Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (Horror Classic)

‘I’m so sorry,’ Eleanor said; she bent down, but it did not seem possible to scoop up the fragments of tomato and cheesecake and shove them somehow back into the broken bag. The old lady was scowling down and snatching up her other packages before Eleanor could reach them, and at last Eleanor rose, smiling in convulsive apology. ‘I’m really so sorry,’ she said.

‘Damn you,’ the little old lady said, but more quietly. ‘I was taking it home for my little lunch. And now, thanks to you ——’

‘Perhaps I could pay?’ Eleanor took hold of her pocketbook, and the little lady stood very still and thought.

‘I couldn’t take money, just like that,’ she said at last. ‘I didn’t buy the things, you see. They were left over.’ She snapped her lips angrily. ‘You should have seen the ham they had,’ she said, ‘but someone else got that . And the little candies in the little paper dishes. I was too late on every thing. And now . . .’ She and Eleanor both glanced down at the mess on the sidewalk, and the little lady said, ‘So you see, I couldn’t just take money, not money just from your hand, not for something that was left over.’

‘May I buy you something to replace this, then? I’m in a terrible hurry, but if we could find some place that’s open——’

The little old lady smiled wickedly. ‘I’ve still got this , anyway,’ she said, and she hugged one package tight. ‘You may pay my taxi fare home,’ she said. ‘Then no one else will be likely to knock me down.’

‘Gladly,’ Eleanor said and turned to the taxi driver, who had been waiting, interested. ‘Can you take this lady home?’ she asked.

‘A couple of dollars will do it,’ the little lady said, ‘not including the tip for this gentleman, of course. Being as small as I am,’ she explained daintily, ‘it’s quite a hazard, quite a hazard indeed, people knocking you down. Still, it’s a genuine pleasure to find one as willing as you to make up for it. Sometimes the people who knock you down never turn once to look.’ With Eleanor’s help she climbed into the taxi with her packages, and Eleanor took two dollars and a fifty-cent piece from her pocketbook and handed them to the little lady, who clutched them tight in her tiny hand.

‘All right, sweetheart,’ the taxi driver said, ‘where do we go?’

The little lady chuckled. ‘I’ll tell you after we start,’ she said, and then, to Eleanor, ‘Good luck to you, dearie. Watch out from now on how you go knocking people down.’

‘Good-bye,’ Eleanor said, ‘and I’m really very sorry.’

‘That’s fine, then,’ the little lady said, waving at her as the taxi pulled away from the kerb. ‘I’ll be praying for you, dearie.’

Well, Eleanor thought, staring after the taxi, there’s one person, anyway, who will be praying for me. One person anyway.

Table of Contents

It was the first genuinely shining day of summer, a time of year which brought Eleanor always to aching memories of her early childhood, when it had seemed to be summer all the time; she could not remember a winter before her father’s death on a cold wet day. She had taken to wondering lately, during these swift-counted years, what had been done with all those wasted summer days; how could she have spent them so wantonly? I am foolish, she told herself early every summer, I am very foolish; I am grown up now and know the values of things. Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one’s childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by. Yet this morning, driving the little car which she and her sister owned together, apprehensive lest they might still realise that she had come after all and just taken it away, going docilely along the street, following the lines of traffic, stopping when she was bidden and turning when she could, she smiled out at the sunlight slanting along the street and thought, I am going, I am going, I have finally taken a step.

Always before, when she had her sister’s permission to drive the little car, she had gone cautiously, moving with extreme care to avoid even the slightest scratch or mar which might irritate her sister, but today, with her carton on the back seat and her suitcase on the floor, her gloves and pocketbook and light coat on the seat beside her, the car belonged entirely to her, a little self-contained world all her own; I am really going, she thought.

At the last traffic light in the city, before she turned to go on to the great highway out of town, she stopped, waiting, and slid Dr Montague’s letter out of her pocketbook. I will not even need a map, she thought; he must be a very careful man. ‘. . . Route 39 to Ashton,’ the letter said, ‘and then turn left on to Route 5 going west. Follow this for a little less than thirty miles, and you will come to the small village of Hillsdale. Go through Hillsdale to the corner with a gas station on the left and a church on the right, and turn left here on to what seems to be a narrow country road; you will be going up into the hills and the road is very poor. Follow this road to the end—about six miles—and you will come to the gates of Hill House. I am making these directions so detailed because it is inadvisable to stop in Hillsdale to ask your way. The people there are rude to strangers and openly hostile to anyone inquiring about Hill House.

‘I am very happy that you will be joining us in Hill House, and will take great pleasure in making your acquaintance on Thursday the twenty-first of June. . . .’

The light changed; she turned on to the highway and was free of the city. No one, she thought, can catch me now; they don’t even know which way I’m going.

She had never driven far alone before. The notion of dividing her lovely journey into miles and hours was silly; she saw it, bringing her car with precision between the line on the road and the line of trees beside the road, as a passage of moments, each one new, carrying her along with them, taking her down a path of incredible novelty to a new place. The journey itself was her positive action, her destination vague, unimagined, perhaps non-existent. She meant to savour each turn of her travelling, loving the road and the trees and the houses and the small ugly towns, teasing herself with the notion that she might take it into her head to stop just anywhere and never leave again. She might pull her car to the side of the highway—although that was not allowed, she told herself; she would be punished if she really did—and leave it behind while she wandered off past the trees into the soft, welcoming country beyond. She might wander till she was exhausted, chasing butterflies or following a stream, and then come at nightfall to the hut of some poor woodcutter who would offer her shelter; she might make her home for ever in East Barrington or Desmond or the incorporated village of Berk; she might never leave the road at all, but just hurry on and on until the wheels of the car were worn to nothing and she had come to the end of the world.

And, she thought, I might just go along to Hill House, where I am expected and where I am being given shelter and room and board and a small token salary in consideration of forsaking my commitments and involvements in the city and running away to see the world. I wonder what Dr Montague is like. I wonder what Hill House is like. I wonder who else will be there.

She was well away from the city now, watching for the turning on to Route 39, that magic thread of road Dr Montague had chosen for her, out of all the roads in the world, to bring her safely to him and to Hill House; no other road could lead her from where she was to where she wanted to be. Dr Montague was confirmed, made infallible; under the sign which pointed the way to Route 39 was another sign saying: ASHTON, 121 MILES.