The Sundial by Shirley Jackson

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.
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    Being impossible, an abstract belief can only be trusted through its manifestations, the actual shape of the god perceived, however dimly, against the solidity he displaces. Not one of the people around Aunt Fanny believed her father’s warning, but they were all afraid of the snake. Miss Ogilvie, indeed, never again sat in that corner of the drawing room near the snake’s bookcase, although it had formerly been one of her favorite spots.
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    â€œIt could have been in the firewood,” Essex said, pacing the library floor.
    â€œBut the gardener could not have been clipping the hedge,” Mrs. Halloran said.
    â€œI have no idea what to think. Aunt Fanny has behaved very strangely.”
    â€œI will not dispute
that
. Essex, you may stay.”
    Essex was silent. Then he said, “People can be persuaded to accept almost anything. Last night I thought myself degraded, fouled, rendered contemptible, cringing. Today Aunt Fanny and her snake have enlightened me; two catastrophes cannot make a right, but I think I had never any expectation of leaving. Aunt Fanny has been very kind.”
    â€œI genuinely hope she will feel better,” Mrs. Halloran said. “Now I will have to let Miss Ogilvie stay, and Maryjane.”
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    But Aunt Fanny continued very odd. Physically, she was well enough to make it unnecessary to call a doctor, but she went about smiling and happy, almost gay. She laughed like a young girl who has found a first lover, she ate hugely of pancakes for her late breakfast, she sang. Mrs. Halloran believed she had gone mad, but Aunt Fanny mad was so much more palatable than Aunt Fanny sane that Mrs. Halloran bit her tongue, averted her eyes, and winced only occasionally.
    Immediately after her breakfast, which everyone had stayed to watch her eat, Aunt Fanny fell asleep, her head on the table, a smile on her face. Asleep, she spoke at length, and, although afterward none of them could remember with exactness the words Aunt Fanny used, they sat appalled and frightened, and certainly heard Aunt Fanny speak as she never had before.
    Aunt Fanny was listening to her father, repeating to them what he told her. With a happy smile on her face and her eyes shut, she listened with a child’s care, and spoke slowly, word for word. Aunt Fanny’s father had come to tell these people that the world outside was ending. Neither Aunt Fanny nor her father expressed any apprehension, but the world which had seemed so unassailable to the rest of them, the usual, daily world of houses and cities and people and all the small fragments of living, was to be destroyed in one night of utter disaster. Aunt Fanny smiled, and nodded, and listened, and told them about the end of the world.
    At one point she said sadly, “All those poor people, dying at once,” and, again, “We must consider ourselves extremely fortunate.”
    Those few people gathered in Mrs. Halloran’s house, which Aunt Fanny now seemed to believe was her father’s house, would be safe. The house would be guarded during the night of destruction and at its end they would emerge safe and pure. They were charged with the future of humanity; when they came forth from the house it would be into a world clean and silent, their inheritance. “And breed a new race of mankind,” Aunt Fanny said with sweetness.
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    Immediately following this revelation, Aunt Fanny, waking, asked for and drank a small glass of brandy, after which she retired to her room and fell into a deep sleep which lasted until late afternoon. While Aunt Fanny slept, Fancy played with her doll house and then went down into the kitchen, where she was not welcome. Miss Ogilvie washed out the underwear she had worn the day before, and used a small hand iron to finish up