I. — HOME INVASION
LAURA STANDISH blurted out her husband's name before she was fully awake."Frank!" But there was no answer. Even before she realized just what it was that had awakened her, a chill, little quiver of dread brushed her spine.
The fire on the hearth, before which she had fallen asleep, was low and there was no other light in the huge, dark-ceilinged parlor. Good Lord! It was already night and Frank wasn't back yet! He was to have been gone only an hour, ample time to go down the hill to the General Store in the village and get some food for supper. She had been too tired after their long trip from the city to go with him, and he had seemed worried about leaving her here alone. Something must have...
A sound at the door brought Laura startled to her feet. He was here at last! Returning circulation needled her cramped legs so that she could not move. Frank had a key, but...
The rasp of flesh against wood, out there in the gloomy foyer, was somehow furtive. Heat beat out from the glowing logs in the fireplace, yet Laura shivered with queasy cold. Suddenly she knew it was the very stealthiness of that groping hand—the menace implicit in its quietness—that had awakened her. And suddenly, she knew also that she was afraid.
Someone was trying to get in! And it was not Frank! For a moment, panic swept over her, and she cowered back against the fireplace, so close that the hem of her dress began to scorch. She was alone in this musty, old country house, and the deep pine woods separated her by a good mile from the village. From any ordinary prowler, she was comparatively safe. Frank had insisted on making sure, before he went, that all windows were safely locked. He had made her promise to shoot home the two heavy bolts on the big, front door.
But there was something eerie about the way whatever it was outside fumbled at the barrier, a strange quality of blindness, of mindlessness. If only Frank was here, with his capable shoulders and easy confident smile! But he was gone, had been, for hours. Overwhelming dread seized Laura Standish as she listened to the aimless groping, the queer slithering sounds, along the stout pine of the door.
Had the Thing outside caught Frank unawares as he was hurrying back to her? Was his dear body even now a cold and mutilated corpse somewhere in the depths of the woods? Did the intruder know that she was alone, a helpless, unprotected, lovely morsel?
She fought herself back to a semblance of sanity. She must not think such thoughts! She forced her trembling voice into just the right mold of casual inquiry. Perhaps, if the prowler knew she were not afraid, if he thought there were others with her in the house...
"Who is there?" she called.
Still there was no answer. The latch! Oh God, the latch! It was rising in its cradle, slowly, with infinite stealth. She stared at its inexorable movement with eyes that were frozen with terror. A new sound came—a snuffling, whining eagerness. It held no human quality in its muffled breathing; it was more like the whimper of an animal to whom human doors are insoluble puzzles.
