We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

came, but I had not forgotten how they made me feel. At first, they were always there, waiting for Constance, just wanting to see her. “Look,” they said, nudging each other and pointing, “there she is, that one, that’s the one, Constance.” “Doesn’t look like a murderess, does she?” they told each other; “listen, see if you can get a picture of her when she shows again.” “Let’s just take some of these flowers,” they said comfortably to each other; “get a rock or something out of the garden, we can take it home to show the kids.”
    â€œConstance?” he said outside. “Constance?” He knocked again. “I want to talk to Constance,” he said, “I have something important to say to her.”
    They always had something important they wanted to tell Constance, whether they were pushing at the door or yelling outside or calling on the telephone or writing the terrible terrible letters. Sometimes they wanted Julian Blackwood, but they never asked for me. I had been sent to bed without my supper, I had not been allowed in the courtroom, no one had taken my picture. While they were looking at Constance in the courtroom I had been lying on the cot at the orphanage, staring at the ceiling, wishing they were all dead, waiting for Constance to come and take me home.
    â€œConstance, can you hear me?” he called outside. “Please listen for just a minute.”
    I wondered if he could hear me breathing on the inside of the door; I knew what he would do next. First he would back away from the house, sheltering his eyes from the rain, and look up at the windows upstairs, hoping to see a face looking down. Then he would start toward the side of the house, following the walk which was only supposed to be used by Constance and me. When he found the side door, which we never opened, he would knock there, calling Constance. Sometimes they went away when no one answered at either the front door or the side; the ones who were faintly embarrassed at being here at all and wished they had not bothered to come in the first place because there was really nothing to see and they could have saved their time or gone somewhere else—they usually hurried off when they found they were not going to get in to see Constance, but the stubborn ones, the ones I wished would die and lie there dead on the driveway, went around and around the house, trying every door and tapping on the windows. “We got a right to see her,” they used to shout, “she killed all those people, didn’t she?” They drove cars up to the steps and parked there. Most of them locked their cars carefully, making sure all the windows were shut, before they came to pound at the house and call to Constance. They had picnics on the lawn and took pictures of each other standing in front of the house and let their dogs run in the garden. They wrote their names on the walls and on the front door.
    â€œLook,” he said outside, “you’ve got to let me in.”
    I heard him go down the steps and knew he was looking up. The windows were all locked. The side door was locked. I knew better than to try to look out through the narrow glass panels on either side of the door; they always noticed even the slightest movement, and if I had even barely touched the dining-room drapes he would have been running at the house, shouting, “There she is, there she is.” I leaned against the front door and thought about opening it and finding him dead on the driveway.
    He was looking up at a blank face of a house looking down because we always kept the shades drawn on the upstairs windows; he would get no answer there and I had to find Constance a sweater before she shivered any more. It was safe to go upstairs, but I wanted to be back with Constance while he was waiting outside, so I ran up the stairs and snatched a sweater from the chair in Constance’s room and ran