The Haunting of Hill House

by Shirley Jackson

  “It seems foolish,” he explained, “to spend a morning as glorious as this has been looking at a frigid place on a floor. We must plan to spend more time outside”—and was mildly surprised when they laughed.

  “Is there still a world somewhere?” Eleanor asked wonderingly. Mrs. Dudley had made them a peach shortcake, and she looked down at her plate and said, “I am sure Mrs. Dudley goes somewhere else at night, and she brings back heavy cream each morning, and Dudley comes up with groceries every afternoon, but as far as I can remember there is no other place than this.”

  “We are on a desert island,” Luke said.

  “I can’t picture any world but Hill House,” Eleanor said.

  “Perhaps,” Theodora said, “we should make notches on a stick, or pile pebbles in a heap, one each day, so we will know how long we have been marooned.”

  “How pleasant not to have any word from outside.” Luke helped himself to an enormous heap of whipped cream. “No letters, no newspapers; anything might be happening.”

  “Unfortunately—” the doctor said, and then stopped. “I beg your pardon,” he went on. “I meant only to say that word will be reaching us from outside, and of course it is not unfortunate at all. Mrs. Montague—my wife, that is—will be here on Saturday.”

  “But when is Saturday?” Luke asked. “Delighted to see Mrs. Montague, of course.”

  “Day after tomorrow.” The doctor thought. “Yes,” he said after a minute, “I believe that the day after tomorrow is Saturday. We will know it is Saturday, of course,” he told them with a little twinkle, “because Mrs. Montague will be here.”

  “I hope she is not holding high hopes of things going bump in the night,” Theodora said. “Hill House has fallen far short of its original promise, I think. Or perhaps Mrs. Montague will be greeted with a volley of psychic experiences.”

  “Mrs. Montague,” the doctor said, “will be perfectly ready to receive them.”

  “I wonder,” Theodora said to Eleanor as they left the lunch table under Mrs. Dudley’s watchful eye, “why everything has been so quiet. I think this waiting is nerve-racking, almost worse than having something happen.”

  “It’s not us doing the waiting,” Eleanor said. “It’s the house. I think it’s biding its time.”

  “Waiting until we feel secure, maybe, and then it will pounce.”

  “I wonder how long it can wait.” Eleanor shivered and started up the great staircase. “I am almost tempted to write a letter to my sister. You know—‘Having a perfectly splendid time here in jolly old Hill House. . . . ’ ”

  “ ‘You really must plan to bring the whole family next summer,’” Theodora went on. “ ‘We sleep under blankets every night. . . . ’ ”

  “ ‘The air is so bracing, particularly in the upstairs hall. . . . ’ ”

  “ ‘You go around all the time just glad to be alive. . . . ’ ”

  “ ‘There’s something going on every minute. . . . ’ ”

  “ ‘Civilization seems so far away. . . . ’ ”

  Eleanor laughed. She was ahead of Theodora, at the top of the stairs. The dark hallway was a little lightened this afternoon, because they had left the nursery door open and the sunlight came through the windows by the tower and touched the doctor’s measuring tape and chalk on the floor. The light reflected from the stained-glass window on the stair landing and made shattered fragments of blue and orange and green on the dark wood of the hall. “I’m going to sleep,” she said. “I’ve never been so lazy in my life.”

  “I’m going to lie on my bed and dream about streetcars,” Theodora said.

  It had become Eleanor’s habit to hesitate in the doorway of her room, glancing around quickly before she went inside; she told herself that this was because the room was so exceedingly blue and always took a moment to get used to. When she came inside she went across to open the window, which she always found closed; today she was halfway across the room before she heard Theodora’s door slam back, and Theodora’s smothered “Eleanor!” Moving quickly, Eleanor ran into the hall and to Theodora’s doorway, to stop, aghast, looking over Theodora’s shoulder. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “What does it look like?” Theodora’s voice rose crazily. “What does it look like, you fool?”

  And I won’t forgive her that, either, Eleanor thought concretely through her bewilderment. “It looks like paint,” she said hesitantly. “Except”—realizing—“except the smell is awful.”

  “It’s blood,” Theodora said with finality. She clung to the door, swaying as the door moved, staring. “Blood,” she said. “All over. Do you see it?”

  “Of course I see it. And it’s not all over. Stop making such a fuss.” Although, she thought conscientiously, Theodora was making very little of a fuss, actually. One of these times, she thought, one of us is going to put her head back and really howl, and I hope it won’t be me, because I’m trying to guard against it; it will be Theodora who . . . And then, cold, she asked, “Is that more writing on the wall?”—and heard Theodora’s wild laugh, and thought, Maybe it will be me, after all, and I can’t afford to. I must be steady, and she closed her eyes and found herself saying silently, O stay and hear, your true love’s coming, that can sing both high and low. Trip no further, pretty sweeting; journeys end in lovers meeting . . .

  “Yes indeed, dear,” Theodora said. “I don’t know how you managed it.”

