I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.

It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house ; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

I assume then, that you have no real faith in the fondness any of the rest of us may feel for you?''None,' said Mrs. Halloran.

Wear your boots if you wander today

Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

I was thinking, I could turn him into a fly and drop him into a spider's web and watch him tangled and helpless and struggling, shut into the body of a dying buzzing fly; I could wish him dead until he died.I could fasten him to a tree and keep him there until he grew into the trunk and bark grew over his mouth. if he was under the ground I could walk over him stamping my feet.

Fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar.