Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana from its historical roots through its most recent branches.
This week, we finish Shirley Jackson’s
The Haunting of Hill House, first published in 1959, with Chapter 9. Spoilers ahead.
“It’s the only time anything’s ever happened to me. I liked it.”
With everyone tucked into bed, Eleanor creeps barefoot from her and Theodora’s room. She’s awakened with the thought of going to the library.
At the tower door, she’s repelled by the smell of decay. “Mother,” she says. “Come along,” replies a voice from above. “Mother?” Eleanor calls again, eliciting a “little soft laugh.” She runs upstairs, sees no one, says “You’re here somewhere.” “Somewhere,” is the reply.
Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana from its historical roots through its most recent branches.
This week, we continue with Chapter 8 of Shirley Jackson’s
The Haunting of Hill House, first published in 1959. Spoilers ahead.
“What do people really want with each other, as Nell asked me once; what use are other people?”
It’s breakfast-time on the morning after Hill House didn’t actually shake itself to splinters, and Eleanor finds she can now hear everything, all over the house. Mrs. Montague and Arthur are tired and upset, Mrs. M. because the nursery was too stuffy and Arthur because some pestilential branch kept tapping on his window. Worse, they detected no “manifestations” at all maybe better luck tonight?
Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana from its historical roots through its most recent branches.
This week, we continue with Chapter 7 of Shirley Jackson’s
The Haunting of Hill House, first published in 1959. Spoilers ahead.
“The spirits dwelling in this house may be actually suffering because they are aware that you are afraid of them.”
On the day Mrs. Montague is expected, Eleanor goes into the hills, wanting to be “secret and out from under the dark wood of the house.” Lying on soft, dry grass, she senses that the trees and flowers pity her as a rootless creation, “heart-breakingly mobile,” but she is filled with “an overwhelming wild happiness.” She wonders: What am I going to do? What
Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana from its historical roots through its most recent branches.
This week, we continue with Chapter 6 of Shirley Jackson’s
The Haunting of Hill House, first published in 1959. Spoilers ahead.
“Her eyes hurt with tears against the screaming blackness of the path and the shuddering whiteness of the trees, and she thought, with a clear intelligent picture of the words in her mind, burning, Now I am really afraid.”
On the morning after she holds a spectral hand in the dark, Eleanor sits on the steps of the summerhouse, Luke sprawled lazily beside her.