Before she can finally save her siblings from their shared, haunted past that is Hill House, Eleanor “Nell” Crain pays the ultimate price—but it does allow her to send a message, and, sometimes, a message is enough.
Having realized that the house constantly played tricks on not just their minds but time itself, Nell explains:
“I thought for so long that time was like a line, that our moments were laid out like dominoes, and that they fell, one into another, and on it went. Just days tipping, one into the next, into the next, in a long line between the beginning…and the end. But I was wrong. It’s not like that at all. Our moments fall around us like rain. Or… snow. Or confetti.”
Even without cursed houses pulling a multiverse on us, we, too, can see time rain into our lives like confetti. A memory from the distant past throws us for a loop. A vision of the future distracts us or scares us. We can only live in the present, but we’re not always here, are we? According to Nell, that needn’t be a bad thing. Though she won’t be able to leave the house, her siblings just might.
“I am not gone. I’m scattered into so many pieces, sprinkled on your life like new snow. Think of me when you stand in the rain. I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That’s all. The rest is confetti.”
Every morning, we wake up, and we try our best with what we have for the people we love. It won’t make us perfect. Sometimes, we’ll get lost in a storm of confetti. But, at the end of the day, it is just shreds of colored paper—we can watch out for it, marvel at it, get distracted by it…but when we decide to put our heads down and focus on what matters most, it can never throw us off course for too long.