The Thief Of Always

“What a fine thing it would be, Harvey thought, to build a place like this. To drive its foundations deep into the earth; to lay its floors and hoist its walls; to say: Where there was nothing, I raised a house. That would be a very fine thing.”

As Harvey gets his first glimpse of Holiday House, his reaction reflects his undeniable membership in a classic version of American culture: that of the hard-working, productive pioneer. This enterprising attitude can be both a strength and a drawback, and the House is designed to ferret out the weaknesses in Harvey’s self-satisfied psyche and exploit them, working its dark magic in a constant attempt to corrupt and enthrall him. Listening to his thoughts, the House immediately begins its work by enticing him with a treehouse project that keeps him busy and allows Mr. Hood to slowly and surely extract his life energy. 

“The House was more wonderful inside than out. Even on the short journey to the kitchen Harvey glimpsed enough to know that this was a place built for games, chases and adventures. It was a maze in which no two doors were alike. It was a treasurehouse where some notorious pirate had hidden his blood-stained booty. It was a resting place for carpets flown by djinns, and boxes sealed before the Flood, where the eggs of beasts that the earth had lost were wrapped and waiting for the sun’s heat to hatch them.”

Standing as any child’s dream come true, the House seems designed just for Harvey. Its many wonders comprise a compendium of all the imaginings a fertile young mind can create, and thus, the building’s attractions play a vital role in inducing the drug-like effect that the estate has on the boy, captivating him and keeping him happily occupied. Although he is the intrepid hero of the tale, at heart Harvey is just a kid, and at first, he cannot help but be seduced by the estate’s many attractions. In his innocent view of the world, such wonders can only be a good thing.

“‘Can he do whatever he likes?’ Harvey said, watching the cat sniff at this and that. ‘I mean, does nobody control him?’ ‘Ah, well, we all have somebody watching over us, don’t we?’ Mrs. Griffin replied. ‘Whether we like it or not.’”

Mrs. Griffin’s ominous words suggest that all is not as it seems at Holiday House. Though Harvey’s visit seems cost- and consequence-free, the very nature of such stories means that there will eventually be a heavy price to pay for enjoying such endless delights; nothing in life is truly free, and anything that presents itself as such is probably a trap. The fact that Mrs. Griffin can only hint at this reality means that she too is constrained by the system of control that governs Holiday House, and as such, anything that she lets slip can result in punitive measures against her even as the dominant force of the House works to harm the children.

“As Wendell had predicted, the lake wasn’t worth the trouble. It was large—so large that the far side was barely visible—but gloomy and drear, both the lake and the dark stones around it covered with a film of green scum. There was a legion of flies buzzing around in search of something rotten to feed on, and Harvey guessed they’d have no trouble finding a feast. This was a place where dead things belonged.”

The lake is one of the strongest clues that the narrative provides to hint that all is not right at Holiday House. The lake’s shadowy, chilly depths, slimy rocks, and buzzing flies imply that it conceals something truly horrifying. Standing as an open sore on the face of the idyllic estate, the sullen lake lies hidden away behind brambles and underbrush yet remains fully accessible to the children despite its dangers, almost as if the House doesn’t care whether they know about it. Even before Lulu’s transformation, Harvey senses that the lake itself is the doom that awaits all who fall into the House’s friendly trap of pleasure. 

“‘Why would Mr. Hood have fish like that? I mean, everything else is so beautiful. The lawns, the House, the orchard…’

‘Who cares?’ said Wendell.

‘I do,’ said Harvey. ‘I want to know everything there is to know about this place.’ ‘Why?’

‘So I can tell my mom and dad about it when I go home.’

‘Home?’ said Wendell. ‘Who needs it? We’ve got everything we need here.’”

In this exchange, it becomes clear that Wendell unquestioningly enjoys his newfound carefree life at Holiday House without even bothering to consider the consequences, and thus he serves as a foil to the inquisitive Harvey, who senses that all is not well on the estate. Something about its strangeness bothers him and seems too good to be true, and as his disquiet grows, so too does the momentum of the plot accelerate toward the inevitable confrontation at its conclusion.

“He reached for his soda, but the bottle had fallen over, and the scent of sweet cherry had attracted hundreds of ants. They were crawling over it and into it, many drowning for their greed.”

