Raising Demons

by Shirley Jackson

  I had already discovered that during the short space of the summer we had accumulated so much more property that it was not going to fit in the car going home, so I had borrowed cartons from the grocer in our summer town and packed them with whatever I could fit in, and mailed them off home, where the postman, thinking that we would have enough to worry about in our moving without coming down to the post office to pick up packages, had taken them up one evening on his way home and dropped them off on the front porch of our new house. As a result we were able to fit into the car very nicely going home, with the dog, the cats, the children, the typewriters, the coin collection, the baby carriage, and the picnic hamper, although our departure, full of sad goodbyes, was a little marred by the discovery that I had put the car keys in an old pocketbook which was in a carton now on the front porch of our new house, and we had to unpack the glove compartment of the car to get the spare car keys and in order to unpack the glove compartment we had to clear the front seat of the car because we were crammed in so tight.

  When we got home it was later than we had expected, around two o’clock, and our new house was waiting for us, eager, expectant, and empty, with the cartons on the front porch. The front door was unlocked and so, we discovered, were all the other doors. There was a great tangle of door keys in the kitchen sink of the downstairs front, but none of them fit any of the doors in the house. Inside, divided among the several rooms of the downstairs front, were our two hundred cartons of books, spread judiciously so that their combined weight would not go through the floor. The phone in the downstairs front had been disconnected, and Laurie went around and in the downstairs back and reported, shouting through the kitchen wall, that that phone had been disconnected, too. Then he went out and up to the upstairs back, where that phone had been disconnected, and around and up to the upstairs front, and of course that phone had been disconnected, too. Barry was still in the car, in his car bed, and so were the coin collection, the typewriters, the picnic hamper, and the box with Ninki and her five kittens. I got into the car and drove down to the railroad station where there was a pay phone. I looked up the number of the E. J. Cobb Storage and Transfer Company, and when I got Mr. Cobb on the phone I said well, here we were, and was our furniture on the way over?

  Mr. Cobb was quiet for a minute, and then he gave a little silly laugh. “Look,” he said, “I certainly do hope that you’re not going to be sore at me or anything.”

  “Why on earth should I be sore at you or anything?” I asked. “I only called to find out about the furniture.”

  Mr. Cobb laughed the silly little laugh again. “I know how you ladies all like to have things arranged just so,” he said. “My wife—”

  “My furniture.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Cobb. “See, the men got the small truck all loaded for you. All ready. That truck could roll right now.”

  There was a long silence. Finally Mr. Cobb started all over again. “I know how you ladies like to have everything just so,” he said. “I just hope you’re not going to be sore at me.”

  “I think after all I am going to be sore at you,” I said.

  “Mostly,” Mr. Cobb said in an aggrieved tone, “mostly, people are always rushing you and telling you to be sure and certainly get their furniture right there and ready to roll at exactly a certain time. And then mostly those same people don’t even bother to be there or anything. Mostly, you can figure if you deliver the furniture on the day they say, why, there won’t even be anyone there to sign for it. That’s just the way it goes,” he finished brightly.

  “I suppose it is,” I said. “Now, about our furniture. Right now we don’t even have a place to sit down, so if you could—”

  “I could send over a bench or something,” Mr. Cobb said.

  The operator cut in, to say that my three minutes were up, and I could hear Mr. Cobb’s phone hang up emphatically. I had to go to the ticket agent to get change, and when I came back I had to look up the number of the E. J. Cobb Storage and Transfer Company again, and this time the phone was answered by a female voice. I told her who I was and asked for Mr. Cobb.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Mr. Cobb is out of town.”

  “He was there just a minute ago.”

  She turned away from the phone and spoke to someone. “—had to hurry—” a voice said indistinctly in the background. “I’m sorry,” she said into the phone again. “Mr. Cobb has just left for Philadelphia. He was in a great rush to catch his train. What?” she said off the phone. “Oh. He probably won’t be back before Thursday,” she said to me.

