supply hot water. But creep? Would a boiler creep?
You had to keep an, eye on, the boiler.
It was like one of those crazy riddles:
Why is a mouse when it runs, when is a raven like a writing desk,
what is a creeping boiler? Was it, like the hedges, maybe? She'd
had a dream where the hedges crept. And the fire hose that had
what - what? - slithered?
A chill touched her. It was not good to think much about the
dreams in the night, in the dark. You could ... well, you could
bother yourself. It was better to think about the things you would
be doing when you got back to New York, about how you were
going to convince Bill that a baby was a bad idea for a while, until
he got firmly settled in the vice presidency his father had awarded
him as a wedding present-
She'll creep on you.
- and how you were going to encourage him to bring his work
home so he would get used to the idea that she was going to be
involved with it, very much involved.
Or did the whole hotel, creep? Was that the answer?
I'll make him a good wife, Lottie thought frantically. We'll work at
it the same way we always worked at being bridge partners. He
knows the rules of the game and he knows enough to let me run
him. It will be just like the bridge, just like that, and if we've been
off our game up here that, doesn't mean anything, it's just the hotel,
the dreams-
An affirming voice: That's it. The whole place. It... creeps.
'Oh, shit,' Lottie Kilgallon whispered in the dark. It was
dismaying for her to realize just how badly her nerves were shot.
As on the other nights, there would be no more sleep for her now.
She would lie here in bed until the sun started to come up and then
she would get an uneasy hour or so.
Smoking in bed was a bad habit, a terrible habit., but she had
begun to leave her cigarettes in an ashtray on the floor by the bed
in case of the dreams. Sometimes it calmed her. She reached down
to get the ashtray and the thought burst on her like a revelation:
It does creep, the whole place - like it's alive!
And that was when the hand reached out unseen from under the
bed and gripped her wrist firmly ... almost lecherously. A
fingerlike canvas scratched suggestively against her palm and
something was under there, something had been under there the
whole time, and Lottie began to scream. She screamed until her
throat was raw and hoarse and her eyes were bulging from her face
and Bill was awake and pallid with terror beside her.
When he put on the lamp she leaped from the bed, retreated into
the farthest corner of the room and curled up with her thumb in her
mouth.
Both Bill and Dr. Verecker tried to find out what was wrong; she
told them but she was still sucking her thumb, so it was some time
before they realized she was saying, 'It crept under the bed. It
crept under the bed.'
