The Sundial

by Shirley Jackson

  “Everlasting darkness is the end of mortal life,” Mrs. Peterson added.

  “I’m the seer in our group,” Edna said. “Who’s yours?”

  “I am not altogether sure,” said Mrs. Halloran at last, “that we have a seer. What we do have, of course, is a place to meet. In that respect we are more fortunate.”

  “Eternal damnation attends us,” Essex said helpfully.

  “Well, who gets your messages?” Edna asked. “Her?” She gestured toward Miss Ogilvie, who gave a little gasp and took a step backward.

  “Miss Ogilvie does not receive messages,” Mrs. Halloran said. “Miss Ogilvie is our . . . contact with the outside world.” Miss Ogilvie wrung her hands and looked ready to cry.

  “When?” Edna demanded.

  “When?” Mrs. Halloran was puzzled.

  “My sword shall destroy life,” said Essex.

  “Horrible is the future ahead,” said Mrs. Peterson.

  “When is your date? Your outside limit?”

  “We have not been so far honored . . .” Mrs. Halloran began.

  “Jeepers.” Edna was surprised. “Ever hear anything like it?” she asked her committee, and the woman with red hair and the man in the white waistcoat nodded and looked mournful.

  “You, sir,” the man said, addressing Essex. “Do you atone?”

  “Daily,” said Essex.

  “Sin?”

  “When I can,” said Essex manfully.

  “Metal?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “How do you stand on metal? Allow yourselves metal fastenings? Meat? Ills of the flesh?”

  “I am heir to all of them,” said Essex, inspired.

  The man in the white waistcoat looked puzzled and turned to whisper into the ear of Edna.

  “The time is near at hand, and vengeance is swift,” said Mrs. Peterson.

  Edna nodded vigorously at the man in the white waistcoat and came forward to speak earnestly to Mrs. Halloran. “Look,” she said, “we’re a whole lot further along than you folks, but even so we’re willing to take you in with us on condition you try to catch up some, and of course we could meet here only out on your lawn, maybe, because we largely don’t believe in roofs over our heads. Now I may as well tell you right off that we got all our messages already, so we just happen to know that the spacemen are coming—”

  “Spacemen?” said Mrs. Halloran faintly.

  “Spacemen, from Saturn. Why? Do you—”

  “Not at all,” said Mrs. Halloran.

  “Well, we get it they’re due along about the end of August, because the skies are clearest then. Early September, maybe, if it takes longer than they figure now to get here. And the saucers could land right out there on your lawn, see? It would be a good clear place. We’re all going to be right there, ready and waiting, with no metal fastenings and what not, and we figure we go to Saturn where we get translated into a higher state of being, but I can tell you more about that as we go along. Anyway, you got to start now practicing, get rid of all metal, and no meat and of course no alcoholic beverages and none of them fancy wines you probably got around here. Mrs. Peterson here is our cook.”

  “All hope is hopeless,” Mrs. Peterson pointed out, “all striving vain.”

  “The main thing,” Edna said, “the most important main thing, is we got to be ready when they come. There’s no second trip, remember. You miss the first saucer—you never get a second chance. Once that saucer with your name on it leaves, it’s gone. And remember they won’t take you if you’re wearing metal or been indulging in fancy wines. They know.”

  “What do they drink on Saturn?” Mrs. Halloran asked with interest.

  “Ambrosia,” said Edna unhesitatingly. “We got it in a message, because Arthur here was asking that very same thing. Now suppose we figure out a schedule of meetings with you folks, and after a couple times you’ll get used to our ways, and then you’ll come out on the lawn with us, and—”

  “Where have you been meeting until now?” Mrs. Halloran asked.

  Edna sighed. “Right now we’ve been meeting over to Mrs. Peterson’s, except her husband’s kind of nasty about it and Mrs. Peterson figures we better start going some place else, particularly to eat.”

  “I am sorry,” Mrs. Halloran said—she was frequently gentle when she perceived that sharpness would be wasted—“I am sorry, but I am afraid that we will not be able to qualify for your space ship. I myself cannot do without my fancy wines, and I believe that my associates—except possibly Miss Ogilvie—use entirely metal fastenings. Miss Ogilvie?”

