Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson (26 page)

There was a letter from Fairchild’s, signed S. B. Fairchild, saying that my credit everywhere would suffer if they had to turn my account over to a collection agency. There was a letter from the United States Postal Department enclosing three forms to be filled out explaining misdelivery of registered mail. There was a letter from the manager of the telephone company saying that it was against their policy to continue carrying unpaid bills, and unless charges of one dollar and sixty-nine cents were remitted, telephone service would be discontinued. There was a letter in a plain envelope from the baby-sitter’s uncle asking “Money troubles got YOU down? Because I’m WAITING to HELP!” There was a letter from the repair department of Fairchild’s Department Store. They were extremely sorry that repairing my tape recorder had taken a little longer than their original estimate. There had been a slight delay in getting parts. The machine was put in order now, however, and waiting for me; would I please pick it up right away? Because after ten days they would not be responsible.

D
ECK THE
H
ALLS

I
T WAS EIGHT O’CLOCK
in the evening, Christmas Eve, and Mr. and Mrs. Williams were decorating their Christmas tree. It was the first Christmas tree they had had since they were married, but this year their little girl was two years old, and Mrs. Williams had thought that it was time they started making a real Christmas for her to remember when she grew up. Mrs. Williams had bought some ornaments at the five and ten, and a lot of little toys to hang on the tree, and Mr. Williams had brought out a kitchen chair and was standing on it, hanging things on the top branches. All of the baby’s relatives and friends had sent lovely things, which Mrs. Williams intended to pile lavishly under the tree, and Mr. and Mrs. Williams had bought an enormous teddy bear, taller by a head than the baby herself, which would be the first thing she would see in the morning.

When the tree was finished, with the packages and the teddy bear underneath, Mrs. Williams stood back and looked at it, holding her breath with pleasure. “Bob,” she said, “it looks lovely. Like a
dream
of Christmas.”

Mr. Williams eased himself off the chair gingerly. “Looks good,” he admitted.

Mrs. Williams went over and moved an ornament to a higher branch. “She’ll come running into the room and we’ll have it all lighted up,” she said happily, “and it will be something for her to remember all year round.”

“We used to have fine Christmases when I was a kid,” Mr. Williams said, “all the family together, and a turkey and everything.”

The doorbell rang, and Mrs. Williams went to open it. “I could only get a goose for tomorrow,” she said over her shoulder, “not many turkeys this year.” When she opened the door there were two little girls standing on the porch, snow in their hair and on their shoulders, and both looking up at her. The taller of the two was holding a folded piece of paper, which she held out to Mrs. Williams.

“My mother said to give you this,” she said to Mrs. Williams.

Mrs. Williams frowned, puzzled, looking down at the children, wondering if they lived in the neighborhood. “Come in,” she said, “don’t stand out there in the cold.” She closed the door behind the little girls, and they stood expectantly in the hall, their eyes on the Christmas tree beyond the archway into the living room. Mrs. Williams, still puzzled, opened the paper and started to read it aloud.

“Dear neighbor,” she read, “these are my two little girls. The oldest is eight years of age and the little one is five…” Mrs. Williams suddenly stopped reading aloud and shut her lips tight, reading on to herself: “If you do not want to give them anything please don’t bother, but if you do Jeanie wears a size four shoe children’s size and Helen needs something to wear to school this winter. Even if you do not give them anything, a Merry Christmas.” Mrs. Williams finished reading and looked at the children for a minute. “Bob,” she said.

Mr. Williams came out from the living room, and Mrs. Williams handed him the note and turned again to the children. “You sit down there for a minute,” she said, indicating the leather bench in the hall, “and I’m going to get you something hot to drink to warm you up, and then we’ll see what we can do about this letter of your mother’s.” She turned to the littler child. “You’re Jeanie?” The girl nodded solemnly. “Well, you just let me take your muffler off and sit you up here on this bench, and then we’ll have some lovely hot cocoa…” While she talked, Mrs. Williams had put the little girl on the bench and taken off her coat, and the older girl, watching, finally took off her coat and sat beside her sister. Mrs. Williams turned around to Mr. Williams, who was standing helplessly, holding the letter. “You amuse these youngsters,” she said, “while I run out and make some cocoa.”

