\u201cShouldn\u2019t we get out of this place?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
A game of 8-ball was underway on the middle table of the Royal James in Beaufort, and Joe and Mary Grady Norkus sat at the end of the bar, drinking a beer and watching. After a spell, Mary called me over \u2013 we had not seen each other in many a year \u2013 and soon Joe said he had a tale for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joe and Mary had been married for a couple of years, and they drove down east to spend a gray, chilly Halloween weekend at the Rose of Tillery Inn<\/em>, a bed and breakfast in Edenton with an Irishwoman as its innkeeper. She checked them in \u2013 they were the only guests at the Inn that night and the next — and led them upstairs to \u201cthe Captain\u2019s Room,\u201d all B&B rooms seeming by some invisible statute to be required to have names in keeping with the family history of the home or something in the local culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second night — Halloween — after walking around the small port town, gazing at the wrought-iron railings of its antique downtown homes and at all the amusing, if ghoulishly-carved, jack-o-lanterns on those old homes\u2019 porches, the couple retired about ten o\u2019clock. Sometime well after midnight, Joe awoke abruptly when he heard their room\u2019s door open, that sound followed by heavy footsteps upon the wooden floor. <\/p>\n\n\n
\n Sometime well after midnight, Joe awoke abruptly when he heard their room\u2019s door open, that sound followed by heavy footsteps upon the wooden floor…\n <\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Enough ambient light fell into the room from a security lamp outside for him to have seen whoever it was that had entered, yet Joe saw nothing. The footsteps strode over to the bathroom door, which opened, and moments later came the sound of the commode flushing, after which the footsteps reversed order, came out of the bathroom and crossed the bedroom. The door to the hall opened, then closed, and there was an end to it. Mary had awakened in the midst of the incident, heard as much and seen as little as Joe, and she then asked him, \u201cShould we check out of here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d he said. \u201cDid whatever that<\/em> was hurt us? We should just go back to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n