Do you always go where you’re not wanted?” Eleanor smiled placidly. “I’ve never been wanted anywhere,” she said.
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.
Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one’s childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by.
They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed.
The reassuring bulk of the college buildings showed ahead of her, and she looked fondly up at them and smiled. As she had never been before, she was now alone, and grown-up, and powerful, and not at all afraid.
Horror is made of such base material – so easily rejected or dismissed – that it may be hard to accept my postulate that within the genre lies one of the last refuges of spirituality in this, our materialistic world. But it is a fact that, through the ages, most storytellers have had to resort to the fantastic in order to elevate their discourse to the level of parable.
I remember coming home from school with friends who were startled at the percussive sound of my parents’ typewriters both going at once, pounding away in different rooms.
A clean house is a sign of mental inferiority.
It was not pleasant sitting on the porch after Tony had gone; a spot where two people have been talking, however briefly, is not after that a spot for one person to sit alone.
In the night, in the dark.
Only human beings and rabid animals turn on their own kind; gratuitous pain is unknown in nature.
Use all the tools at your disposal. The language is infinitely flexible, and your use of it should be completely deliberate. Never forget the grotesque effect of the absolutely wrong words.
Now I want to say something about words artificially weighted; you can, and frequently must, make a word carry several meanings or messages in your story if you use the word right. This is a kind of shorthand.
Mr. Halloran had been crying, but this was not unusual; since he had been made to realize that he would not, now, be vouchsafed a second run at youth he cried easily and often.
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.
I am going to put death in all their food and watch them die.” Constance stirred, and the leaves rustled. “The way you did before?” she asked. It had never been spoken of between us, not once in six years. “Yes,” I said after a minute, “the way I did before.
I wished they were all dead and I was walking on their bodies.
Now, she thought; I may go mad, but at least I look like a lady.
Fancy was a liar. She had been with Aunt Fanny and dared not admit to running away. She had not been frightened, but she enjoyed teasing people weaker than herself. Not a servant, or an animal, or any child in the village near the house, would willingly go near her.
Marble is always a shock,” she said. “It never feels like you think it’s going to. I suppose a lifesize statue looks enough like a real person to make you expect to feel skin.