  “I see,” I said. “Well, I don’t really want Mr. Cobb in any case. I want my furniture.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “If it’s furniture you want, you will have to speak to the foreman.”

  “Then let me speak to the foreman,” I said.

  “Just a minute,” she said, “I’ll see if he’s in. Freddie,” she called, off the phone, “you know that load of goods was supposed to be put on yesterday and Ed forgot? You got enough on to go? Well, you come and talk to her, then.”

  There was another silence, and then a man’s voice on the phone. “Yeah?” he said.

  “What about my furniture? It was supposed to be delivered at noon today.”

  “You the lady with the goods supposed to go out today?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I am.”

  “Well, that goods is not loaded yet.” He thought. “We ain’t got it on the trucks,” he explained.

  “Why not?” It was getting warm in the telephone booth, and I opened the door.

  “Because we didn’t load it on yet. Ed says to tell you he’s sorry and he hopes you ain’t sore.”

  “Your three minutes are up,” said the operator, and the foreman said “boyoboy,” and hung up.

  I had one more nickel and before I looked up the number of the E. J. Cobb Storage and Transfer Company I took a deep breath and planned roughly what I was going to say so I would not have to waste any of my three minutes. When I rang the number again Mr. Cobb answered. “Hello?” he said. “Cobb Storage.”

  “All right, now,” I began, and Mr. Cobb gasped.

  “This is the Cobb Storage Company,” he said in a different, high voice. “Did you want something?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And if you are Mr. Cobb you had better get onto that train you are in such a hurry to catch, and I am warning you right now that Philadelphia is not half far enough and Thursday is not half long enough because in approximately four minutes I am going to arrive at the E. J. Cobb Storage and Transfer Company with a crowbar and when I get there I am going to come into the E. J. Cobb Storage and Transfer Company warehouse with my crowbar and when I come in I am going to start swinging that crowbar right and left smashing whatever is closest, and if whatever is closest turns out to be Freddie that is going to be all right although I would rather it were Mr. Cobb or his secretary. And,” I went on, raising my voice, “now I think of it I am going to bring Mr. Tillotson the policeman and my lawyer with me and I am going to have you arrested for stealing even if you are not Mr. Cobb at all. And after I have you arrested for stealing I am going to call our insurance company over at the bank and tell them that every stick of furniture we own has been stolen with malice aforethought by Mr. Cobb of the E. J. Cobb Storage and Transfer Company and we want to collect all our insurance on it so we can buy more to replace what Mr. Cobb has stolen, and left us without even anything to sit on. And then I am going to send you the bill for hotel accommodations for our family of six from now until we get furniture for our house, and our dog will have to board at the kennel and so will our six cats, and then I think I am going to bring suit against Mr. Cobb for extreme mental anguish brought about by his stealing all our furniture so we came home to an empty house with nothing to sit down on.” I stopped for breath.

  “I am extremely sorry that you are taking this attitude,” Mr. Cobb
said.

  That is a phrase which has always annoyed me. I raised my voice a little higher, and the ticket agent, who had been craning his neck around the corner of the ticket booth, ducked back down inside.

  “Now look,” I said, “I am not going to be insulted by some trifling little insignificant worm of a storage and transfer man who scratches and mars and steals people’s furniture and I should think that you could regard yourself as pretty lucky because I have not really lost my temper yet, but I am going to if you keep talking about attitudes because what attitude can people take when they have no place to sit down? And if you think for one minute that you can retire to Philadelphia with the profits from stealing our furniture you are very much mistaken, because the next person you will deal with will be my husband and he is not a poor defenseless woman.”

  “If you would try to be calm,” Mr. Cobb said.

