The Lighthouse Part VI

I woke to the immense stillness of the house. It was still very dark, and I heard nothing now but my own breathing, and the torn shrouds of crying echoing still from my dream. It was not past two in the morning. Rarely indeed have I spent such a dreadful hour, as that which interposed itself between my mind and further sleep. The house, as I have said, was perfectly still, there was not even a wind abroad to leave in its wake any alarming creaks or rattling. Yet this very stillness implied to my addled brain, a consciousness, and an observer—as though the house itself regarded me, or something within the house, which nevertheless had eyes in the beams, and that peered at me from where the linoleum curled up from the floor, and revealed the house’s foundation. The door to the tower did not shake, yet no less did I fear something beyond its heavy frame, that might at any moment grow restless of its long confinement.