Jane of Fire

by Jessica Penot

  “Do you spend a lot of time climbing?” I asked as I looked at Edward. He seemed so peaceful, so happy.

  “No,” he said. “I used to when I was a boy growing up here, but after my parents died, everything changed.”

  He turned to me. “How about you, Jane?” he asked. His eyes were staring into mine with that intense look that I loved. “Have you ever been on the top of a mountain?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m boring. This is the farthest I’ve ever been from home.”

  “You belong here; you know that? There is something about you that fits in with all of this natural beauty.”

  I moved away from him. I put my feet on the edge of a precipice that looked out over the valley. I leaned into the wind and let it tangle my hair and pull at my scarf. The air was fresh and clean and smelled of campfire and old leaves. The warm sun bathed my face in heat and the wind pushed the heat away and cooled me.

  “We should go back,” I said. I turned and started back down the mountain. He let me lead the way on the journey. He followed silently behind me.

  We returned to Thornfield just before dark and were greeted by Mrs. Fairfax. She seemed worried. She told Edward that there was a gentleman waiting for him in the study. Edward and I made our way there. A fire danced in the stone fireplace and a thin, red-haired man sat in the large leather armchair by the fire. He looked like he was in his late twenties.

  The smile vanished from Edward’s face and the scowl, I had gotten to know so well in our first encounters, replaced it. Edward turned to me.

  “Leave,” he growled at me.

  I looked at him for a minute. I was stunned. I hadn’t expected his harshness. He had been so kind and I had begun to feel like we were good friends.

  “Are you deaf!” he yelled at me. “I said you need to leave.”

  I turned and ran from the room. I fled upstairs to my bedroom and fell onto my bed. I buried my face in the pillow. I wondered if I’d ever know what to expect from Edward and his ever-changing moods. As soon as I thought I knew him, he changed.

  I ate dinner with Miss Adele and Mrs. Fairfax. Edward didn’t join us. The nurse took the evening off. It was getting harder and harder to find nurses that were willing to work with Miss Adele. As I tried to feed her that night, the soup dripped from her mouth onto her lap. She didn’t even seem to understand how to chew or swallow her meal. She looked at me blankly. She didn’t speak anymore and when she did she only talked about fire. The fire is coming. Let it all burn. Let it all burn. Let it all burn. She was like a metronome.

  Mrs. Fairfax cleaned up after dinner and I took care of Miss Adele. I gave her a sponge bath and brushed her thinning hair. I cleaned her dentures and helped her into her pajamas. She didn’t fight me. She was calm, but no one was home inside her head. She just stared into vacant space. I gave her the drug-laced tea and she was able to swallow most of it. I put her to bed and she just stared at the ceiling. She seemed catatonic. I didn’t know much about medicine. I wasn’t even a med student yet, but I knew her decline from semi-functional to completely catatonic was odd. I wondered why the nurses hadn’t noticed.

  I crawled into bed with my favorite Christmas book, A Christmas Carol. I drifted away into the novel. I was so lost in the story that I didn’t hear the yelling, at first. It was the thump that roused me. I sat up. There was another thump and then a shout that sent shivers down my spine. I got out of bed and ran toward the yell. I stumbled through the halls and up into the red tower where I’d found Edward’s girlfriend’s journal. I burst into the room.

  Chapter 6

  Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.

  ~ Emily Bronte

  The man who had come to see Edward was lying on the bed. His shirt was torn and soaked in blood. Blood covered him and the floor. Edward was holding a towel over the man’s abdomen. The man was yelling in unspeakable pain. He was a mangled mess. I took a deep breath and ran to Edward’s side. I took the towel from him and put pressure on the wound. Edward looked panicked. He clearly didn’t know what to do. Calm spread over me.

  “Elevate his legs,” I said. “And call an ambulance quickly.”

