A Haunting on the Hill

by Elizabeth Hand

Elizabeth Sawyer died in 1621, the play was produced two years after that, and eventually published in 1658, like thirty years later. No one ever went broke showing blood and guts and sex. Four hundred years later, we’re still listening to podcasts about the same kinds of stuff.”

I stayed where I was, confused. That morning on the veranda, I’d looked through the windows and seen a room with a pool table, small tables for bridge, paintings on the wall. This had been the same room, I was sure of it.

“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.”

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.