A Haunting on the Hill

by Elizabeth Hand

Most houses sleep, and nearly all of them dream:

Little towns long since colonized by self-styled artists and artisans who are really just people rich enough to flee the city and call themselves whatever they want. Craft brewers, textile designers, glass artists specializing in bespoke bongs and neti pots. Dog chiropractors. Masons who would demolish a centuries-old fieldstone chimney, number each stone, and then rebuild it, piece by piece, in an adjoining room. People who distilled rare liqueurs from echinacea and comfrey, or made syrup out of white pine needles, or wove intricate rings and brooches from your own hair,

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.

I thought that was rich, coming from someone who once mixed the husks of venomous caterpillars with belladonna in a ritual to ensure that a rival didn’t get a part in a regional production of Urinetown.