The haunting of Hill House: a drama of suspense in three acts by F. Andrew Leslie & Shirley Jackson

Author:F. Andrew Leslie & Shirley Jackson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Horror
ISBN: 9780822205043
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Published: 1964-08-15T08:00:00+00:00

4-6

"Coming, mother, coming," Eleanor said, fumbling for the light. "It's all right, I'm coming." Eleanor, she heard, Eleanor. "Coming, coming," she shouted irritably, "just a minute, I'm coming."

"Eleanor?"

Then she thought, with a crashing shock which brought her awake, cold and shivering, out of bed and awake: I am in Hill House.

"What?" she cried out. "What? Theodora?"

"Eleanor? In here."

"Coming." No time for the light; she kicked a table out of the way, wondering at the noise of it, and struggled briefly with the door of the connecting bathroom. That is not the table falling, she thought; my mother is knocking on the wall. It was blessedly light in Theodora' s room, and Theodora was sitting up in bed, her hair tangled from sleep and her eyes wide with the shock of awakening; I must look the same way, Eleanor thought, and said, "I'm here, what is it?"-and then heard, clearly for the first time, although she had been hearing it ever since she awakened. "What is it?" she whispered.

She sat down slowly on the foot of Theodora's bed, wondering at what seemed calmness in herself. Now, she thought, now. It is only a noise, and terribly cold, terribly, terribly cold. It is a noise down the hall, far down at the end, near the nursery door, and terribly cold, not my mother knocking on the wall.

"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

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