Wuthering Bites by Sarah Gray Read Free Book Online

master believed the boy had saved his life and that it was the great spilling of blood that kept the vampires from sniffing them out. They say the beasties smell the way they hear, with supernatural powers!”
    â€œReally?” I asked, enthralled with the tale. “Master Earnshaw believed the gypsy had saved him? Shouldn’t that have changed his wife and family’s opinion of the foundling?”
    â€œShould and would are often far apart,” she replied philosophically as she began to stitch a nightcap, drawing her needle in and out as she continued her story.
    â€œThe Earnshaw children entirely refused to have the gypsy boy in bed with them or even in their room, so I put him on the landing of the stairs, hoping he might be gone on the morrow. Instead, he crawled into Mr. Earnshaw’s bedchamber and was found at the foot of the bed when daylight came.
    They christened him ‘Heathcliff.’ It was the name of a son who died in childhood, and it has served him ever since, both for Christian and surname.
    Miss Cathy and he became very thick, but Hindley hated him, and to say the truth I did the same. In those days, we didn’t realize how badly the moors would become infested with the vampires, or how greatly we would need the slayers.”
    â€œSo the boy was of slayer stock?” I exclaimed. “I knew it!” I wanted to ask how the rumor could have started that he was a vampire, if all knew he was a gypsy, but I didn’t dare.
    â€œNo one knew for sure what he was, except us, below-stairs.” She looked up at me. “A matter of speech, you understand, sir, for no one could abide long in the cellars of Wuthering Heights. There are dark tunnels there, you see, and a great, dark hole covered with an iron slab. Some say the hole leads to hell.” She began to stitch again. “Not that I’m superstitious, you understand, but some do say it.”
    â€œWell, it certainly makes sense. The gypsy orphan knowing to hide in the haystack whilst the others were slain,” I agreed. As for the entrance to hell she described, I was unsure what I thought, but I was too eager to have her continue to allow her to digress too far. “Tell me more about the child Heathcliff,” I urged, sliding up in my comfortable chair.
    He seemed a sullen, patient child who had an aversion to the few sunny days we saw on these moors. He was hardened, perhaps, to the ways of his people, we would guess later. He would stand Hindley’s blows without winking or shedding a tear, as if he had hurt himself by accident and nobody was to blame.
    This endurance made old Earnshaw furious when he discovered his son was persecuting the poor, fatherless child. He took to Heathcliff strangely, believing all he said. There seemed some bond between them we did not understand.
    So, from the very beginning, Heathcliff bred bad feelings in the house. At Mrs. Earnshaw’s death two years later, the young master had learnt to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as a usurper of his father’s affections, and he grew bitter with brooding over these injuries.
    I sympathized awhile, but when the children fell ill of the measles, and I had to tend them, I changed my idea of Heathcliff. He was dangerously sick; however, I will say this, he was the quietest child that I ever watched over. The difference between him and the others forced me to be less partial. Cathy and her brother harassed me terribly; he was as uncomplaining as a lamb, though hardness, not gentleness, made him give little trouble.” She knotted her thread, threaded her needle once more, and began to hem the lace around the outside of the cap. “It made me certain he was a gypsy brat. They aren’t like us, sir. Not even human, perhaps.”
    â€œBut he recovered,” I prompted, wanting to hear more facts firsthand.
    â€œHe got through, and the doctor affirmed it was in a great