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Paul tells Millicent he will call a friend in Tully who has a car and may be able to drive them to Syracuse. Paul says the explanation is 'a little metaphysical' for him, and believes that Millicent's sanity is beginning to unravel. Millicent's doppelgänger can survive in this world only by eliminating and replacing her. When these events occur, the impostors enter this realm.

While they wait, Millicent, now coming to, insists the strange events are caused by an evil double from a parallel world – a nearby, yet distant alternative plane of existence that comes into convergence with this world as a result of powerful forces, or unnatural, unknown events. Millicent lies unconscious on a bench inside the depot while Paul and the cleaning lady attend to her. In shock, Millicent runs back into the depot and faints.

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When the bus arrives and the two of them prepare to board, Millicent happens to look up at the windows and sees the copy of herself, already seated on the bus with a malevolent look on her face. Attempting to calm her, Paul says it is either a joke or a misunderstanding caused by a look-alike. Paul encourages Millicent to tell him what obviously is bothering her, so she explains about encountering her double. Millicent then meets a genial young man from Binghamton named Paul Grinstead, who is waiting for the same bus. Upon leaving the restroom, she glances in the mirror and sees, in addition to her reflection, an exact copy of herself sitting on the bench outside. She washes her hands in the restroom and the cleaning lady there insists this is her second time there. She does not believe this until she notices her bag is not beside the bench anymore. She mentions this and the agent responds that it is her bag. While speaking with him, she notices a bag just like hers on the floor behind the desk. She asks the ticket agent when the bus will arrive, and he gruffly complains that this is her third time asking. Looking at a wall clock she notices the bus is late. Millicent Barnes waits in a bus depot in New York for a bus to Cortland, en route to a new job. Millicent Barnes, who, in one minute, will wonder if she's going mad. Circumstances will assault her sense of reality and a chain of nightmares will put her sanity on a block. All of which is mentioned now because, in just a moment, the head on Miss Barnes' shoulders will be put to a test. Like most young career women, she has a generic classification as a, quote, girl with a head on her shoulders, end of quote. Not a very imaginative type is Miss Barnes: not given to undue anxiety, or fears, or for that matter even the most temporal flights of fantasy. Millicent Barnes, age twenty-five, young woman waiting for a bus on a rainy November night.

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