It’s morning again, Monday now, and I’m still training a blotch of yellow decay to wiggle across the carpet when I hear her. Bee down the hall in her bed, having another nightmare.

“Get it out of me,” she wheezes, as I rush into her room.

That thing inside her is moving fast, stretching her skin taut and translucent. She scratches at her own arms, again and again, raking her nails across her flesh, until she’s raw and bleeding.

But no, bleeding isn’t the right word. Whatever’s inside her isn’t red and flowing. It’s gray and crawling, viscous as oil, and when a drop of it hits the marble floor, it tries to escape, tries to dart across to the wall. I chase after it, stomping on it again and again until it’s crushed to dust on the hardwood floor.

Bee perches on the edge of the mattress, tears streaking her cheeks. “Thank you,” she says, her arms already scabbed over, holding back the rest of what’s inside her. Her own sort of decay. The only alimony Rochester ever gave her.

It’s taken me years to piece it together from the things Bee let slip in moments of grief. How the Rochesters were a family of bitter landlords, counting every shilling and every grudge. Generation after generation, wringing the life out of the land, out of the people. And if you couldn’t keep up with them, couldn’t keep up with the rent and the grueling work and the grueling hours, then one day you’d return home to find the locks changed and everything you ever owned whisked away, a final payment for your debts.

That was what the Rochesters used the attic at Thornfield for, to store all the things they repossessed from the dispossessed. Cradles for babies too sick to see their first birthdays. Wedding veils and mourning veils and funerary shrouds with yellow stains too terrible to fathom. Heirloom jewelry and silverware and little trinkets that meant nothing except to the people who once cherished them. Hopes and dreams left to rot in the dark. Left for years to ferment into something else, something sentient.

Something vengeful.

Poison the world long enough, and the world will figure out a way to poison you back.

When Rochester finally discovered it there, that writhing thing his family had inadvertently created, he should have been afraid. He should have begged for mercy. But that was never his style. He welcomed it instead, letting it seep into his skin like rancid oil, and when he felt its power, the way it was eternal and made him eternal too, he decided it wasn’t a monstrosity at all. He decided it was a gift. Something worth sharing. Something worth tricking his new bride up into that attic.