The children sat on the bench looking at the Christmas tree, and Mr. Williams squatted on the floor beside them. “Well,” he said, “you’re a little bigger than my little girl, so I hardly know what to say to you…”

Mrs. Williams went out into the kitchen and put some milk on to heat while she arranged a dish of oatmeal cookies and two cups and saucers on a tray. When she had made the cocoa, she put the pot on the tray and carried it out into the hall. The littler girl was laughing at Mr. Williams, and the older girl was watching with a smile. Mr. Williams was telling them a story and Mrs. Williams waited with the cocoa while he put a quick ending on it and stood up. She handed each little girl a cup and filled it with cocoa, and then gave them each a cookie.
“That
will make you nice and warm,” she said. “Believe I’ll have some, too,” Mr. Williams said.

Mrs. Williams went back into the kitchen and got two more cups, and brought them out and filled them, and she and Mr. Williams sat on the floor drinking, and Mr. Williams made faces that made little Jeanie laugh so that she could hardly hold her cup. When she had finished her cocoa, Mrs. Williams went upstairs and got out an old coat of her own, and a couple of sweaters and a warm bathrobe. She put them in an old suitcase so the children could carry them, and tore off a page from the telephone pad and scribbled on it: “I have nothing that will fit the children, but maybe you can use these. Or you can make them over.” She slipped the note in with the clothes and came back downstairs to the children, who had begun to talk to Mr. Williams.

“The second grade,” the older one was saying shyly.

“Well, isn’t that fine,” Mr. Williams said. “I bet you’re lots smarter than Helen, though,” he said to the smaller girl.

“I’m
smarter than
her,”
Helen said.

The smaller girl giggled. “Old Helen has to go to school every day,” she said.

When Mrs. Williams came back into the hall, Mr. Williams stood up and turned away from the children. He took out his wallet, selected a five-dollar bill, and held it up to Mrs. Williams, who nodded. Mr. Williams went over and slipped it into the older girl’s hand. “Don’t you lose that, now,” he said. “Tell your mother that’s for a Christmas present for all of you.”

“Can they carry the suitcase?” Mrs. Williams asked anxiously. The older girl slipped off the bench and picked up the suitcase. Even with the coat in it, it wasn’t very heavy, and she would manage it all right, Mrs. Williams thought. Mrs. Williams helped the smaller girl down off the bench and began putting her coat on again.

“Thank you very much,” the older girl said to Mr. Williams.

“Nonsense,” Mr. Williams said, “it’s Christmastime, isn’t it?” The older girl smiled and reached for the suitcase.

“Wait a minute,” Mrs. Williams said. She ran in to the Christmas tree and took off a couple of candy canes, and brought them back to the children.

They accepted them silently, but suddenly Jeanie began to cry, taking her sister’s hand and pointing.

The older girl looked up apologetically. “It’s the teddy bear,” she said. “She just saw it this minute and she’s always wanted one.” She tried to pull her sister to the front door, but the little girl refused to move, standing and crying.

“Poor little kid,” Mr. Williams said. Mrs. Williams kneeled down beside the little girl.

“Jeanie, honey,” she said, “just listen to me for a minute. The teddy bear is pretty, but it’s for
my
little girl,” she finished.

Jeanie stopped crying, looking up at Mrs. Williams. “Wait,” Mrs. Williams said. She went back to the Christmas tree, Jeanie watching her eagerly, and took two little toys off the branches. It spoiled the whole balance of the tree, having them gone, but Mrs. Williams thought quickly that she could fix that later. One of the toys was a little doll, and the other was a folded piece of blanket with three very tiny dolls in it. Mrs. Williams gave the three tiny dolls to Jeanie and the larger doll to Helen. “These are for you,” she said. Jeanie held the blanket with the little dolls, looking beyond Mrs. Williams at the teddy bear.