Much as Harvey swims in a luxury of childhood fantasies-come-true, the ants discover his spilled soft drink and indulge their sudden good luck to the point of death. This image therefore serves as yet another clue that the perfect happiness of Holiday House carries a deadly price. At this point in the narrative, Harvey doesn’t yet see the danger, but the sticky, dead ants serve as a strong example of foreshadowing to alert readers to the dire events to come, and accordingly, the memory of the ants’ demise clings to Harvey’s mind and instills the beginnings of a disquieting lesson deep within his psyche. 

“Perhaps the House had heard Harvey wishing for a full moon, because when he and Wendell traipsed upstairs and looked out the landing window, there—hanging between the bare branches of the trees—was a moon as wide and as white as a dead man’s smile.”

A full moon on Halloween evokes the arrival of monsters, and such a moon graces every single Halloween night that the children spend at Holiday House. With the grim simile that describes the grin of the moon, Barker draws an unspoken comparison between this nighttime spectacle and the sinister cheer of Rictus’s habitual grimace. Like many denizens of Halloween, the servant is a half-dead creature whose insincere expression carries an implicit warning of the House’s evil intentions. Likewise, the sinister nature of the boys’ surroundings is embedded into the very landscape.

“Harvey wasn’t interested in the clothes, it was the masks that mesmerized him. They were like snowflakes: no two alike. Some were made of wood and of plastic; some of straw and cloth and papier-mâché. Some were as bright as parrots, others as pale as parchment. Some were so grotesque he was certain they’d been carved by crazy people; others so perfect they looked like the death masks of angels. There were masks of clowns and foxes, masks like skulls decorated with real teeth, and one with carved flames instead of hair.”

For Harvey, the Halloween masks suggest all the different kinds of beings he could become instead of his everyday boring self, but he fails to realize the grim reality that by donning a specific mask, one is forced to play the role it implies. Likewise, if one plays such a role for long enough, the role will itself come to subsume one’s true identity. Taken in this context, the nightly ritual of Halloween is imbued with a much more ominous tone, for by offering the children a plethora of morally ambiguous roles to choose from, Mr. Hood wordlessly encourages them to give in to the very worst of their inner impulses toward evil. In this way, the House thus subtly teaches all the children, including Harvey, to lean toward the “dark side”: The more selfish the children become, the more distracted they will be, which serves the House’s ultimate purpose.

“As he worked through the piles of clothes he found himself wondering about the children who’d left them here. Though he’d always hated history lessons, he knew some of the jackets and shoes and shirts and belts had been out of fashion for many, many years. Where were their owners now? Dead, he presumed, or so old it made no difference. The thought of these garments belonging to dead folk brought a little shudder to his spine, which was only right. This was Halloween, after all, and what was Halloween without a few chills?”

Like the other children before him, Harvey tries to convince himself that the various hints of the House’s dark purpose are simply manifestations of the harmless Halloween creep show that happens there every night. Deep inside, though, Harvey already suspects that something is deeply amiss. Over endless decades, so many children have visited, left their clothing, and vanished. The thought that the House is a foundry of evil begins to rise up like a ghost from a cemetery, but Harvey hastily pushes it back down.

“This was a place of illusions. Wouldn’t he be happier here if he just stopped questioning what was real and what wasn’t?”

Harvey struggles to ignore the possibility that real dangers surround him. Instead, he tries to believe that it’s all just a magic trick, but a nagging doubt tugs at him, warning him that a terrible end awaits all the visiting children. His effort to silence these doubts struggles against his natural curiosity, for by his very nature, Harvey can’t help asking questions; his mind won’t rest until he understands what’s really going on behind all the fun and games.

“‘There’ll be presents for everyone. There always are. You should wish for something.’ ‘Is that what you’re doing?’ She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here so long I’ve got everything I ever wanted.’”

Lulu has it all, yet she doesn’t seem happy. Endless days of pleasure and easy luxury have dented the girl’s spirit, and thus Barker uses her character to imply that perfect happiness cannot be achieved by simply acquiring every physical object that one might happen to desire. The unspoken argument behind this section of the novel posits that because people need to struggle with their problems and achieve their own solutions, the House’s very nature robs them of that satisfaction and therefore curses them with an inherently empty existence. 