  “Zippers,” Miss Ogilvie whispered, pale. “Nothing but zippers. Everywhere.”

  “So you see,” Mrs. Halloran continued, “we shall have to make our own destinies, in addition to which I cannot possibly hope to persuade my little group to leave this planet for another. Perhaps—after you have gone, of course—we may hope to inherit this one. Perhaps we may even come to like it.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t expect—” Edna began, but was silenced when Mrs. Halloran held up one hand, regally.

  “We wish you a pleasant journey,” Mrs. Halloran said. “We hope that you will be very happy on Saturn, in . . . a higher order of being? Perhaps you will keep us under observation?”

  “This earth has no temptations for us,” Edna said stiffly, and Mrs. Peterson droned behind her, “A world well lost, and dire be its fate.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Halloran said. “Mrs. Peterson, good day.”

  “Woe, woe,” Mrs. Peterson said, and they filed out, Edna leading and Arthur hesitating briefly to investigate an erotic carving near the doorway of the ballroom. Mrs. Halloran gestured to Miss Ogilvie to follow and see them safely down the stairs, and Miss Ogilvie went quickly, half-backing out and half skittering.

  “You know,” Mrs. Halloran said, leaning back in her chair, “I could kill Aunt Fanny.”

  “Man’s life is but a moment run,” Essex said.

  “Essex, stop it at once. You would make quite a good impression on Saturn, I should think.”

  Essex made a face. “Ambrosia is not my drink.”

  “Something must be done, however. I will not have space ships landing on my lawn. Those people are perfectly capable of sending their saucers just anywhere, with no respect for private property. I want all the gates in the wall checked, today. You and the captain had better go. Go right around the wall, all the way. Make sure that no one can get in anywhere—there may be spots where it has weakened, or fallen away. Lock all the gates, and see that they are kept locked. You may put on new locks, if it seems necessary to you. No one is to go in or out without my permission, and I mean particularly Miss Ogilvie.”

  “Aunt Fanny?” Essex asked softly.

  “Yes.” Mrs. Halloran sighed. “What a plague Aunt Fanny is getting to be. I will not forbid her to visit the village, provided that she only passes through the gates with my permission. I will tell her that it is for her own protection, and trust that she will believe me. Her captain is, after all, a potential asset, and there is surely room enough inside the wall for all of us.”

  “This is all very well,” Essex said, “but I do not see how it will keep out flying saucers.”

  “I could put up signs,” Mrs. Halloran said irritably, “reading ‘NO LANDING OF INTERSTELLAR AIRCRAFT PERMITTED HERE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.’ If any spaceships land on my lawn we will give them Aunt Fanny and Miss Ogilvie. I am really very angry, Essex; Miss Ogilvie, with her wanton chattering, has very nearly sent us all to Saturn.”

  “Not so long as you indulge in fancy wines,” Essex pointed out.

  “Furthermore,” Mrs. Halloran said, “if any True Believer attempts to enter this house again, Essex, I want you and the captain prepared to inflict the most direct bodily retribution. The one true belief I want firmly implanted in the minds of th
e True Believers is the unshakable conviction that I am not one of their number.”

  “Much like Mr. Peterson, in fact.”

  “Not at all like Mr. Peterson; I find his reaction piddling.”

  “Perhaps,” Essex said wickedly, “Aunt Fanny has been wrong all the time; perhaps this house and everyone in it will go with the rest of the world. The True Believers would then have the last laugh, you perceive. Unless,” he added, “laughing also is forbidden on Saturn.”

  6

  Aunt Fanny, meanwhile, was lost. She had planned to take her walk no farther than the beginning of the orchard, to admire the blossoms on the apple trees, and had gone aimlessly and without hurry around the side of the house, through the sunken rose garden, and down the orchard path, but there she had somehow, dreaming, lost herself. She had either come out the wrong gate from the rose garden, or turned off on a cross path, because the orchard was not ahead of her at all; it was not for several minutes that she realized that she had somehow gotten herself into the maze.

