Raising Demons

by Shirley Jackson

  It had been a rainy Saturday morning, so I knew that the refrigerator door was going to stick. The old man came to the back door not long before lunchtime, and he came—I knew it the minute I saw him—to chat about the gatepost; after a year in the house I could spot them at five hundred yards. He opened by saying well, so they finally got someone to buy the old house, did they? I leaned my head against the doorframe and said oh, yes, they finally got someone to buy the old house. Well, he said with the light coming into his eye, had we fixed on anything yet about that there gatepost?

  I winced. Sally was painting at the kitchen table behind me, and I knew she was eavesdropping. Barry was in a corner of the kitchen at his toy table, disassembling a truck, and clearly not interested at present in the gatepost. The rest of the family was lucky enough to be out of earshot. Laurie and Rob were still building their fort at that time, working from the inside out because of the rain, and I could hear, faintly, the sound of hammering. Jannie was in her room, theoretically cleaning out her dresser drawers, but actually doing some kind of an acrobatic dance in front of her mirror, and singing the Fairy Rosabelle. The distant, unwilling sound of a typewriter from the study made it sound as though my husband was working, although I sometimes believe that he has a device (perhaps a woodpecker?) which taps the typewriter for him while he sleeps on the study couch. It was clearly going to rain all day; far away against the barn I could see the small brave orange dot which was still our only tulip.

  “Take them both out, that’s what I’d do,” the old man said at the kitchen door. “Make a nice little fireplace with them stones. Winter, this house, you need a fireplace.”

  “Awfully nice of you to stop by,” I said, pushing at the door.

  “Never did think to see anyone living here,” he said, nodding profoundly at the broken step which Laurie had promised to fix as soon as they finished the fort. I sneezed, and shivered, and the old man settled himself down on the porch rail and recounted in detail the names, addresses, and contributing neglect attached to the downfall of every gatepost for miles around, then went on to examine the subject of leaning fences, discussed with ardor the striking of trees by lightning, and even digressed slightly to tell me about Morton’s chimbley going down brick by brick onto the senior Morton, who was cleaning trout by the rain barrel.

  “Anyone can make things fall down,” Sally said softly behind me. “It’s getting them back up again is hard.”

  “Now you take that well Ananias Watkins was figuring to dig,” the old man went on relentlessly.

  “Yes, indeed,” I said with wild finality, “I’ve got to go and open the refrigerator now.”

  “There was him and his two boys digging out this rock—”

  “Thanks ever so much.” I slammed the door and leaned against it.

  “That gatepost.” Sally shook her head mournfully, and then set down her paintbrush and looked at me. “Why can’t I?” she asked.

  “Because it is a great big gatepost and you are only a little tiny girl and you have made enough trouble with that magic already, what with poor little Jerry Martin afraid to go to bed at night and his mother keeps calling me and calling me to get you to take the spell off again—”

  “I won’t,” Sally said stubbornly. “He called me a name.”

  “And no amount of teasing is going to talk me into letting you go to work with magic on that great big gatepost because you are only a little—”

  “The refrigerator? Can I anyway magic the refrigerator?”

  “When I want my refrigerator door unstuck I will get hold of a man who can unstick refrigerator doors, or at least your father.”

  “Suppose I just—”

  “No,” I said. “No magic, no no no.”

  Murmuring, Sally gathered together her brushes and her paper, and then her eye fell upon Barry, crooning over his truck. “Peabody,” she said to him hopefully, “you want I should turn you back into a rabbit?”

  “No, a boy with a truck,” Barry said.

  “No one ever lets me do anything,” Sally said. She thought, and then slid down from her chair and approached Barry. “Peabody,” she said winningly, “my true love?”

  “No,” Barry said. “Play with this truck.”

  “Remember,” Sally said, “you always used to be a rabbit, and it was only me got you into a baby in the first place.”

