Kit struggles to sleep in her new room at Hope's End. The ocean and wind batter the house, and Kit's thoughts keep returning to where she is: in a crumbling mansion above the sea, beside Lenora Hope, a woman widely believed to have murdered her family and who has now promised to tell Kit the truth.

In the middle of the night, Kit hears a faint creak that seems different from the house's usual noises. Alarmed, she checks her room and the hallway, wondering if someone is moving through the mansion, but she finds no one and hears nothing more.

When the creaking starts again, Kit realizes it is coming from Lenora's room. She listens at the connecting door and then opens it, only to find Lenora exactly as Kit left her, asleep in bed with her hands at her sides. Because Lenora appears motionless and no intruder is present, the source of the sound remains unexplained, deepening Kit's unease.

After returning to bed, Kit finally falls asleep and has a disturbing dream. In it, she is a child on a school slide while unseen children chant the old rhyme about Lenora Hope murdering her family. At the bottom stands Kit's mother as she looked near the end of her life, frail and wasted, and although Kit hears only the clacking of typewriter keys when her mother speaks, Kit understands the plea: her mother is asking for pills. The nightmare blends Lenora's story with Kit's own painful past, showing how deeply the house and Lenora are affecting her.