We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

All of the village was of a piece, a time, and a style; it was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it.

Perhaps the fine houses had been captured—perhaps as punishment for the Rochesters and the Blackwoods and their secret bad hearts?—and were held prisoner in the village; perhaps their slow rot was a sign of the ugliness of the villagers.

The blight on the village never came from the Blackwoods; the villagers belonged here and the village was the only proper place for them.

I thought about burning black painful rot that ate away from inside, hurting dreadfully. I wished it on the village.

I imagine that there were plenty of rotting hearts in the village coveting our heaps of golden coins but they were cowards and they were afraid of Blackwoods.

I was afraid that they might touch me and the mothers would come at me like a flock of taloned hawks; that was always the picture I had in my mind—birds descending, striking, gashing with razor claws.

“my Uncle Julian always fancies a roasted lamb in the first spring days.” I should not have said it, I knew, and a little gasp went around the store like a scream.

I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain and dying. I would then help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs. Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true.

“nice land to farm. Man could get rich, farming the Blackwood land.

Keep their land pretty well locked up, the Blackwoods do.”

from the time when the village was first put together out of old grey wood and the ugly people with their evil faces were brought from some impossible place and set down in the houses to live.

“A village loses a lot of style when the fine old people go. Anyone would think,” he said slowly, “that they wasn’t wanted.”

There won’t be any peace around here until you go.” “Now, that’s the truth,” Jim Donell said.

They saw me at once, and I thought of them rotting away and curling in pain and crying out loud; I wanted them doubled up and crying on the ground in front of me.

Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea? Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me. Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep? Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!

back and forth along the path, sneaking and weaving and sidestepping servilely, went the people from the village. They can’t get in, I used to tell myself over and over, lying in my dark room with the trees patterned in shadow on the ceiling, they can’t ever get in any more; the path is closed forever.

“I might, at that,” she said. Even though I knew she was teasing me I was chilled, but I laughed.

even at the worst time she was pink and white and golden, and nothing had ever seemed to dim the brightness of her.

“Someday I’ll go.” It was the second time she had spoken of going outside, and I was chilled.

but they never offered to step beyond their defined areas;

They never came inside or took any refreshment, but they drove to the front steps and sat in their car and talked for a few minutes.

Constance always invited them in, because we had been brought up to believe that it was discourteous to keep guests talking outside, but the Carringtons never came into the house.

which was the last time Helen Clarke ever came for tea,

“Are you frightened?” I asked Constance once, and she said, “No, not at all.” Without turning I could hear from her voice that she was quiet.

“But I won’t have you frightened.” “Sooner or later,” she said, “sooner or later I will have to take a first step.” I was chilled. “I want to send them away.” “No,” Constance said. “Absolutely not.”

Helen Clarke who was far more eccentric than Uncle Julian, with her awkward movements and her unexpected questions, and her bringing strangers here to tea; Uncle Julian lived smoothly, in a perfectly planned pattern, rounded and sleek.

“You’ve done penance long enough,” Helen Clarke said.

after all this time of refusing and denying, she had come to see that it might be possible, after all, to go outside. I realized now that this was the third time in one day that the subject had been touched, and three times makes it real. I could not breathe;

My niece, after all, was acquitted of murder. There could be no possible danger in visiting here now.”

“Regrettable,” Uncle Julian said. “A most fascinating case, one of the few genuine mysteries of our time. Of my time, particularly. My life work,” he told Mrs. Wright.

“Please,” Helen Clarke said loudly, “it’s outrageous, it really is; I can’t bear to hear it talked about. Constance—Julian—what will Lucille think of you?”

this dwelling on the past is not wholesome;

She was a wicked, disobedient child,” and she smiled at me.

“A child should be punished for wrongdoing, but she should be made to feel that she is still loved. I would never have tolerated the child’s wildness.

It was a curious act.” “There was a spider in it,” Constance said to the teapot.

“She told the police those people deserved to die.”

“She told the police that it was all her fault.”

“But the great, the unanswered question, is why? Why did she do it? I mean, unless we agree that Constance was a homicidal maniac—” “You have met her, madam.” “I have what? Oh, my goodness yes. I completely forgot. I cannot seem to remember that that pretty young girl is actually—well. Your mass murderer must have a reason, Mr. Blackwood, even if it is only some perverted, twisted—oh, dear. She is such a charming girl, your niece; I cannot remember when I have taken to anyone as I have to her. But if she is a homicidal maniac—”

“It really happened?” he asked her. “It certainly did.

All the omens spoke of change. I woke up on Saturday morning and thought I heard them calling me; they want me to get up, I thought before I came fully awake and remembered that they were dead;

but held fast to guard us.

on Thursday, which was my most powerful day, I went into the big attic and dressed in their clothes.

I was not allowed in Uncle Julian’s room.

I was not allowed to handle knives,

but we never touched what belonged to the others; Constance said it would kill us if we ate it.

“If I am spared,” he always said to Constance, “I will write the book myself. If not, see that my notes are entrusted to some worthy cynic who will not be too concerned with the truth.”

I decided that I would choose three powerful words, words of strong protection, and so long as these great words were never spoken aloud no change would come.

You have been a good niece to me, although there are some grounds for supposing you an undutiful daughter.

My brother sometimes remarked upon what we ate, my wife and I;

I saw him watching her. We took little enough from him, Constance.