CRAFT ESSAY - Scary Stuff

Craft Essay #12

The Haunting of Hill House

vs.

The Shining

Scary Stuff

What makes a novel scary? Is it simply a matter of putting people in a remote house and letting loose the ghosts? Or does it require a delicate balance of language, character development and plotting? This essay will examine two classics of the horror genre—Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Stephen King’s The Shining—with a focus on their differences and similarities.

The Haunting of Hill House opens with one of the creepiest first paragraphs ever

written:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. (p. 3)

Here the narrator is immediately established as scientifically knowledgeable (with phrases such as “live organism”) and distantly authoritative (the house is “not sane”). The brief description of Hill House, like the descriptions of characters to come, does not so much paint a visual picture as a psychological one: the house “stood by itself against the hills, holding darkness within.” In fact, throughout the novel the house is treated as a character, with feelings and motivations (when Eleanor first sees the house, on page 25, it appears to be “looking down over her”; on page 41, the house “steadied and located” its four occupants). Finally, there is that spine-tingling last sentence that sets the stage for the thrills to come.

Contrast this with the brief opening paragraph of The Shining:

“Jack Torrance thought: officious little prick.”

The omniscient third-person narrator, here closely aligned with Jack, goes on to describe Mr. Ullman, the manager of the demon-infested Overlook Hotel. While there are plenty of chills in the chapters that follow, this scene could take place at any office between a new employee and his self-important boss. Unlike Jackson, King is in no hurry to introduce us to the malevolent spirits of the Overlook (the Torrance family doesn’t even arrive there until page 72), though he does allow Ullman to relate the grisly tale of Grady, the caretaker who murdered his family there (pp. 9-10). Grady’s bloody spree is blamed on alcoholism and cabin fever, but we know better: horror story convention dictates that Jack, himself a recovering alcoholic, will also give in to violent impulses when his inner demons (already hinted at by his hostile attitude toward Ullman) meet the supernatural forces of the Overlook Hotel.

Both novels feature a limited cast of characters. In The Shining, there is very little visual description of Jack, his wife, Wendy, and their son, Danny. Their characters emerge via the omniscient narrator, who relates their thoughts, actions and dialogue—e.g., Wendy’s scene with Danny on page 13, which establishes her sense of dread about Jack and his new job, and also flashes back to Jack’s checkered past as a father. The Haunting of Hill House follows a similar pattern, though the third-person narrator in this case is limited to one character, Eleanor, whose neuroses, like Jack’s, will arouse the ill-will of the local spirits. Physical descriptions are even more sparse. As with the house, the narrator instead zeroes in on the psychological:

Eleanor Vance was thirty-two years old when she came to Hill House. The only other person in the world she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister…She could not remember ever being truly happy in her life; her years with her mother had been built up devotedly around small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair. (p. 3)

We need not know what Eleanor looks like, perhaps because Hill House doesn’t really care; it only cares about the weakness at her emotional core.

Perhaps the most noticeable difference between the two novels—other than their lengths (The Haunting clocks in at less than 200 pages, vs. The Shining’s 500-plus)—is the use of language. Jackson lards her descriptions with details designed to invoke anxiety. On page 19 alone, while Eleanor drives her “little car” from Boston to Hill House, she encounters “unattractive hills,” “thick, oppressive trees,” a “vicious rock,” and an “ominous scraping.” And when she finally arrives, she is met by a “tall and ominous and heavy gate.”

The journey to the Overlook Hotel in The Shining is also anxiety-ridden, but this is established in a different way. The narrator, aligned here with Danny, is limited to the five-year-old’s point of view. Thus, the descriptions are simple and display a sense of wonder: “On the tallest of [the mountains] you could see a fine dusting of snow, which Daddy said was there year-round” (p. 67). Initially, the dread of this scene is communicated solely through the mother’s fear that their old VW Beetle will not make it up the mountain, and Jack’s irritation at her fretting. The subtext of this domestic squabble is that this journey will bring violence and death. At one point, perhaps to fit in a poetic sense of doom that Danny’s point of view can’t handle, the narrator shifts from Danny’s limited perspective to Wendy’s more sophisticated one: “She saw a waterfall spilling over…the early afternoon sun sparkling in it like a golden fish snared in a blue net” (p. 68). But then the chapter ends with Danny recognizing the hotel as the place he’s seen in his visions: “the dark and booming place where some hideously familiar figure sought him down long corridors…It was here. It was here…” (p. 71).