  I grabbed a couple of pillows and put them under the man’s legs and told Edward to call 9-1-1. I was left alone with the blood-soaked man, putting as much pressure on his wound as I could. The man yelled, again, and I grabbed a pillow from the bed and switched from the towel to the pillow. The towel was so saturated with blood it wouldn’t stop the blood flow anymore. The man grabbed my arm and looked at me with wild green eyes.

  “It’s all right,” I promised him. “The ambulance will be here soon.”

  He slid his hand down my arm and put his hand in mine. He squeezed it as tightly as he could and I squeezed back. “Don’t leave me alone,” he said. “I don’t want to die here. Stay with me.”

  “You aren’t going to die,” I said. “The wound hasn’t hit any major organs. The abdomen is just profusely vascularized and has an extraordinary number of nerves in it. It is going to hurt like fire, but you won’t die. The paramedics are on their way.”

  “Hold me,” he yelled.

  I pulled his head onto my lap and continued applying pressure to his wound. He squeezed my hand so tightly I thought I might lose blood flow in it. He started shaking and yelling again, and I did the only thing I could. I kept pressure on the wound and held his hand. I let him scream and carry on. “There is something here!” he wailed. “It isn’t human. It isn’t human. It has my sister. The monster has my sister. She is trapped. Help me!”

  Edward came up the stairs with the paramedics. One of the paramedics pushed me out of the way and took over. He began working on the wound and a second paramedic started an IV. The man calmed down very quickly.

  “What happened?” the second paramedic asked.

  “He fell,” Edward answered.

  The paramedic looked incredulous. “This doesn’t look like a fall. It looks like he was mauled by a tiger.”

  “It was a bad fall,” Edward said.

  “My sister!” the man cried out. “It has my sister! Please God! Please! It will kill us all.”

  “His sister is dead,” Edward said. “He must be delirious.”

  “Bertha! Bertha!” he yelled.

  One of the paramedics gave him a shot of something and he stopped thrashing and screaming. He fell asleep quickly and they carried him out on the stretcher. Edward and I followed behind the paramedics and helped them navigate the labyrinth that was Thornfield.

  When the paramedics drove away, I became aware that I was standing in the foyer in nothing but a blood-soaked t-shirt. I felt cold and naked. I squirmed to make sure my shirt covered my tattoo. Edward must have seen me squirming because he quickly wrapped his jacket around my shoulders.

  “What happened?” I asked into the cold

  “He fell,” Edward said.

  “I can’t believe that,” I said.

  “He fell down the stairs and gashed his side on a nail.”

  I turned to Edward. I was too tired to deal with mysteries and lies. “I think I’m going to bed.”

  He reached out and grabbed my hand. He had blood all over him and it was dripping from his shirt and pooling at my toes. I knew, in that moment, that he really wanted me. I saw the longing in his eyes and I drew back. I pulled away from him in fear. I didn’t want to die. Superstition and fear drove me. In that moment, I was really afraid of the curse and I was afraid of myself.

  “Stay with me,” he said.

  “I’m cold,” I answered.

  He let go of my hand and I walked back upstairs to my room. I showered and washed the blood from me and put on a flannel nightgown. I crawled into bed and grabbed the old journal I had found in the tower room. Bertha’s journal. I closed my eyes and I could still hear that man screaming. I could hear him screaming her name, over a
nd over again.

  The Rochester curse had killed his sister.

  Chapter 7

  Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it pure daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.

  ~ H. P. Lovecraft

  The next morning, I waited for Edward in the sitting room. I wanted to talk to him about what had happened in the night. I needed him to make sense of it. I just couldn’t believe the man’s wound had come from falling down the stairs. I didn’t wait long before Mrs. Fairfax emerged from the hallway.

  “I knew you’d be here,” she commented. “Edward wanted me to let you know that he had to go to the airport to get Blanche. Also, someone called looking for you. They said you weren’t answering your cell phone. I took a message.”

