Opening the story in the first person pov, we are hearing from a man about an experience in his past that tells us right in the first sentence: “I still get nightmares.”
What follows as an introduction is the setting up of an event where the narrator was seeking a place to live, was told by his friend of an availability in his building when a resident, Zampano, dies, and the unsettling exploration of the man’s room after his death by natural causes. So we’re getting the idea that there is a scary mystery involved and this is where it is focused. We also know that no matter how frightened the narrator is, he is alive to tell the story.
The typeface is large, bold, different; obviously meant to appear as a personal entry by the narrator as typed on a regular typewriter. This intimacy with the reader is heightened by another break in the fourth wall:
Truth be told, I was still having a hard time taking my eyes off the scarred floor. I even reached out to touch the protruding splinters.
What did I know then? What do I know now? At least some of the horror I took away at four in the morning you now have before you, waiting for you a little like it waited for me that night, only without these few covering pages. (p. xvii)
So Danielewski reached further through the wall not only by the narrator speaking to the reader, but by suggesting that they are truly sharing this experience but that thanks to his foresight, the narrator is granting the reader an edge by this introduction.
Interesting.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology