On a dark and stormy night, Meg Murry tosses and turns in her attic bedroom. She is unable to fall asleep because she is preoccupied with all that seems wrong in her life: she doesn't fit in at school; her high school teachers have just threatened to drop her down a grade on account of her poor academic performance; and worst of all, her father has been missing for many years and no one has heard from him. Meg hears her family's big black dog Fortinbras barking downstairs, and she begins to worry that a stranger may be skulking around the house; she suspects the tramp who, according to local gossip, recently stole twelve bed-sheets from the constable's wife, Mrs. Buncombe.