The authors’ different styles are also evident in the more frightening scenes. On Eleanor’s second night at Hill House, she and Theodora wake up terrified by sounds coming from the hallway just outside the bedroom door (p. 93-99). Moving back and forth from simple, expository dialogue (“Something is knocking on the doors,” Theodora says) to Eleanor’s thoughts and feelings (“Is this what they mean by cold chills going up and down your back?” she asks herself), the narrator skillfully builds the terror. The two women try to convince themselves that something rational is happening even as the pounding arrives at their door and “the sickening, degrading cold came in waves from whatever was outside.” From there, Jackson ratchets it up: “Little pattings came from around the doorframe, small seeking sounds, feeling the edges of the door, trying to sneak a way in.” Even when these awful noises stop, and we are relieved (if wrung out), the author throws in another spooky element: while Eleanor and Theodora were being terrorized in their room, the two male occupants of the house, ostensibly the strong, sensible ones, were outside chasing what they thought was a dog. “Doesn’t it begin to seem,” one of them says, “that the intention is, somehow, to separate us?”

In The Shining, when Danny enters room 217, which he’s been warned against doing by the hotel’s clairvoyant cook, the terrifying scene unfolds through the boy’s eyes (pp. 241-3). Entering the bathroom, he finds the shower curtain closed, and hopes that behind it “he would perhaps see something nice…something Daddy had forgotten or Mommy had lost, something that would make them both happy—

So he pulled the curtain back.

The woman in the tub had been dead for a long time. She was bloated and purple, her gas-filled belly rising out of the cold, ice-rimmed water like some fleshy island. Her eyes were fixed on Danny’s, glassy and huge, like marbles. She was grinning, her purple lips pulled back in a grimace. Her breasts lolled. Her pubic hair floated. Her hands were frozen on the knurled porcelain sides of the tub like crab claws.

This scene derives its power from visual description—those glassy eyes, that bloated belly—and an identification with Danny painstakingly constructed over the previous 242 pages. For my money, however, Jackson’s scene, while also descriptive (if aurally, rather than visually) and built upon a firm psychological foundation, is more terrifying. Her language is sharp, even hard, compared with King’s rather plain (and sometimes passive) language. In Jackson’s scene, the cold is “degrading,” the ghosts at the door make “small seeking sounds.” The author also uses poetic repetition in a weirdly threatening way: Eleanor hears what sounds like the house giggling “in a breath of air through the room, a little mad rising laugh, the smallest whisper of a laugh, and Eleanor heard it all up and down her back, a little gloating laugh moving past them around the house…” (pp. 96-7) This language seems a little mad itself, and penetrates more deeply than King’s admittedly scary, but more superficial and pulpy, descriptions of the corpse in the bathtub.

Both The Haunting of Hill House and The Shining trap their flawed, depressed protagonists in claustrophobic situations. Both use character development as much as (or more than) horror conventions to create suspense. Both build toward intense climaxes in which their main characters succumb to the powerful supernatural attractions of their surroundings. The difference is mainly that Jackson’s psychologically piercing descriptions and jaggedly poetic language push deeper into the fears of the reader than King’s more old-fashioned, sometimes pedestrian sentences.

49 LOVE LANE - Section 8

I felt tired, nauseous. For the past thirty seconds I’d been possessed, and now my real self was slowly coming back.

“I don’t know what came over me,” I said.

“Don’t sweat it, Carl. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve throttled my kids.” He smiled. “I try not to do it in public, though.”

I took a voluminous swig of beer, but it tasted bitter, metallic.

“I’d better go find them,” I said, but before I could escape, Arnie grabbed my elbow.

“Abby’s got it under control.”

I kept looking over at the sliding glass door, as if she would appear there, spectral, Daisy in her arms. Was she inside waiting for me to follow?

“Let it be,” Arnie said. “Plus I’ve got that thing I want to show you.”

He led me to the side of the house and a cement stairway that led down to a door.

“We’re going to the basement?” I asked.

“You’ll see.”

He opened the door and I followed him into a faux wood-paneled mudroom.

“Shoes off,” he said.

I slipped off my shoes and stood in socked feet on the slick linoleum floor. Arnie opened another door into a dark inner room. He flipped a wall switch and several table lamps lit up, their shades draped with red scarves. An L-shaped sofa padded with large, elaborate pillows dominated the room. On a glass-topped coffee table sat a small, black metal-encased machine resembling a stereo component.

“What is that?”

Arnie’s eyebrows danced a little jig as he sat on the sofa. “This is a vaporizer.”

He pressed a button on the machine and small red digital numbers blinked. Then he picked up a clear plastic tube connected to the side.

“This is where you inhale.”

From his shirt pocket he removed the little pill bottle in which he kept his pot. He scooped a wad of the stuff between his thumb and forefinger and inserted it into a small opening in the vaporizer.

“Sit, Carl, sit.”

“I can’t stay long.”

I was thinking about Abby and Daisy. Had they gone home? I could still feel the baby in my hands as I shook her. What had I been thinking?

“Here,” Arnie said, offering the hose.

