There was sand in my room again this morning.  And a warm spot in the air, hovering three feet off the floor just in front of my door.  There was sand, too, in the keyhole, such that I almost couldn’t lock up as I left.  Great quantities of sand covered the floor of the hall, in drifts several inches high as if there had been a great and persistent wind blowing through the house all night.  And heat there was also, although I know Mrs. Malloy never turns on the boiler before Thanksgiving.  The hallway seemed overlong, as if the house had been stretched in the night, and there weren’t enough doors.  The wallpaper, damp and curling at the best of times, now hung in strips, sand caked to its reverse side.  I shuffled along, suffering from an immense thirst, and the sand got in my shoes and the blew up into my hair and my eyes.  The sun overhead was a hammer on my soul, and I wondered into what sort of weapon I was being beaten, would I be used for good or for evil, and by whom.

I don’t believe I ever found the front door.