  Every wise man’s son doth know. “Be sensible,” Eleanor said. “Call Luke. And the doctor.”

  “Why?” Theodora asked. “Wasn’t it to be just a little private surprise for me? A secret just for the two of us?” Then, pulling away from Eleanor, who tried to hold her from going farther into the room, she ran to the great wardrobe and threw open the door and, cruelly, began to cry. “My clothes,” she said. “My clothes.”

  Steadily Eleanor turned and went to the top of the stairs. “Luke,” she called, leaning over the banisters. “Doctor.” Her voice was not loud, and she had tried to keep it level, but she heard the doctor’s book drop to the floor and then the pounding of feet as he and Luke ran for the stairs. She watched them, seeing their apprehensive faces, wondering at the uneasiness which lay so close below the surface in all of them, so that each of them seemed always waiting for a cry for help from one of the others; intelligence and understanding are really no protection at all, she thought. “It’s Theo,” she said as they came to the top of the stairs. “She’s hysterical. Someone—something—has gotten red paint in her room, and she’s crying over her clothes.” Now I could not have put it more fairly than that, she thought, turning to follow them. Could I have put it more fairly than that? she asked herself, and found that she was smiling.

  Theodora was still sobbing wildly in her room and kicking at the wardrobe door, in a tantrum that might have been laughable if she had not been holding her yellow shirt, matted and stained; her other clothes had been torn from the hangers and lay trampled and disordered on the wardrobe floor, all of them smeared and reddened. “What is it?” Luke asked the doctor, and the doctor, shaking his head, said, “I would swear that it was blood, and yet to get so much blood one would almost have to . . .” and then was abruptly quiet.

  All of them stood in silence for a moment and looked at HELP ELEANOR COME HOME ELEANOR written in shaky red letters on the wallpaper over Theodora’s bed.

  This time I am ready, Eleanor told herself, and said, “You’d better get her out of here; bring her into my room.”

  “My clothes are ruined,” Theodora said to the doctor. “Do you see my clothes?”

  The smell was atrocious, and the writing on the wall had dripped and splattered. There was a line of drops from the wall to the wardrobe—perhaps what had first turned Theodora’s attention that way—and a great irregular stain on the green rug. “It’s disgusting,” Eleanor said. “Please get Theo into my room.”

  Luke and the doctor between them persuaded Theodora through the bathroom and into Eleanor’s room, and Eleanor, lo
oking at the red paint (It must be paint, she told herself; it’s simply got to be paint; what else could it be?), said aloud. “But why?”—and stared up at the writing on the wall. Here lies one, she thought gracefully, whose name was writ in blood; is it possible that I am not quite coherent at this moment?

  “Is she all right?” she asked, turning as the doctor came back into the room.

  “She will be in a few minutes. We’ll have to move her in with you for a while, I should think; I can’t imagine her wanting to sleep in here again.” The doctor smiled a little wanly. “It will be a long time, I think, before she opens another door by herself.”

  “I suppose she’ll have to wear my clothes.”

  “I suppose she will, if you don’t mind.” The doctor looked at her curiously. “This message troubles you less than the other?”

  “It’s too silly,” Eleanor said, trying to understand her own feelings. “I’ve been standing here looking at it and just wondering why. I mean, it’s like a joke that didn’t come off; I was supposed to be much more frightened than this, I think, and I’m not because it’s simply too horrible to be real. And I keep remembering Theo putting red polish . . .” She giggled, and the doctor looked at her sharply, but she went on, “It might as well be paint, don’t you see?” I can’t stop talking, she thought; what do I have to explain in all this? “Maybe I can’t take it seriously,” she said, “after the sight of Theo screaming over her poor clothes and accusing me of writing my name all over her wall. Maybe I’m getting used to her blaming me for everything.”

  “Nobody’s blaming you for anything,” the doctor said, and Eleanor felt that she had been reproved.

  “I hope my clothes will be good enough for her,” she said tartly.

  The doctor turned, looking around the room; he touched one finger gingerly to the letters on the wall and moved Theodora’s yellow shirt with his foot. “Later,” he said absently. “Tomorrow, perhaps.” He glanced at Eleanor and smiled. “I can make an exact sketch of this,” he said.

  “I can help you,” Eleanor said. “It makes me sick, but it doesn’t frighten me.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. “I think we’d better close up the room for now, however; we don’t want Theodora blundering in here again. Then later, at my leisure, I can study it. Also,” he said with a flash of amusement, “I would not like to have Mrs. Dudley coming in here to straighten up.”

  Eleanor watched silently while he locked the hall door from inside the room, and then they went through the bathroom and he locked the connecting door into Theodora’s green room. “I’ll see about moving in another bed,” he said, and then, with some awkwardness, “You’ve kept your head well, Eleanor; it’s a help to me.”

  “I told you, it makes me sick but it doesn’t frighten me,” she said, pleased, and turned to Theodora. Theodora was lying on Eleanor’s bed, and Eleanor saw with a queasy turn that Theodora had gotten red on her hands and it was rubbing off onto Eleanor’s pillow. “Look,” she said harshly, coming over to Theodora, “you’ll have to wear my clothes until you get new ones, or until we get the others cleaned.”