“I don’t know, Arn.”

“Come on, Carl. You need this.”

I inserted the hose between my lips. It tasted rubbery and cold. Arnie turned a knob and cooled vapor rolled into my mouth.

“Thattaboy.”

I handed the hose back to Arnie and held the vapor in my lungs. As it seeped into my blood stream I sank deeper into the sofa cushions. The world went soft all around me. I felt the earth’s rotation slow to a crawl. After what seemed like days I pushed the remaining vapor out of my nose in two invisible streams.

Arnie said, “You look better already,” then took the hose and inhaled. Holding his breath, he handed the hose back.

I sucked in another lungful and became very aware of my feet. My socks felt thick and hot. I pulled them off and set my soles on the cool, linoleum.

“This thing is designed for medicinal purposes,” Arnie said, laughing. “No burn.”

“That’s good medicine,” I said.

The red scarves on the lamps made the room look like a wood-paneled submarine. On the walls hung framed posters of 70s bands: Foghat, Blue Oyster Cult, Foreigner.

“More?” Arnie asked, offering the tube. As I inhaled, the door swung open and Mark Patek ambled in.

“I knew it!”

“I thought Carl could use a little pick-me-up.”

“Pick me up and slam me down,” I said through a jaw-aching rictus.

“Let me have a toke.” Mark grabbed the hose and inhaled, then held it in until his face turned red.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a door paneled to match the walls.

“Oh, that’s the sauna,” Mark said as he exhaled.

“You have a sauna?”

“Hell yeah. When your kids grow up and move away you do all kinds of crazy

shit. Saunas, hot tubs, cruises.” His eyes turned glassy. “None of it works, though.”

“Hey now, big fella,” Arnie said.

“It’s true, man. You’ll see, too, when your kids are gone.”

Arnie turned to me. “Mark’s one of those oddballs who gets morose when he smokes weed.”

“Nothing can fill the void,” Mark said.

“Personally, I can’t wait till those little vampires are out of my house,” Arnie said.

“You say that now—“

“And I’ll say it then. I’m counting the days.” Arnie turned to me again. It looked like he’d applied blood-red eyeliner. “You’ve got a ways to go, Carl.”

“She’s a beauty, your Daisy,” Mark said. He put his thick slab of a hand on my shoulder. “Love her right, dude.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

He shrugged, the way someone does when they’re not saying what they really mean.

“You think I don’t love my daughter?” I said.

“Of course you do, Carl.”

“Then what did you mean—‘love her right’?”

Arnie clapped his hands. “Okay, let’s get back before the ladies send out a search party.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it, Carl,” Mark said.

I saw all those people in the yard watching me as Daisy wailed in my hands.

“Come on, man,” Arnie said. “Let’s go eat.”

“Yeah, I’m so hungry I could eat a pig’s ass,” Mark said as he opened the door.

I fumbled with my socks and shoes and followed them out into the bright yard. The sky seemed farther away while the trees had moved closer, their thick green leaves pulsing just overhead. The smell of meat and charcoal singed my nostrils.

The Pierces sat with the Millers and Mrs. Schwinn at a picnic table, little Leo apparently recovered now and gnawing at a buttery ear of corn. Gloria Patek sat with Frannie Johnston in matching folding canvas chairs, complete with built-in cup holders. They eyed their husbands warily, gauging their levels of intoxication. Arnie and Mark grabbed plastic plates and started piling food onto them. Monica sat on the grass with Ellis, her dress riding high on her tan thighs.

I went straight into the house, looking for Abby and Daisy. I walked through the kitchen into the front room, then the dining room—all empty. Maybe Abby took the baby upstairs, I thought, to calm her down. I climbed the carpeted stairs to the second floor landing. I scratched at my dry eyeballs, wishing I could take them out and soak them in water. I peeked into two open doorways, both small bedrooms that appeared to be unused. A third door was shut. I turned the knob and peered into the large master bedroom. Against the side wall stood a king size bed. Another wall was entirely mirrored. From an open window came the sound of laughter. I walked across the room and looked down on the back yard.

From her place on the grass Monica looked up and waved. Then, as she leaned forward to grab a brownie from her plate I could see down her low-cut dress. I became acutely aware of two things: my heart thumping against my ribcage, and my penis growing heavy between my legs. I had to get out of here.

Turning to go, I noticed a fat leather wallet lying on a tall oak chest of drawers. Several bills stuck out, pale green. One of them, I could see, was a twenty. Glancing back out the window, I made sure that both Mark and Gloria were still outside.

I opened the wallet. Credit cards jammed the pockets and billfold. I spread the fold and counted at least three hundred dollars in twenties and tens. I took out my own wallet. Three ones and a five. Two maxed-out credit cards. A folded photo of Daisy in soft pink onesies, age six months—my child, my charge, dependent on me. One large box of diapers cost forty bucks. My ears throbbed with the echo of my heartbeat and the sound of Mark Patek saying Love her right, dude.

