Devil House

by John Darnielle

“If you miss one, you don’t get the chance to see it again,”

You have to look hard at all the details of a scene before it changes on you. There may come a day when all you’ve got left are the notes you took: maybe a photograph or two, if you’re lucky.

Write what you know. Keep it local. Start in your own backyard and spread out from there.

Prior to the renovation, it had been officially standing empty since 1986. Nobody had lived inside Devil House since forever.

That was Devil House’s original form: a diner on Main Street, six tables and a long wooden counter.

I call this the proximity effect: the closer you get to the past, the less believable its particulars seem.

the deep cover of secrecy afforded by the infinite unlit corners and corridors squirreled away inside the human brain,

IT’S A LUXURY TO WORK SLOWLY;

you’d been in love with the world: there was so much in it, a life so full of surprises if you only stayed open to them, ready to receive the transmissions when they came.

Mothers protecting their children are expected to act with ferocity: society demands this of them; it’s one of many requirements women are encouraged to absorb and internalize, selves they’re supposed to envision themselves growing

People are awful, even when they’re not trying to be. None of the stories they tell themselves are good.

He was now grown-up enough himself to be interested by it, but still young enough to think of it as somebody else’s affair.

Anger passes. Disappointment vibrates.

It wasn’t comfortable in a physical sense, but there are many other kinds of comfort worth seeking out in this world.

the world beyond school didn’t seem like a place with tons of extra room for people who did things their own way.

Anything worth doing is worth doing right.

Secrets require care and nurturing; they die when they hit the air.

Simple explanations are what people want when they’re scared.”

I was a bookworm; telling me not to read something guaranteed that I’d read it:

not all houses are built to protect the people inside them.

To gaze upon a childhood home through adult eyes is to engage in an act of disenchantment.

Like many abandoned spaces, it’s an indicator of where somebody once saw some possibilities.