Free The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

clutching at the doorknob and, under Theodora’s quizzical eye, unclenched her fingers and walked steadily across the room. “We’ll have to find some way of opening these windows,” she said.
    “So there won’t be anyone around if you need help,” Mrs. Dudley said. “We couldn’t hear you, even in the night. No one could.”
    “All right now?” Theodora asked, and Eleanor nodded.
    “No one lives any nearer than the town. No one else will come any nearer than that.”
    “You’re probably just hungry,” Theodora said. “And I’m starved myself.” She set her suitcase on the bed and slipped off her shoes. “Nothing,” she said, “upsets me more than being hungry; I snarl and snap and burst into tears.” She lifted a pair of softly tailored slacks out of the suitcase.
    “In the night,” Mrs. Dudley said. She smiled. “In the dark,” she said, and closed the door behind her.
    After a minute Eleanor said, “She also walks without making a sound.”
    “Delightful old body.” Theodora turned, regarding her room. “I take it back, that about the best hotels,” she said. “It’s a little bit like a boarding school I went to for a while.”
    “Come and see mine,” Eleanor said. She opened the bathroom door and led the way into her blue room. “I was all unpacked and thinking about packing again when you came.”
    “Poor baby. You’re certainly starving. All I could think of when I got a look at the place from outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down. Maybe before we leave . . .”
    “It was terrible, being here alone.”
    “You should have seen that boarding school of mine during vacations.” Theodora went back into her own room and, with the sense of movement and sound in the two rooms, Eleanor felt more cheerful. She straightened her clothes on the hangers in the wardrobe and set her books evenly on the bed table. “You know,” Theodora called from the other room, “it is kind of like the first day at school; everything’s ugly and strange, and you don’t know anybody, and you’re afraid everyone’s going to laugh at your clothes.”
    Eleanor, who had opened the dresser drawer to take out a pair of slacks, stopped and then laughed and threw the slacks on the bed.
    “Did I understand correctly,” Theodora went on, “that Mrs. Dudley is not going to come if we scream in the night?”
    “It was not what she agreed to. Did you meet the amiable old retainer at the gate?”
    “We had a lovely chat. He said I couldn’t come in and I said I could and then I tried to run him down with my car but he jumped. Look, do you think we have to sit around here in our rooms and wait? I’d like to change into something comfortable—unless we dress for dinner, do you think?”
    “I won’t if you won’t.”
    “I won’t if you won’t. They can’t fight both of us. Anyway, let’s get out of here and go exploring; I would very much like to get this roof off from over my head.”
    “It gets dark so early, in these hills, with all the trees . . .” Eleanor went to the window again, but there was still sunlight slanting across the lawn.
    “It won’t be really dark for nearly an hour. I want to go outside and roll on the grass.”
    Eleanor chose a red sweater, thinking that in this room in this house the red of the sweater and the red of the sandals bought to match it would almost certainly be utterly at war with each other, although they had been close enough yesterday in the city. Serves me right anyway, she thought, for wanting to wear such things; I never did before. But she looked oddly well, it seemed to her as she stood by the long mirror on the wardrobe door, almost comfortable. “Do you have any idea who else is coming?” she asked. “Or when?”
    “Doctor Montague,” Theodora said. “I thought he’d be here before anyone else.”
    “Have you known Doctor Montague long?”
    “Never met him,” Theodora said. “Have you?”
    “Never. You almost