About this story
You cannot sleep through the masons' noise, so you have had a sealed chamber dug beneath your own house, and tonight a doctor puts you under. Your servant has the waking procedure and his orders: nine o'clock precisely, whatever happens. The last thing you see is the iron door.
Who you’ll meet
Dr Pillsbury, the mesmerist who puts the reader to sleep, and Dr Leete, the future physician waiting on the other side of the trance — the reader's two hosts across a century, never the reader.
How it opens
Boston wore its Decoration Day honors in public and its inequalities in every street.
The house you inherited stood above a cellar newly deepened against city noise.
Edith BartlettYou have been watching those workmen instead of listening to me.
Edith BartlettFather says the new house will finally give us a wedding date.
Mrs BartlettDates are easier to promise than foundations, Julian.
Choose
The digging has made sleep nearly impossible.
I was thinking about the house we are promised.