  Now, the maze was not at all frightening to Aunt Fanny, who had grown up knowing its secrets. Like all mazes, it went to a pattern, and the pattern had been, romantically, built around the name of Aunt Fanny’s mother, Anna. One turned right, left, left, right, and then left, right, right, left, and so on, alternating, until the center of the maze was attained. When Aunt Fanny had been a child it had been a dear puzzle to her, and she had spent hours trying to lose herself in the maze, but she could never forget her mother’s name. Again and again, coming unerringly to the center of the maze, where there was a stone bench and a marble figure tantalizingly named Anna—although of course Aunt Fanny’s mother would never have permitted herself to be portrayed from life in that state of undress; not, at the very least, without a petticoat—Aunt Fanny had thrown herself down in tears. Was she to be disappointed, always, because she could not forget the answer? Was she never to lose herself, as other people did so easily, could she never escape into the mad labyrinths and run confused?

  And yet now, not a child any more, and long forgetting the maze, Aunt Fanny was at last lost. She stood with her back against a hedge, looking right and left at a divided path, and thought: I have not been here for so long, and it has not been kept up as it should. She was not frightened at first, because she had never yet succeeded in losing herself in the maze. The tall hedges grew up past sight on either side, although they should have been cut to just above her height, and they were not trimmed. The hedges had not been trimmed, before, along the walk to the secret garden, and Aunt Fanny sighed irritably; it was because she was the only person who traveled these ways, and it must not be tolerated.

  Anna, she thought, Anna. She could at one time have almost drawn a picture of the maze, knowing so well its trickful turns and alleys, could have pictured faithfully the mysteries where she could not lose herself. There was one point where the path seemed to be going in a circle; although it was the right path, there was one false turn where long ago she had found a bird’s nest. The finish, the climax, always came suddenly, when you were convinced that you were turned in the wrong direction. She had long ago made a little castle of her own in one dead end path. Now, so much later, she leaned her head back against the solid hedge and said Anna, and turned right. When I get to the center, she thought, I will check to see if the statue of Anna is as I remember; perhaps it has been neglected, or defaced. When I get out I shall tell Orianna Halloran that the hedges are a disgrace, even in the maze where no one ever comes any more. She turned left; I do not believe, she thought, wondering, that many of the others even know that there is a maze at all—there is so much that everyone has forgotten, or never been told in time. The hedges were so overgrown that the turns were indistinct, and once, where she was sure of a turn right, the branches crossed in front of her and kept her out. Irritably, Aunt Fanny went on.

  Left, she turned, and then right again. Still not frightened, she stopped for a minute to remember with amusement a long forgotten fury: this, she remembered suddenly, was a turn which had particularly angered her long ago, because she knew so clearly, always, that it led to a dead end, and had never been able to fool herself with it; no matter how optimistically she had tried, telling herself that yes, this was surely the only right path, she could never make herself forget that she was leading herself down a wrong way. I never will forget it, either, I suppose, she thought, turning right, because it is part of my mind now, and has been for so long. I wish they had made it more difficult. Anna, Anna, Anna.

  She was caught in a pocket of hedge. For a minute she believed that the hedges were only so overgrown that they hid the alley, and then she was at last aware that she had gone wrong, taken the bad turning somewhere, lost Anna. But then, she thought easily, wherever you are, Anna will bring you out. She turned back, moved right, hesitated, turned again, and was taken by the calculated bewilderments of the maze.

  Once, running, she stopped and sank back, against the strength of the hedge and thought Minotaur, Minotaur; somewhere, the strong branches holding her around, tight away from freedom, she cried out “Anna, Anna” and turned and twisted wildly in a frantic escape from the trap of branches holding her helpless. Once she saw the way out clearly, and even reached her hands almost through the hedge into daylight but could not get through. But this is my own maze, she told herself, this is the maze I grew up in; I could not be a prisoner here; I know the way so perfectly, and she turned and was further lost.