“He’d lost plenty of toys before. He’d had a brand new bicycle—his prize possession!—stolen from the step of his house two birthdays ago. But this loss upset him as much; more, in fact. The idea that the lake now had something that he’d owned was somehow worse than a thief running off with his bike. A thief was warm flesh and blood; the lake was not. His possessions had gone into a nightmare place, full of monstrous things, and he felt as though a little part of himself had gone with it, down into the dark.”

With its chill, shadowy waters, and giant fish, the sullen imperfection of the lake mars the otherwise idyllic beauty of the estate and therefore implies that something is inherently wrong with the fabric of this world. It stands as the dark underbelly of the place: a repository of evil things that cannot be entirely hidden from visitors—especially inquisitive ones who keep wondering and asking questions, contrary to the rules of the House. 

“Despite all entertainments that the Holiday House supplied so eagerly, it was a haunted place, and however hard he had tried to ignore his doubts and suppress his questions, they could be ignored and suppressed no longer. Whoever, or whatever, that haunter was, Harvey could not be content now until he’d seen its face and knew its nature.”

The lake has swallowed Harvey’s precious ark, a toy he has now lost for the second time in his life. Up until this point, Harvey has yet to learn that Holiday House exacts a secret price for its wonders; upon plumbing the depths of the sinister lake, Harvey can no longer ignore the inherent discrepancies of this world and becomes determined to investigate the House’s many mysteries. The place’s pleasures lie only on the surface, and just like the lake, the House’s depths conceal terrifying truths.

“‘I hope you call your family now and then.’

‘Yep’ said Harvey. ‘I called them yesterday.’

‘Are they missin’ you?’

‘Didn’t sound like it.’

‘Are you missin’ them?’ Harvey shrugged. ‘Not really,’ he said. (This wasn’t strictly true—he had his homesick days—but he knew if he went back home he’d be in school the day after, and wishing he’d stayed in the Holiday House a while longer.).”

Holiday House works its relentless magic, and Harvey cannot entirely resist its power. He knows something about the place is wrong, but its pleasures overpower the voice in his head telling him to go home. The House needs him as much as he needs it, but he doesn’t know why, and, meanwhile, the place is too much fun to abandon. Real life is dull in comparison. 

“‘We’ve gone to all this trouble to make a monster of you—’ ‘Yes, but it’s a game,’ Harvey said. ‘A game?’ said Jive. ‘No, no, boy. It’s more than that. It’s an education.’”

Harvey’s desire to get revenge on Wendell for scaring him on a previous Halloween goes too far when Jive and Marr turn him into a real vampire and try to convince him to drink his friend’s blood. In the newfound bloodlust of his current form, Harvey nearly complies, but he pulls back just in time and narrowly escapes surrendering the essence of his conscience to the House’s evil influences. Holiday House thus begins to reveal its true intentions, and Harvey realizes that he doesn’t want to give what it clearly wants to take from him. Thus, he slowly understands that in order to escape, he will have to do battle with the House itself. 

“Though agonized by its wounds, [Carna] hauled itself up onto the spiky crutches of its wings and began to drag itself back toward the wall. If it had not wanted their flesh so badly, he thought, it wouldn’t have come after them at such speed, and brought this pain and humiliation upon itself. There was a lesson there, if he could only remember it. Evil, however powerful it seemed, could be undone by its own appetite.”

During his initial escape with Wendell from Holiday House, Harvey realizes that the evil place has weaknesses that can be exploited. This insight comes at the midpoint of the story, almost as an incidental mention, but Harvey will need this essential knowledge to overcome The Perils of Pleasure and Transcend the Illusions of the House in the tumultuous events to come.

“‘Find Hood.’

‘But you told me he was dead.’

‘I don’t think being dead means much to a creature like him,’ Harvey said.”

With this quote, Barker makes it clear that Harvey is beginning to comprehend the magnitude of the evil he faces. Mr. Hood isn’t human, and it’s possible he isn’t alive in any way. His drives are quite beyond those of living things; he is likely more powerful, dangerous, and merciless than any creature from the regular world. Stopping him will require an approach quite different from anything Harvey has imagined in his short life. The boy must trust his ingenuity and wade into battle despite his fears.

“‘I can’t explain how Hood’s magic works. All I know is, he took all those years away to feed himself.’ ‘Feed?’ ‘Yeah. Like…like…like a vampire.’ This was the first time Harvey had thought of Hood that way, but it instinctively seemed right. Blood was life, and life was what Hood fed upon. He was a vampire, sure enough. Maybe a king among vampires.”

