Gretchen wastes no time in pointing out how creepy her grandparents' large house is.
The place only has two windows (which are barely even big enough to be considered windows), one on each floor, with none of them in any of the bedrooms!
Gretchen doesn't fail to notice the eerie emptiness she feels in her first night struggling to sleep there. Her bedroom is almost as big as a gym, yet the only pieces of furniture were a lump bed with a scratchy blanket, a small lamp with a dim yellow light, and a warped wooden dresser with the drawers hanging out. She can't help but feel as if she's staying in a prison cell.
As if all of the above wasn't enough, the rooms around the place are filled with almost nothing to find fun in. Even when Gretchen and Clark do try to find things to have fun with, it all fails horrifically. They come across a room filled with newspapers and magazines, and when Gretchen tries to look through them, hundreds of cockroaches come skittering out of them and all over her body. And in the next room they try, they find toys all over that were all broken (likely due to the monster getting ahold of them beforehand).
When cornered by the monster, he grabs Gretchen and pulls her close. She can't help but stare up at his face and notice that his eyes were deep, dark pools with tiny worms swimming in them. And then the monster opened his jaws wide to reveal that his mouth was filled with bugs which crawled up and down his tongue. Gretchen is understandibly terrified and tries to get out of his grasp.
The book, as well as the episode, ends on quite a chilling note. After they escape, Gretchen and Clark run deep into the swamp at night and don't stop until their grandparents' place is no longer in sight. As they stood still to catch their breath and celebrate, Gretchen suddenly remembered that they still hadn't read the second letter that their grandparents left for them. She demands that he take it out and read it out loud, and he does so. It tells them that if they kill the monster and escape the house, stay on the road and NOT in the swamp. It then reveals that this is because the monster that is trapped in the house has dozens of family members hiding in the swamp, waiting for him to return, and it is not safe for their grandchildren to go out there. Gretchen and Clark then notice shifting shadows all around them through the dim moonlight, and can suddenly hear whistling sounds throughout the swamp. Clark fearfully asks Gretchen if she has any more ideas, to which the terrified girl replies that she doesn't.
