A Lesson in Vengeance

by Victoria Lee

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. —Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Oh this better be good

Girls who might prefer Oates to Shelley, Alcott to Allende.

The problem is, I don’t have anything I want to read. I peruse the shelves, but nothing jumps out at me. I feel as if I’ve read everything—every book in the world. Every title seems like a reiteration of something that came before it, the same story regurgitated over and over. I make a fine literature student, don’t I?

When classes fall into full swing, it’s easier to forget I’m haunted.

there’s no shortage of female horror to consume, and not nearly enough time in the semester to read it all.

The question isn’t whether magic is real. It’s whether I can touch it without being consumed by it.

I’m more certain than ever that even the Hermit’s light won’t be enough to keep the ghosts in their graves.

I started reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle this morning for my thesis. I wonder if Merricat’s brand of magic would work here—if I could tie a black ribbon in knots and bury it in the back garden with a murmured incantation, and tomorrow I’d wake to find the postcard back on my wall, where it belongs.

“I don’t understand,” she says again. “Alex didn’t die on a mountain. She died here, at school. She drowned.”

HUH

I look at my alarm clock with one hand cupped around my brow, squinting against the glowing red numbers: it’s three in the morning.

literally the witching hour

“You know it took three years after Flora Grayfriar’s murder until all of the Dalloway Five were dead. Three years to the day.”

“Witchcraft is just a metaphor for female grief and anger. I told you that.”

“I’m not going to drag you anywhere.” At last Ellis pushes herself up onto her elbows, fixing me in her gaze. “No,” she says after a moment. “You don’t have to. You could, though. If you tried.”

oh?

It’s easier to forget my ghosts when I have her.

“Are you drunk?” Hannah asks, a question stupid enough to rival her first. “No,” I say. “I just hate everyone.”

I knock. There is no response. “Ellis? It’s me.” A beat. “Felicity.” Still no reply. But I can hear the creak of a floorboard as she—what? Shifts in her chair? Moves across the room? Ellis is in there. She’s just ignoring me.

yeah ellis is definitely not in there

“There…You’re okay. Did you think I was going to hurt you? I would never hurt you. You’re safe.”

UUUUHHH THAYS NOT A NORMAL PEOPLE THING TO SAY

The only thing down there, I tell myself, is Ellis Haley. And Ellis Haley can go fuck herself.

The Secret Garden. It’s the same copy Ellis gave me in the graveyard, the same copy I left leaning against Alex’s headstone, with its old pages and embossed gold foil. I’m sick to the blood, sick in a way that makes me certain I shouldn’t touch that book. I should leave, should burn this place to the ground. But I can’t help myself. I slide the book out of its space between two Austens with shaking hands. When I open the ancient pages I smell something familiar, something that isn’t glue or rotting paper. It’s jasmine and vetiver. It’s…Alex. It’s Alex’s perfume. Pressed between chapters three and four is a sprig of hellebore.

“Mostly how depictions of mental illness are used to build suspense by introducing uncertainty and a sense of mistrust, especially with regard to the narrator’s perception of events, and the conflation of magic and madness in female characters.”

this is meta

“Okay. I suppose if we must have this conversation…yes. I killed her. And it worked, Felicity. It worked! I’d spent months trying to push through this scene. You don’t even know how many sleepless nights I wasted trying to eke out just one more word, to find the perfect phrase or image.”

Girl what the fuck!

A book lies open atop the pillow: Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

like how meta

“Literary fiction? That should be everyone’s genre, I hope,”

I open the cover, flipping past the title page. For Felicity. I did it all for you.