(#Thirty-two: Birth) Wuthering Nights: Inspired by Wuthering Heights

Chapter Thirty-two

Birth

    Nights later, Kate woke in the dark. Her stomach grumbled as she listened to the rain lick the roof.  It was two in the morning. Hunt was sleeping soundly, as Kate crept silently to the wardrobe and removed her long, winter coat, her woollen hat, scarf and gloves. Instead of slippers she slid on her waterproof boots as she prepared for the winter night after many months of clear weather. Kate could hardly breathe she felt so cooped up. She couldn’t explain her need to get out of the house. Her mind was overworked. She was not thinking clearly. Kate wished she had told Heath about Katarina. She woke up, dreaming of Heath and thought if she didn’t get a breath of fresh air there was no way she’d have the strength to deliver the child that kicked inside her. She knew Heath had rejected her, yet she was compelled to find him.  

     Kate grabbed the keys to her car then realized she probably shouldn’t drive. Besides, her car was at the garage getting serviced. She knew Edmund’s Range Rover would make a loud scraping noise coming out of the gravel driveway. Instead, Kate walked quietly downstairs, found the keys to the house in the kitchen and walked very quietly out the door.   It was a good distance from the Grange yet she knew a shortcut across the heath towards Hareton Hall that she hadn’t used in months. She needed to see Heath again; she would wait for him - forever, if she had to. Tell him it was a mistake, that they belonged side by side, that she never wished to be parted from him again.

   Kate was not prepared for the cold air that slapped her face as she stepped into the night. She wasn’t far from the beginning of the trail that led between the two houses and she was sure she could find it. Rain started to spit down and the irrational part of Kate did not think about the stupidity of walking in the dark, alone, in her condition.

     The manicured garden formed a pattern - a maze that she remembered from childhood -and led the exact way across the heath towards Hareton Hall. The lone house was filled with secrets and lies. Kate was determined to find Heath, to talk to him about Katarina, to make him understand that she had made a stupid mistake. She knew this track, knew the way by dark and from memory. 

    Kate peered through the midnight air. She caught her breath for the first time in hours and pulled her overcoat tight around her. Kate knew she shouldn’t do it, but she thought, if she could just get a glimpse of her old home, the place she now missed, the only place she really belonged to, everything would be all right. She’d had a bad dream, about herself, about Heath and the baby. She needed to know that Heath was alright, needed to tell him about Katarina and wanted to see him again. It had been almost a week since they’d talked. Kate walked on.

     The baby stirred inside her and the rain spat down suddenly but softly from the sky. Kate kept going as crystal tears, like the ones from her childhood, began to roll down her cheeks. She put one foot in front of the other, driven. The wind howled, the night closed in on her. She stumbled and hit her head on the rocks. Kate was as far from The Grange as she was close to The Hall. The pain was unbearable as she screamed into the dark. 

  

   Hunt woke, restless in the night.

  ‘Kate,’ he called.

   He wondered which part of the house his beautiful, thankless wife had roamed off to. He saw that her cream dressing gown lay crumpled on a chair and something about the emptiness of the room, the silence in the hallway, bothered him. Hunt got out of bed, put on his slippers in his ordered way and walked downstairs to the kitchen.

   ‘Kate,’ he called again, ‘Kate.’

    In response, there was howling wind and an open window. He walked over to pull it down and latch it shut as the rain fell and the wind seemed to gather momentum. Then he noticed his keys were missing, which meant his wife had gone out driving (a ridiculous notion given that she could barely fit behind the wheel) or walking in the rain. Hunt was beside himself with worry and looked at the telephone. He knew where she had gone just as surely as if she had told him herself. Although the last thing he wanted was to talk to his sister, he picked up the receiver and dialled Hareton Hall.

    Heath never expected a call in the middle of the night so he hadn’t bothered to take the telephone off the hook. He couldn’t believe someone would bother to ring so he tried to ignore the noise until, restless and unable to sleep himself, he picked up the telephone.

    ‘Yes,’ he said, sleepily and irritated. Annabelle was asleep at the other end of the hall but woke when she heard raised voices. Belle wandered into the room, wrapped in a blanket.

    Heath had spoken only a few sentences before he handed the phone to Annabelle and left the room. He dragged on his boots, riding britches and a long coat. He’d had barely any time to dress because he knew, as surely as if Hunt had told him, where Kate was.

   ‘Is it Kate? What’s wrong?’

