“What’s wrong with you?” demanded Emily. “You’re pinching me. We’re not lost, you know. I can find the way home.”

Kate stared desperately back into the forest. “Em, something’s watching us!” she whispered.

“Oh?” asked Emily, very interested. “What? Where?” She turned around and peered unsuccessfully into the deep gloom.

“I don’t know,” murmured her sister. “It followed us down the path. I can’t see it, but it can see us. Can’t you feel it?”

“No,” replied Emily with a shrug. “It’s probably just a fox. Come on, Kate, we’ll get in trouble.” And she towed her preoccupied sister across the Lodge lawn. At the door, Kate stopped and looked back. The heavy shadows under every tree seemed full of menace. Once she was in the house, the feeling left her, but it came back a little later as they talked in the parlor. The great-aunts never drew the heavy curtains. Kate stared suspiciously at one gauze-covered window after another. She even rose and looked out into the dark night, but there was nothing there that her eyes could see. After a few minutes of this restlessness, her great-aunts began to watch her in some surprise. Embarrassed, she excused herself and went up to bed.

Nighttime became an ordeal for Kate after this. Sometimes she would be free of the feeling until bedtime, when she would begin to pace and fret under the conviction that something was watching her. She, who had always loved the stars, began to avoid looking out the windows after dark. Even in her bedroom on the second floor, she would wake in the night, uneasy. She would lie as still as she could under the covers, peering around the room at the darkness, and she began to have exhausting nightmares. When Kate tried to explain her feeling to her great-aunts, they laughed at first and then looked puzzled. Hallow Hill was so remote that no one ever came or went across its grounds. The aunts never even locked the doors.