Текст книги "Night Freight"
Автор книги: Bill Pronzini
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My first published story dealt with salmon fishermen plying their trade along the northern California coast, individuals whom I admire for their courage and resilience. "Deathwatch" is also about salmon fishermen—and, even more prominently, about levels of light and dark. This may be the darkest of all my stories, in fact, in more ways than one; an existential nightmare that has left some readers depressed, others annoyed or repelled or both, and still others thoughtful and with a disinclination to turn out the lights.
Those in the last group are the ones for whom it was written.
Deathwatch
They just came and told me I'm dying.
I've got first– and second-degree burns over sixty percent of my body, and the doctors—two of them—said it's hopeless, there's nothing they can do. I don't care. It's better this way. Except for the pain. They gave me morphine but it doesn't help. It doesn't keep me from thinking either.
Before the doctors, there were two county cops. And Kjel. The cops told me Pete and Nicky are dead, both of them killed in the explosion. They said Kjel and me were thrown clear, and that he'd come out of it with just minor burns on his face and upper body. They said he hung on to me until another boat showed up and her crew pulled us out of the water. I don't understand that. After what I did, why would he try to save my life?
Kjel told them how it was. The cops didn't say much to me about it, just wanted to know if what Kjel said was the truth. I said it was. But it doesn't make any difference, why or how. I tried to tell them that, and something about the light and the dark, but I couldn't make the words come out. They wouldn't have understood anyway.
After the cops left, Kjel asked to see me. One of the doctors said he had something he wanted to say. But I wouldn't let him come in. I don't want to hear what he has to say. It doesn't matter, and I don't want to see him.
Lila is in the waiting room outside. The same doctor told me that, too. I wouldn't let her come in either. What good would it do to see her, talk to her? There's nothing she can say, nothing I can say—the same as with Kjel. She's been sitting out there sixteen hours, ever since they brought me here from the marina. All that time, sitting out there, waiting.
They have a word for it, what she's doing.
Deathwatch.
The pain . . . oh God, I've never hurt like this. Never. Is this how it feels to burn in hell? An eternity of fire and pain . . . and light? If that's what's in store for me, it won't be so bad if there's light. But what if it's dark down there? Christ, I'm so scared. What if the afterlife is dark, too?
I want to pray but I don't know how. I never went to church much, I never got to know God. The doctors asked if I wanted to see a minister. I said no. What could a minister do for me? Would a minister understand about the light and the dark? I don't think so. Not the way I understand.
The lights in this room are bright, real bright. I asked the doctors to turn the lights up as high as they would go and one of them said he would and he did. But outside, it's night—it's dark. I can see it, the dark, pressing against the window, if I look over that way. I don't look. Dying scares me even more when I look at the night—
I just looked. I couldn't stop myself. The dark, always the dark, trying to swallow the light. But not the black dark that comes with no moon, no stars. Gray dark, softened by fog. High fog tonight, high and heavy, blowing cold. It'll drop by morning, though. There won't be much visibility. But that won't stop the boats from going out. Never has, never will. Wouldn't have stopped us from going out—me and Kjel and Pete and Nicky. It's the season, and the big Kings are running. Christ, it's been a good salmon run this year. One of the best in the last ten. If it keeps up like this, Kjel said this morning, we'll have the mortgage on The Kingfisher paid off by the end of the year.
But he said that early this morning, while we were still fishing.
He said that before the dark came and swallowed the light.
It seems like so long ago, what happened this morning. And yet it also seems like it must have been just a minute or two . . .
We were six miles out, finished for the day and on our way in—made limit early, hit a big school of Kings. Whoo-ee! They were practically jumping into the boat. I was in the wheelhouse, working on the automatic depth finder because it'd been acting up a little, wishing we could afford a better one. Wishing, too, that we could afford a Loran navigation system like some of the other skippers had on their boats. Kjel and Pete and Nicky were working the outriggers, hauling in the lines by hand. We didn't have one of those hydraulic winches, either, the kind with an automatic trigger that pulls in a fish as soon as it hits the line. The kind that does all the work for you. We had to do it ourselves.
The big Jimmy diesel was rumbling and throbbing, loud, at three-quarters throttle. I shouldn't have been able to hear them talking out on deck. But I heard. Maybe it was the wind, a trick of the wind. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I heard.
