Don removes the coverings and lets the creatures into the house

Don’s removal of the coverings is the decisive breach of the safe house: by pulling down the blankets and opening the door, he lets the creatures into the house. The act gives physical force to the belief Gary has taught him—that the creatures are harmless—and transforms a conflict over that belief into a lethal emergency. The danger is announced through voices and sounds from downstairs while Malorie and Olympia are upstairs, facing labor and a storm outside.

Causes and Background

Gary identifies Don as the person acting below and says Don is trying to persuade the others of what Gary has taught him. The explanation links the opening of the house to Gary’s claim that the creatures will not hurt them. In the attic, Gary whispers the reassurance to Malorie, close enough that his beard touches her ear. But his certainty cannot protect anyone once Don acts on the theory: the coverings that separated the household from the creatures are no longer in place.

The narrative later makes the chain of influence more explicit. Gary had spoken to Don from behind a tapestry in the cellar and had told him that the creatures were fake and harmless. The scene therefore presents the breach not as an unexplained accident but as the result of persuasion passing from Gary to Don. The evidence establishes what Gary said and what Don did; it does not settle whether Gary believed his own claims or how Don understood them beyond acting on them.

What Happens

The first clear warning reaches the attic as a shout identifying Don. A voice below then reports that Don pulled down the blankets. As the alarm escalates, the housemates’ cries say that Don has opened the door and that the creatures are inside. The repeated announcements make the breach legible without showing what has entered: the reader, like Malorie and Olympia upstairs, receives the danger through sound.

Malorie does not accept Gary’s whispered reassurance as a reason to keep listening to him. When Olympia asks whether the creatures are in the house, Malorie answers that they are. Her reply is described as defeated and without hope. The storm whips against the walls, while the chaos below seems almost impossible to comprehend; the contrast makes the house feel both exposed to the weather outside and newly vulnerable from within.

The danger is reinforced by a further cry that Don tore down the blankets. Something slams against a downstairs wall, the dogs bark, and someone has thrown a dog against the wall. Malorie cannot see what is happening, and the account does not identify who threw the dog. The sounds evoke wolves, but that comparison is part of the scene’s auditory impression, not confirmation that wolves are present in the house.

Consequences and Aftermath

The immediate consequence is that the house’s protective boundary has failed while its occupants remain inside. A voice explicitly reports that the creatures are in the house; downstairs, the sounds of impact and the barking dogs turn that warning into signs of violence and disorder. Malorie thinks the housemates below are going to die, though the passage does not confirm their eventual fates.

The breach also collides with Malorie’s labor. Amid the repeated thought that the baby is coming, she must respond to Olympia’s question while hearing the crisis below. Her attention shifts away from Gary and toward the childbirth and the endangered household; the scene places two urgent threats in the same moment without suggesting that she can control either one. Olympia is upstairs with her, and Malorie tells her plainly that the creatures are inside.

Narrative Significance

The coverings had functioned as a barrier between the inhabitants and a threat they could not safely confront through sight. Once Don pulls them down, the barrier ceases to be an unobtrusive part of the house and becomes the material condition on which everyone’s safety depended. The blankets’ ordinary, domestic appearance cannot conceal their practical importance: their removal changes the house from refuge to breached enclosure.

The sequence also turns the story’s crisis of knowledge into a crisis of action. Gary’s claim that the creatures are harmless is conveyed to Don, and Don’s removal of the coverings gives that claim an irreversible consequence. Against the unseen danger, the scene offers no visual confirmation from Malorie’s position; instead, shouted warnings, impacts, and the dogs’ barking carry the reader’s understanding. The breach is thus both a physical opening and the collapse of the household’s shared means of remaining safe.