   ‘She’s gone missing. Your brother said she’d been acting strange. She’s been cooped up. He’s worried she was coming here and something’s happened…here, you talk to him…’

    ‘Shouldn’t you ring the police?’

    ‘It will be hours before they do anything, but yes, you do that. I’m going out, I think I know where she might have gone - it will be quicker.’

    It was moments later that Annabelle realised Heath had picked all of this information up from one sentence. If Annabelle hadn’t known better she would have said her husband was a mind reader. Annabelle looked both put out and worried as she walked over to the telephone. 

    Heath could read Hunt’s mind but he’d also dreamt about her. He dreamt about Kate every night. 

    In his dream they were running along Hampstead Heath together. They were children, again. It was summer. They were bare footed and laughing as the sun shone. Heath only needed a hat and sunglasses. His dream became a nightmare as the sky darkened and the rain came down and Kate, older, turned to him with rain on her face and said, ‘Remember…when I’m missing...when we  are parted…look harder…I’ll be there… I love you…I’ll always love you…When you find me we’ll be together…forever…’

    Then he must have woken and fallen asleep again and in the next dream he was lying in Kate’s old room with all her photographs on the dressing table where she’d left them, trying to sleep but constantly woken up by a tap at the window. Rain poured down and the rattle of her tiny fingers became harder and louder until the glass shattered and a voice, Kate’s voice snarled, ‘Let me in, let me in!’ Her neck was red with blood, her skin white as snow. Venom-filled fangs were bared as she hissed…I’ve been away for eighteen years…’

     Heath had woken and gone to touch the small hand of his beloved but just as her icy fingertips moved on the broken glass of the window pane, cut and bloody, she disappeared.

    Rain poured down as Heath walked, ran, and then merged speedily through the park. The meadow was becoming an ocean of water and mud.

    ‘Kate! Katherine!’ Heath yelled, shining a torch into the mist. ‘Katherine!’ He merged faster then ran towards the glass house. A bundle of shawl, overcoat, boots and wet hair lay waiting for him, shivering in the shelter. There was a gash on her forehead. Heath walked to her and put his arms around her, holding her in an embrace that locked them together like one person.

   ‘Kate, my darling Kate, what have you done? No one knew where you were. You shouldn’t have gone out on a night like tonight…’

   Kate looked pale and her face was wet from the rain and cold which was perhaps even worse. He knew he had to normalize her body temperature and although he was getting colder by the day, his coat would warm her. He bundled her up inside it.

  ‘I’m taking you to the car, Kate. I parked it not far from here. I knew where you would be.’

   Kate stumbled to her feet as Heath helped her. ‘You wouldn’t speak to me, Heath. You stopped talking to me…’

   ‘I was desperate. I tried to forget you.’

  ‘I know. We’ve both made mistakes…’

  ‘I should never have left you. It’s all my fault…’  

   ‘No, it’s mine,’ Kate said, half delirious. ‘Oh Heath, I came back to you…’ She put her arms around his neck. He leant in and whispered, ‘I never stopped loving you’. Her voice was fading. Then she curled up in pain and cried. Heath scooped her up and lifted her from the ground. Normally, carrying a heavily pregnant woman would be difficult but Kate was surprisingly light.

   ‘We have to get you home, get you warm,’ Heath said.

   ‘I’m…I’m sorry. Forgive me for what I did. I made a mistake, should never have married Hunt…but Katarina…’

    ‘Hush,’ Heath said, ‘I know, you’re delirious.’ He placed his hand on her brow, worried that her skin was burning. ‘None of that matters now…’

    ‘It is…as if we are the same person…I cannot exist without my love…I cannot exist without you…’

   ‘Nor I you,’ Heath whispered but it wasn’t clear if Kate could hear him. He knew he had to get her to a doctor, quickly.

    Heath bundled her into the car and rang emergency.

    ‘Kate, you’re not thinking straight. Try to stay awake. We’re almost…there,’ Heath looked over, and touched her forehead which was still warm but Kate’s eyes were closed, she was slumped into the seat belt and her breath was laboured.   

(#Thirty-three: Reborn) Wuthering Nights: Inspired by Wuthering Heights

Chapter Thirty-three

Reborn   

      Heath had stayed with Kate in her room and refused to be moved until Hunt barged in and demanded to see his wife. Heath was asked to leave. He reluctantly agreed to wait in the hall after he was assured by the nurses that Kate would live through the night and the child would be safe.

