LET ME IN

"The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in – let me in!’ ‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. ‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of LINTON? I had read EARNSHAW twenty times for Linton) – ‘I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor!’ As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window.”

A ghostly feminine perfume rising from the stiff binding of old diaries. Violet leaf and antique rose curl through the air, smeared with ink.

1924 illustration by Percy Tarrant, courtesy of the British Library