The Road Through the Wall by Shirley Jackson Page A

back and said, “Sally, are you out in the sunshine too?”
    It had been Helen Williams’s great contribution to neighborhood lore, that a witch could not put spells on anyone if she didn’t know their name, and Mary said, comfortable in the knowledge that some unfamiliar Sally would get her spell, “How are you feeling?”
    â€œBetter now,” Mrs. Mack said. “Better now.” No one knew any of Mrs. Mack’s history except that a friend had given her her dog, and that she was always ailing in some way. “Where’s your dog today?” Mary asked, to be as thorough and polite as she could, and Mrs. Mack nodded back, sage in the sunlight. “Indeed yes,” Mrs. Mack said. “Not nice people at all.”
    â€œOf course not, Mrs. Mack,” Mary said.
    â€œDon’t belong at all in a nice neighborhood,” Mrs. Mack said. “Glad to see the last of them.”
    â€œYou mean the Williamses?” Mary stopped in her rose-gathering to listen.
    â€œThis has always been a nice neighborhood,” Mrs. Mack said. She lifted a stick from the ground beside the step and began to make figures in the dirt. “I always liked living here.”
    Mary crossed herself wildly, gasped, “I guess I’ve picked enough of these old roses,” and fled indoors. “She was making charms in the dirt,” she told her mother breathlessly, “I could see her writing names.” For a minute the comfort of Mrs. Mack’s not knowing anyone’s name deserted her, and she said in terror, “She was looking right at me.”
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    Tod Donald rarely did anything voluntarily, or with planning, or even with intent acknowledged to himself; he found himself doing one thing, and then he found himself doing another, and that, as he saw it, was the way one lived along, never deciding, never helping. When he found himself one afternoon walking down Pepper Street nearly at the Desmond driveway, and saw Mrs. Desmond backing the car out with Caroline beside her in the front seat, it never occurred to him to slip into the Desmond yard; and once there, when he saw the glass door from the Desmond terrace slightly open, his mind did not encompass the notion of stepping into the Desmond house, nor did it suggest to him, once in, that he had no right to be there.
    The glass door took him directly into the Desmond dining-room, and, since he had never been inside the Desmond house before, he first regarded the walls, and the ceilings, and the floor, before going on to a more intimate investigation. With the glass doors at his back, he stood coolly surveying what he could see of the house, estimating it, weighing it in his hand. The walls, for instance, were painted, not papered as in the Donald house; the table in the dining-room was long and slim. Tod went to the painted wall and felt it with his finger, leaving an almost imperceptible touch on the light paint. He bent over the table and saw his face reflected dimly in the polished wood. He looked at the chairs; they had light leather seats and graceful rising backs; the rug on the floor, barely pressed by the legs of the chairs and the table, was pale and smooth. Tod took hold of one of the chairs; it was unexpectedly heavy, and he had to use both hands to tip it over backward and examine the under part. When he put the chair back into place he caught sight of his face reflected in the silver coffee service on a side table. As he came closer to the coffee-pot his face became more distorted, elastic in the long coffee-pot; he looked back into the table and found his face there, back to the coffee-pot and found his face again. He ran his hand caressingly down the side of the coffee-pot, his fingers lingering as he turned away, to the doorway beyond which lay the living-room.
    Facing him as he entered the living-room was the wall of tall shrouded windows; because they were covered against