    At six in the morning he was told the child had been born and both mother and baby were sleeping. Relieved, Heath sighed. Hunt walked out of the room and said, ‘She wanted to see you. They say she will be alright…she’s sleeping now. I have a son.’

     Afterwards, when he had assured himself Kate was resting peacefully, Heath went home, and fell asleep on the couch as the sun came up. He was wrapped in Kate’s old blanket. Greta pulled the drawing room curtains shut, shielding him from the harsh light that made his pale skin sizzle.

     Greta woke Heath from a slumber he never thought he’d fall into, almost as if he were drugged from lack of sleep. Greta had her coat wrapped around her. Her face was downcast yet welcoming. Heath’s mind was a sea of nothingness. Morning rose like a cloud as the faintest trickle of sun shone through the imminent afternoon storm that would lead to yet another wild night. 

      Heath rubbed his eyes.

      ‘How is she?’

     ‘The baby, the boy, is well and healthy. They have named him Edmund after his father. Annabelle has gone to help her brother with the baby…’

     ‘I wasn’t asking about the child.’ Heath said wearily.

     ‘I know you weren’t. Kate is weak. She asked to be transferred home, she asked for you.’

     Heath pulled on his sweater and drove with Greta back to The Grange. He’d never had any desire to come here again, to the house with perfectly manicured gardens. Heath had always preferred the wild, unkempt beauty of Hareton Hall. The Grange held no secrets, until now.

    Hunt was standing at the door.

   ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s you. She’s been asking for you, they say there is nothing I can do except let her rest. She lost a lot of blood but she insisted on coming home. There is a medical team with her…’

    Heath knew she hadn’t meant her home, here, at The Grange. He knew she’d meant her childhood home, Hareton Hall.

    In Hunt’s arms lay a sleeping baby with fair hair, like Edmund’s. Heath brushed past Hunt and the baby and bounded up the stairs, two at a time.

    Kate lay on the bed covered in a pale duvet. Her pain was dulled by the drip in her arm. Kate smiled when she saw Heath.

    ‘Oh Heath, you’ve come back to me,’ she whispered as he leant over her.

     Kate pulled him into her, his warm, strong body giving her the strength to speak.

    ‘I wanted to see you one last time…’

    ‘Quiet Kate…you need to rest.’

    ‘Plenty of time for that,’ she whispered. ‘I wanted to say how much…I loved you…love you still and that I have paid for my mistake…’

     ‘Quiet Kate, it is I who has paid also…for loving you…’

     ‘No…no…you don’t understand,’ Kate leant in close to him ‘…the baby is your child. I’ve named her Katarina. Please…please don’t take her from Hunt. I know he will be a…good father, but I wanted you to know the truth before I…so you can always keep a close…eye on her… my last wish is for Hunt to raise her Heath…because…’

    ‘Hush,’ Heath said, ‘You’re delusional. I know…all that is past.’

     Heath tried to hide his anger.

     Kate continued, ‘I know how…ambitious you are… there would be no place for a child in the world you seek…and because I know it will be hard for you to raise her, reminding you of me. Hunt will love her… as if she is his own.’

     Heath pushed his face into Kate’s cheek.

    ‘No Kate, you are talking madness. Don’t leave me…don’t leave us…’

    ‘I can’t…stay,’ she swallowed. ‘I’m so tired…no choice…’ A tear dropped down Heath’s face and onto her lips, paler than chalk. ‘I want you to know, there was no one in this world I loved more than you and I will love you beyond this earth...’

   ‘Don’t go…’ Heath whispered, ‘Fight…’

   ‘I dreamt, when I was under the anaesthetic, when they took the baby…I dreamt that I didn’t go to Heaven, Heath…’

    ‘Stop talking this way, Kate.’

    ‘I dreamt that I stayed with you…forever…here at The Hall…’

    ‘You’re at The Grange, Kate...’

     Kate continued, deliriously. ‘I dreamt that I haunted you…and we went to the heath every day and lay in the sun and it didn’t hurt us… we rode our horses…and had picnics and…raised Katarina…and it was as it always should have been. I never cared about…my career or travel or any of those things you enjoyed…I only ever wanted to be loved by you…to love…you. We are the same person you and I. We were never meant to be parted.’

