A Haunting on the Hill

by Elizabeth Hand

there was something about a kid who might have poisoned his family when they were living there. No, not his family,” he said, musing. “Someone visiting them. But that was a lot later, in the eighties, maybe.”

Grand Guignol.

“You’ll thank me when you hear what I’ve done for your show. Our show,” he corrected himself, catching a glimpse of my face in the rearview mirror. “Holly’s show.” “Our show,” Nisa repeated, and stuck in her earbuds.

Againn. This vibe is interesting

It had been months since Nisa and Stevie had hooked up.

How late am I to this change of voice party?

“Whoa—slow down, Holly…” I tapped the brake, turning to see what Stevie pointed at. “Those rocks.” He stabbed at the window with a finger. “It’s a stone circle—see? It goes all the way around the trailer. And there’s a witch ball, too.” His voice rose, triumphant. “She’s a witch.” I let the car roll to a stop. He was right about the stone circle—how had I missed that before? The plants had hidden it, I realized. Now that the clumps of hostas and ferns had died back, you could see the rocks nestled within them. Most were knee high, a few almost four feet tall. They formed a circle—more of an oval—encompassing the trailer and pretty much the entire yard, including the vegetable garden. A clothesline stretched above the dying tomato plants. Flattened aluminum cans dangled from it, along with animal bones and skulls, the jawbones of what might have been deer. There was some kind of scarecrow, too, made of branches and rags tied together to suggest a skeletal shape, with too many limbs and no head. At one end of the stone circle, a ceramic pedestal held a silvery mirror ball streaked red and blue where it reflected maple leaves and sky. “A gazing ball.” Nisa smiled. “I love those.” Stevie shook his head. “It’s called a witch ball. My grandmother’s from Salem, everyone has one. They use them for scrying. And protection.” “She’s not taking any chances.” Nisa pointed at the skulls. “And—oh! Holly, look!” An immense black rabbit had emerged from a ring of yellowing ferns. It hesita...

In the photo she’d just taken, there was no evidence of the rabbit, though I knew it had been there. We had all seen it. Rather than the hare, a person stood beside the gazing ball. One hand resting upon its smooth reflective surface, the other hand raised, palm out, as she stared at the camera. A dark-haired woman in a blue hoodie. The photo had been enlarged so that I could see the deep grooves beside her mouth and her eyes, such a pale blue they seemed to have no iris, just a black fleck of pupil. Evadne Morris.

Interesting.....

“No. It started back by that church. I think Satan ate my phone.”

Hahaha

The shift in altitude left Hill House more exposed to the elements, and most of the leaves were gone from the trees. They’d been raked in piles across the lawn, brown heaps that resembled grave mounds.

Stevie clutched the heavy duffel to his chest like a personal flotation device. He gazed at the third-floor windows, dark despite the noon sun. “Stevie.” I touched his shoulder, and he began to fall backward. Nisa lunged for him as I grabbed his arm. “What the fuck, Holly?” he said, straightening. “You were zoning out! Are you okay?” “I’m fine!” “You didn’t look fine.” I glanced up at Hill House. “What’s not safe?” “Nothing. Everything is fine.”

Ok Eleanor

A strong scent of lemon polish and Murphy Oil Soap hung in the air, proof that Melissa Libby had been hard at work, but that foul underlying odor remained. Maybe there wasn’t a dead mouse beneath the floorboards but something bigger, like a squirrel or raccoon?

She stuck out her hand—silver nail polish, and I was surprised to see a silver ring like Ainsley’s, with a chunk of amber big enough I could tell something was embedded in it, a tiny insect or petal.

Well we all need pieces of amber...

Hey, what was it you said when we were walking to the kitchen?” He appeared bemused. “You were playing with my hair, I couldn’t hear what you said.” He shook his head. “Maybe it was Nisa? I didn’t touch your hair.”

“Amanda took our room,” she announced. She didn’t bother to keep her voice down. “Even after Melissa told her it was our room, she totally ignored her!”

Are you five?

“What, are you twelve?” Stevie snapped.

Well I've agreed with Stevie ......

“I don’t think anything’s really been done here since it was built. Things get started, but nothing’s ever finished.”

Amanda was pleased to arrive before the other actors. Why should she wait an extra day? She was eager to get down to work. Plus, she didn’t like the idea of them being there without her, gossiping and perhaps even cutting lines without Amanda present to put in her two cents.

These people arent real butbim exhausted

there was no mold that she could see, and as she followed Ainsley inside, she was relieved to note that it didn’t smell particularly musty.

Difference in smells again

she wanted bright light, the better to put on her makeup and fix her hair. One needed to keep up appearances in the hinterlands, a lesson she’d learned doing summer stock as a girl. You never knew who you might run into, even in a cultural wasteland, and you never knew who might prove useful.

I have audibly groanedd

She’d been reduced to jobs like this ever since the accident with Jason Pratt.

We have two mysterious acting accidents

Mme X: Do you actually think I’d want to shoot you? Seriously? Good lord, I can’t believe you thought that! I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me, because of the way our paths crossed. I know you’ll never forget that. But you know, I was the innocent one.

This is probably going to be important

proscenium,

the wife who used the golden key to open the forbidden cellar.

I don’t ask for much, but what I have should be of very good quality.

