The Haunting of Hill House (17 page)

“Something is knocking on the doors,” Theodora said in a tone of pure rationality.

“That’s all. And it’s down near the other end of the hall. Luke and the doctor are probably there already, to see what is going on.” Not at all like my mother knocking on the wall; I was dreaming again.

“Bang bang,” Theodora said.

“Bang,” Eleanor said, and giggled. I am calm, she thought, but so very cold; the noise is only a kind of banging on the doors, one after another; is this what I was so afraid about? “Bang” is the best word for it; it sounds like something children do, not mothers knocking against the wall for help, and anyway Luke and the doctor are there; is this what they mean by cold chills going up and down your back? Because it is not pleasant; it starts in your stomach and goes in waves around and up and down again like something alive. Like something alive. Yes. Like something alive.

“Theodora,” she said, and closed her eyes and tightened her teeth together and wrapped her arms around herself, “it’s getting closer.”

“Just a noise,” Theodora said, and moved next to Eleanor and sat tight against her. “It has an echo.”

It sounded, Eleanor thought, like a hollow noise, a hollow bang, as though something were hitting the doors with an iron kettle, or an iron bar, or an iron glove. It pounded regularly for a minute, and then suddenly more softly, and then again in a quick flurry, seeming to be going methodically from door to door at the end of the hall. Distantly she thought she could hear the voices of Luke and the doctor, calling from somewhere below, and she thought,
Then they are not up here with us at all,
and heard the iron crashing against what must have been a door very close.

“Maybe it will go on down the other side of the hall,” Theodora whispered, and Eleanor thought that the oddest part of this indescribable experience was that Theodora should be having it too. “No,” Theodora said, and they heard the crash against the door across the hall. It was louder, it was deafening, it struck against the door next to them (did it move back and forth across the hall? did it go on feet along the carpet? did it lift a hand to the door?), and Eleanor threw herself away from the bed and ran to hold her hands against the door. “Go away,” she shouted wildly. “Go away, go away!”

There was complete silence, and Eleanor thought, standing with her face against the door, Now I’ve done it; it was looking for the room with someone inside.

The cold crept and pinched at them, filling and overflowing the room. Anyone would have thought that the inhabitants of Hill House slept sweetly in this quiet, and then, so suddenly that Eleanor wheeled around, the sound of Theodora’s teeth chattering, and Eleanor laughed. “You big baby,” she said.

“I’m cold,” Theodora said. “Deadly cold.”

“So am I.” Eleanor took the green quilt and threw it around Theodora, and took up Theodora’s warm dressing gown and put it on. “You warmer now?”

“Where’s Luke? Where’s the doctor?”

“I don’t know. Are you warmer now?”

“No.” Theodora shivered.

“In a minute I’ll go out in the hall and call them; are you—”

It started again, as though it had been listening, waiting to hear their voices and what they said, to identify them, to know how well prepared they were against it, waiting to hear if they were afraid. So suddenly that Eleanor leaped back against the bed and Theodora gasped and cried out, the iron crash came against their door, and both of them lifted their eyes in horror, because the hammering was against the upper edge of the door, higher than either of them could reach, higher than Luke or the doctor could reach, and the sickening, degrading cold came in waves from whatever was outside the door.

Eleanor stood perfectly still and looked at the door. She did not quite know what to do, although she believed that she was thinking coherently and was not unusually frightened, not more frightened, certainly, than she had believed in her worst dreams she could be. The cold troubled her even more than the sounds; even Theodora’s warm robe was useless against the icy little curls of fingers on her back. The intelligent thing to do, perhaps, was to walk over and open the door; that, perhaps, would belong with the doctor’s views of pure scientific inquiry. Eleanor knew that, even if her feet would take her as far as the door, her hand would not lift to the doorknob; impartially, remotely, she told herself that no one’s hand would touch that knob; it’s not the work hands were made for, she told herself. She had been rocking a little, each crash against the door pushing her a little backward, and now she was still because the noise was fading. “I’m going to complain to the janitor about the radiators,” Theodora said from behind her. “Is it stopping?”