    ‘No,’ Heath said, ‘Kate, Kate,’ he whispered ‘… I love you. I cannot live without you…’

  ‘Then don’t…’ Kate whispered. ‘Turn me…make me like you. I know you can do it…’

    Heath held her to him gently, trying to will the life back into her aching, bruised body but her breath was fading. There was blood on the sheets when she coughed. When her breathing stopped the medical staff wrestled Kate from Heath and started administering every possible remedy to her lifeless body until there was nothing further to be done.

    Kate, in her breathless whisper, asked everyone to leave; she only wanted Heath.

    Later, Heath let out a piercing scream as he stormed past Greta, who held the quiet baby boy, in the drawing room. The infant was unaware of the tragedy and commotion that was the post-script to his birth.   

(#Thirty-four: Transition) Wuthering Nights: Inspired by Wuthering Heights

Chapter Thirty-four

Transition

    In the dark, Kate had whispered, ‘Heath, you have come back to me.’

     He lifted his head, contemplating her neck, only for a second.

     Kate stirred as he leant in to whisper, ‘Don’t leave me. I cannot live without you…come back to me, come back to me... I never stopped loving you.’

    Heath pulled her arm towards him and rested his head in the crook of her shoulder.

    ‘Nor I you, I just wanted to make you... suffer. I’m sorry Kate. Stay with me, don’t leave. I cannot be without you…’

     ‘You don’t have to,’ she whispered ‘…if it’s not too late, turn me into you, even as a ghost, let me haunt you, drive you mad...’

     ‘Your transition may take…decades. Changing you will change me. Neither of us will ever be the same.’

     ‘I don’t care.’

      He had been warned by Greta that she had only minutes left. It seemed like seconds. The doctors had done all they could.

     Heath barely paused before he lifted her towards him, plunging his teeth into her wrist, then her neck. The taste of her blood was honey and nectar to him but his tears were bitter. Without her, he felt nothing. With her by his side, they were invincible. Kate shuddered and closed her eyes.

     She did not stir. Moments passed. He could hear the doctors discuss how many more seconds they should be left alone. He’d been inside Kate’s room for less than three.

      Heath turned and looked at the blackened sky. It reminded him of their shared childhoods. He resolved to take her, drag her out of the window if he had to, but physically, her recovery was quick. Her wounds began to heal, almost immediately, but the venom of a hybrid was not as strong in transition.  Heath felt weaker. He wasn’t sure this would save her.

      Kate opened her eyes, yet her skin remained white, almost translucent. The fever, hot, began to cool. Her fingers responded to his touch as he lifted her from the bed to see the view from the window, the view in the night across Hampstead Heath and towards Hareton Hall, where she grew up.

      ‘Heath,’ she said, ‘there is no man on earth I love more than I love you…’ Then she shut her eyes. Kate’s body lay mute and lifeless in his arms and Heath let out a howl in the dark that made the staff and Edmund come rushing into the room.

    ‘And that is how the story went…’ Greta said, ‘A sad story, with no happy ending.’

     Greta looked around her as she took the keys from the kitchen fruit bowl, freshly filled with blood oranges. The older woman’s eyes filled with tears.

     ‘Katarina, your mother would have been glad that you came here, to discover more about her, but now I think you should leave and think twice about coming back…You see, when we burst into the room that day… her body was lifeless. Then, they took her from him and she was buried far beneath the ground. There is no coming back from that. But people say… no body exists where she was laid to rest. Heath was raving on about immortality for days after but he was talking to a ghost.

       I tried to placate him, but he was inconsolable. She’d whispered something in his ear before she passed; something to drive him mad. He bared his teeth and hissed at me when I found him lying beside the place she was buried and to my shame… I ran. I always knew that he was different. I thought it made him special, but that night… he was beyond help. I only imagine what he may have done to bring her back…at least, partly.’

      The wind blew a gale outside. The night closed in on them.

     ‘There are ghosts here,’ Greta said. ‘And more than that, besides… You don’t want to make the same mistakes your parents did…’

(#Thirty-five) Wuthering Nights #Family: Inspired by Wuthering Heights

Chapter Thirty-five

Family

      Katarina and Hinton were seated in the Hidden Garden.

     ‘I’ve read the file, Hinton. Of course, I can’t pretend I’m not…surprised but it doesn’t change you. Not really. It really doesn’t matter to me.’

     Hinton looked surprised and hugely relieved.

    ‘I… I’ve drawn you something. When I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you. Do you…think of me?’

    ‘Do I think of you? Always.’

    ‘Meaning?’

