Page 64 of Fragile Wicked Things
"I do."
"Then you leave me no choice. I will hunt you down relentlessly. It will drive you mad."
"Being yours will drive me to madness."
This rejection displeased him and the creature resurfaced, his back stiffened and the blackness returned to his eyes. "Refuse me again and I will unleash an evil on this town the likes of which your eyes have never witnessed. I will massacre first those you love and hold dear, beginning with your dear Thomas. I will search out anyone you've crossed paths with in New York, hunt them, torture them and devour them until you relinquish yourself to me. Every part of my being demands you: it will be satisfied or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame."
My breath came in quick succession, the room spun, and I fell to the floor on my hands and knees. "You bury me in this coffin you call Thornfield." I sobbed before him, an unbearable pain in my chest that I could not wrench out from my conquered body.
"I expected a scene of some kind. I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. Anything but this." Rochester grabbed my hands and placed them on his monstrous face. "Rip out my eyes, injure me, spit on me, anything but the tears of a child. If there must be tears, then shed them on my breast when you pound on me and don't waste them drenching the floor. If you do not return to me the Jane that could save me from my wretchedness, then it will be blood you will weep."
"There was a time when I would have saved you, when I would have willingly sacrificed myself. You forget I am all too aware of the love you are capable of, but your darkness terrifies me. In the end, that’s what we’re left with. You are a monster."
"Of the worst kind—one in desperation," he said in a low whisper. Rochester forced me to my feet and, having to drag me against my protest to the door, became frustrated and threw me hard to the floor. "Still, you fight!"
"You wounded me," I said, holding my hand.
He paced the room, shaking his head. "Don't speak to me about wounds. Time cannot erase my pain. Even now, when I'm lost in Blanche's darkness, she finds me and calls to me. She won't forgive me."
"Catherine?"
"No, not Catherine!" he roared at me. Then, in a trance-like whisper, he said, "My daughter."
I watched as he held out his hands, gently stroking the head of an imaginary figure, one small in stature, which made me think of a child.
"Peace is what I want, but she will not let me have it!" Rochester threw himself to the floor near me and reached out to touch me. I fought him, pulling my hand out of his.
"I was a good man, Jane."
His words softened me, and I acquiesced, allowing him to hold my hand. It was true; he was once human, and I knew nothing of his life beforehand. Most of what I learned came from Catherine, and although he was already a creature of the night when they met, I could not deny that he expressed love and kindness toward her. His devotion must have come from a benevolent character before this evil made him, yet I stood before him as his adjudicator.
"I was a good man, Jane," he said again, "content in my simple life. I didn't choose this; the soulless creature was thrust upon me. Crimes have been committed against humanity by my hands. I know the wrong that I've perpetrated; I know how you judge me, I see it when I look at you. Catherine saw me as a man. Blanche, as a monster. I want you to see all of me."
PARTFOUR
Edward
Twenty
Iwas thirty-six years of age when I died in 1826.
Buried under my Christian name, Edward Lawrence Dylan, on the farm where I lived with my wife, Meghan, and daughter, Lucy, I remained undisturbed for a short time. Locked in a wooden coffin submerged in the earth, I was reborn from death and had awoken to a newfound sense of power, destruction and, above all, hunger. The man I once was no longer breathed.
When I was alive, I was a good man, father, husband, a strong farmer who worked tirelessly to provide for my family, in particular, during the cold and dreary winters. Our daughter Lucy was only six years of age, the sole blessing given to my wife and me as she could never bear more children. Each Sunday, we attended St. Sebastian's Parish Church in the village where we prayed and thanked God for our blessings. And each Sunday, when we returned to our farm at midday, we ate whatever we could cobble together, a few scraps of dried, tough meat boiled in a watery stew. My best was never enough. I toiled the earth during the warm months, and when winters brought further hardship, I cared for the few farm animals that helped us survive. Still, nourishment was hard to procure and the milk from one cow was scant. Many nights we went to bed with hunger in our bellies, cold in our bones and in the mornings when we awoke no different, I was struck by the dark circles around my wife's sunken eyes, the sallow complexion of my young child.
In the evenings, we sat by the fire, my wife immersed in her mending, my daughter on my lap, her head resting on my chest, listening while I read the Bible. Then, I was not well-read or well-versed, and time has almost made me forget, but I had the very nature, the dialect of the farming community that surrounded me: poor, uneducated, and simple in how we lived.
Lucy was always near me. Sometimes she'd play Catch-Penny with a halfpenny in her hand, but she was never able to bring her hand beneath her elbow with the quickness necessary to catch it. Still, she determined that she would succeed in the game I had taught her.
One winter night brought a terrible squall; the wind howled, a harsh cold swept in through the cracks around the windows and so shook the glass in its pane that I worried it would break. "Get away from the window, Lucy," I said. "Come by the fire." She remained at the window, bare toes tipped up, a sliver of light from the moon cascading on her blond locks. "What has got you so mesmerized?"
"Piggie got out," said Lucy.
"Edward," my wife said with a start.
"The animals are locked up. I accounted for them all earlier. Lucy, you must be mistaken." She shifted her attention to me, sunk lower so her feet were flat and shook her head.
"Daddy, there's a man with Piggie."
