“Come Along with me” includes Shirley Jackson’s final story as well as sixteen other short stories and three lectures. The stories range from humour to the gothic horror for which Jackson is best known. I will touch on a selection of stories.

“Come Along with Me” was Shirley Jackson’s last story, and unfinished.  This is a shame, because the protagonist/narrator is a hoot. She is a psychic older woman who does as she pleases and doesn’t care about what anyone thinks, says outrageous things and seems to have no fear. When asked what she does, she responds with:

A little shoplifting, sometimes, I told him. Some meddling.

She does things like going into a department store and telling a salesperson she’s trying her hand at shoplifting, tries it but gets seen and has to put it back. (She has lots of money, she just does this because she feels like it.) She holds a séance, and this is where we learn that she can just tune into dead people without much effort. She had made comments earlier about her dead husband asking about things, which sounded very odd, but when this is revealed, it starts to make more sense. Of course, as the story is unfinished, we could be looking at an unreliable narrator who is mentally ill and just thinks she can speak to dead people. We never learn her real name, as she deliberately changes it on arriving at the city she is staying in (to Angela Motorman), and she says and does enough that is odd that it is not unreasonable to wonder how much of what she says is true. This character is something of a change from many of Jackson’s protagonists – as she is a much stronger and more forceful presence. The protagonists of “We have always lived in the castle” and “The Haunting of Hill House” are softer, more obviously fearful and less stable. The readers have missed out with the story never being completed.

Two of the stories in this collection are based on Jackson’s real family, though with some poetic licence to add humour. “The Pajama Party” involves the mother having agreed to a sleep-over for her daughter’s eleventh birthday party, much against her better judgement. The evening involves much eleven-year-old girl drama and fights, noise and complaints from the other kids of the house, and parents pulling their hair out. From my own memories of being eleven years old, I find this story very believable. It’s also hilarious. “The night we all had grippe” involves the entire family coming down with a flu-like illness, and the different ways they all deal with it (not to mention the oh-so-true fact that mum has to look after everyone even though she’s sick too). Drama from children and husband ensues, involving a great deal of bed-swapping because children won’t stay put. The end result is that one blanket is missing once this is all over, the narrator hasn’t seen it since, and can not understand what could have happened to it. Priceless!

Then there are the stories that are mildly uneasy in a psychological way, without being truly scary. “The Beautiful Stranger”, for example, tells about a woman meeting her husband at the railway station after he has been away on a business trip. However, she soon comes to believe that ‘John’ is not actually her husband, but is a stranger:

…why, it is not my husband, and he knows that I have seen it.

She is delighted that it is not her husband, as they had a fight before he left, and she gives some indication that he has been abusive:

… this is not the man who enjoyed seeing me cry

There is an important line, from the husband/stranger that may indicate a possible explanation:

Someone told me today, he said once, that he had heard I was back from Boston, and I distinctly thought he said that he heard I was dead in Boston.

The story ends just as strangely:

The evening was very dark, and she could see only the houses going in rows, with more rows beyond them and more rows beyond that, and somewhere a house which was hers, with the beautiful stranger inside, and she lost out here.

The story has an ambiguity to it, an uncertainty as to whether there is something supernatural going on or not. Is the husband actually dead in Boston? Is this ‘beautiful stranger’ some kind of spirit or otherworldly entity? Or is the woman having some kind of breakdown?

“Island” is another story which is intriguing and mysterious though not really frightening. An elderly woman suffers from dementia, and her son pays for a companion/carer to be with her constantly. The story is told from two points of view, the carer, and the patient. The carer endures a life that is dull and frustrating. She does her job well, and earns her pay, but she is not above becoming angry with the elderly woman. However, as far as the patient is concerned she is living an entirely different life. She lives on an island, where she eats fancy fruit and cakes, and runs in the sand. A parrot in the trees says ‘eat, eat’, apparently representing the companion. I found it a fascinating idea – we see dementia as a robbing of the victim’s personality. Slowly they fade away while still being here, losing memory and function. But what if they are simply living an entirely different and more carefree life, even if it is a fantasy? It’s a nice thought.

Finally there are the spooky stories, for which Shirly Jackson is best known.

“The Summer People” starts in a perfectly innocuous way, and goes downhill from there. An elderly couple are at their summer cottage where they go every year. They decide on this occasion to stay on a bit longer – they are retired and there is really no rush to go back home. They are apparently well off, and have a certain class consciousness about the local people who provide goods and services while they are staying. They have various conversations with the residents, and everyone they speak to seems very confused by their choice, saying ‘no one stays after labour day’.

Don’t know about staying on up there to the lake. Not after Labor Day.

Surprised you’re staying on.

They usually leave Labor Day.

and so on. The couple doesn’t think much of this reaction, after all, no one has acted aggressive about it. So, they continue with their plans. Then suddenly, they cannot get groceries or deliveries, their car has been tampered with and will not work, and finally their phone lines are cut and they cannot call for help. The story ends here, with the couple huddling together in their cottage not knowing what is going to happen next. No reason or explanation is offered. The vague unease of the people’s reaction culminates in the terrifying discovery that they have been deliberately left without resources or aid, leaving the reader with the kind of chill Jackson is so good at delivering. I am not really sure what is the intended interpretation is. Possibly the couple are symbolic of the elite who ignore the workers at their peril. I am not sure. It’s a creepy story regardless.

The bus

An elderly woman is trying to go home, and is getting on a bus on a very wet night. She is unhappy about her situation, feels unwell, and thinks about her desire to go home and get comfortable. She is woken by the driver who tells her it is her stop, and gets off the bus, only to find she is in the middle of nowhere. A truck takes her to a roadhouse which seems strangely familiar to her, like the home of her childhood. She is offered a room for the night, goes to sleep and ‘apparently’ wakes to noises in the closet. Her old toys from her childhood are in the closet and come alive, but they attack her, and then she awakes to find she is on the bus and the driver puts her off in the middle of nowhere. I found this story to be very creepy indeed. But what is happening here? Again Jackson’s ability to put ambiguity into her stories comes into play. Is it all a dream? Is the woman sleeping on the bus and dreaming of being kicked off in the rain and dark in a strange place, only to find herself in an echo of her childhood home, reverting to childhood behaviour? Is she having some kind of breakdown? Is she dying? Is she dead and in hell? So many possibilities, from which the reader can take their pick.

The lottery

“The Lottery” is the best known of Jackson’s short stories, involving as it does a strange lottery in a small town, where everyone draws lots until one person is selected. The people in the town speak about nearby towns that do the same thing, though some are discussing that the neighbouring towns are starting to discontinue the lottery. Firstly lots are drawn to select one family, and then that family draws lots to select one person (a process I found reminiscent of a method for determining guilt in the Old Testament.) The story is done in a way that doesn’t really give any explanations for the ritual or the reason for it, though it is strongly implied to have some kind of fertility basis (or did at one time – we have to wonder whether the characters even know what it is for, and most don’t seem to ask questions).

Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.

So, what does it mean? It is demonstrating the willingness of people to submit to authority, and their tendency to keep slavishly following a patently evil ritual because it is ‘traditional’. We find this in the world today, where people hold onto traditions which no longer have meaning, and act like this is fine because they are entitled to their traditions, whereas bad traditions should not be held onto. Tessie, the one selected, cries out that it isn’t fair, but made no objection until she was the victim. Had it been anyone else, it does not appear that she would have spoken up. She insists it’s not fair to her, while the reader understands it’s not fair to anyone.

I very much enjoyed all of the stories in this collection, of which I have only mentioned a few. If you like to read stories ranging from the funny, to the unsettling, to the straight-out spooky, this is the book for you.