  “And I am not going to be insulted on top of everything else and if you think you can talk that way to a lady you had better think again because I am right now going out to tell everyone I know in town that the E. J. Cobb Storage and Transfer Company not only steals furniture entrusted to them for storage and breaks and smashes everything but they also yell curses and obscenity at people just trying to get their furniture back and by the time I finish with you you will regard yourself as extremely fortunate if they let you out of jail long enough to fire Freddie, because I personally am going to—”

  “Your three minutes are up,” said the operator.

  I still had a good deal I wanted to tell Mr. Cobb, but when I went to get more nickels the ticket agent peered out at me from the back of the ticket booth, and shook his head no. I got back into the car and drove to our new house, where I found that my husband and the children were sitting on cartons of books and eating potato chips. My husband said that they were trying to decide what to name Jannie’s new room and Laurie’s new room, since Jannie and Laurie were going to share the upstairs back apartment, and each of them would thus have a small bedroom and a larger room for other activities and there was quite a problem in thinking of names for these larger rooms. Laurie thought he would like to call his room Laurie’s Laboratory, because since it had formerly been a kitchen he could keep the sink in and do chemistry there and maybe set up a darkroom to develop pictures and we could get him a microscope. Jannie wanted to call hers a Study so she could study there, but my husband said that he had a study, and two studies would be confusing, and he suggested that she put her books in there and call it Jannie’s Library. I said she could call it her salon, and Laurie said a salon was not a nice name for a room where a little girl kept her books, but she could call it Jannie’s Joint. Sally said why not put her bed in there, bed, and then she could call it her bedroom? Or, Laurie thought, she could call it her Giggle Room, because that was all she ever did, anyway.

  Jannie, who had been for the past ten days engaged in running one joke into the ground, said smartly that Laurie’s room, then, should be called Laurie’s Stable, and he could keep a horse in there, and besides, it always looked like a stable. She was going on to elaborate this last point when a moving truck stopped in front of the house and began a complicated maneuver to enable it to back across the rhododendron bush beside the front steps. We all went to the front door and a man got down from the truck. From his voice and general air of graceful self-possession I strongly suspected that it might be Freddie. He removed his hat respectfully and remarked that he hoped he had gotten the right house. My husband said never mind about the right house; if that was furniture in that truck we would take it. Freddie said that Ed hoped we weren’t going to be sore at him, because they had certainly meant to deliver our furniture today and had even gotten this small truck loaded, so Ed decided that they should bring over what they had, just so’s we could have some furniture in the house tonight, and they would bring over the rest tomorrow, absolutely, on Ed’s personal word of honor, or the next day at the very latest.

  We explained that due to certain obstructive difficulties in our house it was going to be necessary to take some of the furniture to the upstairs front apartment and some around to the back entrance and up the back stairs to the upstairs back apartment, and that the furniture in the downstairs front was going to have to be very carefully spaced so that the weight of the furniture and books would not go through the floor. Freddie said he understood perfectly. The first thing that came off the truck was my husband’s workbench, which the men carried out back to the barn. Then came Laurie’s bicycle and Jannie’s and Sally’s tricycles, which the children offered with pleasure to ride out to the barn. I stood on the front porch with Barry in his carriage, to tell the men where to put things, and my husband stayed inside, to do as much arranging as he could, and to see that nothing went through the floor. They unloaded our glass-topped coffee table, and I checked to make sure that Mr. Cobb had not smashed the glass top, and then told them to take it into the living room downstairs front, and then they unpacked the old music box, which has always gone in the dining room, and inside, my husband, already arranging, moved the music box to the corner where the buffet was going to go, because the music box has always been on top of the buffet.

