Dom's attempt to fortify his house

Dom's attempt to fortify his house is a night of defensive action whose evidence survives into morning: Dominick Corvaisis apparently meant to nail his bedroom windows shut, then fled to the garage and concealed himself behind the furnace. The episode turns an anxiety he cannot consciously explain into a physical trail of nails, a hammer, and canvas, while withholding the identity of whatever he feared.

Treatment and the Night's Setting

After beginning the physical-activity treatment prescribed by Dr. Cobletz, Dominick pushed himself with more persistence than the doctor had recommended. He fell asleep almost immediately when he went to bed. The treatment seemed, at first, to have changed the night: in the morning he did not wake in the closet, where he had found himself before. But he did not wake in bed either. He was in the garage.

He came to in terror, gasping, with his heart pounding and his hands clenched. He was cramped and sore, partly from the excessive exercise and partly from the uncomfortable position in which he had slept. The bodily details make the episode more than a puzzling change of location: his sleepwalking has placed him somewhere narrow and concealed, and his fear persists into waking.

The Evidence of a Barricade

In the bedroom, Dominick found 1.5-inch steel finishing nails scattered across the carpet. A partly emptied box of nails lay beside a hammer near the baseboard beneath the window; three more nails rested on the windowsill. Together, these objects allowed him to reconstruct an action he could not remember performing. He had apparently been preparing to nail the windows shut, turning the house into a fortress against a danger he could neither see nor name.

The arrangement matters because it records intention as well as interruption. The nails and hammer had been brought to the window, but the work had not begun. Dominick's reconstruction was that fear had overwhelmed him before he could set about fastening the windows, sending him instead to the garage. The abandoned barricade and the improvised hiding place are two stages of one response: first an attempt to secure the boundary of the house, then retreat into concealment.

Flight and Concealment

In the garage, Dominick had taken two folded canvas dropcloths from a shelf above the workbench and squeezed into a narrow service space behind the furnace. He lay beneath the tarps. Their placement made clear that this was not simply a makeshift bed or a search for warmth: he had hidden himself.

The sequence leaves the threat unresolved. Even after pushing aside the canvas and sitting up, Dominick remained intensely anxious. In daylight he looked out at rose bushes, a strip of lawn, and an ivy-covered slope leading to another house: a peaceful view that offered no visible explanation for the terror of the night. He could not believe the landscape had looked more threatening in darkness, but neither could he dismiss the evidence of his own actions.

Morning Aftermath and Significance

Dominick had hoped his sleepwalking might produce a message explaining the anxiety he could not access while awake. He had previously looked to the IBM Displaywriter as a possible means by which his subconscious might communicate, but this episode yielded no explanation. Instead, the house itself became a record: the nails, their box, the hammer, and the dropcloths disclose what he did without disclosing why.

On November 24, after watching daylight strengthen and bees visit the roses, Dominick began picking up the nails. The quiet cleanup does not resolve the fear; it follows a night in which his body acted on knowledge unavailable to his conscious mind. The episode sharpens the story's distinction between waking understanding and sleepwalking behavior: the defensive plan is recoverable from physical traces, but its cause remains beyond him.