That night Lucy couldn’t sleep. He sat in his rocking chair before the stove, feeding twigs into its black mouth and staring out the window at the village, half-hidden in a shroud of unmoving fog. It was past midnight when, intermingled with the crackling of the fire, he became aware of an extraneous noise, a muffled bustle taking place behind him, and he turned to look, assuming it was the puppy settling in her sleep. But no, she was dozing leadenly atop his pillow, and Lucy thought he must have imagined the sound. He had resumed his window-watching when it occurred a second time, only more distinctly, and now Lucy’s attentions were drawn to the door.
The knob was turning. This was being performed slowly, as though whoever was doing it did not wish to draw attention to the fact that he was. When the knob reached the limit of its rotation, the door swelled in its jamb; but being bolted, it couldn’t be opened, and the knob turned backward, just as cautiously as before, to its point of origin. Lucy stared, rooted by fright. When the knob began again to turn, he called out,
“Who’s there?”
The reply registered scarcely above a murmur. The voice was a man’s, and his tone was illustrative of one possessed by deep confusion and hurt:
“Why are you in my room?”
A simple enough question, and yet these six words summoned a tingling dread in Lucy. He stood away from the rocker, creeping sideways, and to the bed. Locating the heavy telescope under his pillow, he took this up in his hand, never looking away from the door. “This is not your room,” he answered, as evenly as he could. “This is my room.”
“No,” said the voice, and again: “No.” Now the man began pacing in the hallway, pacing and whispering to himself, hissing some unknown threats or remonstrations. Suddenly he struck the door with his fist, so that Lucy jumped back, holding the telescope high in the air like a club. “No,” said the voice a third time, then shuffled away down the stairs. Lucy moved to his bed but sat up a long while afterward, regarding the doorknob with an anticipatory anguish, and he thought that if it began turning once more he would cry out from the shock of it. When he awoke in the morning, the telescope was still gripped in his cramping fist, and the puppy was sniffing at the base of the door.