    ‘Meaning I accept you for who you are,’ Katarina said, as she ate the lunch she’d brought. She and Hinton, both dressed in long, dark coats (Katarina wore a red beret and gloves covering the expensive bracelet her father had given her for her birthday).  They’d met here for lunch to celebrate Hinton’s win – with the help of a perfectly worded essay attached to his entry.

    ‘Finally I can spell, read and write almost perfectly, thanks to you Katarina. Although I have to admit, it still takes extra effort to translate some words.’

    ‘I am so proud of you, Hinton. What words are still difficult?’

   ‘I love you.’

    Katarina smiled.

    Hinton continued, ‘they are simple words but hard for me to say.’

    ‘I love you too,’ Katarina replied.

    Hinton could not contain his smile.

    ‘I have been thinking of the future. The truth is, Katarina, I was never very interested in school. I preferred the horses and my Art and was never very big on study, nor was Heath. We were both too wrapped up in our own little worlds; Heath and his ghost, me and my cravings. Well, we shared the cravings. Perhaps Linus is the one you should congratulate. He just got accepted into Cambridge.’

    ‘Wow. That’s amazing,’ Katarina said. ‘I have to say I’m kind of surprised. He’s so into his weekend dance parties. I didn’t realize he ever studied. I’m still waiting to hear about Art College.’

   ‘Well, I’ve been thinking, wondering. I’m planning to go travelling this summer. I was going to start in Italy, and then maybe Greece…The scholarship gives me enough money for two if I travel second class. I was hoping you might come with…’

   ‘Yes,’ Katarina said. She was barely eighteen but she knew perfect when she saw it (or perfect for her) and the love she felt for Hinton was real and present. She didn’t care what her father thought of the Spencers and she had little memory of her mother apart from the ghostly young girl on the roof that day. The thought saddened Katarina so much she put the image out of her mind and convinced herself the moment could never be replicated.

    She’d demanded an explanation from Heath the next time they spoke but he’d just dismissed her sighting and said, ‘I warned you not to go up there…’

   ‘Perhaps some things are….inexplicable,’ was all Kate could think. The girl had looked so… real, so inexplicably like her. Katarina had barely seen the pyjama-clad intruder’s face, but she remembered her clear blue eyes, flashing in the dark, a ghost, a vision, a pretty little vampire.

     Katarina understood that somewhere, way back in time, near the place she and Hinton now walked, towards the glass house on Hampstead Heath, her mother had once met Hinton’s father, a meeting that created this new moment for her now.

     In her mother’s antique locket, which she always wore (it had been passed down through generations of Spencer women), Kate had placed a photograph of her mother, and herself; together. The locket, she was sure, kept her safe. Katarina looked over at the handsome young man next to her. It was hard to believe, eight weeks ago, they had barely spoken. Now, she couldn’t imagine being without him as he took her hand and they walked across the frosty mist of the Heath.

     The truth was in the final pages of the journal. That was why Linus had given it to her to read; she knew that now. The words contained strange truths but necessary ones. Her father was not her biological father. This was something she had guessed from the early chapters of the journal. To discover her heritage was a shock, to discover she had a half-brother in Linus, was revelatory. Katarina also had a younger brother but they had been in different years at separate schools and had conflicting interests. Katarina hoped they would become closer when they were both adults. 

     She thought of the last time she had spoken to Heath. She was alone on the meadow, angry and tear-stained when she went to him. Heath had had the strangest feeling he was not alone riding his horse that day. He’d lately, in his thirties, begun to hear the thoughts of every human being he came into contact with, something he found disturbing. Once it had only happened when he listened closely. Recently his specialist had warned him about it, warned him that he’d be fully immortal if he lived past thirty, free to roam the heath forever if he wanted to, free to turn himself to ash in the sun if he did not. His image would not be betrayed in mirrors or print. After twenty-six, he’d ceased to exist in photographs entirely.

    Heath heard her angry thoughts before he saw his daughter again that day and was not surprised to see her standing before him when he turned. Katarina wore the same long coat as her mother had worn, twenty years ago. Edmund must have kept it with Kate’s things. He owed her an explanation. Before she could speak, he apologized.

     ‘Here,’ he said, handing her his waterproof jacket. ‘The rain is coming down and it will protect you from the storm.’

    They rode together to the glass house in silence. When she asked him a question, instead of replying in words, he vanished in mist.  Katarina wasn’t sure if she would ever see him again.