  Things were going so smoothly that I decided to drive down to the grocery and get some beer, because it was an almighty hot day, and while I was gone the men unloaded the ping-pong table, which went in the barn, and Laurie’s desk, which went into the upstairs back, and the cushions from the living room couch, which my husband arranged where the couch was going to be. The movers and my husband and I drank beer, and the children drank grape soda, and Barry had a bottle of orange juice, and then the movers unloaded the hall table and two bridge tables and my husband’s desk and Jannie’s puppet theater and our two laundry hampers. After the laundry hampers, which I recalled were full of clothes, came four barrels of dishes, and the guest room bed tables, and the odd dressing table mirror, which my husband arranged temporarily in the upstairs hall. The number of things in the moving truck seemed endless. I checked the piano bench, and the carton which held the waffle iron and the electric broiler and the dog’s dish. There was a carton of piano music, and a barrel of toys, and then Sally’s toy box and Jannie’s toy box and Barry’s bathinette. Sally and Jannie retired to Sally’s new room to unpack the barrel of toys, the rugs arrived, were stacked in the front hall, and my husband put our big silver fruit dish in the middle of the dining room floor where the dining room table was going to be. Finally, from the very back of the truck, came the picnic table and benches, and the outdoor barbecue. The men then brought in an odd leg from something, had another can of beer, thanked us, were thanked, and departed with the truck, cutting across the front lawn.

  In our new living room, then, we had perhaps sixty cartons of books, the piano bench, the coffee table, and the carton of piano music. In the dining room were the music box, another forty cartons of books, and the silver fruit dish. In the kitchen were four barrels of dishes, and a carton with the waffle iron, the electric broiler, and the dog’s dish. Upstairs in Sally’s room were her toy box and a barrel of toys, unpacked. The guest room had two bed tables. In what was going to be the new study was the odd leg off something and my husband’s coin collection, which he had brought in out of the car, and another fifty cartons of books. In the front room where we planned to put the television set were another fifty cartons of books and the picnic hamper. In my husband’s and my bedroom was a carton, sent by me from our summer home, which held half a dozen wet bathing suits wrapped in aluminum foil, three plastic sandpails, Sally’s blue sunbonnet, and Laurie’s collection of shells. It was half-past six.

  I heated Barry’s baby food and his bottle in the hot water from the kitchen sink, fed him sitting on the piano bench with a carton labeled Miscellaneous Non-Fiction for a tray, cleaned him as well as I could, and changed him into his pajamas. I opened a can of dog food and fed Toby on a newspaper on the kitchen floor, and Ninki in the top of an old mayonnaise jar
I found in the pantry. Then we shut all the animals inside the new house, got the rest of us, including Barry’s carriage, back into the car, and drove to our local inn. Everyone had a hot bath, and the inn was serving its special pecan cinnamon honey pie for dessert that night. The children fell asleep early after their tiring day, and my husband and I played bridge with a nice couple in the lounge.

  The rest of our furniture arrived at half-past six the next morning. The men had already carried in a great deal of it by the time we got to our new house. Freddie told us confidently that he had figured out where everything went, and some of his arrangements were so tasteful and judicious that we left them: the big dining room buffet in the television room, for instance, and the lawn chair in the pantry, which turned out to be a very practical arrangement, because later on when we got a washing machine we had to put it in the pantry and while I was doing the wash I could sit down. We had to leave the buffet in the television room because the men had brought it in through the front window and Freddie said he was pretty sure they couldn’t get it out again and anyway there was more room in there than there was in the dining room, with the table and all them cartons of books.

  One of the things the men left in the front hall was the carton of football helmets, ice skates, and tennis rackets. With a feeling of pure triumph I dragged the carton over to our new hall closet, and unpacked it. I put in the ice skates and the basketball and the hockey sticks and the overshoes and then I got up off the floor and tried to close the closet door. After a minute or two I repacked all the things in the carton and called Laurie and told him to take it out to the barn. He said in a worried voice that the first floor of the barn was nearly full and if I wanted to put my car in there we were going to have to start putting things up on the second floor of the barn. I called to my husband, who was down cellar checking the furnace, and he said that what with the junk the previous people had left down there, and our own collection of cellar odds and ends, there wasn’t going to be room down there for much more. When the next carton of odds and ends came in I waited until no one was looking and then carried it secretly around the house and put it in the downstairs back apartment.