Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle

During the night I had gone out in the darkness and brought in a large basket filled with pieces of wood and broken sticks and leaves and scraps of glass and metal from the field and the wood. Jonas came back and forth with me, amused at our walking silently while everyone slept. When I altered our father’s room I took the books from the desk and blankets from the bed, and I put my glass and metal and wood and sticks and leaves into the empty places. I could not put the things which had been our father’s into my own room, so I carried them softly up the stairs to the attic where everything else of theirs was kept. I poured a pitcher of water onto our father’s bed; Charles could not sleep there again. The mirror over the dresser was already smashed; it would not reflect Charles. He would not be able to find books or clothes and would be lost in a room of leaves and broken sticks. I tore down the curtains and threw them on the floor; now Charles would have to look outside and see the driveway going away and the road beyond.

I looked at the room with pleasure. A demon-ghost would not easily find himself here. I was back in my own room, lying on the bed and playing with Jonas when I heard Charles down below in the garden shouting to Constance. “This is too much,” he was saying, “simply too much.”

“What now?” Constance asked; she had come to the kitchen door and I could hear Uncle Julian somewhere below saying, “Tell that young fool to stop his bellowing.”

I looked out quickly; the broken step had clearly been too much for Charles because the hammer and the board lay on the ground and the step was still broken; Charles was coming up the path from the creek and he was carrying something; I wondered what he had found now.

“Did you ever hear of anything like this?” he was saying; even though he was close now he was still shouting. “Look at this, Connie, just look at it.”

“I suppose it belongs to Merricat,” Constance said.

“It does not belong to Merricat, or anything like it. This is money. ”

“I remember,” Constance said. “Silver dollars. I remember when she buried them.”

“There must be twenty or thirty dollars here; this is outrageous.”

“She likes to bury things.”

Charles was still shouting, shaking my box of silver dollars back and forth violently. I wondered if he would drop it; I would like to have seen Charles on the ground, scrabbling after my silver dollars.

“It’s not her money,” he was shouting, “she has no right to hide it.”

I wondered how he had happened to find the box where I had buried it; perhaps Charles and money found each other no matter how far apart they were, or perhaps Charles was engaged in systematically digging up every inch of our land. “This is terrible,” he was shouting, “terrible; she has no right.”

“No harm is done,” Constance said. I could see that she was puzzled and somewhere inside the kitchen Uncle Julian was pounding and calling her.

“How do you know there isn’t more?” Charles held the box out accusingly. “How do you know that crazy kid hasn’t buried thousands of dollars all over, where we’ll never find it?”

“She likes to bury things,” Constance said. “Coming, Uncle Julian.”

Charles followed her inside, still holding the box tenderly. I supposed I could bury the box again after he had gone, but I was not pleased. I came to the top of the stairs and watched Charles proceeding down the hall to the study; he was clearly going to put my silver dollars into our father’s safe. I ran down the stairs quickly and quietly and out through the kitchen. “Silly Merricat,” Constance said to me as I passed; she was putting spice cookies in long rows to cool.

I was thinking of Charles. I could turn him into a fly and drop him into a spider’s web and watch him tangled and helpless and struggling, shut into the body of a dying buzzing fly; I could wish him dead until he died. I could fasten him to a tree and keep him there until he grew into the trunk and bark grew over his mouth. I could bury him in the hole where my box of silver dollars had been so safe until he came; if he was under the ground I could walk over him stamping my feet.

He had not even bothered to fill in the hole. I could imagine him walking here and noticing the spot where the ground was disturbed, stopping to poke in it and then digging wildly with both his hands, scowling and finally greedy and shocked and gasping when he found my box of silver dollars. “Don’t blame me, ” I said to the hole; I would have to find something else to bury here and I wished it could be Charles.

The hole would hold his head nicely. I laughed when I found a round stone the right size, and scratched a face on it and buried it in the hole. “Goodbye, Charles,” I said. “Next time don’t go around taking other people’s things.”

I stayed by the creek for an hour or so; I was staying by the creek when Charles finally went upstairs and into the room which was no longer his and no longer our father’s. I thought for one minute that Charles had been in my shelter, but nothing was disturbed, as it would have been if Charles had come scratching around. He had been near enough to bother me, however, so I cleared out the grass and leaves I usually slept on, and shook out my blanket, and put in everything fresh. I washed the flat rock where I sometimes ate my meals, and put a better branch across the entrance. I wondered if Charles would come back looking for more silver dollars and I wondered if he would like my six blue marbles. I was finally hungry and went back to our house, and there in the kitchen was Charles, still shouting.

“I can’t believe it,” he was saying, quite shrill by now, “I simply can’t believe it.”

I wondered how long Charles was going to go on shouting. He made a black noise in our house and his voice was getting thinner and higher; perhaps if he shouted long enough he would squeak. I sat on the kitchen step next to Jonas and thought that perhaps Constance might laugh out loud if Charles squeaked at her. It never happened, however, because as soon as he saw that I was sitting on the step he was quiet for a minute and then when he spoke he had brought his voice down and made it slow.

“So you’re back,” he said. He did not move toward me but I felt his voice as though he were coming closer. I did not look at him; I looked at Jonas, who was looking at him.

“I haven’t quite decided what I’m going to do with you,” he said. “But whatever I do, you’ll remember it.”

“Don’t bully her, Charles,” Constance said. I did not like her voice either because it was strange and I knew she was uncertain. “It’s all my fault, anyway.” That was her new way of thinking.

I thought I would help Constance, perhaps make her laugh. “ Amanita pantherina, ” I said, “highly poisonous. Amanita rubescens, edible and good. The Cicuta maculata is the water hemlock, one of the most poisonous of wild plants if taken internally. The Apocynum cannabinum is not a poisonous plant of the first importance, but the snakeberry—”

“Stop it,” Charles said, still quiet.

“Constance,” I said, “we came home for lunch, Jonas and I.”

“First you will have to explain to Cousin Charles,” Constance said, and I was chilled.

Charles was sitting at the kitchen table, with his chair pushed back and turned a little to face me in the doorway. Constance stood behind him, leaning against the sink. Uncle Julian sat at his table, stirring papers. There were rows and rows of spice cookies cooling and the kitchen still smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg. I wondered if Constance would give Jonas a spice cookie with his supper but of course she never did because that was the last day.