    Months passed. There were so many questions and so few answers that Katarina had stopped asking for them. Her own father had died before she had ever challenged him on the matters of her parentage. Edmund had been a good father to her and she had loved him and mourned his loss and that was all that mattered. Katarina had inherited The Grange.

    Heath had not once visited them but Linus came around often for dinner. The three young people had wild parties in the drawing room that were the talk of the borough and many friends from Italy and Europe came to visit. It was a world of lightness and socializing that none of them - Linus, Hinton or Katarina - ever experienced during their solitary childhoods. Heath had become more and more reclusive and barely spoke to his own son, let alone Hinton, when they moved out of Hareton Hall. By then, Heath had stopped going to work, repairing the now crumbling mansion, and never appeared at his own pub for dinner like he used to.

(#Thirty-six: Birthday Party) Wuthering Nights by Summer Day: Inspired by Wuthering Heights

Chapter Thirty-six

Birthday Party

   Almost twenty years had passed since the night she was born, and Heath remembered it was Katarina’s birthday. He’d had the gift wrapped. A gold necklace with diamonds tastefully worked into swans on the pendant. A fine piece of jewellery, new, not from the family crypt, Heath mused. He also had another gift, the deeds to Hareton Hall, made out to Linus, Katarina and Hinton.  He placed inside the envelope the gift of a round the world plane ticket, and access to the shares he had set aside for her since she was born. It was the least he could do, with all his money. He knew it would never be enough to make up for the neglect she’d suffered from him. The gift was merely a gesture and he expected nothing in return. Her desire to be friendly surprised him, given that there were so many unanswered questions about their... family. 

     Katarina was surprised that Heath remembered her birthday since he had ignored every other one and had refused an invitation to the party that evening. Instead, he had driven over to The Grange to see her. He explained he didn’t “do” parties anymore, especially ones with a Great Gatsby theme. Instead, he asked her to go walking with him across Hampstead Heath. Katarina smiled and said, ‘I’ll get my coat.’

     They walked in tandem across the meadow in the mild winter light.

    “I need to get some more decorations for tonight in Hampstead High Street,’ Katarina said, making small talk. ‘Linus will be there, you know. And Hinton would love to see you again. You never replied to my invitation, so I just assumed you…forgot.’

     ‘Do you honestly think I could forget the day you were born?’

    ‘No,’ Katarina said, ‘I suppose not.’

    ‘What was she like, my mother? People say you were both… inseparable. They talk of a ghostly teenaged girl…like the girl I saw in the rafters that day. Tell me what she was like…’

    ‘Well, at first I thought she was nothing like you, but I have changed my mind. You share the same curiosity about things you should not… and there is a determination in your manner that is similar.’

    Heath looked down at his feet.

    Katarina could hardly believe that this stranger was actually her father. After discovering her mother’s old journals she had always suspected there was a story she was never allowed to know.  She did not understood her need to reach out to this strange, alone man, who hadn’t really shown her any love. Only her mother’s journals filled in the blanks, shocking though they were to her. Deep down, there had always been something missing from her family history, something that she’d always suspected. Now she knew there was a vampire in the bloodline. She wanted to go far away from here, at least for a while.

    ‘Your eyes are the same,’ Heath said, reaching out to Katarina. He touched her hair when she stood in front of him, overlooking the meadow. Katarina could not feel or sense the touch. The man’s fingers were like the air.  

    ‘And you look, almost identical - so similar that it was hard for me, at first.’

    Then she understood, even slightly, that her mother had been right to let Hunt raise her. Her real father knew nothing about selflessness and love, or did he? He seemed to feel he owed her an explanation, however, and she was interested to hear it.

    Heath admitted he’d always known she was his.

    ‘I used to check on you from time to time. It was the reason I never left The Hall. Your mother thought Hunt should raise you and I did not object. I thought raising you in a house full of memories of your mother would not be in your best interests. Your mother and I were meant to be together, always…and I have never truly loved another…’

   ‘I know,’ Kate said.

  ‘Then you know, everything?’ he asked.

   ‘I read her journals. I know what she wrote in them. It made me understand her…and you, more. But I don’t love you. I don’t think I even like you. I have forgiven you. That is all.’

    ‘I understand,’ Heath said. ‘I owed you an explanation…but you found it yourself. I thought I was not fit to be your father…with the boys, I barely had a choice. It was…perhaps wrong of me not to claim you. It was Kate’s wish that you be raised at The Grange. I think she thought it was less…haunted than Hareton Hall.’