  It was much darker. Overhead the hedges seemed to meet, shading the alleys mortally; ahead there was nothing but a little light between the touching branches. Left, Aunt Fanny turned, right, right, left, and blundered against the taut grasping fingers of the twigs, felt her dress caught, and her hair, felt scratches on her cheeks under the sharply caressing touch; Anna, she said, turning left, Anna, turning right.

  Look, she said aloud once—it was much later; it was very dark, and no one knew where she was—look, here is where I buried a doll once, when I was so small, and I buried my doll on a wrong turning so no one would ever find her grave. Right here is where I buried my doll. I could always find my way out, from here; I used to try to lose myself on this very path—this is where I used to come and hide when I was unhappy, and just beyond this turn is the spot where I cut my hand on a sharp branch and my brother bandaged it for me, because my mother was dead. We both cried, I remember; I used to come along this path pretending I was lost and could never go home again—no longer, she thought in despair; these ways are wrong now.

  Then, before she would accept it, she was in the center of the maze. The hedges on either side separated and broadened, and her feet went from the gravel path onto lawn. There, in the gloom, was the marble bench, and, leaning over it pathetically, the statue named Anna, friendless now since no one ever came into the maze, leaning down with love to caress an empty place. Here was the center of the maze where no one could ever be lost who had a memory of her name. Aunt Fanny came unwillingly to the bench and fell against it. There were dried leaves blowing against the marble, and the figure leaned down overhead, holding out bare arms of tenderness and love. Aunt Fanny put her face down among the dried leaves and thought, well I am here, I am at the heart, I have come through the maze—where is the secret I am to learn from my many agonies? Here I am, here I am, where is my reward? What have I earned, learned, spurned? Mother, mother, she thought, and felt the marble warm under her cheek.

  FRANCES. FRANCES HALLORAN.

  Aunt Fanny found her way out of the maze without fault; she had no time to mistake the paths, running insanely (Anna, Anna) and if she was screaming there was no one to hear her or find her; FRANCES HALLORAN FRANCES FRANCES HALLORAN and Aunt Fanny pushed through twigs and leaves; FRANCES HALLORAN and she was out of the maze, onto the path to the rose garden FRANCES FRANCES FRANCES and there was Essex standing alone; “Essex,” she called, “please help me, please—take me home”; FRANCES HALLORAN, and it was not Essex at
all.

  _____

  Aunt Fanny’s second revelation was duly recorded by Mrs. Willow on four pages torn from the pad by the telephone in the main hall. Aunt Fanny’s words were clearly and carefully spoken, and Mrs. Willow was able to take them down almost exactly, although her hand shook as she wrote. “It is coming,” Mrs. Willow copied, “it is coming and my brother will be saved. There will be a night of horror, a night of terror and the father will watch over his children. The children must not be afraid. The children must wait. There will be screaming and imploring but the children may not go outside, the children must wait. It is coming, the father guards his children. Let the children wait.”

  “Why are you writing it down?” Miss Ogilvie asked. “It’s almost the same as before.”

  “Shh,” Mrs. Willow said, writing.

  “My brother is not to be afraid.” Aunt Fanny, turning wildly on the couch in the drawing room, tried to sit up, fell back, and threw her arms wildly. “My brother is not to be afraid,” she said, urgently. “He will take us in his arms, he will shield us, he will cherish us and hide us, my brother is not to be afraid; even if it is all gone my brother will be safe. There is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be afraid of, we are safe and warm, we are safe and warm, everything is all right, everything is all right, don’t be afraid. I am right here, nothing can hurt you, nothing can get in. Brother, go back to sleep. Brother,” she cried, striking at the air, “I am here, I am coming, we are safe.” Then, very softly, “There will be a night of murder and a night of bloodshed but we will be saved. And now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep—”

  “Why are you taking this down?” Miss Ogilvie asked. “Everyone knows it by heart.”

  Aunt Fanny was quiet, and Mrs. Willow leaned over her and asked pressingly, “Tell us quickly, what must we do? Are we all safe in this house? Are we supposed to stay here? When will it happen?”