Disbelief

He doesn't know, as he enters the door to Louis's place, that ignorance is bliss, but of this he will soon be certain. His life to date has been largely unremarkable; the only child of well-to-do parents of above-average intelligence and a cultured (but not sophisticated) lifestyle, he went to a good school, achieved good grades, and attended a university which although not Ivy-League was at least a respected Red Brick. These days he works in a bank and performs his job well, but he will never be promoted out of the ranks, so to speak. No, despite what awaits him in Louis's place his future life will be as unremarkable as his past, and even those moments that might have been blessings of sublime wonder, such as his marriage to Elizabeth or the births of his sons Mark and Graham, will be soured by the haunting memory of the next few minutes.

But he knows nothing of his future, and if he did he would be as desperate to repress that knowledge now as he will be after the event. He has been here a hundred times before, here to Loius's place, and he enters the door with casual familiarity and a belated knock out of courtesy, but he doesn't know that this time Louis is not his friend, that Louis is a hideous remnant of his former self, no longer entirely human. A demon from the lesser, malignant depths lurks in the rotting shell of Louis's still-living corpse. It hides from the sunlight, the blackness of Louis's basement pierced only by the red glow of its ethereal eyes, and awaits nightfall when it will emerge and bring corruption to the unbelieving masses that it scorns.

The man who was Louis's friend is an atheist and does not believe in hell, or heaven. His world is unremarkable and has no room in it for malevolent creatures such as that inhabiting Louis, and as he enters the door to Louis's place his only intimation of an encounter that will shock him to the core and shake his beliefs with gale-force winds is an ominous stench of decay that will lead him inexorably to the basement door and to the horror beyond.