“Thank you very much,” Helen said. “We better be going.” She hesitated, and finally said to Mrs. Williams, “Please may I have the piece of paper back now?”

Mr. Williams handed her the folded note and Helen put it in her pocket and took Jeanie’s hand.

“Merry Christmas,” she said. She picked up the suitcase in her free hand and led Jeanie to the door, which Mr. Williams opened for her. On the porch she stopped again, and turned around. “We’re going to sing a Christmas carol for you,” she said, “I learned it in school.” She began, and after a minute Jeanie joined in weakly: “Deck the hall with boughs of holly, tra la la la la…”

Mr. and Mrs. Williams stood on the porch and watched them going down the walk, singing carefully together. When they reached the street Mr. Williams stepped back inside. “Coming?” he asked.

“Merry Christmas,” Mrs. Williams called out after the children, but even to her, her voice sounded inadequate.

L
ORD OF THE
C
ASTLE

I
T WAS A BLACK
winter’s day when I watched my father hanged. I stood, fifteen years old but too proud to show my fear before the villagers who crowded around, and watched the man I adored ascend the scaffold and take his last look at the sky and the trees and the mountains he loved.

In that ignorant little village the punishment for witchcraft was death, and not even the lord in the castle on the mountaintop was great enough to stand against the law of superstition and dread. And so my father stood today before the hatred in the eyes of the villagers and went gallantly to his death.

As I stood there, alone, I could feel the secret glances that followed me, and I could almost hear the whispers—“That’s his son”—“That’s the young one”—“Yonder goes the boy who inherits the devil’s lore”—and I hated them all for their ignorance and fear. And when they brought my father out to walk the steps to his death, I came forward to stand beside him before he mounted the scaffold. I looked deep into his black eyes, haunted by the sight of things no mortal had ever seen before him, and I stood as straight as I could, and said to him clearly: “I know you are unjustly accused, Father, and those who have done it will suffer at my hand.”

But he looked at me, and smiled, and said: “It is not well to return death for death, my son. Rather hope that I shall rest quietly, and leave you in peace.” And he touched his hand to my head, and took his great signet ring from his finger and put it on mine. Then I stood watching him climb up to the platform, and as one man close by me cried out against my father: “Go back to the devil, your master!” I cried “Quiet!” and lashed out at him with the whip I carried. And the crowd moved slowly backward, sullen and murmuring, while I stood alone beside the scaffold. But I could not turn my eyes away while my father died, for I would rather have died myself than show myself, before the eyes of that crowd, a coward.

And, afterward, I rode alone, back up the hill to the tall, dark castle, mine now, my home and the home of my vengeance. At fifteen I was the lord on the hill, and possessor of such wealth, in gold and land and antique treasures, as would make me a success in any world’s capital I chose to frequent. I chose none, however, for my heart and my passion and the wild, long history of my name held me to my home and the home in which my father had lived and died. I wished never to lose sight of that long black line against the sky that meant my castle on the hill, and, too, my promise to revenge my father’s death held me to this place.

Many days and nights I spent there alone, reading my father’s books and studying his knowledge, with only an old dumb man moving quietly (who moves more quietly than those who cannot speak?) about the darkness, bringing me what I needed and turning the world from the door. It was vengeance I was studying, and a means of it, for I was bound by that very devil lore that had killed my father, to turn it to bringing his murderers to justice. And soon it was almost a year, and I still knew nothing, and was no closer to my heart’s desire.

And it was a year to the day later that I sat in the garden, hidden below the crest of the hill by a heavy stone wall, safe, I thought, from any watcher. I was reading, and no footfall disturbed my work, but a voice spoke at my elbow.

“Is this not part my garden?” it spoke, and I leaped to my feet, the book fallen to the ground, seeing before me a tall and slim young man, ragged and tired, but with a hint of my family in his half-closed eyes.

“Who are you?” I demanded of the stranger, and he laughed.

