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One of the most haunting dreams in English literature is that of Lockwood in Wuthering Heights, when he first becomes a ‘tenant’ of Mr Heathcliff and spends the night in the closet-bed of Catherine Earnshaw/Linton. This, with its window on the moor, represents the dream-chamber at the core of the moor-mind governing the interaction of the two houses of Linton and Earnshaw at opposite poles of the mental landscape:
‘I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch: instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!
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 — terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes; still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear.1