I heard Nicky laugh, and Pete say something that had Lila's name in it, and Kjel said, "Shut up, you damned fool, he'll hear you!"
And Nicky said, "He can't hear inside. Besides, what if he does? He knows already, don't he?"
And Kjel said, "He doesn't know. I hope to Christ he never does."
And Pete said, "Hell, he's got to have an idea. The whole village knows what a slut he's married to . . ."
I had a box wrench in my hand. I put it down and walked out there and I said, "What're you talking about? What're you saying about Lila?"
None of them said anything. They all just looked at me. It was a gray morning, no sun. A dark morning, not much light. Getting darker, too. I could see clouds on the horizon, dark hazy things, swallowing the light—swallowing it fast.
I said, "Pete, you called my wife a slut. I heard you."
Kjel said, "Danny, take it easy, he didn't mean nothing—"
I said, "He meant something. He meant it." I reached out and caught Pete by the shirt and threw him up against the port outrigger. He tried to tear my hands loose; I wouldn't let go. "How come, Pete? What do you know about Lila?"
Kjel said, "For Christ's sake, Danny—"
"What do you know, goddamn you!"
Pete was mad. He didn't like me roughing him up like that. And he didn't give a damn if I knew—I guess that was it. He'd only been working for us a few months. He was a stranger in Camaroon Bay. He didn't know me and I didn't know him and he didn't give a damn.
"I know because I was with her," he said. "You poor sap, she's been screwing everybody in the village behind your back. Everybody! Me, Nicky, even Kjel here—"
Kjel hit him. He reached in past me and hit Pete and knocked him loose of my hands, almost knocked him overboard. Pete went down. Nicky backed away. Kjel backed away too, looking at me. His face was all twisted up. And dark—dark like the things on the horizon.
"It's true, then," I said. "It's true."
"Danny, listen to me—"
"No," I said.
"It only happened once with her and me. Only once. I tried not to, Danny, Jesus I tried not to but she . . . Danny, listen to me."
"No," I said.
I turned around, I put my back to him and the other two and the dark things on the horizon and I went into the wheelhouse and shut the door and locked it. I didn't feel anything. I didn't think anything either. There was some gasoline in one of the cupboards, for the auxiliary engine. I got the can out and poured the gas on the deckboards and splashed it on the bulkheads.
Outside Kjel was pounding on the door, calling my name.
I lit a match and threw it down.
Nothing happened right away. So I unlocked the door and opened it, and Kjel started in, and I heard him say, "Oh my God!" and he caught hold of me and yanked me through the door.
That was when she blew.
There was a flash of blinding light, I remember that. And I remember being in the water, I remember seeing flames, I remember the pain. I don't remember anything else until I woke up here in the hospital.
The county cops asked me if I was sorry I did it. I said I was. And I am, but not for the reason they thought. I couldn't tell them the real reason. They wouldn't have understood, because first they'd have had to understand about the light and the dark.
I close my eyes now and I can see my old man's face on the night he died. He was a drunk and the liquor killed him, but nobody ever knew why. Except me. He called me into his room that night, I was eleven years old, and he told me why.
"It's the dark, Danny," he said. "I let it swallow all the light." I thought he was babbling. But he wasn't. "Everything is light or dark," he said. "That's what you got to understand. People, places, everything, the whole world—light or dark. You got to reach for the light, Danny. Sunshine and smiles, everything that's light. If you don't you'll let the dark take over, like I did, and the dark will destroy you. Promise me you won't let that happen to you, boy. Promise me you won't."
I promised. And I tried—Christ, Pa, I tried. Thirty years I reached for the light. But I couldn't hold onto enough of it, just like you couldn't. The dark kept creeping in, creeping in.
Once I told Lila about the dark and the light. She just laughed. "Is that why you always want to make love with the light on, sleep with the light on?" she said. "You're crazy sometimes, Danny, you know that?" she said.
I should have known then. But I didn't. I thought she was light. I reached for her six years ago, and I held her and for a while she lit up my life . . . I thought she was light. But she wasn't, she isn't. Underneath she's the dark. She's always been the dark, swallowing the light piece by piece—with Nicky, with Pete, with all the others. Kjel, too, my best friend. Turning him dark too.
I did it all wrong, Pa. All of it, right to the end. And that's the real reason I'm sorry about what I did this morning.