“No,” Eleanor said, sick. “No.”

It had found them. Since Eleanor would not open the door, it was going to make its own way in. Eleanor said aloud, “Now I know why people scream, because I think I’m going to,” and Theodora said, “I will if you will,” and laughed, so that Eleanor turned quickly back to the bed and they held each other, listening in silence. Little pattings came from around the doorframe, small seeking sounds, feeling the edges of the door, trying to sneak a way in. The doorknob was fondled, and Eleanor, whispering, asked, “Is it locked?” and Theodora nodded and then, wide-eyed, turned to stare at the connecting bathroom door. “Mine’s locked too,” Eleanor said against her ear, and Theodora closed her eyes in relief. The little sticky sounds moved on around the doorframe and then, as though a fury caught whatever was outside, the crashing came again, and Eleanor and Theodora saw the wood of the door tremble and shake, and the door move against its hinges.

“You can’t get in,” Eleanor said wildly, and again there was a silence, as though the house listened with attention to her words, understanding, cynically agreeing, content to wait. A thin little giggle came, 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, and then she heard the doctor and Luke calling from the stairs and, mercifully, it was over.

When the real silence came, Eleanor breathed shakily and moved stiffly. “We’ve been clutching each other like a couple of lost children,” Theodora said and untwined her arms from around Eleanor’s neck. “You’re wearing my bathrobe.”

“I forgot mine. Is it really over?”

“For tonight, anyway.” Theodora spoke with certainty. “Can’t you tell? Aren’t you warm again?”

The sickening cold was gone, except for a reminiscent little thrill of it down Eleanor’s back when she looked at the door. She began to pull at the tight knot she had put in the bathrobe cord, and said, “Intense cold is one of the symptoms of shock.”

“Intense shock is one of the symptoms I’ve got,” Theodora said. “Here come Luke and the doctor.” Their voices were outside in the hall, speaking quickly, anxiously, and Eleanor dropped Theodora’s robe on the bed and said, “For heaven’s sake, don’t let them knock on that door—one more knock would finish me”—and ran into her own room to get her own robe. Behind her she could hear Theodora telling them to wait a minute, and then going to unlock the door, and then Luke’s voice saying pleasantly to Theodora, “Why, you look as though you’d seen a ghost.”

When Eleanor came back she noticed that both Luke and the doctor were dressed, and it occurred to her that it might be a sound idea from now on; if that intense cold was going to come back at night it was going to find Eleanor sleeping in a wool suit and a heavy sweater, and she didn’t care what Mrs. Dudley was going to say when she found that at least one of the lady guests was lying in one of the clean beds in heavy shoes and wool socks. “Well,” she asked, “how do you gentlemen like living in a haunted house?”

“It’s perfectly fine,” Luke said, “perfectly fine. It gives me an excuse to have a drink in the middle of the night.” He had the brandy bottle and glasses, and Eleanor thought that they must make a companionable little group, the four of them, sitting around Theodora’s room at four in the morning, drinking brandy. They spoke lightly, quickly, and gave one another fast, hidden, little curious glances, each of them wondering what secret terror had been tapped in the others, what changes might show in face or gesture, what unguarded weakness might have opened the way to ruin.

“Did anything happen in here while we were outside?” the doctor asked.

Eleanor and Theodora looked at each other and laughed, honestly at last, without any edge of hysteria or fear. After a minute Theodora said carefully, “Nothing in particular. Someone knocked on the door with a cannon ball and then tried to get in and eat us, and started laughing its head off when we wouldn’t open the door. But nothing really out of the way.”

Curiously, Eleanor went over and opened the door. “I thought the whole door was going to shatter,” she said, bewildered, “and there isn’t even a scratch on the wood, nor on any of the other doors; they’re perfectly smooth.”

“How nice that it didn’t mar the woodwork,” Theodora said, holding her brandy glass out to Luke. “I couldn’t bear it if this dear old house got hurt.” She grinned at Eleanor. “Nellie here was going to scream.”

“So were you.”

“Not at all; I only said so to keep you company. Besides, Mrs. Dudley already said she wouldn’t come. And where were
you,
our manly defenders?”

