The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Page B

asked. “I mean, I can accept that Hill House is supposed to be haunted, and you want us here, Doctor Montague, to help keep track of what happens—and I bet besides that you wouldn’t at all like being here alone —but I just don’t understand. It’s a horrible old house, and if I rented it I’d scream for my money back after one fast look at the front hall, but what’s here? What really frightens people so?”
    “I will not put a name to what has no name,” the doctor said. “I don’t know.”
    “They never even told me what was going on,” Eleanor said urgently to the doctor. “My mother said it was the neighbors, they were always against us because she wouldn’t mix with them. My mother—”
    Luke interrupted her, slowly and deliberately. “I think,” he said, “that what we all want is facts. Something we can understand and put together.”
    “First,” the doctor said, “I am going to ask you all a question. Do you want to leave? Do you advise that we pack up now and leave Hill House to itself, and never have anything more to do with it?”
    He looked at Eleanor, and Eleanor put her hands together tight; it is another chance to get away, she was thinking, and she said, “No,” and glanced with embarrassment at Theodora. “I was kind of a baby this afternoon,” she explained. “I did let myself get frightened.”
    “She’s not telling all the truth,” Theodora said loyally. “She wasn’t any more frightened than I was; we scared each other to death over a rabbit.”
    “Horrible creatures, rabbits,” Luke said.
    The doctor laughed. “I suppose we were all nervous this afternoon, anyway. It is a rude shock to turn that corner and get a clear look at Hill House.”
    “I thought he was going to send the car into a tree,” Luke said.
    “I am really very brave now, in a warm room with a fire and company,” Theodora said.
    “I don’t think we could leave now if we wanted to.” Eleanor had spoken before she realized clearly what she was going to say, or what it was going to sound like to the others; she saw that they were staring at her, and laughed and added lamely, “Mrs. Dudley would never forgive us.” She wondered if they really believed that that was what she had meant to say, and thought, Perhaps it has us now, this house, perhaps it will not let us go.
    “Let us have a little more brandy,” the doctor said, “and I will tell you the story of Hill House.” He returned to his classroom position before the fireplace and began slowly, as one giving an account of kings long dead and wars long done with; his voice was carefully unemotional. “Hill House was built eighty-odd years ago,” he began. “It was built as a home for his family by a man named Hugh Crain, a country home where he hoped to see his children and grandchildren live in comfortable luxury, and where he fully expected to end his days in quiet. Unfortunately Hill House was a sad house almost from the beginning; Hugh Crain’s young wife died minutes before she first was to set eyes on the house, when the carriage bringing her here overturned in the driveway, and the lady was brought—ah, lifeless, I believe is the phrase they use—into the home her husband had built for her. He was a sad and bitter man, Hugh Crain, left with two small daughters to bring up, but he did not leave Hill House.”
    “Children grew up here?” Eleanor asked incredulously.
    The doctor smiled. “The house is dry, as I said. There were no swamps to bring them fevers, the country air was thought to be beneficial to them, and the house itself was regarded as luxurious. I have no doubt that two small children could play here, lonely perhaps, but not unhappy.”
    “I hope they went wading in the brook,” Theodora said. She stared deeply into the fire. “Poor little things. I hope someone let them run in that meadow and pick wildflowers.”
    “Their father married again,” the doctor went on. “Twice more, as a matter of fact. He