I shouldn't have blown them up, blown me up. I should have blown her up, lit up the dark with the fire and light.
Too late now. I did it all wrong.
And she's still out there, waiting.
The dark out there, waiting.
Deathwatch.
The pain isn't so bad now, the fire on me doesn't burn so hot. The morphine working? No, it isn't the morphine.
Something cool touches my face. I'm not alone in the room anymore.
The bastard with the scythe is here.
But I won't look at him. I won't look at the dark of his clothes and the dark under his hood. I'll look at the light instead . . . up there on the ceiling, the big fluorescent tubes shining down, light shining down, look at the light, reach for the light, the light . . .
And the door opens, I hear it open, and from a long way off I hear Lila's voice say, "I couldn't stay away, Danny, I had to see you, I had to come—"
The dark!
A major social problem of our times is the stuff of this mordant little tale. The central premise strikes me as all too possible; if something like it hasn't happened yet, I for one won't be surprised to pick up my morning newspaper one day soon and find an account of a similar occurrence. It should probably be noted that my personal sympathies here are about equally divided between Rennert and Dain and their real-life counterparts. Victims both, victims all.
Home
Rennert unlocked the door to his apartment, thinking that it was good to be home. It had been a long day at the office and he was eager for a dry martini and a quiet dinner. He walked in, shut and relatched the door. The hall, five steps long, led into the living room; when he reached the end of it he stopped suddenly and stood gawping.
A man was sitting on his couch.
Just sitting there, completely at ease, one leg crossed over the other. Middle-aged, nondescript, wearing shabby clothing. And thin, so thin you could see the bones of his skull beneath sparse brown hair and a papery layer of skin and flesh.
It took Rennert a few seconds to recover from his shock. Then he demanded, "Who the hell are you?"
"My name is Dain. Raymond Dain."
"What're you doing in my apartment?"
"Waiting for you."
"For Christ's sake," Rennert said. "I don't know you. I've never seen you before in my life." Which wasn't quite true. There was something vaguely familiar about the man. "How did you get in here?"
"The same way you just came in."
"The door was locked. I locked it this morning—"
"I'm good with locks."
A thread of fear had begun to unwind in Rennert. He was a quiet, timid man who took pains to avoid any potentially dangerous situation. He had no experience with anything like this; he didn't know how to handle it.
"What's the idea?" he said. "What do you want?" Dan was looking around the room. "This is a nice apartment. Really nice."
"I asked what you want."
"Comfortable. Warm. Everything in good taste."
"None of the furnishings is worth stealing," Rennert said. "There's nothing here worth stealing—you must know that by now. I have twenty dollars in my wallet and about two hundred in my checking account. I work for an insurance company, my salary isn't—"
"I'm not after your money, Mr. Rennert."
". . . So you know my name."
"From the mailbox downstairs."
"If you're not a thief, then what are you?"
"A salesman. That is, I used to be a salesman. Sporting goods. At one time I was the company's top man in California."
"I don't—
"But then one of the bigger outfits bought us out and right away they began downsizing. They said my salary was too high and my commissions too low, so I was one of the first to be booted out."
"I'm sorry to hear that, but—"
"I couldn't get another job," Dain said. "Everywhere I went they said I was too old. Eventually I lost everything. My wife and I had been living high and on the edge and it didn't take long, less than a year. House, car, all my possessions of any value—everything went. Then my wife went too. I ended up with nothing."
Rennert couldn't think of anything to say. He felt as though he'd walked into the middle of somebody else's nightmare.
"You can't imagine how bad it was," Dain said. "The first year I tried twice to do away with myself. But gradually I came to terms with my situation. Developed a new outlook and started to put my life back together. A long, slow process, but it's going to work out. It's definitely going to work out."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it, but that doesn't explain what you're doing in my apartment. Or give you any right to be here."
Dain got slowly to his feet. Rennert stiffened, but Dain didn't come his way; instead he moved to the undraped picture window and stood peering out.
"Quite a view from here," he said. "You can see a lot of the park. On clear days I'll bet you can see the ocean, too."
Rennert said, "That's it, the park."
"What about the park?"
"That's where I've seen you before. Panhandling in the park."
"I don't do that," Dain said in an offended tone. "I've never once resorted to panhandling."