I grabbed two twenties and ran from the bedroom.

Frannie Johnston waited at the bottom of the stairs.

“There you are!”

“I think I should go home,” I said, my hand still thrust into my pocket where I’d jammed the cash.

“Balderdash!”

“But Abby—”

“She’s fine. She told me to tell you: you can stay if you want.”

“No. She really wants me to come home. She’s just saying that to test me.”

“Don’t be an ass, Carl. She said she’d come back if Daisy calms down. Now let’s go and have another drink and one of those indecent sausages.”

She took my hand and pulled me through the kitchen and out onto the patio. Her hand was warm and surprisingly small, and as she tugged she squeezed mine in an intimate way that, I admit, raised goose bumps on my skin. Once outside she moved that small, warm hand onto my arm, leaned in and whispered, “Has my husband been corrupting you?”

“What?” Had she somehow seen me steal the money?

“Don’t give me that clueless look, Carl. I’m not blind, you know.”

“That’s just my usual expression,” I told her, casting about for an explanation for my thievery.

She laughed. “I don’t mind if you get high, really. Boys will be boys—forever. Plus you look like you could use a little corrupting, if you don’t mind my saying it.”

Relieved, I let out a long exhalation.

“Go on, now,” she said. “Eat. And drink.”

She pushed me toward the food table, where, responding to the empty ache in my belly, I piled two sausages, two ears of corn, and a lump of potato salad onto my plate.

The Millers and Pierces and Mrs. Schwinn still occupied the picnic table. Arnie and Mark sat on the grass near the Johnston kids. Gloria Patek waved me over to Frannie’s now empty canvas chair. I grabbed another beer and joined her. The chair was even less comfortable than it looked. I felt like I was on the verge of toppling over.

“I’m very sorry about the outburst,” I said, unable to look her in the eye. I felt sure that if she saw my eyes she’d immediately know I’d been in her bedroom and had stolen her husband’s money.

She waved a cup of wine around. “Oh, forget about it. We all have our days.”

“Sometimes I have a hard time staying as patient as I should.”

“I remember how it can be,” she said. “Sometimes you want to drown them in a bag.”

Gloria was apparently a little more cold-eyed about her kids than Mark was.

I carved a sausage into bite size pieces with a plastic knife and fork. “How long have you lived here, Gloria?”

“Oh Lord, I can’t even remember. Decades.”

“So you were around when the little girl was murdered in our house?”

She didn’t bat an eye. “Just barely, yes. I think we moved in just a week or so before. My goodness, what a welcome to the neighborhood.”

I inserted a hunk of sausage into my mouth. The heat and spices and texture combined into a kind of taste explosion.

“Delicious, aren’t they?” Gloria said. “Mark is very proud of his sausage skills.”

I poured some beer down my vibrating throat, then asked, “Do you remember anything? About the murder, I mean.”

She shook her head no. “We were so young, and we didn’t know anyone yet.”

“So you didn’t know the man? Arliss Taylor?”

“I saw him once or twice, around the neighborhood, but we never spoke.”

“And the woman? Annette Bingham?”

“Her I did speak to. Just one time.”

“What was she like?”

As Gloria thought back, I tried to picture her thirty years ago, chatting with Annette Bingham, her red hair more organically vibrant, maybe falling down her back. I took another bite of sausage. Ka-boom.

“She was,” Gloria said, “…afraid.”

“Afraid of Taylor?”

“She seemed afraid of everything. Very jittery. I got the sense she might explode right in front of me.”

I paused before taking another bite of sausage. “Did you ever hear stories about strange things going on over there?”

Gloria slurped at her wine. “You mean the sex orgies?”

My eyebrows jumped.

“I have a hard time believing that stuff,” she said. “That gal was a mouse.”

“So how did those rumors get started?”

She leaned in and, keeping her eyes on the picnic table crowd, said, “Old Mr. Schwinn was always creating rumors out of nothing. He once accused Mark of pushing drugs, and virtually everyone in the neighborhood was guilty of incest, according to him.”

“Incest?”

“Oh, sure. You ask me, he was just envious. They had no kids, you see, and everyone was having a better time than him.” She set her hand on my arm. “That girl, Annette—she may have been a little wild when she got drinking, but I just can’t see her in a roomful of naked people.”

“Maybe she went along with it to please Taylor.”

“Anything’s possible, I suppose.” Gloria reached down and retrieved a gallon jug of white wine. Beaded water rolled across the green glass as she filled her cup.

“How’s that sausage, Carl?” Mark called out from his spot on the grass.

I waved a hunk of the meat. “Delicious!” Meanwhile, his money felt like porcupine quills in my pocket.

