A Haunting on the Hill

by Elizabeth Hand

Hill House neither sleeps nor dreams. Shrouded within its overgrown lawns and sprawling woodlands, the long shadows of mountains and ancient oaks, Hill House watches. Hill House waits.

When you’re confronted with something deeply strange or obviously implausible in a book or movie or painting, you know it means something. It’s a symbol, a clue. A warning. But in real life, that’s not necessarily how it works.

The building was completely hideous. I loved it.

“Does the house get lonely, too?”

“You said the house was demented,” she said. “Why is that?” Ainsley turned her amber ring, as though adjusting an old-fashioned radio dial. “I said that my late husband thought it was demented,” she replied. “Not me.” “But why?” “People project their own expectations onto it.

People think that old ballads are about love, but really, they’re about blood.

“We’re the ones haunting it,” she proclaimed. “Actors, we channel the spirits. What do you think acting is? Bringing the dead to life.”

“Characters in a play aren’t dead,” said Holly. “They’re fictional.” “But they aren’t alive, either, are they? Not until we summon them.” Amanda had given this speech before, addressing college acting classes or community theater fund-raisers. Only there nobody interrupted her. “We memorize words, arrange objects in a ritual space, wear special clothing. Then, after weeks or months of preparation we’re transformed. We’re possessed. Something else enters us.”

Exhaustion pinned me to the bed, as I drifted between wakefulness and a bone-deep yearning for oblivion.

Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.

But Shakespeare knew that words were also spells, designed to intoxicate and enthrall the senses.

It is evil, Amanda thought, staring up at Hill House. You can’t fool me, I have magic eyes and I see you. I played Medea, and Clytemnestra—the fall of another house, the House of Atreus! So there. She turned, nearly lost her balance as she was buffeted by a sudden gust, not cold like the autumn morning but hot with the carious reek of rotting gums and tongue. I see you too, it whispered.

This is a lost place, he thought, and felt a growing, profound unease. Despair lapped at the walls and floors of Hill House like fetid, rising water: anyone who stayed here might drown. The others might not feel how it fed off their rancor and petty resentments, like a battery being recharged, but he did.

“I worked with victims of domestic violence for thirty-seven years. They stay with the devil they know, and the devil they know kills them. Hill House is like that. Most people realize in a few days and get out.” “What happens to the ones who don’t?” “They all leave, one way or another.”

Whatever was going on, there was definitely bad blood between Ainsley and Evadne, and perhaps Melissa, too. In spite of that, they seemed bound together—by isolation, by precarious finances, by the fact that they were women.

“Do you know why certain houses make people feel uneasy?” Nisa rolled her eyes and cut in. “Because they’re obviously haunted?” “No. It’s because we can’t tell whether they’re actually a threat. I heard it on a podcast. If you were to open the door to Hill House and see a dead body, or a collapsed ceiling, you’d refuse to enter. But nothing here is obviously wrong. It’s just all slightly wrong. Which makes it harder for us to know if it’s safe.” She settled back into her chair, pleased with herself.

“I’ve been thinking, this place, it absorbs our energy. Like a battery, only it gets its charge from us.

Only Hill House neither sleeps nor dreams. Shrouded within its overgrown lawns and sprawling woodlands, the long shadows of mountains and ancient oaks, Hill House only watches. Hill House waits.