We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

Blackwoods had always lived in our house, and kept their things in order; as soon as a new Blackwood wife moved in, a place was found for her belongings, and so our house was built up with layers of Blackwood property weighting it, and keeping it steady against the world.

wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village.

In this village the men stayed young and did the gossiping and the women aged with grey evil weariness and stood silently waiting for the men to get up and come home.

There was some talk once of putting in zoning laws in the village and tearing down the shacks on Creek Road and building up the whole village to match the town hall, but no one ever lifted a finger; maybe they thought the Blackwoods might take to attending town meetings if they did.

Blackwood Road goes in a great circle around the Blackwood land and along every inch of Blackwood Road is a wire fence built by our father. Not far past the town hall is the big black rock which marks the entrance to the path where I unlock the gate and lock it behind me and go through the woods and am home. The people of the village have always hated us.

we did not accept mail, and we did not have a telephone; both had become unbearable six years before—but

(Mary Katherine Blackwood, her foot caught in the tar, cringing as a car bore down on her; go back, all the way, and start over),

it was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it.

I always thought about rot when I came toward the row of stores; I thought about burning black painful rot that ate away from inside, hurting dreadfully. I wished it on the village.

doors. 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.

not willing to move until I had gone out through the door again and the wave of talk began and they were swept back into their own lives.

days.” I should not have said it, I knew, and a little gasp went around the store like a scream. I could make them run like rabbits, I thought, if I said to them what I really wanted to,

“It’s wrong to hate them,” Constance said, “it only weakens you,” but I hated them anyway, and wondered why it had been worth while creating them in the first place.

If he had a million years and three heads, and didn’t care what grew, a man could get rich.

there was a crack in the sidewalk that looked like a finger pointing; the crack had always been there.

I suppose the crack was there, like a finger pointing, 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.

the only one who managed to keep hold of any color at all. She was round and pink and when she put on a bright print dress it stayed looking bright for a little while before it merged into the dirty grey of the rest.

When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry.

I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have a little house all by myself on the moon.

Constance could put names to all the growing things, but I was content to know them by their way and place of growing, and their unfailing offers of refuge.

I used to try to draw her picture, with long golden hair and eyes as blue as the crayon could make them, and a bright pink spot on either cheek; the pictures always surprised me, because she did look like that; even at the worst time she was pink and white and golden, and nothing had ever seemed to dim the brightness of her.

“They didn’t often quarrel,” Constance said. “They were almost invariably civil to one another, Niece, if that is what you mean by not quarrelling; a most unsatisfactory example for the rest of us. My wife and I preferred to shout.”

Because Helen Clarke was ungraceful by nature, she managed to make the simple act of moving into a room and sitting down a complex ballet for three people;

sent Mrs. Wright sideways like a careening croquet ball off into the far corner of the room where she sat abruptly and clearly without intention upon a small and uncomfortable chair.

I was thinking that if eccentric meant, as the dictionary said it did, deviating from regularity, it was 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. She ought not to call people things they’re not,

I must have known what she was going to say, because I was chilled; all this day had been building up to what Helen Clarke was going to say right now.

this morning the kitchen had been bright and happy and now, chilled, I saw that it was dreary.

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; I was tied with wire, and my head was huge and going to explode;

I began dressing Helen Clarke in my mind, putting her in a bathing suit on a snow bank, setting her high in the hard branches of a tree in a dress of flimsy pink ruffles that caught and pulled and tore; she was tangled in the tree and screaming and I almost laughed.

“There is such a thing as good taste, Julian.” “Taste, madam? Have you ever tasted arsenic? I assure you that there is one moment of utter incredulity before the mind can accept—”

it happened in this very room, and we still have our dinner in here every night.”

“What was wrong with Mrs. Blackwood doing her own cooking?” “Please.” Uncle Julian’s voice had a little shudder in it, and I knew the gesture he was using with it even though he was out of my sight.

She is such a charming girl, your niece; I cannot remember when I have taken to anyone as I have to her.

I can’t help it when people are frightened; I always want to frighten them more.”

I heard them calling me; they want me to get up, I thought before I came fully awake and remembered that they were dead;

once I quartered the long field and buried something in each quarter to make the grass grow higher as I grew taller, so I would always be able to hide there. I once buried six blue marbles in the creek bed to make the river beyond run dry.

Constance had worked all her life at adding to the food in the cellar, and her rows and rows of jars were easily the handsomest, and shone among the others.

“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.”

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.

it has the prettiest colors of all; nothing is so pretty on the shelves as rhubarb jam.” “Make it for the shelves, then.

“We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.”

I decided on Pegasus. I took a glass from the cabinet, and said the word very distinctly into the glass, then filled it with water and drank.

the air of change was so strong that there was no avoiding it; change lay over the stairs and the kitchen and the garden like fog.

this was to be a day of long thin things, since there had already been a hair in my toothbrush, and a fragment of a string was caught on the side of my chair and I could see a splinter broken off the back step.

I lay there with Jonas, listening to his stories. All cat stories start with the statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this,”

I was on my way back to the house when I found a very bad omen, one of the worst.

He knocked, quietly at first and then firmly, and I leaned against the door, feeling the knocks hit at me, knowing how close he was.

“listen, see if you can get a picture of her when she shows again.” “Let’s just take some of these flowers,” they said comfortably to each other; “get a rock or something out of the garden, we can take it home to show the kids.”

she said, and the day fell apart around me. I saw Jonas in the doorway and Constance by the stove but they had no color. I could not breathe, I was tied around tight, everything was cold.

today would be a glittering day, full of tiny sparkling things.