“We were chasing a dog,” Luke said. “At least, some animal like a dog.” He stopped, and then went on reluctantly. “We followed it outside.”

Theodora stared, and Eleanor said, “You mean it was
inside?
”

“I saw it run past my door,” the doctor said, “just caught a glimpse of it, slipping along. I woke Luke and we followed it down the stairs and out into the garden and lost it somewhere back of the house.”

“The front door was open?”

“No,” Luke said. “The front door was closed. So were all the other doors. We checked.”

“We’ve been wandering around for quite a while,” the doctor said. “We never dreamed that you ladies were awake until we heard your voices.” He spoke gravely. “There is one thing we have not taken into account,” he said.

They looked at him, puzzled, and he explained, checking on his fingers in his lecture style. “First,” he said, “Luke and I were awakened earlier than you ladies, clearly; we have been up and about, outside and in, for better than two hours, led on what you perhaps might allow me to call a wild-goose chase. Second, neither of us”—he glanced inquiringly at Luke as he spoke—“heard any sound up here until your voices began. It was perfectly quiet. That is, the sound which hammered on your door was not audible to us. When we gave up our vigil and decided to come upstairs we apparently drove away whatever was waiting outside your door. Now, as we sit here together, all is quiet.”

“I still don’t see what you mean,” Theodora said, frowning.

“We must take precautions,” he said.

“Against what? How?”

“When Luke and I are called outside, and you two are kept imprisoned inside, doesn’t it begin to seem”—and his voice was very quiet—“doesn’t it begin to seem that the intention is, somehow, to separate us?”

Looking at herself in the mirror, with the bright morning sunlight freshening even the blue room of Hill House, Eleanor thought, It is my second morning in Hill House, and I am unbelievably happy. Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long. Abandoning a lifelong belief that to name happiness is to dissipate it, she smiled at herself in the mirror and told herself silently, You are happy, Eleanor, you have finally been given a part of your measure of happiness. Looking away from her own face in the mirror, she thought blindly, Journeys end in lovers meeting, lovers meeting.

“Luke?” It was Theodora, calling outside in the hall. “You carried off one of my stockings last night, and you are a thieving cad, and I hope Mrs. Dudley can hear me.”

Eleanor could hear Luke, faintly, answering; he protested that a gentleman had a right to keep the favors bestowed upon him by a lady, and he was absolutely certain that Mrs. Dudley could hear every word.

“Eleanor?” Now Theodora pounded on the connecting door. “Are you awake? May I come in?”

“Come, of course,” Eleanor said, looking at her own face in the mirror. You deserve it, she told herself, you have spent your life earning it. Theodora opened the door and said happily, “How pretty you look this morning, my Nell. This curious life agrees with you.”

Eleanor smiled at her; the life clearly agreed with Theodora too.

“We ought by rights to be walking around with dark circles under our eyes and a look of wild despair,” Theodora said, putting an arm around Eleanor and looking into the mirror beside her, “and look at us—two blooming, fresh young lovelies.”

“I’m thirty-four years old,” Eleanor said, and wondered what obscure defiance made her add two years.

“And you look about fourteen,” Theodora said. “Come along; we’ve earned our breakfast.”

Laughing, they raced down the great staircase and found their way through the game room and into the dining room. “Good morning,” Luke said brightly. “And how did everyone sleep?”

“Delightfully, thank you,” Eleanor said. “Like a baby.”

“There may have been a little noise,” Theodora said, “but one has to expect that in these old houses. Doctor, what do we do this morning?”

“Hm?” said the doctor, looking up. He alone looked tired, but his eyes were lighted with the same brightness they found, all, in one another; it is excitement, Eleanor thought; we are all enjoying ourselves.

“Ballechin House,” the doctor said, savoring his words. “Borley Rectory. Glamis Castle. It is incredible to find oneself experiencing it, absolutely incredible. I could
not
have believed it. I begin to understand, dimly, the remote delight of your true medium. I think I shall have the marmalade, if you would be so kind. Thank you. My wife will never believe me. Food has a new flavor—do you find it so?”