“It had clearly been an old mansion once,… […] … it needs paint and tightening all round and possibly a new roof…”
Miss Harper travels on a pervasively rainy night in a dirty old bus, with a grumpy driver who claims he is not an alarm clock, and other passengers blurred and soft speaking, and someone behind her who says they are running away from home. She is put off in a strange place, not her own home town, and she eventually finds an ex-mansion that seems to have echoes of her own childhood home with prehensile wooden toys…
It is a great scary story with an oblique loop of déjà vu and ‘fairyland colours’, that I am glad I have now read by the skin of my teeth in catching its late bus, astonished that I have not read hardly any Shirley Jackson before. Especially as my own work has been compared recently by an independent source to an amalgam of Lautréamont, Barthelme and Jackson! It has now stirred me to order a copy of THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE to read for the first time, too. I’ve not read Barthelme or Lautréamont, either!
My Jackson reviews here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2024/02/15/my-reviews-of-stories-by-shirley-jackson/
Shadows & Elbows 