Hidden in that darkness, things were moving.

He couldn’t tell what sort of things they were. Their feet ticked like cat’s claws on the hard floor and they seemed to be whispering to one another in a high, buzzing falsetto—a language he had never heard. He imagined elves; he imagined immense, articulate rats.

But the worst thing was their invisibility—compounded by what he recognized suddenly as his own helplessness. He understood that the room had no door; that the window was impossibly high; that his arms and legs were not just stiff but paralyzed.

He strained forward, peering into the darkness …

And they opened their eyes—all at once.

A hundred eyes all around him.

A hundred disks of pure, pupil-less, bone-white light.

The whispering rose in a metallic, clattering crescendo—

And he awoke.

Woke alone in this smaller, brighter, but still moonlit and unfamiliar room. Woke with his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

Woke with the sound still ringing in his ears: The hiss of their voices. The clatter of their nails.

Of course, it was only a dream.

The morning house was clean, hollow, blank, and prosaic. Tom paced from bedroom to kitchen listening to the unfamiliar shush of his feet against the broadloom. He put together breakfast, fried eggs and a bagel, and stacked the dirty dishes in the sink when he was finished. Bachelor housekeeping. Maybe the Genius Loci would clean up.

Yesterday’s overcast had spilled away across the mountains. Tom opened the screen door at the back of the kitchen and stepped out into the yard. The lawn had been slashed down to stubble but was starting to grow back, as much weed as grass. No housekeeping elves out here. A stand of tall pine rose up beyond the margin of the yard, enclosing ferns and fallen needles in its darkness. An overgrown trail led away from the corner of the yard and Tom followed it a few paces in, but the trees closed out the sun and the air was suddenly chill.