"All right. Wandering around over there then."
"I've seen you in the park too. Several times."
"How did you find out where I live?"
"I followed you the last time. Yesterday."
"Why? Why me?"
"You were always alone, whenever I saw you, and I wanted to find out if you lived alone."
"Well, now you know," Rennert said shakily. "I live alone and you live in one of the homeless camps in the park. So what? What's the idea if you don't intend to rob me?"
"I've been existing in one of the camps, yes. I hate it. I hate being homeless."
"I'm sure you do. It has to be rough—"
"You have no idea how rough, Mr. Rennert. Only those of us who've been through it really know."
"I believe that. And I'm sympathetic, I truly am. But I think you'd better leave now."
"Why?"
"Why? Because I don't want you here. Because you're trespassing. Because you won't tell me why you broke in or what it is you want."
"I did tell you," Dain said. "You weren't listening."
"All you told me is that you've started to put your life back together, and I can't help you with that."
"But you can."
"How? How can I?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
"Not to me. Do you want me to call the police?"
"Then leave. Just leave, right now. I don't want any trouble with you."
Dam looked at him in silence. A sad, waiting look. No, not sad—hungry.
"Go away," Rennert said desperately, "leave me alone. Don't you understand? I can't do anything for you!"
Dain said, "You're the one who doesn't understand, Mr. Rennert. I told you I hate being homeless and I meant just that. A decent job, possessions, even a wife and family—I can manage without those. But I can't go on, I can't have any kind of life, without a home."
"For God's sake, what does that have to do with me? This is my apartment, my home—"
"Not anymore," Dain said.
Understanding came to Rennert in a thunderous jolt. Even before he recognized the object Dan took from his pocket, heard the faint snicking sound, and saw the shine of steel, he understood everything. Panic sent him running into the hail, his mouth coming open and a scream rising in his throat.
He didn't quite make it to the door. And the scream didn't quite make it all the way out.
Dain sighed, a deep and heartfelt sigh. "It's good to be home," he said, and went into his bathroom to wash the blood off his hands.
I like cats. Better than dogs and much better than some humans, in fact. You might not think so when you finish reading "Tom," but the story grew out of a wry glimmer of understanding of the cat psyche—my wife and I are owned by two and we've been owned by others over the years—rather than out of any aversion. I have no illusions about the cute and cuddly little buggers; if my cats could manage it, especially on those days when their food bowl doesn't get filled on time, Decker's fate could very well be mine.
Tom
Decker was so absorbed in the collection of Fredric Brown stories he was reading that he didn't see the cat jump onto the balcony railing. He felt its presence after a while, and when he glanced up there it was, switching its tail and staring at him.
At first he was startled; it was as if the cat had materialized out of nowhere. Then he felt a small pleasure. Except for birds and two deer running in the woods, it was the first living creature he'd seen in two weeks. Not that he minded the solitude here; it was the main reason he'd come to this northern California wilderness—a welcome change from his high-pressure Silicon Valley computer job, and a chance to work uninterrupted on the novel he was trying to write. But after fourteen days he was ready for a little company, even if it was only a stray tomcat.
He closed the well-worn paperback and returned the cat's stare. "Well," he said, "hello there, Tom. Where'd you come from?"
The cat didn't move except for its switching tail. Continued to watch him with eyes that were an odd luminous yellow. Otherwise it was an ordinary Felis catus, a big butterscotch male with the unneutered tom's overlarge head. It might have been anywhere from three to ten years old.
A minute or so passed—and Decker's feeling of pleasure passed with it. There was something strange about those steady unblinking eyes, something in their depths that might have been malice . . .
No, that was silly. A product of his hyperactive imagination, nurtured for nearly twenty years now by a steady diet of mystery and horror fiction, his one passion other than microtechnology. A product too, he thought, of the coincidental fact that the cat's sudden appearance had coincided with his reading of a Brown story called "Ailurophobe," which was about a man who had a morbid fear of cats.
He had no such fear; at least he'd never been afraid of cats before today. And yet . . . those funny luminous eyes. He had never encountered a cat quite like this one before today.
His mind conjured up another Brown story he'd read, about an alien intelligence that had come to Earth and taken over the body of the protagonist's pet cat.
Then, in spite of himself, he remembered a succession of other stories by other writers about cats who were demons and sorcerers, about human beings who were werecats.