“You’re going to have to pardon me,” Gloria said, climbing unsteadily to her feet. “I need to visit the powder room.”

No sooner had she staggered off then Frannie, clutching her own cup of wine, plopped down in the seat.

“Were you grilling Gloria about that murder?”

“I’m interested,” I shrugged.

Frannie glanced over at Arnie, then the picnic table occupants—and leaned toward me. “There’s a good reason I don’t want you to bring that business up with Arnie.”

Her words, already made elastic by her accent, were now even more stretched out by the wine. I leaned sideways until our heads were nearly touching. I could smell Chardonnay and a fruity perfume.

“Talk to me, Frannie.”

“We’re pals, right, Carl?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“I mean, you’re a teacher. You’re used to having students take you into their confidence.”

My face went all warm at the thought of the secrets I’d held as a teacher. “Uh-huh.”

“Okay, here’s the thing.” She did another scan, then took a deep breath. “I had a little thing with Arliss.”

My head snapped back as if her admission had tapped me on the nose. “Arliss Taylor?”

Words started tumbling from her mouth: “I know. I was a bad girl. It was just one of those things. I think I was rebelling against the idea of monogamy. I was young.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. It was crazy. Insane. But he was a good guy. I fell for him.”

“Arliss Taylor was a good guy?” I pictured him swinging little Jane Bingham through the air. I shook the image out of my head before impact.

“Oh, I know what they say about him, but there’s more to it than that.”

“More to what? The guy killed a baby.”

Again, she glanced over at Arnie, who looked up and nodded. His face had grown serious. Maybe he didn’t like Frannie talking to men who lived at 49 Love Lane.

“Does Arnie know?” I asked.

“Hell, everyone knows. But it was a long time ago, so don’t go blabbing it around. Some people may have forgotten.”

Arnie continued to stare at us. He could tell we were discussing a sensitive topic—the tilted heads, the low volume. Still, I had to pursue this.

“How long did it last?”

“Oh, now you want details?”

“I’m just—”

“Next you’ll want photos.”

“You took pictures?”

She wrinkled her nose and sighed. “It didn’t last long, Carl.”

“What about those orgies Mr. Schwinn talked about?”

“Hey, I may have been young and stupid, and I may have a wild side, but I draw the line there, mister.”

“So Taylor never tried to get you to—”

“Listen to Columbo over here. All I know is we did our thing the old-fashioned way, just the two of us, and not even in our homes—out of respect for our spouses.”

Arnie climbed to his feet. I had to hurry.

“Where’d you go—a motel?”

Arnie headed our way, his plate piled high with crumpled napkins and plastic cutlery. He appeared nonchalant but I detected some purpose in his taut face. Frannie, taken aback by my interrogation, did not notice his impending arrival.

“We did it in the yard,” she said, her eyes twinkling with mischief.

“What kind of dirt is my wife spreading around over here?” Arnie asked, towering over us.

“Frannie’s just giving me some much-needed parenting advice.”

“I’d take that advice with a grain of salt if I were you, Carl,” he said.

Frannie reared up. “Bite your tongue, Arnold Johnston. Our kids turned out pretty good, if I say so myself, and without a whole lot of help from you, either.”

“Maybe I’d better get myself another beer,” I said, starting to rise from the chair.

“Look,” Frannie said. “You embarrassed Carl.”

“Carl’s fine.”

By now I’d gotten to my feet. Those canvas chairs are hard to escape from. As I walked off Arnie started complaining about Monica.

“That girl’s got ants in her pants,” he said, and as much as I wanted to hear about that, I kept on going.

I reached into the cooler and grabbed another beer.

“Don’t you already have one of those?”

Monica stood behind me, pointing to the half-full beer I already held.

“Oh. Yeah.” I considered concocting an explanation—I was getting a beer for Arnie?—but I knew she wouldn’t believe me.

She smiled and pulled her blonde hair behind a perfect seashell ear. One spaghetti strap remained fallen, so that the right side of her dress drooped a little. Freckles dotted her tan upper chest. I wanted to take a pen and connect them, creating bears and hunters among the constellations. She noticed how I looked at her and pulled the strap up and shifted her weight. She knew I was high, and she thought I was old and ridiculous, in my khaki shorts and polo shirt, my white athletic socks and bland sneakers. My too-hairy legs.

“What were you up to in the bedroom up there?” she asked.

“Just looking for my wife and daughter.”

“Really?”

Then I remembered what I’d wanted to talk to her about.

“Daisy loves that doll you gave her.”

She squinted at me so that her pale eyebrows contracted. “What doll?”

“That old doll. Didn’t you give it to her the night you babysat?”

“I didn’t give Daisy any doll. Why would I give her a doll?”

