The Thief Of Always

Described as “a freckled girl with long, frizzy blonde hair and huge, blue-green eyes” (20), Lulu is the child who has been at the House the longest. By the time Harvey meets her, she has acquired every item of her heart’s desire, yet she’s also the least content of all the residents. A lonely girl, she spends far too much time at the shadowy lake, gazing into its depths, and because she is reaching the final stages of Mr. Hood’s enchantment, she eventually transforms into a fishlike creature and dives into the lake to live there: the price of accepting the House’s many gifts and pleasures. Far from Transcending Illusions, Lulu succumbs to them and is only able to break free with Harvey’s intervention.

Before that climactic moment, however, Lulu does not understand the true nature of the House until it is too late, but her heart nonetheless remains open to kindness, and she appreciates Harvey’s friendship. When he loses some precious toys in the lake, she braves its depths to retrieve them. Her tragic sadness, and her kindness to Harvey inspire him to return to the House and attempt to free her from its imprisoning embrace. Thus, although she is at first a minor character, Lulu’s importance to the story grows until she becomes the most significant of Harvey’s friends. In the end, Harvey’s victory over the House resets the children’s timelines, and they return to their regular lives in the time frames from whence they came. Therefore, Lulu and Harvey can no longer share their childhood friendship in the real world, and this inevitable separation serves as a bittersweet reminder that the good things in life always come with a cost.

Bespectacled Wendell thoroughly enjoys life at Holiday House and is the least critical of the true nature of his surroundings. Unlike Harvey, Wendell is largely unconcerned about the place’s mysteries. To him, everything is real, and, as he’s fond of saying, “Who cares?” Only when he becomes thoroughly frightened by a vampire (which is really Harvey in disguise) does he finally resolve to leave the House. At this point, he and Harvey manage to escape the House together, but once they realize that they have returned over 30 years later than when they left, they have no real choice but to return and directly vanquish the House in order to set everything right. However, upon their return, Wendell is almost immediately enthralled once again by the House’s many sensual enticements, even though he understands the true nature of the place. Thus, Wendell represents the human tendency to blatantly ignore unpleasant truths and indulge in more comforting illusions, even if such illusions are poor disguises for deadly realities. Because Wendell is rendered useless in the final battle against Mr. Hood, his behavior also emphasizes that not everyone can be depended on in a crisis, and that sometimes a person must act alone against great evil.

Mrs. Griffin, the cook at Holiday House, has “a face like a rolled-up ball of cobwebs, from which her hair, which could also have been spiders’ work, fell in wispy abundance (17). However, because her voice is described as “melodious” (17), it is clear from the start that the essence of her character exudes nothing but kindness despite the desperation of her current circumstances. The vast majority of Mrs. Griffin’s full story and character development remains somewhat mysterious and can therefore only be intuited by applying the experiences of the other children to her situation, for Mrs. Griffin is eventually revealed to be the very first child to visit Holiday House. She has spent years there, trapped by the promise of eternal life in exchange for helping Mr. Hood to ensnare other children. She is first compelled to flee to Holiday House after her beloved cat dies, and the Faustian bargain that she makes with Mr. Hood ensures two things: that she will never die, and that she will never cry again. However, far from being the welcome escape from life’s harshness that she initially believes these things to be, both aspects of the deal bring her nothing but pain, for by the end of the novel, it is clear that she yearns to die as much as she yearns for the emotional release of being physically able to cry. Thus, the pitfalls of her particular bargain with the novel’s villain serve as a cautionary tale to warn young readers that it is much better to meet the hardships of life head-on, for by trying to avoid a life of sorrow, she condemns herself to a miserable and empty existence.

In her role at Holiday House, she tries to make up for her mistake by giving some happiness to each of the doomed visitors. After Harvey rescues her from the House cellar and kills Marr, Mrs. Griffin admits that the boy might be the only one who can defeat Mr. Hood. When he succeeds, he does so partly to rescue her, and he hopes that she will be a part of his future. Instead, she has “another life to go to, where every soul [shines],” and she tells the boy, “Wherever I go, I will speak of you with love” (185). In her compassion for all the children trapped at Holiday House, Mrs. Griffin plays the part of a mother figure, and thus Harvey’s heroic efforts to save her demonstrate his revitalized love and concern for his own parents.