“I am your half brother,” he said.

Then I laughed, but I fell back before the look in his eyes, so much my father that I feared him.

“Your father had more than one son,” he said, and touched the signet ring on my hand with the tip of his finger, and when I moved my hand away he laughed once more.

Then he was sober again, and his eyes were kind as he watched me. “Our father,” he said, “gave you his ring, because I am afraid that I had no legal right to it… yet.”

Then I understood. “You are the son of some poor country woman whom my father…” It was delicacy made me pause, but he laughed still more.

“I am,” he said.

I felt a great kindness growing in me toward this poor unfortunate. “I owe you something, then,” I said, and he nodded idly.

I offered him sanctuary in the castle for a day or two, until we could decide what I should do for him by way of reparation for my father’s unfortunate legacy to him. And together, almost arm in arm, we walked into the castle from the garden, and through the dark hallways, I the lord of the castle, he the beggar hoping for assistance, and we passed down the long hall from whose sides great dark portraits looked down, portraits of those who had borne us and cherished us and given us our common life.

Then, in the chamber where old Joseph had kindled a fire and set out supper, I turned to my companion to bid him be seated and eat with me.

“First, tell me,” I said. “What do they call you?”

For a long moment he stared at me from under his lids, and the firelight made his eyes sparkle. “Nicholas,” he said.

“Good.” And I waved him to bring his chair nearer the fire.

As we dined for the first time together he told me strange tales of wandering and seekings, of far lands and places that existed, I was certain, in no country but that of his moving mind. He talked of wonders he had seen, of princes he had met, and queens, and I let him talk, half listening, and half wondering what part this queer half brother of mine could play in the plans I was making. For I needed help, of that there was no doubt, and perhaps this was my help, sent to me, as it were, from my dead father himself.

So, when at last the fire was growing dim, and he had silenced himself with talking, I said to him: “Do you know how our father died?”

“He was hanged.”

“Were you there?”

“I saw it.” As he spoke, he looked long into the fire, as though seeing it again.

“I have committed myself to vengeance upon my father’s murderers,” I said. “I promised him as he died that they would suffer.”

Nicholas looked at me suddenly. “But he bade you forget his death so that he might leave you in peace.”

I shook my head, gazing in my turn into the fire. What secret faiths it held for us that night! “By my father’s death his work was broken and destroyed. By revenging him I shall recreate that work, and follow my father’s dearest dreams.”

Nicholas frowned. “But you cannot help your father’s work by harming a few blind villagers, or even by wiping out the village itself.”

“I could have put the village in flames, and the villagers into the ground, a year ago, had I wished that. They did not murder my father. It was the forces of evil and darkness and fear who gave my father into the hands of the villagers, and gave the villagers a scaffold upon which to hang him.”

Then Nicholas put back his head and laughed longer and louder than ever before. “Do you want, then, to destroy the forces of evil?”

I rose. “I
will
destroy the forces of evil, and for that I require your help.”

“You will require the help of the devil himself,” said Nicholas.

And so Nicholas remained in the castle with me, and there were two of us who walked the dark halls, and read the old books. But it was Nicholas who led me onto the trail of the vengeance which I sought.

“Do you know what the villagers fear?” he asked of me one day.

“They believe that a demon haunts the castle, and makes the land dark and blood-thickened, and that so long as the lord is under this demon’s claw, there will be death and destruction along the land. My father was good and kind, but he sought this demon on the hill to defeat it, and was defeated himself.”

“And you?”

“When I myself have found and destroyed this demon, then shall my father be revenged.”

“And what is your plan?” asked Nicholas.

“To seek and destroy.”

“And who will revenge you?” asked Nicholas. “If you should perish, the demon will hold sway, and his evil will be turned loose upon the land, to bring harm as he wishes.”

“Then I must marry,” I said firmly, but Nicholas laughed. “You will really go to any length to achieve your object,” he said.