As a teacher I had seen teenagers lie. Nine out of ten times my inner polygraph went crazy, but there was that tenth lie, usually told by an expert, someone like Okay Peterson, that registered as a straight line. This, I was sure, was one of those lies, but Monica lied so skillfully and, yes, seductively, that I had no real evidence: no trembly lip, no sweaty brow, no wobbly eye contact, no twitch or stutter or hesitation.

It was my turn to say, “Really?”

“No,” she said. “I’m lying. I always give away creepy old dolls to little kids.”

“So you think it’s creepy too?”

“Very. I wouldn’t give that doll to a kid.”

My certainty had gone all flabby. I found myself staring into Monica’s brown eyes as if looking for a flaw in her retina.

“Well,” I said, “It’s a mystery.”

“Her mom didn’t give it to her?”

“Of course not.”

She gave me a skeptical look.

“She would have told me,” I said.

Monica shrugged as if to say, Who knows what people are capable of?

I decided to let the topic go and pursue a different line of questioning.

“Hey, did you ever babysit for the people before us?”

“The Princes? Yeah.”

“What were they like?”

“Pretty dysfunctional, if you ask me. The boy—”

“Graydon?”

“Grayson. He was a handful. He was always, like, biting and tantruming.”

“He bit you?”

“Kids do that, but he was out of control. And no wonder. His mom and dad were always going at it.”

“Fighting?”

“Yeah, or fucking.”

That word—it sounded so natural coming from this girl’s mouth, I almost didn’t catch it.

“And they weren’t shy about it, either,” she added.

I felt my face heat up, remembering how Abby had shouted during sex, with Monica and Arnie right outside the window. I could tell from Monica’s expression that she remembered it, too.

“What about the people before the Princes?”

“That was a single guy. Michael Something. I think he was gay.” She quickly added, “Which was cool.”

“And before that?”

“Uh, that’s going back aways. I was pretty young.”

“Did they have kids?”

“Yeah. A girl. She was my age. We hung out.”

“Any dysfunction there?”

She laughed. “You’re awfully nosey, aren’t you?”

“I just like to know the history, that’s all.”

She sighed and looked up at the trees, remembering. “There was this one time I was over there with Carla—that was her name—and we were playing with her dolls or something, and her dad said it was time for a bath, and he said I could take one too, so I said okay, and we got undressed and hopped into the tub, and we played with, like, some water toys and stuff, and…”

“How old were you?”

“Six. Maybe seven.”

“What happened?”

“Well, he wanted to, like, wash us, you know—down there.” She gestured vaguely toward her groin. “And, I don’t know, it’s not like my dad and mom didn’t scrub me down there, but this felt, I don’t know…different.”

“He was inappropriate?”

“I guess so. But I can’t say why, exactly. I just felt funny about it.”

“Did you tell your parents?”

“God, no. They’d have lynched the guy. It’s not like he hurt me or anything.”

“But he was out of line, Monica.”

“I guess so. I just never took a bath over there again.”

I felt queasy. Every story I heard about 49 Love Lane seemed to include some violence.

“What happened to them?
“I think they broke up, like everyone else. I overheard my parents talking about it once. I think the guy was screwing around. What else is new?”

A shadow played over her face. I looked up to see a hawk gliding high overhead, probably eyeing a small bird or a chipmunk.

“He was a teacher, I think,” Monica added. “Just like you, Carl.”

*

Dear Daisy,

Finally you are asleep, after one long hour of wailing and thrashing. I, too, am exhausted, but also determined to stay awake. When your father comes home I have some wailing to do myself. I can’t imagine what he’s still doing over there, probably getting sloshed and making an ass of himself in front of all our neighbors. Honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to show my face around here after that sorry display—from the both of you. Perhaps I shouldn’t hold your behavior against you, but if people judge parents by their children’s behavior then I am to be considered petulant, crude and violent. Hearing that foul word on your lips I felt as if, at one, you were already slipping away from me. And scratching that poor, sweet Leo—Daisy, what came over you? Between that and then biting me and the hour or so of hysteria I felt ready to call an ambulance: Help! My daughter has lost her mind! Even now, asleep, you hiccup and grunt, trying to catch your breath after so much sobbing. Your face, normally so composed, glows red, your hands clench and unclench. You resemble your father—the way he looked at you today, as if he could snap you in two. I’ve never seen that in him before. Where does all this anger come from, I wonder as I look out at the darkening yard, the green slowly going black, the air filling with the soot of night. Every so often through the open window I hear a peal of laughter, Frannie or Gloria, drunk and happy beneath the thick maple trees and emerging stars. When I was a girl not much older than you, Daisy, my parents put glow-in-the-dark stars on my bedroom ceiling and I would lie in bed staring up as if they were real, counting them as some count sheep until slowly swallowed by sleep. But if I woke up in the middle of the night the stars would have lost their luminosity, and I felt absolutely alone in the blackness, adrift in space with no stars. Sometimes I’d lie there until the first thin tentacle of dawn slithered in from behind the blinds to paint outlines on the door, the dresser, the corner where the walls met the ceiling. Only then could I find my way back to sleep. I hope you don’t have nights like those. I hope you don’t wake in the dark feeling lost. Tonight I will stay with you, just in case.

