“Remember what we talked about before? About our dreams?”
“They can spill.”
“That’s right. Yeah. Just like a cup of water can spill sometimes. But kids dreams are special. They’re like…”
”An ocean.”
”An ocean. That’s right. And the big dreams can spill out sometimes….Now I know that bent-neck lady can be pretty scary. But that’s all she is. She’s just a little spill.”
”How long do we have to live here, Daddy?”
”Well, your mother and I, we have to finish fixing this house. And then, someone has to buy it.”
“Then we can go?”
“Yep. Then we can go.”
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against the hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. 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.
—Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, 1959
The Sanguine Woods 