  She handed me a plain white slip of paper. I took it and read the words carefully. Mrs. Blankenship was dying. She wanted to see me before she left this world. She had been trying to call me. I took my phone out of my pocket and looked at it. I wondered how long the battery had been dead and slipped the phone back in my pocket.

  I thought of Helen as I packed my bag to go home. I remembered our journey to Thornfield together. I missed her so much it hurt. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve her abandoning me, but it didn’t even matter. She was gone and Edward was off picking his girlfriend up from the airport. I was alone. I had to remember that.

  I waited for Edward to return and caught up with him when he was alone. Blanche was resting and I found Edward in the library looking through the journal of letters I had given him. He was studying the notes carefully. His eyes lingered on each page the way a lover might linger over a kiss. I hated to interrupt him, but time was of the essence.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said as I approached him.

  Edward looked up at me. His face was creased with worry. His mouth was twisted in anger and his eyes shone with some violent emotion I didn’t understand. I stood back. His moods were like the winter weather and I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to handle another of his storms.

  “My foster mother has taken ill and I need to go home and visit her,” I said.

  He stood up and walked to me. It didn’t matter that I had backed away, he put himself so close to me that we could have kissed. I met his gaze. I didn’t want to back down from him anymore. I looked into his amazing blue-green eyes and held my ground.

  “And what should I do while you’re gone?” he asked.

  “You could hire a temporary night companion for your grandmother or perhaps you could move down to her end of the hall to watch for her nightly wanderings. Maybe Blanche could help you.”

  “Don’t you know there is no one else who could help me?”

  “That’s nonsense. Even Mrs. Fairfax could fill my position for a few nights while I go to stay with my foster mother.”

  “Go then,” he said. He turned his back to me and went back to reading the letters.

  “I haven’t been paid this month,” I said.

  He took out his wallet and handed me a wad of cash. He grabbed my fingers and held them as the money passed into my hand. I pulled away from him. He was toying with me. How could he be so flirtatious with me when his girlfriend was napping upstairs? I flushed with anger and frustration. What was he doing? I looked at the stack of bills in my hand. They were all hundreds.

  “This is far too much,” I said.

  He took the money back and handed me two 100-dollar bills.

  “This isn’t enough.”

  “You’ll have to come back for the rest,” he said.

  I turned to leave, but he stopped me. He put his hand on my shoulder. I wanted to take his hand. I wanted to turn and throw myself into his arms, but I wouldn’t be made into a fool. I wouldn’t let him break my heart while his girlfriend was in the same house.

  “Come back to me,” he said as I walked away.

  I had to jumpstart the Jeep. It had been so long since I had used it the battery had died. I had saved a significant amount of money by not driving. I threw my bag in the back of it and started my long journey home.

  Chapter 8

  The darkness always teemed with unexplained sound - and yet he sometimes shook with fear lest the noises he heard subside and allow him to hear certain other fainter noises which he suspected were lurking behind them.

  ~ H.P. Lovecraft

  I didn’t get to see Mrs. Blankenship my first night home. The hospice nurse, who was watching over her at night, didn’t want me to wake her. I settled myself into my old bedroom. It wasn’t as cold as it had been. Mrs. Blankenship must have found some money. In fact, everything seemed better. Except for the stench of death in the air, it could have been a happy home. There was food in the cupboards and the fridge was full. All the lights were on and the entire house was warm. It felt like the home I’d wished for when I was living there.

  I watched a couple of movies on cable before I went to bed. I didn’t realize how much I had missed real television at Thornfield until I had it that night. I fell asleep with the TV on in my room. It must have been well after 3 a.m. when I woke up. The television was blaring. The screen was filled with static. It was as if someone had suddenly turned the volume up. I got out of bed and turned the television off. It was freezing. I could see my breath in front of me.

  I jumped back into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. I closed my eyes for a minute and then I felt someone’s hand on mine. I opened my eyes and Helen was lying next to me in the bed. She was curled up beside me under the covers.

