The most frightening moment in the story occurs at the very end when Mr. and Mrs. Smith hear the knocking at their downstairs door, late on a very dark night. From the details developed throughout the story, the reader infers it is their dead son Herbert knocking to come in. Herbert is not perceived here to be a ghost, but a living corpse who has come out of his grave.
The mood of this scene adds to the suspense. The darkness of the night is “oppressive.” A stair creaks. A clock ticks in the silence. The knocking at the door is “quiet and stealthy.” Mr. Smith goes down the stairs with the light of a burning match that soon goes out. When the knock is repeated, Mr. Smith flees back to his room, terrified.
After the knocking has continued and grown louder and more insistent—even angry-sounding—Mrs. Smith rushes downstairs to the door and struggles with the bolt. She tries desperately to let her son in. Upstairs, Mr. Smith struggles to find the monkey’s paw to make his final wish, that Herbert go back to the peace of the grave.
The moment of greatest fear is then achieved when Mrs. Smith finally manages to get the door open: No one is there.
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