  “Oh,” said Peabody. Reluctantly, he put down the truck and scrambled along after her. “Peabody,” he explained to me as he passed.

  “Maybe,” Sally said suddenly, “maybe I will get me another rabbit and make another baby. A little girl.”

  “Under no circumstance,” I said. “Barry is quite enough.”

  “A little girl?”

  “Girl?” Barry insisted.

  “Sally,” I said firmly. “Not one more word.”

  “Then can I magic the refrigerator?”

  I hesitated, and the day was lost. Sally turned joyfully and hurried into the study, Barry trailing along behind. I could hear Sally telling her father in the study that she and her helper Peabody had some very terrible magic to do for Mommy.

  “Very nice,” her father said.

  “—so I need a lot of paper and pencil for me and two pencils for Peabody my helper because he writes with both hands.”

  “Magic?” her father said suddenly. “Just a minute now—what about that clock?”

  “This is Mommy magic. Peabody my helper and I are going to unstick the refrigerator. Mommy asked us to.”

  “But when the clock—”

  “You suppose I can do all this magic all by myself with just Peabody my helper without a pencil?”

  I heard the sharpening of pencils only dimly; in order to open the refrigerator on a rainy day it was necessary to hold the sink with one hand and brace one foot against the wall, pulling and cursing. I was pounding the refrigerator door with my fists when Sally and Barry returned to stand and watch me from the kitchen doorway.

  Sally chuckled. “You pull and pull and pull,” she said, “and here a little girl like me will open it right open with magic for you.” Then, forcefully, she gestured. “Peabody,” she said.

  Peabody moved forward, pencils alert. “Now,” Sally said. “Three times backward, singing with me.” She began to march backward around the kitchen table, singing, “Dearest sweetest Sally is the best girl in the world, dearest sweetest Sally, the most magical of all.” Her helper followed her, shuffling uneasily and looking over his shoulder. “Magic magic magic,” he sang, until he broke off abruptly, said, “My truck!” with vast delight, and made for the toy table.

  “It’s all right,” Sally said hastily. “I can finish without him.” I sat down on the kitchen stool and reflected upon rain and refrigerators.

  When Jannie appeared in the kitchen doorway I thought for one stunned moment that it was something conjured up by Sally’s magic before I recognized the unmistakable earmarks of the Fairy Rosabelle. She was wearing a pink ballet skirt, a quantity of junk jewelry mined from my dresser drawer, and a wreath of artificial roses around her head. She fluttered over to where I sat and bent over me, touching me gently on the head with her wand.

  “Why so dreary, lonely mortal?” she inquired. “Is there aught that Rosabelle can offer to brighten thy sad lot?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You can set the table for lunch.”

  Rosabelle laughed, a little tinkling laugh. “We fairies sip only the dew from early violets.”

  “So will the rest of us,” I said darkly, “unless we get the refrigerator open.”

  “Yonder approaches an honest woodcutter,” Rosabelle remarked, hovering about six inches over my head. “Mayhap he will lend us his stalrit—stal—stal—”

  “Stalwart,” I said. “Sally, for heaven’s sake stop that bellowing.”

  “I’m through,” Sally said with dignity. “It
’s only the magic writing now.” She settled down at the kitchen table and seized her pencil, scowling horribly.

  “Hence,” Rosabelle said as the back door opened, “hence, noble woodcutter, wouldst aid a damsel in distress?”

  Barry leaped up joyfully. “Laurie,” he shouted, “see my truck, will you fix it together?”

  “Don’t get in my way, Laurie,” Sally said, “because I’m magicking the refrigerator door and you might come unstuck.”

  “Laurie,” I said flatly, “go over and open that refrigerator.”

  “Dig her,” Laurie said, regarding Jannie. “Who’re you—the mad fiend from Planet X? When’s lunch?” he asked me.

  “I’m the Fairy Rosabelle,” Jannie said.

  “Cra-zy mixed-up,” Laurie said, with the air of one making an original remark. “Hi, Salamander.”

