When Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” about the evil underbelly of a normal, quaint, American town, first appeared in the New Yorker in 1948, it shook the literary world—and the country—to its core. Here was a seemingly normal woman, living a quiet family life, raising a slew of kids in Vermont, who turned out to be a housewife with fangs. People found it fascinating … and unsettling. How could a woman, a mother, think such evil things? Jackson’s refusal to answer the hundreds of queries that poured in fueled the mystery.

In 1954, she had only this to say about herself: “I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains, naturally, no pertinent facts. I was born in San Francisco in 1919 and spent most of my early life in California. I was married in 1940 to Stanley Edgar Hyman, critic and numismatist, and we live in Vermont, in a quiet rural community with fine scenery and comfortably far away from city life. Our major exports are books and children, both of which we produce in abundance. I beat my kids regularly.”

After her wild, disturbing debut with “The Lottery,” Jackson went on to write hundreds of short stories and a half dozen novels before her death in 1965, at the age of 48. Her last novel, “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” is perhaps her best. It tells the story, through a flashback, of 18-year-old Merricat Blackwood, her older sister Constance and her ailing uncle Julian, who live in isolation in the family home, a huge Victorian mansion that has begun to crumble around them.

Constance and Merricat’s family used to be much larger, until six years earlier, when arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl. After a lovely dessert of blackberries sprinkled with sugar, their mother, father, younger brother and aunt were all dead. Merricat escaped death, having been sent to her room before dinner, and Julian survived the poisoning, although he continued to suffer side effects.

Constance, having avoided the dessert entirely, was sent to a mental hospital for the crime. After a short stay, she was acquitted for lack of evidence and allowed to return home.

But, being a suspected murderer makes her a bit of a social pariah. The villagers fear and avoid Constance, and the town’s children have made up a chant they taunt her with when they see her in town or outside her house:

Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!

Soon after her return home, Constance becomes agoraphobic. For six years inside their house, she and her sister and uncle make their little world, without the intrusion of others, much to Merricat’s delight. She never cared much for her family, anyway, and isn’t bothered in the least by the deaths that took place right under her roof.

Six years later, enter Charles, a distant cousin of the Blackwoods. He appears one day, claiming the need to rekindle family ties, but Merricat suspects otherwise. Certain that he is there to hunt for the family fortune, she resents his presence and Constance’s willingness to let him into their little world. She begins acting out, breaking things and behaving horribly in an effort to drive Charles away. But, Charles is not easily frightened, and Merricat realizes it’s going to take more to restore her home to the way she likes it.

Jackson’s writing is concise, with nary an unnecessary word or embellishment, and makes for a very fast read. It’s simply to the point, which adds to its creepiness. You can see the book’s influence in “Carrie” by Stephen King, and “The Cement Garden” by Ian McEwan, both about unstable families living in isolation and fear of the people around them. As “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” heads for its unavoidable, disastrous conclusion, it’s like watching a scorpion crawl up your arm toward your face with no way to stop it. You just have to wait and see what it does.