The Sundial by Shirley Jackson Page A

the underwear already dry. Maryjane lay on the chaise in her bedroom, reading a true confession magazine brought her secretly by one of the maids, and eating peanut brittle. Essex sat in the library under a bust of Seneca and did a crossword puzzle. Mr. Halloran dozed before the fire in his room, and wondered that the years had been so short. Mrs. Halloran sat long alone, her open hand resting on the pages of a Bible she had not opened, or even remembered, for many years.
    When Aunt Fanny awakened she was perfectly aware of all that had happened, including her own revelations, and—probably resembling in this all souls who have been the vehicle of a major supernatural pronouncement—her first reaction of shivering terror was almost at once replaced by a feeling of righteous complacence. She did not know why these extraordinary messages had been sent through her own frail self, but she believed without question that the choice had been good. She was completely subject to some greater power and, her own will somewhere buried in that which controlled her, she could only become autocratic and demanding.
    For a few minutes she lay quietly on her bed, wondering, and then she rose and went to look at herself in the mirror. There seemed as yet no outward change to her, so she thought to put on her dead mother’s jewels, and, at last, decked in diamonds never cleaned since they were put away on her mother’s death, Aunt Fanny made her way upstairs to the wing which was occupied by Maryjane and Fancy. She knocked on the door of their sitting room, and heard Maryjane ask who it was, then tell Fancy to get up and unlock the door.
    â€œIt is Aunt Fanny, my dears,” Aunt Fanny said, and the door was opened. Fancy had been putting away her doll house, and Maryjane was lying back, her confession magazine underneath her. “Aunt Fanny,” said Maryjane. “It was kind of you to come. My asthma is worse, much worse. Will you tell them downstairs?”
    â€œBut now you may give up having asthma, Maryjane,” Aunt Fanny said.
    â€œWhy?” Maryjane sat up. “Is she dead?”
    â€œYou know perfectly well,” Aunt Fanny said irritably, “that she is well on her way to being reborn into a new life and joy.”
    â€œReborn?” Maryjane fell back. “That’s
all
I need,” she said.
    â€œShall I push her down the stairs?” Fancy asked, as one repeating an incantation rather than as one asking a question; perhaps she had to recite this regularly to her mother.
    â€œIs Fancy subnormal, do you think?” Aunt Fanny asked.
    â€œShe’s Lionel’s own child,” Maryjane said.
    â€œWell, tell her to stop saying that. Evil, and jealousy, and fear, are all going to be removed from us. I told you clearly this morning. Humanity, as an experiment, has failed.”
    â€œWell, I’m sure I did the best
I
could,” Maryjane said.
    â€œDo you understand that this world will be destroyed? Soon?”
    â€œI just couldn’t care less,” Maryjane said. “Unless they save a special thunderbolt for
her
.”
    â€œEverything, Aunt Fanny?” Fancy was pulling at her sleeve. “The whole thing? All the parts I’ve never seen?”
    â€œAll of it, dear. It has been a bad and wicked and selfish place, and the beings who created it have decided that it will never get any better. So they are going to burn it, the way you might burn a toy full of disease germs. Do you remember when you had the measles? Your grandmother took your teddy bear and had it put in the incinerator, because it was full of germs?”
    â€œI remember,” Fancy said grimly.
    â€œWell, that is just what they are going to do with this diseased, filthy old world. Right in the incinerator.”
    â€œDid your father really tell you all this?” Maryjane asked.
    â€œIt is as though something I had known all my life, and believed without ever really knowing what