  “Don’t call me Salamander, because Mommy wants me to magic—”

  “Laurie,” I said, “go over and open that refrigerator.”

  “Real cool,” Laurie said. “Real real cool. What’s the matter with the refrigerator?”

  “You know perfectly well if your father hears you talking like that you will be fined, maybe even fifty cents. The refrigerator door is stuck.”

  “That all?” He laughed shortly. “Poor old lady,” he said, and patted me on the head as he went by. He took hold of the handle on the refrigerator door and pulled. “Crazy,” he said, pulling. “This thing is real gone shut.”

  “Canst Rosabelle aid thee, honest lad?”

  “Hah?” said Laurie. “Oh. Why don’t you pull me?”

  Jannie took hold of Laurie’s belt and pulled, and Barry screamed, “Game, game,” and hastened over to tug on the back of the pink ballet skirt.

  “Cadabra!” said Sally, but the door did not open.

  “Mixed-up,” said Laurie, gasping.

  The study door opened and my husband came into the kitchen. “When’s lunch?” he asked. “What are you doing that for?”

  I let go of the back of Barry’s overalls. “We’re opening the refrigerator,” I said. “Why?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I just wondered when was lunch?”

  “When I get the refrigerator door open,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because the milk is inside. And the butter, and the cold roast beef you said you would like to have for lunch today.”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, why do you open it like that? Letting the children play with it? After all, a refrigerator is a complex machine, not a toy.”

  “Ooh, that nervous man,” Laurie said.

  “Laurence,” his father said sternly, “one more word in that oleaginous jargon and you will pay a substantial fine.”

  “Yes, sir,” Laurie said.

  “Perhaps,” my husband said condescendingly to me, “perhaps I have never thought to mention this to you before, but the way to deal with a stubborn piece of machinery is to use your intelligence. I cannot understand why you think you can open this refrigerator door by force. Do not attempt to impose your will upon it, do not bang upon this refrigerator, do not shake it. Losing your temper,” he said kindly, “never does any good. That is very likely what made it stick in the first place. The thing to do,” he said, still in that patient voice, “is to take hold of the handle gently—gently, remember—and use the slightest downward pressure. Then—” and he made a dramatic wide gesture of opening the refrigerator door, which came completely off the refrigerator and fell against him, so that he backed up across the kitchen floor, staggering, with the refrigerator door in his arms.

  “Dig that,” Laurie said in admiration.

  “Jeekers,” Sally said, eyes wide. “I went and unstuck the wrong side.”

  “Please put that down somewhere,” I told my husband with a good deal of annoyance. “When I let you open the refrigerator door I hardly expected that you would go ripping it off and carrying it around the kitchen like—”

  My husband set his back against the wall and put the door gently down onto the floor. He stood looking at it without saying anything and the children gathered gravely around him. “I did mean to unstick the other side,” Sally said apologetically.

  “Craaaaazy,” Laurie said. “She ripped it right off the hinges.”

  “Sarah,” my husband said at last, controlling his voice, “go to your room. Get a man to fix that,” he told me tensely. “Not a five-year-old girl with magic. A refrigerator repairman. Call him on the telephone and tell him to come over and fix that refrigerator. Not a five-year-old girl with magic—a man.”

  He slammed the study door behind him.

  The refrigerator repairman said he would come over right after lunch, and all the time I was getting out the roast beef and slicing tomatoes I could hear sounds of lamentation from Sally’s room. Her father permitted her to come down for lunch, and when she came to her chair at the table she stopped to whisper in my ear. “I fixed him,” she said, with an evil scowl at her father. “I’m going to show him about how magic is better. He can just wait.”

  I thought of Jerry Martin afraid to go to bed with a spell on him and of little Cheryl whose doll’s head was on backward now because she had pushed Sally in the snow, and I said apprehensively, “What?”