  “Cleaned?” Theodora rolled convulsively on the bed and pressed her stained hands against her eyes. “Cleaned?”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Eleanor said, “let me wash you off.” She thought, without trying to find a reason, that she had never felt such uncontrollable loathing for any person before, and she went into the bathroom and soaked a towel and came back to scrub roughly at Theodora’s hands and face. “You’re filthy with the stuff,” she said, hating to touch Theodora.

  Suddenly Theodora smiled at her. “I don’t really think you did it,” she said, and Eleanor turned to see that Luke was behind her, looking down at them. “What a fool I am,” Theodora said to him, and Luke laughed.

  “You will be a delight in Nell’s red sweater,” he said.

  She is wicked, Eleanor thought, beastly and soiled and dirty. She took the towel into the bathroom and left it to soak in cold water; when she came out Luke was saying, “. . . another bed in here; you girls are going to share a room from now on.”

  “Share a room and share our clothes,” Theodora said. “We’re going to be practically twins.”

  “Cousins,” Eleanor said, but no one heard her.

  3

  “It was the custom, rigidly adhered to,” Luke said, turning the brandy in his glass, “for the public executioner, before a quartering, to outline his knife strokes in chalk upon the belly of his victim—for fear of a slip, you understand.”

  I would like to hit her with a stick, Eleanor thought, looking down on Theodora’s head beside her chair; I would like to batter her with rocks.

  “An exquisite refinement, exquisite. Because of course the chalk strokes would have been almost unbearable, excruciating, if the victim were ticklish.”

  I hate her, Eleanor thought, she sickens me; she is all washed and clean and wearing my red sweater.

  “When the death was by hanging in chains, however, the executioner . . .”

  “Nell?” Theodora looked up at her and smiled. “I really am sorry, you know,” she said.

  I would like to watch her dying, Eleanor thought, and smiled back and said, “Don’t be silly.”

  “Among the Sufis there is a teaching that the universe has never been created and consequently cannot be destroyed. I have spent the afternoon,” Luke announced gravely, “browsing in our little library.”

  The doctor sighed. “No chess tonight, I think,” he said to Luke, and Luke nodded. “It has been an exhausting day,” the doctor said, “and I think you ladies should retire early.”

  “Not until I am well dulled with brandy,” Theodora said firmly.

  “Fear,” the doctor said, “is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.”

  “I was wondering earlier,” Eleanor said, feeling she had somehow an apology to make to all of them. “I thought I was altogether calm, and yet now I know I was terribly afraid.” She frowned, puzzled, and they waited for her to go on. “When I am afraid, I can see perfectly the sensible, beautiful not-afraid side of the world, I can see chairs and tables and windows staying the same, not affected in the least, and I can see things like the careful woven texture of the carpet, not even moving. But when I am afraid I no longer exist in any relation to these things. I suppose because things are not afraid.”

  “I think we are only afraid of ourselves,” the doctor said slowly.

  “No,” Luke said. “Of seeing ourselves clearly and without disguise.”

  “Of knowing what we really want,” Theodora said. She pressed her cheek against Eleanor’s hand and Eleanor, hating the touch of her, took her hand away quickly.

  “I am always afraid of being alone,” Eleanor said, and wondered, Am I talking like this? Am I saying something I will regret bitterly tomorrow? Am I making more guilt for myself? “Those letters spelled out my name, and none of you know what that feels like—it’s so familiar.” And she gestured to them, almost in appeal. “Try to see,” she said. “It’s my own dear name, and it belongs to me, and something is using it and writing it and calling me with it and my own name . . .” She stopped and said, looking from one of them to another, even down onto Theodora’s face looking up at her, “Look. There’s only one of me, and it’s all I’ve got. I hate seeing myself dissolve and slip and separate so that I’m living in one half, my mind, and I see the other half of me helpless and frantic and driven and I can’t stop it, but I know I’m not really going to be hurt and yet time is so long and even a second goes on and on and I could stand any of it if I could only surrender—”

  “Surrender?” said the doctor sharply, and Eleanor stared.

  “Surrender?” Luke repeated.

  “I don’t know,” Eleanor said, perplexed. I was just talking along, she told herself, I was saying something—what was I just saying?

  “She has done this befor
e,” Luke said to the doctor.

  “I know,” said the doctor gravely, and Eleanor could feel them all looking at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I make a fool of myself? It’s probably because I’m tired.”

  “Not at all,” the doctor said, still grave. “Drink your brandy.”

  “Brandy?” And Eleanor looked down, realizing that she held a brandy glass. “What did I say?” she asked them.

  Theodora chuckled. “Drink,” she said. “You need it, my Nell.”

  Obediently Eleanor sipped at her brandy, feeling clearly its sharp burn, and then said to the doctor, “I must have said something silly, from the way you’re all staring at me.”