar, and a light, an orange, flickering glow, cast into the entrance hallway. A fire had been lit, and I could hear someone stoking the logs while, at the same time, the volume of the music raised. I put my bag down and edged closer to the door, trailing a wet path behind me on the tiled foyer floor. There were voices below the strange sound of a distorted electric guitar, music that had never been heard at Thornfield before—loud, aggressive, modern.
With my fingertips pressed against the door, I pushed it wide open. Music pounded the air around me, obtrusive, the voices incoherent. They were scattered about, creatures with raven hair, sharp fingernails, and dark eyes staring at me, the woman who had disturbed their feeding frenzy. Some returned to the bodies whose blood they sucked from, draining them until their hearts beat no more. Another stood by the record player, flipping through a stack of albums held in his hands, a cigarette dangling from his lips, blood smeared across his undershirt. Elsewhere in the room came the sound of fornication, two, no, three distinct voices writhing and groaning with pleasure.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the darkened room in strobes.
A creature sat on the sofa ahead of me, her long red hair glowing against the flame as a log burned, her head tilted towards a man almost lifeless, his eyes wide and motionless. When she turned to look at me, I recognized that porcelain skin, electric blue eyes and red lips, now bloody from sucking on the helpless man. She smiled at me.
On the other side of her victim sat another creature, his head burrowed into the man's neck while wisps of his raven hair tickled the man's ashen face. The blood gurgled as he sucked it out, a stream trickling down the man's throat while he took his last breath. Then the creature stopped, suddenly alert and turned to me. A chill swept up my back as I stared at Edward Rochester. He was not killed as the messenger had relayed to me, but he was no longer the man I left behind, one that now embraced the darkness of the soulless creature. I opened my mouth, but no words were spoken, all emotion trapped in my throat, expressing feverish sounds. At first, Rochester looked away, staring downwards to the carpet and wiped away the blood from his chin with the backside of his hand, smearing the blood across his cheek. When his eyes returned to mine, the shame that had been there was replaced with contempt, his chin lifted and the corner of his lips tightened and raised to the side.
"You did come after all," the red-haired woman said.
My breath was trapped in my throat; I couldn't utter a word, or cry, or scream, and my feet were fixed to where I stood. Another of the creatures grabbed me from behind, wrapped his arms around me and licked my neck.