Decker suppressed a shiver. Shook himself and smiled a little sheepishly. "Come on," he said aloud, "that's all pure fantasy. Cats are just cats."
He got up and crossed to the railing. The torn seemed to tense without actually moving. Decker said, "So, guy, what're you doing way out here in the piney woods?" and reached out a hand to pat the animal's head.
Before he could touch it, the cat leaped gracefully to the floor and ran through the open doors into the cabin. He blinked after it for a few seconds, then followed it inside. Where he found it sitting on one arm of the wicker settee, flicking its tail and staring at him again.
For a reason he couldn't explain, Decker began to feel apprehensive. "Hell," he said, "what's the matter with me? Tom, you're nothing to be afraid of."
The apprehension did not go away. Neither did the cat. When Decker walked deliberately to the settee, with the intention of either shooing or carrying the tom outside, it bounded off again. Took up another watchful position on top of a battered old bookcase.
"All right now," Decker said, "what's the idea? You want something, is that it? You hungry, maybe?"
The fur along the cat's back rippled. Otherwise it sat motionless.
Decker nodded. "Sure, that must be it. Big old tom like you, you need plenty of fuel. If I give you something to eat, you'll go away and let me get back to my reading."
He went into the kitchen, poured a little milk into a dish, tore two small strips of white meat from a leftover Swanson's chicken breast, and took the food back into the living room. He put it down on the floor near the bookcase, backed off half a dozen paces.
The cat did not move.
"Well, go ahead," Decker said. "Eat it and get out."
Ten seconds died away. Then the tom jumped off the bookcase, walked past the food without pausing even to sniff it, and sat down again in the bedroom doorway.
Okay, Decker thought uneasily, so you're not hungry. What else could you want?
He made an effort to recall what he knew about cats. Well, he knew they had been considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians, who worshiped them in temples, paraded them on feast days, embalmed and mummified them when they died and then buried them in holy ground. And that the Egyptian goddess Bast had supposedly endowed them with semidivine powers.
He knew that in the Middle Ages they had been linked to the Devil and the practice of Black Arts and were burned and tortured in religion-sanctioned witch hunts.
He knew that Henry James (whom he had read in college) once said about them: "Cats and monkeys, monkeys and cats—all human life is there."
He knew that they were predators with a streak of cruelty: they liked to toy with their prey before devouring it.
And he knew they were independent, selfish, aloof, patient, cunning, mischievous, extra clean, and purred when they were contented.
In short, his knowledge was limited, fragmentary, and mostly trivial. And none of it offered a clue to this cat's presence or behavior.
"The hell with it," he said. "This has gone far enough. Tom, you're trespassing. Out you go, right now."
He advanced on the cat, slowly so as not to frighten it. It let him get within two steps, then darted away again. Decker went after it—and went after it, and went after it. It avoided him effortlessly, gliding from one point in the room to another without once taking its yellow-bright gaze from him.
After several minutes, winded and vaguely frightened himself, he gave up the chase. "Damn you," he said, "what do you want here?"
The tom stared, switching its tail.
Decker's imagination began to soar again. All sorts of fantastic explanations occurred to him. Suppose the cat was Satan in disguise, come after his soul? Suppose, as in George Langelaan's story "The Fly," a scientist somewhere had been experimenting with a matter transporter and a cat had gotten inside with an evil human subject? Suppose the tom was a kind of modem-day Medusa: look at it long enough and it drives you mad? Suppose—
The cat jumped off the couch and started toward him.
Decker felt a sharp surge of fear. Rigid with it, he watched the animal come to within a few feet and then sit again and glare up at him. Incoming sunlight reflected in its yellow eyes created an illusion of depth and flame that was almost hypnotic.
Compulsively, Decker turned and ran out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
In the kitchen he picked up the telephone—and immediately put it down again. Who was he going to call? The county sheriff's office? "I've got a strange cat in my rented cabin and I can't get rid of it. Can you send somebody right out?" Good Christ, they'd laugh themselves sick.
Decker poured a glass of red wine and tried to get a grip on himself. I'm not an ailurophobe, he thought, and I'm not paranoid or delusional, and I'm not—nice irony for you—a 'fraidy cat. Cats are just cats, damn it. So why am I letting this one upset me this way?