  “Helen!” I cried out. I wrapped my arms around my friend and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry. I’m not sure what I did to drive you away, but I’ll do whatever I have to do to make things better between us.”

  Helen hugged me back. She squeezed me so tightly I could barely breathe. “Forgive me,” she said. “It wasn’t you. You’re awesome. You know that. It was that place. I can’t see you anymore. Something isn’t right.”

  I sat up and looked at Helen. “It scared you that much?”

  Helen shrugged. “You know me. I’m not afraid of much, but I can’t go back there.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you remember how we met?”

  I tried to remember. It was strange. There was a blank spot in my memory. I couldn’t remember how I’d met Helen. It was like she’d always been there. I didn’t have many memories without her. I knew that I hadn’t met her when I was at Mrs. Reed’s house. Mrs. Reed had been my second foster parent, just before Mrs. Blankenship and her husband. It was funny, but I couldn’t remember my first foster home…I thought it was because I was so young…

  Helen took my hand and held it warmly. I looked at her, into her beautiful blue eyes, and I started to remember…Those terrible memories I had made myself forget. I remembered things I loathed to think about. I saw my first foster father, Bob Ferguson. I saw his wicked sneer and greasy hair. He used to sit on the sofa with a beer balanced on his gut after dinner. He would look at me in a way that made me want to vanish. He would grin at me and tell me to sit on his lap. I never did, and he would get so mad. I remembered hiding in the closet when he got mad. He would lash out at everyone around him. I could hear my foster mother howling with rage as he hit her. She was no lamb and she’d hit back. I could hear things breaking. My foster mother was gone most of the time and when she wasn’t there to abuse, Bob turned to us.

  I’d always felt safe in that closet. I would hide behind a stack of old boxes. I knew no one would find me there, but I wasn’t alone. I had never been alone in that closet. Helen was there. Helen and I sat in the back of the closet together. We’d hold hands. She’d had long hair then. It had been so pretty. I used to braid it for her. It was long and straight and silky and black. I could remember the day we cut it. She had come to me after school with te
ars in her eyes.

  “Please help me,” she’d said, weeping. “I don’t want long hair anymore. You have to help me cut it. I have to cut it all off.

  I never understood her then. Why would she want to cut her beautiful, long, black hair? I hadn’t understood why anyone would want to be ugly when they were so beautiful, but I loved her. I loved her like a sister, so I helped her cut it. I took the scissors and cut it so short that she was almost bald. I cried and cried because it was so short, but she hugged me tight and told me it would be all right.

  We tried to hide in the closet that night. She and I sat in the darkest part of our secret world, with our backs pressed up to the wood. We each held our stuffed animals in our arms. Helen told me we would always be together. Helen looked at me with such urgency. I could remember what she’d said: “Don’t try to help me, Jane. No matter what happens, just cover your ears and don’t try to help me. Stay in the closet. Stay hidden.”

  I opened my eyes and let the memories fade away. I didn’t want to remember anymore. It hurt too much. “You were my foster sister,” I whispered.

  “I was,” Helen said. Helen was crying. I could see tears flowing down her cheeks.

  “Do you remember why they took you out of our house? Do you remember why you were moved?” Helen asked

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to remember anymore.”

  Helen ran her hand through my hair. “Jane, sweet Jane. You can’t hide from the past forever. You have to remember now.”

  Chapter 9

  Memories and possibilities are even more hideous than realities.

  ~ H.P. Lovecraft

  The memories washed over me like a flood. They came so quickly I thought I might drown in them. They washed over me and pulled me back into that closet. I was six years old again and Helen was nine. We were holding each other in the darkness of that closet and we could hear him coming. He was calling for her. He was calling for Helen. He found us. He found us, and he grabbed Helen by the arm and dragged her out of the closet and into the bedroom. I could hear her screaming, but I didn’t dare look at what he was doing to her. I closed my eyes. I could hear her begging him to stop, but there was no stopping him.