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But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain,” one might say, and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin.
After the ghosts say they must search quietly to keep from waking the living couple, the narrator directly addresses them, telling them that they did not wake them. They are already awake, listening to the ghosts’ movements, and the narrator is reading. The narrator knows that the ghostly couple is looking for something, but does not know what. The ghosts’ search piques the narrator’s curiosity, leading the narrator to pause to consider what the ghosts may have found. The quote showcases the narrator’s interest in discovering the meaning of the ghost’s search and provides a glimpse of the narrator’s life, emphasizing traits of imagination and intellect as they take notes in the margins of a book.
“What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?”
After hearing the ghosts’ movements and whispering, the narrator goes to see what the ghosts have found. Instead, the narrator finds an empty house with open doors and quickly loses their train of thought. The narrator cannot remember why they entered the room.
On the one hand, this feeling is one that many readers will find familiar, walking into a room and forgetting what they came for. On the other hand, the scene reveals a similarity between the narrator and the ghostly couple. Each time the ghostly couple finds their treasure, they seem to forget that they have found it and resume their search. Both the narrator and the ghostly couple find themselves empty-handed, literally and metaphorically. The quote also suggests that the ghosts may have some sort of influence over the living, causing the narrator to forget the search.