    Heath touched his daughter’s cheek and walked on. He wandered further ahead of Katarina, ending the brief moment of rare and unexpected closeness between them.

    He added as an afterthought, ‘Your mother would be very proud to see you as you are.’

     Heath moved quickly and deliberately. Katarina was left standing alone in silence once again.

(#Thirty-seven) Wuthering Nights: Eternal by Summer Day: Inspired by Wuthering Heights

Chapter Thirty-seven

Eternal

    The Grange was decorated like something out of the 1920s. Light filled the room. It was surprising to Katarina that she felt so happy. Hinton had not expected her acceptance. Together they worked.

        Though she could only recall the length of her mother’s hair, her large, pretty eyes and the warmth of her touch – barely – Kate’s writing brought her back to Katarina. She could not, of course, detail her transformation into the girl in the attic that day and Katarina resolved that the more fantastical elements of her visit to The Hall might have been a terrible dream or vision.

      Katarina had each of the journals stored in a locked drawer of her desk. They represented a year of Kate’s life on this earth, and Katarina had read all of them. The words began in large, childish letters, written in an unsophisticated way. Kate had skipped forward to the good parts, and that was how she knew that Heath was her father, although she never thought of him as that. Not yet. Not ever. They were how she had learnt of the existence of hybrids and humans and vampires and bloodsucking and night terrors. It was where she began to believe in the secrets of the impossible.

     The day in the mist, the last time Katarina had seen him, had been the day he started to disappear. Heath had begun to move faster, some say at the speed of light. His powers were so diverse now. He thought they might have brought him happiness but eternity without the one he loved was…worthless. He waited for her.

      It was not meant to be that way. He’d been waiting for a long time. But a vampire turned by a hybrid is the longest hibernation of all. Twenty years, he’d been told. And even then, she’d need another eight to reach maturity (girl hybrids aged until twenty-eight when they sometimes attained immortality). It was a risk. There was a chance.  

     For twenty years the teenage girl had hidden and grown, showing herself only in the early dawn of first light. She could not speak to him or any other person, let alone touch them. Recently, she began to attain human form, as she had been the day she saw Katarina.

      For the past month, Kate had come to him in the night, older, not translucent anymore, still talkative, like a child. Her skin had transformed from see through to pale. She no longer took the form of a ghost.

     Heath was preparing their first moments together. Their first trip to Italy, where he intended to take her, was to coincide with Kate’s twenty-first birthday as a hybrid. He’d been told it was different for women. She’d take longer to emerge.

    Tomorrow would be the day. Tomorrow eternity began.

    Kate had writhed in pain for months in her attic space, hidden in corners, curled up in blankets. Heath had wandered the heath in the evening to spare himself the pain of her suffering. No one else could hear or see her and he couldn’t help her, could not even touch her. He was sure she must regret her choice but when her memory returned, from the wild dark spirit she had become, she reminded him constantly, how much she loved him. It was the pain of seeing Katarina for the first time that rendered her silent. Unable to speak to her grown child, or touch her, she’d disappeared for a long time into the dark. No one could ever find her when they went looking, not even Heath. Kate languished in a ghostly form, pined to hold her daughter, longed to take human shape. It was no use.

    Tomorrow, however, they would be free to roam together. Heath would give up his human form for now and they would no longer be seen by the rest of the world, at least until her transition was complete. One day hybrids and vampires would be accepted by the human race but that day had not yet arrived and it would not be safe for them to reveal themselves. Those were the rules. Being hybrid, Heath could only turn one human and that human, being part vampire, had had to wait two decades for restoration. Kate’s form would be human, her body hybrid, with all the term implied. Neither of them would ever look older than their mid-twenties. Heath would be there to help her final transition, to encourage her, to love her.

     He had been travelling, on a tour of his European offices as she had languished in hibernation in The Hall. Over the years she looked on in agony as the children grew. They were her greatest joy. On occasion she visited Katarina at night, resting her face on the child’s cheek, mindful she could never actually touch her. Eventually, she hoped they would discover an elixir; that instead of vanishing together, (the price Heath would pay for her complete transformation), they would be revealed simultaneously. 