When Harvey wishes to have some fun, lest he “die” of boredom, Rictus immediately appears in his room. The quasi-vampiric servant of Mr. Hood is described as being “no more than six inches taller than Harvey, his frame scrawny, his skin distinctly yellowish in color. He was wearing a fancy suit, a pair of spectacles and a lavish smile” (5). Rictus lures Harvey to Holiday House with false promises of happiness without cost. In a classic example of the “grotesque,” his very name is synonymous with a painfully gaping mouth, and accordingly, his huge smile is more of a grimace that exudes a false and exaggerated sense of cheer. Rictus therefore represents the showy salesman, the fast-talking purveyor of glittering fakery who will do and say anything to make a sale. His inauthentic manner is the first sign that Harvey’s invitation to join Holiday House has ominous underpinnings, but Harvey is so dazzled by the idea of fun and happiness that he ignores this clue until it’s almost too late.

A brother to Rictus and fellow servant of Mr. Hood, the vampiric Jive is full of nervous energy; the narrative states that “[e]very muscle in his body seemed to be in motion: tics, jigs and jitterings that had wasted him away until he barely cast a shadow” (66). Even his hair writhes anxiously, and his name denotes both a lively type of dance, and also an object that is either deceptive or worthless. In a moment that proves to be pivotal to Harvey’s internal character development, Jive has Marr turn Harvey into a real vampire and convinces the boy to play a trick on Wendell; in Harvey’s bloodthirsty enthusiasm, the trick almost turns deadly. When Harvey ultimately refuses to drink Wendell’s blood, Jive insists that being a vampire isn’t mere fun but is instead part of the boy’s “education.” Harvey realizes that Jive is trying to turn him into something evil. At the end of the novel, turnabout is fair play, for Harvey tricks Jive into eating some of the House’s fake food, which causes Jive to collapse into dust. Jive therefore serves as a warning against listening to those who are too eager to encourage naughty, dangerous, or cruel behavior. 

A sister to Rictus and Jive and fellow servant of Mr. Hood, Marr is as slovenly as her brothers are energetic. The narration states, “She was grossly fat, her flesh barely clinging to her bones” (69). Her skin droops in ripples; her mouth contains no teeth. She can reshape a child into a monster and then undo it with a wave of her hand. For Halloween, she converts Harvey into an authentic vampire, complete with bat ears, fangs, wings, fur, night vision, and a terrifying roar. When Harvey returns to the House at the end of the novel, Marr tries to convert him into something passive, like a worm, but Harvey turns the tables on her, reversing her magic, so that she turns into the thing she always dreamed of being—“Nothing”—and melts into a watery stain. Marr therefore represents the agony of emptiness that curses all of Mr. Hood’s servants, and she also symbolizes the fate of those who live only for self-indulgence.

The fourth of Mr. Hood’s servants, Carna is by far the most dangerous. It flies with a terrifying screech, “its skin rotted and stretched over barbed and polished bone, its throat a nest of snaky tongues, its jaws set with hundreds of teeth” (103). Carna—whose name means “meat” in Latin and suggests the image of bloody carnage—is the final, lethal weapon that Holiday House hurls against children who try to leave. When Harvey and Wendell first manage to escape, Carna follows, but once outside the compound, it begins to disintegrate and must go back inside before it can capture the boys. From Carna’s ill-timed and overeager attack, Harvey realizes that Mr. Hood’s evil has a weakness: “its own appetite” (105). Later, Carna receives orders from Mr. Hood to devour Harvey, but the boy extends his hand to the creature in kindness, and, stunned by the gesture, the monster sighs in relief and disintegrates into pieces as it dies. 

The mysterious owner of Holiday House, Mr. Hood never appears of his own accord, but Harvey ultimately realizes that everything that happens at the House does so at Mr. Hood’s direction. Calling him the “Vampire King” for sucking the life energy from children, Harvey confronts Mr. Hood directly at the end of the novel only to discover that Hood actually is the House itself: a monstrous creature that shapes itself into whatever pleases and distracts children from its ultimate goal of devouring their spiritual energy.

“Hood” denotes both a covering and a criminal, and accordingly Mr. Hood himself proves to be a hidden thief who steals souls in an endless attempt to fill the emptiness inside him. Mr. Hood also serves as a powerful symbol of real-life people who live only to prey on the innocent: tyrants, master criminals, and serial abusers. Like such people, Mr. Hood flatters his victims and tempts them with false visions of happiness that instead trap them in misery.