The Haunting of Hill House

Chapter 3

The sun went down smoothly behind the hills, slipping almost eagerly, at last, into the pillowy masses. There were already long shadows on the lawn as Eleanor and Theodora came up the path toward the side veranda of Hill House, blessedly hiding its mad face in the growing darkness.

"There's someone waiting there," Eleanor said, walking more quickly, and so saw Luke for the first time. Journeys end in lovers meeting, she thought, and could only say inadequately, "Are you looking for us?"

He had come to the veranda rail, looking down at them in the dusk, and now he bowed with a deep welcoming gesture, "'These being dead,"' he said, "'then dead must I be.' Ladies, if you are the ghostly inhabitants of Hill House, I am here forever."

He's really kind of silly, Eleanor thought sternly, and Theodora said, "Sorry we weren't here to meet you; we've been exploring."

"A sour old beldame with a face of curds welcomed us, thank you," he said. "'Howdy-do,' she told me, 'I hope I see you alive when I come back in the morning and your dinner's on the sideboard.' Saying which, she departed in a late-model convertible with First and Second Murderers."

"Mrs. Dudley," Theodora said. "First Murderer must be Dudley-at-the-gate; I suppose the other was Count Dracula. A wholesome family."

"Since we are listing our cast of characters," he said, "my name is Luke Sanderson."

Eleanor was startled into speaking. "Then you're one of the family? The people who own Hill House? Not one of Doctor Montague's guests?"

"I am one of the family; someday this stately pile will belong to me; until then, however, I am here as one of Doctor Montague's guests."

Theodora giggled. "We," she said, "are Eleanor and Theodora, two little girls who were planning a picnic down by the brook and got scared home by a rabbit."

"I go in mortal terror of rabbits," Luke agreed politely. "May I come if I carry the picnic basket?"

"You may bring your ukulele and strum to us while we eat chicken sandwiches. Is Doctor Montague here?"

"He's inside," Luke said, "gloating over his haunted house."

They were silent for a minute, wanting to move closer together, and then Theodora said thinly, "It doesn't sound so funny, does it, now it's getting dark?"

"Ladies, welcome." And the great front door opened. "Come inside. I am Doctor Montague."

2

The four of them stood, for the first time, in the wide, dark entrance hall of Hill House. Around them the house steadied and located them, above them the hills slept watchfully, small eddies of air and sound and movement stirred and waited and whispered, and the center of consciousness was somehow the small space where they stood, four separated people, and looked trustingly at one another.

"I am very happy that everyone arrived safely, and on time," Doctor Montague said. "Welcome, all of you, welcome to Hill House—although perhaps that sentiment ought to come more properly from you, my boy? In any case, welcome, welcome. Luke, my boy, can you make a martini?"

3

Dr. Montague raised his glass and sipped hopefully, and sighed.

"Fair," he said. "Only fair, my boy. To our success at Hill House, however."

"How would one reckon success, exactly, in an affair like this?" Luke inquired curiously.

The doctor laughed. "Put it, then," he said, "that I hope that all of us will have an exciting visit and my book will rock my colleagues back on their heels. I cannot call your visit a vacation, although to some it might seem so, because I am hopeful of your working—although work, of course, depends largely upon what is to be done, does it not? Notes," he said with relief, as though fixing upon one unshakable solidity in a world of fog, "notes. We will take notes—to some, a not unbearable task."