Agree

There was no way he’d sleep with her again, not with Holly here, not when they were working together. Those days were long gone, along with his cocaine habit and compulsive Grindr hookups.

So Stevie has turned a new leaf

A wooden baseboard ran around the room, half-covered by ragged strips of violet-patterned wallpaper. In moving the dresser, he’d revealed a section where the baseboard had been removed. A small panel had been inserted there, about six inches high and almost as wide. Not a panel—a tiny wooden door, painted spruce-green and with a brass knob the size of a thumbtack head.

Stevie no.

He wouldn’t tell anyone about what he’d found. He didn’t know why but he felt with absolute certainty that he had to keep it secret. For its own protection.

Interesting

Actors rarely talked about being possessed by a character during a performance—it’s all technique, discipline, practice, blah blah blah, not to mention eating disorders, plastic surgery, addiction, narcissism, and the occasional bit of sociopathy. Amanda knew all about it, she’d gone to Juilliard and studied with Stella Adler, done her share of classics and also crap. Often, the audience couldn’t even tell if there was a star, or former star, or almost-star, onstage. But she knew: she’d witnessed how something else takes over when a great actor performs.

theaters began as sacred spaces.

Hill House

Has it been called that before?

It’s better upstairs, but she said we should stay out of the big room at the end of the hall. It’s not safe.

Like the nursery in the OG

“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.”

Oh goodness...

“What is that?” cried Stevie. She looked up to see him staring—not at her, at the tablecloth. And not just Stevie: all of them, gaping as Amanda glanced down to see the stain spreading across the white cloth, the color of red wine or beet juice. But not blood, she thought, pushing her chair back as she stumbled to her feet, not blood, how could it be blood?

What is crappening?

Who had put it here? And where did it lead? The paint had looked brighter than what he’d seen elsewhere in Hill House, and the brass knob had shone as though just polished.

He felt an irrational, powerful urge to keep the door a secret. It was meant for him, even if it hid nothing but dust and mouse droppings.

Downstairs, in the dark? I was so cold, I couldn’t feel anything.”

Usually after sex I fall asleep immediately. Nisa’s the one who gets energized and stays up, listening to murder podcasts or scrawling song lyrics in a notebook while she watches some inscrutable Jacques Rivette movie on the Criterion Channel.

Sounds familiar. Haha

I saw nothing, not the windows or the walls or Nisa beside me. The darkness was like a liquid I couldn’t feel or taste or smell, but which somehow coated my eyes or was absorbed by them. I tried to lift my hand to my face but the effort was too much. Exhaustion pinned me to the bed, as I drifted between wakefulness and a bone-deep yearning for oblivion. I don’t know when the voices started. I grew aware of them only gradually, the way you wake to an alarm that’s been set too low. There was no mistaking the sound—not wind in the leaves or rain, or Amanda snoring in the next room, but a very soft murmuring. Words, though I couldn’t understand them. There were two voices, one deeper than the other. Not a man’s voice but an unctuous burbling, like water being sucked down a clogged drain. The other voice was quieter but even more repellent, at once throaty and sibilant. Sometimes it grew so soft I almost couldn’t hear it, and I found myself struggling to do so even though the noise was horrible.

The smell of decay filled my nostrils

What are you looking at?” “That kid—” She pointed. “He just keeps staring at the house.” “Maybe because you’re staring at him.” I rolled out of bed and stepped to the window. “Where is he?” “There at the edge of the woods—oops, no. He ran off—he must’ve seen us.”

She’d slept soundly, waking once or twice to hear Holly and Nisa murmuring in their room. It must have been two or three a.m., much too late for sleepover chatter between adults. That kind of low sniggering laugh mean girls always had, though one of them almost sounded like a man. Stevie might have snuck in, the three of them gossiping about Amanda while she slept.

Oh boy

Outside her room, she paused. Something scrabbled behind the wainscoting, tiny claws scratching at the plaster and lath.

Beetle

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

People were so condescending about mobile homes;

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.

The main hall seemed even bigger than it had yesterday, probably because there were no people in it. And there seemed to be more doors than he recalled.

This was exactly the kind of house he’d daydreamed about as a kid, huge and rambling and just waiting to be explored. Yet Hill House pushed back against all that. Standing alone in the main hall, he felt it—like a hand shoved hard against his face, making it impossible for him to breathe, to see or call out for help…

“This fucking place. Hill House. Ainsley shouldn’t rent it out.” “Holly said she needs the money to keep it up.” “Better if it just fell down,” Melissa snapped. “It’s not safe.”

HC.

Hugh Crain.

“No wonder Ainsley needs to rent the place out.” He’d meant it as a joke, but Melissa wasn’t amused. “She doesn’t need to,” she retorted. “She chooses to. That’s why Evadne and I keep an eye on it.” “Evadne? The lady in the trailer?” “My aunt. The two of them go way back. They’re constantly arguing, they’re like sisters. But Ainsley renting out Hill House is one thing they will never agree on, and…” “And you’re with your aunt?” “Yeah. But Ainsley writes my checks.” She lowered her head—self-conscious, maybe. “Still, this way, I can help Evadne. That’s why she lives up here.” “To watch the house?” She nodded.

“Your ring. Is it by the same person who did Ainsley’s?” “Yes. Evadne made it.”

Really digging the coven theory. Especially with a witch being the topic of the play