Harvey reasons out the real purpose of Holiday House: to feed on children’s potential lives, amusing them for several weeks while the energy of their future years drains away into the House. The kids end up as empty husks shaped like fish; even their souls are lost to Mr. Hood’s insatiable need to feed. This quote also marks the moment when Harvey gains a much more nuanced understanding of vampirism. By introducing the concept of a vampire who feeds “on life,” Barker also imparts a profound moral lesson to his young readers: that vampires do exist in the real world, and they lurk in many different forms.

“Death is a natural thing. Hood isn’t. I would welcome Death now, like a friend I’d driven away from my door.”

With this contemplative statement, Mrs. Griffin describes her regret at letting herself be trapped at Holiday House. Knowing now the hollowness at the heart of its intense pleasures, she wishes that she had opted to experience a regular life, with its boredom, its anxiety, and even its inevitable end. The life she’s known at the House has instead been so strange that it has denied her the ability to actually live: to choose a state of existence that best fits her, and to be beholden to no one for that existence. For Mrs. Griffin, a flawed human life would be much better than this beautiful prison where pleasures soon become intolerable and all that remains is fear. 

“‘I dream of nothing…’ Marr replied, her eyes sinking back into her disintegrating skull, ‘…and that’s…what…I’ve…become […].’”

In this moment, Marr succumbs to the emptiness at her core and simply melts away as Harvey turns her shapeshifting magic turned back upon her. It is telling that all he has to do to accomplish her end is to ask her to become what she dreams of, for a creature like Marr—a mere construct of dust and goo—is incapable of dreaming any dreams of her own. She exists only to serve her master, and the very idea of being something different causes her to collapse into a puddle. Thus, it is clear that demonic creations have no access to the power of the human imagination; only people can dream—and pursue— other ways of being.

“‘It’s all dust,’ [Harvey] said. ‘Dirt and dust and ashes! All the food! All the presents! Everything!’”

In this quote, Jive is vanquished by Harvey’s realization of the falseness of the food and gifts of the House. By simply stating the nature of the illusion, Harvey breaks the spell, and as Jive chokes on a fake dessert, dirt issues from him, and he dissolves in a cloud of dust. Once Harvey fully understands the illusory nature of the prison, nothing at Holiday House holds any sway over him. He wants none of it and fears none of it. As he reveals all the fakery, it reverts to what it really is: ashes and emptiness. 

“‘I can nurture you. Help you better understand the Dark Paths.’

‘So I’ll end up feeding on children, like you?’ Harvey said. ‘No thanks.’

‘I think you’d like it, Harvey Swick,’ Hood said. ‘You’ve got a streak of the vampire in you already.’ There was no denying this. The very word vampire reminded him of his Halloween flight; of soaring against a harvest moon with his eyes burning red and his teeth sharp as razors. ‘I see you remember,’ Hood said, catching the flicker of pleasure on Harvey’s face.”

Mr. Hood, his visage spread across the attic ceiling, tries to lure Harvey into darkness with the morbid dream that most tempts the boy. Harvey knows his enjoyment of the momentary vampiric transformation that he experienced is a weakness of his own character, but he also knows the revulsion he felt when he beheld his own appearance and realized just how close he had come to committing cold-blooded murder. Having made the conscious decision to use his destructive impulses for good by seeking to destroy the House, Harvey no longer fears his own dark impulses. What he finds instead within himself is a useful font of aggressiveness, and therefore he no longer fears Mr. Hood and his evil plans. He now wants only to free the trapped children and end the ruination caused by the House. 

“Before Hood could stop him, [Harvey] grabbed hold of the creature’s coat and pulled. The scraps came away with a wet tearing sound, and Hood let out a howl of rage as he was uncovered. There was no great enchantment at his heart. In fact, there was no heart at all. There was only a void—neither cold nor hot, living nor dead—made not of mystery but of nothingness. The illusionist’s illusion.”

As Mr. Hood reaches out to kill Harvey, the boy reveals the utter emptiness of the creature’s soul: the hollowness of evil, a purposeless void that can only fill itself endlessly with the pain of others. Hood, though frightening, has nothing to offer anyone beyond the emptiness of malicious and self-serving magic.