14. Losing It

When I arrived home that night I found all the lights had been turned off, as if Abby did not expect me to return. Drunk and still a little high, I felt my way along the wall to our bedroom first, and could immediately tell it was empty. There is a sound that comes from an empty room that always makes me think of death. From there I stumbled through the living room, kicking toys and books that had been left on the floor, cursing as I slipped on a stack of flash cards. The house was becoming a pig sty. In Daisy’s room I heard the twin breathing of mother and daughter, deep and synchronous. I stood wobbling for a long moment, my pupils sowly opening to let in the faint illumination from a outdoor light two houses down. Abby slept in the rocking chair, her chin resting against a shoulder, her hair covering half her face. Her hands held a book. Daisy lay sideways in the crib, on her back, a nightshirt bunched up around her waist, legs bulging from her diaper.

The room started to move, so I grabbed the crib and closed my eyes, but the room shook even more. I tried to breathe. I couldn’t understand how the girls could sleep while the house vibrated like this. The air tasted of smoke and beer. My tongue lay like a dusty blanket in my mouth. Tiny ball bearings floated before my eyes. “Oh God,” I said, and my ears hurt from the sound of my own voice. I staggered out of the room and again slipped on the slick cards. My knee slammed onto the floor and I hardly felt it. I climbed to my feet and hobbled into the bathroom. For a moment I thought I was in our old apartment and was surprised to find the sink on my left and the tub on my right. Remembering now, I moved farther in to kneel at the toilet. The taste of Mark Patek’s spicy, flame-crusted sausage burned itself up my throat and into my nose. Behind that rolled a toxic wave of warm beer. I flipped up the toilet seat and braced myself.

*

I woke up in bed, unsure of how I got there, fully clothed, including shoes, my head full of glass shards, my gut scraped out like a Halloween pumpkin. Light shot through the window and pierced my one open eye. I groaned from deep inside.

“Abby?”

I knew the house was empty. All sounds moved from outside in: screeching crows, a clattering lawnmower, a jet clawing the ozone. Somewhere nearby a hammer pounded a nail. I lay as still as possible, praying for sleep, but my hands trembled, and alcohol sugar percolated in my spleen.

I needed water the way a cactus needs it in a drought, and yet the idea made my stomach turn. Get up, I told myself. The message traveled from my brain to my legs but nothing happened. So this is what it’s like to be a paraplegic, I thought. Maybe I had fallen down and snapped my spinal cord.

Random images came at me like holograms: the Pateks’ faux wood-paneled basement, thick green maple leaves, the freckles on Monica Johnston’s chest. Defying all sense, my penis stirred. From Monica my thoughts roamed back to nights on stage with Okay Peterson and her smooth wet thighs. Her hands looked so small on my erect penis, a memory that led me back to Frannie’s small, warm hand last night, a hand that had once held the cock of Arliss Taylor thirty years ago as they dallied in the back yard. What was it like to have fucked a killer, to have come at his hands, to have lost yourself in that electric moment? I rubbed my crotch against the mattress. I felt my blood move from aching skull down to between my legs. One time I had the flu, my fever topping out at 103.5, and all I could think about was sex. Must be the procreative instinct, I thought as I rubbed faster.

More images floated before my eyes: a hawk, Abby asleep in the rocking chair, a wallet on a tall oak dresser. The blood rolled away from my penis and back to my skull, where an ice pick proceeded to poke my forehead in time with the relentless hammering outside. Had I really stolen money from Mark Patek? With some effort I ran my fingers over my pocket and felt the thin ridge of folded bills. I relived my search through the Pateks’ house and the long, drawn-out moment of thievery. Then, as if I’d witnessed it, God-like, from the bedroom window, I watched Daisy’s assault on little Leo and Abby, followed by my overwrought reaction.

I lifted my boulder of a head and turned as if to look away from the sight of me shaking my daughter’s limp body. There, on the wall, beneath the portrait of my in-laws: a splotch of blood—red, glistening, fresh. Adrenaline rushed through me and I shot up onto my knees. The wall was dry. A sliver of a laugh fell from my mouth.

I was losing it.