  Sally laughed. “Don’t worry,” she told me ambiguously. “It’s really good,” she added, seeing me frown. “Just about how Daddy will know magic is better.”

  Conversation at lunch was monopolized by Laurie, who was planning a party for his birthday which was still seven months off. He wanted to invite twenty-one friends for lunch and a football game on the side lawn. He thought that it would not be any great inconvenience to put up goal posts, and he would get a can of white paint and do the yard lines himself. I thought that it would be much nicer, since we could not be sure yet what the weather was going to be like in October, if he planned on inviting two friends over for supper, and they could go to the movies. Laurie pointed out that if he invited twenty-one friends he would automatically get twenty-one presents, which was, he felt, real crazy. His father fined him fifty cents. Jannie suggested that it would be nice to have a play or at least a pageant honoring Laurie’s birthday, and proposed the Fairy Rosabelle because then, she added prudently, she would not have to bother to learn something new. Sally, hugging herself, said that we were all going to have a wonderful surprise and Daddy would be sorry he had talked so mean about her magic. My husband remarked that the practice of magic was going to cost a certain young lady a considerable amount in fines before very long. Sally smiled mysteriously, and said he would be glad when he found out about her surprise. “Anyway,” she added, “Jannie can still tell time on the clock, sort of.”

  “But Jannie is left-handed anyway,” I said. “Besides, we decided not to say anything more about the clock.”

  “Maybe I could invite the whole class,” Laurie said. “All but the girls, of course. We could have a track meet, or a rifle shoot, maybe. Is it all right to build a campfire?” he asked his father. “We’ll promise to pick up the lawn afterward.”

  I said that unless table manners improved generally no one needed to think about birthday parties, and lunch continued as usual, except that Sally occasionally giggled to herself, and declined dessert, which was tapioca pudding, on the grounds that she was too excited about her surprise. Jannie was fined ten cents for elbows on the table, and Laurie talked himself out of a dollar and a half. All fines were remitted when my husband remarked absent-mindedly that his pudding was real cool. Barry was fined one jellybean for feeding tapioca pudding to his truck. Sally said my goodness, we were going to be so surprised.

  The refrigerator man arrived while I was clearing the table, and he had a pair of hinges which luckily fit the door. Barry was allowed to stay up from his nap to watch the man put the door on again. My husband came out into the kitchen to watch, too, and he and the refr
igerator man had a long, learned talk about baseball and what was apt to happen in Brooklyn during the coming summer. Laurie entered the conversation and was fined a quarter for saying that he thought Milwaukee would take the pennant.

  I happen to like Milwaukee and so, since I did not have a quarter, I thought I would go upstairs and get the laundry put away. I heard my husband and the refrigerator man telling each other goodbye, and the refrigerator man saying we ought to think about a new refrigerator, really, because this one was getting pretty old and shaky and my husband said he was glad I had gone upstairs before the refrigerator man said that. I heard Sally singing “—is the best girl in the world.” I went to the top of the stairs and called down for her to stop it, but I could not make her hear me.

  I was putting away pajamas in Barry’s room, which is in the front of the house, when I heard a crash which I thought at first was the refrigerator door falling off again, and then I realized that it came from outside and sounded irresistibly like the car of the repairman of the refrigerator backing into a stone gatepost. Almost at once, from the front porch, I heard Sally’s voice raised in fury. “Jeekers,” she wailed, “wrong side again.”

  My husband fined himself five dollars for remarks made upon this occasion. The man who came a few days later about the insurance felt that rather than going to the expense of having both gateposts straightened it would be simpler to take them down altogether, before, as he explained, “they fall down on someone’s head and really cost you money.”

  No one around town ever remarked upon the fact that our left-hand gatepost leaned at an angle and our right-hand gatepost was now just slightly off its foundations. I got the impression that there was a general feeling that we ourselves had made the ultimate deadpan joke about the crooked gatepost, and further discussion would be superfluous. I was just as pleased to leave it that way.