Then, for the first time since my father’s death, I rode down to the village. From the sunny windows of the houses women watched me ride by, and the men in the streets narrowed their eyes and spat in my path. On the farther outskirts of the village I dismounted, for here was the family that had brought my father’s death. There had been a man to this family, a great motionless beast, and it had been he who stopped before my father and challenged the demon of the hill. When my father’s sword had taken the man’s life, it was witchcraft that helped him, they cried; not all the strength of my father’s arm nor the power of his voice could avail against their cries. And here was the cottage where the man had lived, and here the very path upon which he had awaited my father, and the dirt on which he had died. I stood, not knowing what I sought, and then a clear, cool laugh reached me, from the cottage garden.

It was a girl, young and golden-haired, and she stood watching me through the rosebushes.

“Are you counting pebbles,” she cried, “that you stand so silent and careful?”

I frowned. “Come here,” I said. She made an insolent curtsy, and with no hurrying of her steps came lazily through the garden gate to me.

“Who are you?” I said.

“Elizabeth,” she said demurely.

“And why do you live here?” I gestured at the cottage of the man who had killed my father.

“Please, sir,” she said, dimpling, “it is my father’s home, and my mother’s, I have no place else to live.”

“Your father?”

“He’s dead now, sir.”

“Are you the daughter of the man who died before the old lord of the hill?”

“I am, sir.”

“Do you know who I am?”

She glanced up at me from beneath her eyelashes. “You are the young lord, sir,” she said, “and a fine figure of a man, at that,” and, laughing, she turned and ran away.

I stood for a moment looking after her, and then I mounted my horse and rode back through the village and up the hill. There I found Nicholas, and I told him of Elizabeth.

And: “Bring her here,” I said.

Nicholas laughed.

“I have certainly made up my mind to marry,” I said, and then we both laughed.

And so Elizabeth came to the castle on the hill. How Nicholas brought her there I never asked, nor did he tell me what he had done. I know only that one day the door of the great study fell open, and Elizabeth stood before me, not laughing now, but proud and stubborn and lovely.

“So you came after all?” I said, genuinely pleased with my triumph.

“I had little choice,” she said.

“You make a charming addition to our family circle here,” I said.

Then, furiously angry, she cried out at me: “I am here because your devil’s hands brought me, and yet I am not afraid of you. Your devil’s hands killed my father, and he was not afraid, and I saw your father hanged and I was glad, do you hear me? And I wanted nothing more than to see your whole foul line perish, and yet I was a poor woman and could never revenge myself on you and your evil blood. But now—I am here, and I think I will see you die because of it. And I defy you and your castle and your devil, too!”

“At any rate the lady’s prayers should help you in your task,” Nicholas said, coming softly into the room, “for, if I know your devil at all, nothing will bring him more quickly than the defiance of a beautiful woman.”

And so I called Joseph and bade him keep Elizabeth prisoner in a high tower of the castle until such time as she should be more inclined to be courteous to her host.

And now suddenly Nicholas and I were feverish and hopeful of our search, for the time had come when the books my father had followed were beginning to be intelligible to me, and I could read easily the secrets they held. And one night I determined to be at this business of the devil and his will. I had caused Elizabeth to be brought to dinner, where she sat sullen and silent, and so I ordered her removed, to hide her tears in her tower prison.

The incident had left me in an evil humor, and I was ready, that night, for anything the devil might bring with him.

When Nicholas and I had finished dinner, we sat together quietly, until I said: “Nicholas, I mean to try the devil tonight.”

Nicholas laughed, as always. “Go carefully,” he said. “Our father’s ghost will be watching.”

“Will you try with me?” I asked.

Nicholas shook his head. “Sometimes, half brother,” he said, “these things are better done alone. I will be waiting to hear of your success.”

And so I sat alone in the study that had been my father’s, with one of his great books open on the table in front of me, and I drew the awful diagrams the books ordered, and mixed my secret potions, and spoke the dreadful words that were to call the devil to my side.

“In nomino lutheris, sathanus, et spiritus acherontis…”