I sat at the foot of the bed staring out the window at the Johnston’s empty back yard: the blue swing set, the folding lounge chair where Monica liked to sunbathe, the steps leading up to the deck. Beyond stood the Pateks’ tall wooden fence. This was where Frannie and Arliss Taylor did their dirty business. I remembered the night Abby and I watched Monica having sex out there, and wondered if perhaps we had watched something entirely different, something out of the deep past.

Maybe I should run away, I thought.

Feeling the pull of my bladder I limped to the bathroom, my knee throbbing. From there I went to the living room where toys and stuffed animals remained scattered across the floor, and then into Daisy’s bedroom. Following me came the rhythmic hammering that I now realized did not originate down the street but inside my own head. I squinted out the window and saw the car still parked in the driveway. They must have gone for a walk, I thought. I hoped they would not come back for a long time—hours, at least, maybe days. How lovely, I thought—and then felt guilty about it—if they never came back at all.

I padded back to the bedroom and peeled off my clothes, slowly, like a burn victim. Then I stood under the shower, listening for the creak of the kitchen door but hearing nothing but the water and the unstopping hammer in my brain. Thinking of Monica, I made a sad attempt at tugging at myself, but there was no response as my mind kept skipping to the various awful facts of my life: I had no job, I was a thief and child abuser, and now I was imagining blood on the walls.

I shut off the water and the pounding grew even louder.

“Stop,” I croaked, my mouth still parched. I patted myself with a towel and returned to the bedroom. That pounding sound—it came from the wall. I really am losing it, I thought. Maybe a rest sure was in order. I pictured a hospital room painted in muted colors, people dressed in white, a fistful of pills designed to dull everything down to a nub.

Still naked, I approached the wall. The noise was definitely louder here. I removed the screen from the window and leaned out. There, on the clapboard siding, checkered black and white, leaning back on its tail feathers for support, perched a woodpecker. It turned to look at me. On the back of its head gleamed a bright red patch.

“Shoo,” I said, waving. “Shoo!”

The woodpecker squeaked at me in a shrill voice, shook its head, fluffed its feathers, and continued to peck at the siding.

I walked back to the wall and slammed my fist against the plaster. The pounding stopped for a moment, then resumed. I banged some more, and the same thing happened. I returned to the window.

“Get out of here, you bastard!”

The bird chirped back at me as if laughing.

“Hiya, Carl.”

I turned to see Frannie Johnston in her yard. She wore shorts and a sleeveless blouse. She smiled in a curious way.

“Do you ever get woodpeckers?” I asked.

She laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

Following her line of sight, I realized I was naked and half hanging out the window. I leaped back and pulled a blanket around my waist.

“Sorry!” I called out, still standing back and to the side of the window.

“No worries,” she said with a giggle.

I sat on the bed, wondering what else could go awry.

“Try tin foil,” I heard Frannie say.

“What?”

“They don’t like shiny things. Put some foil here and there on the side of the house.”

“Great. Thanks.”

I sat there for a long time, away from the window, the blanket on my lap, waiting for her to walk away, and listening to the tap-tap-tap of the woodpecker.

*

An hour later the girls had still not returned. Dressed and feeling hollow I wandered from room to room, picking up toys and stuffed animals and cans of Diet Pepsi left out by Abby over the past few days. The woodpecker continued his jackhammering, off and on, but mostly on. I didn’t have the energy to attempt Frannie’s remedy. Instead, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and ate only a bite or two before my stomach seized up on me.

Continuing my cleanup project I picked up Daisy’s discarded clothes—last night’s nightie, yesterday’s dress and socks—from her bedroom floor. A sodden, lumpy diaper lay next to the crib. As I bent to retrieve it I remembered the wooden box. I pulled the basket from beneath the crib. The box lay under the sweaters, as before, but was now positioned so that the carved star showed upside down. The image looked familiar; I had seen it recently. I picked up the box and felt my stomach drop—the upside down star was a symbol of satanic worship. I remembered the inverted pentagram showing up repeatedly on the websites I’d researched.

Where the hell did this thing come from? How did it get into the basket?

It was heavier than I remembered. I shook it and whatever was inside rattled. I ran a finger along the five lines that had been carved into the wood. I pictured Arliss Taylor with some sort of ceremonial knife, perhaps the same knife he used to disembowel animals and children. Dirt caked the grooves here and there, the carved wood dark with age and—blood?

“What’re you doing?”

Abby stood in the doorway, Daisy asleep in her arms.

“Where did this come from?” I asked, holding up the box.

“How the hell should I know?”

She carried the baby to the crib and lay her on the mattress.

“You’ve never seen this before?” I asked.

“What is it?”

“Some kind of box.”

“I can see that.”

“I found it in the basket under the crib.”

“How’d it get there?”

I watched her closely for the tell-tale signs—the twitch, the downcast eyes. If she was lying about this, she could have lied about the doll, too. But she showed no signs of it.

“I don’t have any idea,” I said.