two o'clock
What was the nature of this force that Skale hoped to invoke -- so mighty that it should make them `` as gods , '' so terrible that a chord alone could compass even the first of its stupendous syllables ? And , further , he was still haunted with the feeling that other `` beings '' occupied certain portions of the rambling mansion , and more than once recently he had wakened in the night with an idea , carried over from dreams possibly , that the corridor outside his bedroom was moving and alive with footsteps . `` From dreams possibly , '' for when he went and peered shivering through the narrow crack of the half-opened door , he saw nothing unusual . And another time -- he was awake beyond question at the moment , for he had been reading till two o'clock and had but just extinguished the candle -- he had heard a sound that he found impossible to describe , but that sent all the blood with a swift rush from the region of his heart . It was not wind ; it was not the wood cracking with the frost ; it was not snow sliding from the slates outside . It was something that simultaneously filled the entire building , yet sounded particularly loud just outside his door ; and it came with the abrupt suddenness of a report . It made him think of all the air in the rooms and halls and passages being withdrawn by immense suction , as though a gigantic dome had been dropped over the building in order to produce a vacuum .