The wine calmed him, made him feel sheepish again. He went back into the living room.
The cat wasn't there.
He looked in the bedroom and the bathroom, the cabin's only other rooms. No cat. Gone, then. Grew tired of whatever game it had been playing, ran off through the balcony doors and back into the woods.
That made him feel even better—more relieved, he admitted to himself, than the situation warranted. He shut and locked the balcony doors, took the Fred Brown paperback to the couch, and tried to resume reading.
He couldn't concentrate. It was hot in the cabin with the doors and windows shut, and the cat was still on his mind. He decided to have another glass of wine. Maybe that would mellow him enough to restore his mental equilibrium, even get his creative juices flowing. He hadn't done as much work on his novel in the past two weeks as he'd planned.
He poured the wine, drank half of it in the kitchen. Took the rest into the bedroom, where he'd set up his Macintosh laptop.
The tomcat was sitting in the middle of the bed. Fear and disbelief made Decker drop the glass; wine like blood spatters glistened across the redwood flooring. "How the hell did you get in here?" he shouted.
Switch. Switch.
He lunged at the bed, but the cat leapt down easily and raced out of the room. Decker ran after it, saw it dart into the kitchen. He ran in there—and the cat had vanished again. He searched the room, couldn't find it. Back to the living room. No cat. Bedroom, bathroom. No cat.
Fine, dandy, except for one thing. All the doors and windows were still tightly shut. The tom couldn't have gotten out; it had to still be inside the cabin.
Shaken, Decker stood looking around, listening to the silence. How had the cat gotten back inside in the first place? Where was it hiding?
What did it want from him?
He tried to tell himself again that he was overreacting. But he didn't believe it. His terror was real and so was the lingering aura of menace the torn had brought with it.
I've got to find it, he thought grimly. Find it and get rid of it once and for all.
Bedroom. Nightstand drawer. His .32 revolver.
Decker had never shot anything with the gun, for sport or otherwise; he'd only brought it along for security, since his nearest neighbor was half a mile away and the nearest town was another four miles beyond there. But he knew he would shoot the cat when he found it, irrational act or not. Just as he would have shot a human intruder who threatened him.
Once more he searched the cabin, forcing himself to do it slowly and methodically. He looked under and behind the furniture, inside the closets, under the sink, through cartons—every conceivable hiding place.
There was no sign of the tom.
His mouth and throat were sand-dry; he had to drink three glasses of water to ease the parching. The thought occurred to him then that he hadn't found the cat because the cat didn't exist; that it was a figment of his hyperactive imagination induced by the Brown story. Hallucination, paranoid obsession . . . maybe he was paranoid and delusional after all.
"Crap," he said aloud. "The damned cat's real."
He turned from the sink—and the cat was sitting on the kitchen table, glowing yellow eyes fixed on him, tail switching.
Decker made an involuntary sound, threw up his arm, and tried to aim the .32, but the arm shook so badly that he had to brace the gun with his free hand. The cat kept on staring at him. Except for the rhythmic flicks of its tail, it was as still as death.
His finger tightened on the trigger.
Switch.
And sudden doubts assailed him. What if the cat had telekinetic powers, and when he fired, it turned the bullet back at him? What if the cat was some monstrous freak of nature, endowed with superpowers, and before he could fire it willed him out of existence?
Supercat, he thought. Jesus, I am going crazy!
He pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened; the gun didn't fire.
The cat jumped down off the table, came toward him—not as it had earlier, but as if with a purpose.
Frantically Decker squeezed the trigger again, and again, and still the revolver failed to fire. The tom continued its advance. Decker backed away in terror, came up against the wall, then hurled the weapon at the cat, straight at the cat. It should have struck the cat squarely in the head, only at the last second it seemed to loop around the tom's head like a sharp-breaking curveball—
Vertigo seized him. The room began to spin, slowly, then rapidly, and there was a gray mist in front of his eyes. He felt himself starting to fall, shut his eyes, put out his hands to the wall in an effort to brace his body—
–and the wall wasn't there—
–and he kept right on falling . . .
Decker opened his eyes. He was lying on a floor, only it was not the floor of his rented kitchen; it was the floor of a gray place, a place without furnishings or definition, a place where the gray mist floated and shimmied and everything—walls, floor, ceiling—was distorted, surreal.