     Heath had told no one he was winding up the companies in America and selling most of his property. It took many weeks. When he returned to London he only left the house to go riding on his favourite horse and sometimes he went for long walks across Hampstead, through the park, and back again. Kate was transforming. Her image appeared to him more than briefly, for moments, and in daylight, not just dreams. He’d become more and more silent to the point where even Greta, who had long ago realized that Heath was not like other men, had taken to worrying constantly about him.

    He would miss Greta and the children, who were now grown but they would not miss him. He knew it.

   He’d stopped pestering the boys about study or work, stopped worrying about the future of his companies (they would cease to exist soon enough and the cash signed over to Katarina, Linus and Hinton). Heath had long ago stopped asking about any of his old rivals and acquaintances, stopped being interested in the world around him.

    That night, before the morning of change, when Hinton, Linus and Katarina came to see him, he was congratulatory but distant. Linus seemed more terse than usual and Katarina and Hinton were blissful in each other’s company. The general malaise which Heath had embraced now seemed to affect all areas of his life. He had long since ceased trying to control the younger generation around him. He even congratulated Linus on his new start at University, he told him he was ‘extremely proud of him, whatever he chose to do but that “enjoying life” was just as important as a formal education.’

      It was all very out of character, according to Greta, who left early after the party that night. Heath had relented and made a brief appearance after Katarina left another invitation at The Hall. Hinton insisted on kissing her goodbye on the cheek and hugged her. His body was cool, his breath light. He assured her he was feeling perfectly alright.

     The next morning, Greta noticed Heath’s bed had not been slept in and he’d lost weight, so much weight that suits hung off him, but he’d stopped wearing them, anyway. Greta had long since stopped suggesting he take anti-depressants. Heath just laughed and told her he didn’t need her help or anyone else’s.

     Something strange happened in the silence and emptiness of Hareton Hall when he returned. These days, it wasn’t just when he slept. The attic was inhabited by a young girl, there was no question. Greta invaded the attic one day and found packets of lollies, uneaten crisps, shoes, socks, dresses, ancient dolls and ribbons. Then there were the strange, empty vials of elixir which looked like…blood.

   The first time Kate came to him in human form, he’d been in the drawing room attending to the paperwork on his latest company acquisition. He looked up to see some birds flying beyond where Hareton Hall was situated. They looked so free, so wild.

    It was three in the afternoon and a clear day. No one was in the house, on the floor where the study was, yet all his pens and papers had been sorted into neat piles when he walked back to his desk.

    It had been eighteen human years since he’d seen her. He sat on his favourite chair and felt a reach on his shoulder, like a whisper, the touch of her hands was so light, so transient.

    ‘Kate.’

    ‘Heath.’

    ‘I knew you’d come back to me,’ he said.

    He held her hand for a moment and looked at her perfect face until she was gone.

    From that moment, he searched for her with some hope of finding her transitioned and whole. He was reminded of the night he begged her as she lay lifeless on her bed, ‘Come back to me, Kate. Haunt me, drive me mad…’

   ‘Only if you turn me, change me…make me yours forever.’ Somehow the timing was wrong. Somehow they’d met in the middle and once again, they’d been kept apart, made to wait. Both of them like ghosts, only one of them real.

    That day, she must have heard him.

    He tried to put the image of her from his mind, at first, because it interfered with work, with his day. For many years, she only visited at night in what he tried to believe were his dreams.

    When Hinton came to stay, permanently, after Harrison had drunk himself stupid and wished to stay in the cottage, I insisted Hinton should stay in the main house and Heath should hire more help (he did, without question or interest). Heath always seemed distracted and secretive, for a reason, Greta wrote in the journals I read that night, after my final visit to Hareton Hall. I had as soft a spot for Hareton as I had for Heath, she wrote. Although I know I helped to raise a wolfish man, you must understand how difficult life had been for him and how his ambition had been fuelled by his loss and his early life and his…condition. Both Heath and Kate, both young and headstrong, helped to create the adult paths their lives had taken, but they deserved better. They deserved to be together, it is just a shame they managed to hurt so many people in the process. Although Annabelle remarried and found happiness at last - becoming the manager of her own gallery…’ Greta added as an afterthought.

     Heath wandered up the stairs that final night, with a copy of Kate’s favourite novel, Jane Eyre, in his hands. He placed it by the bed next to her photograph. He’d removed the photograph when Annabelle had lived with him here, but it hadn’t helped him forget Kate. He’d read Jane Eyre when he was younger, at Kate’s insistence, unable to see the parallels to their own isolated existence and the seeking of great love.