9
THE SKIRTS OF THE NIGHT WERE GATHERED around the Evans house, rustling in a dry desert wind.
A neighbor's white cat .crept across the lawn, stalking a wind-tossed scrap of paper. The cat pounced, missed its prey, stumbled, scared itself, and flashed lightning-quick into another yard.
Inside, the house was mostly silent. Now and then the refrigerator switched on, purring to itself. A loose window-pane in the living room rattled slightly whenever a strong gust of wind struck it. The heating system rumbled to life, and for a couple of minutes at a time, the blower whispered wordlessly as hot air pushed through the vents.
Shortly before midnight, Danny's room began to grow cold. On the doorknob, on the radio casing, and on other metal objects, moisture began to condense out of the air. The temperature plunged rapidly, and the beads of water froze. Frost formed on the window.
The radio clicked on.
For a few seconds the silence was split by an electronic squeal as sharp as an ax blade. Then the shrill noise abruptly stopped, and the digital display flashed with rapidly changing numbers. Snippets of music and shards of voices crackled in an eerie audio-montage that echoed and reechoed off the walls of the frigid room.
No one was in the house to hear it.
The closet door opened, closed, opened. . . .
Inside the closet, shirts and jeans began to swing wildly on the pole from which they hung, and some clothes fell to the floor.
The bed shook.
The display case that held nine model airplanes rocked, banging repeatedly against the wall. One of the models was flung from its shelf, then two more, then three more, then another, until all nine lay in a pile on the floor.
On the wall to the left of the bed, a poster of the creature from the Alien movies tore down the middle.
The radio ceased scanning, stopping on an open frequency that hissed and popped with distant static. Then a voice blared from the speakers. It was a child's voice. A boy. There were no words. Just a long, agonized scream.
The voice faded after a minute, but the bed began to bang up and down.
The closet door slammed open and shut with substantially more force than it had earlier.
Other things began to move too. For almost five minutes the room seemed to have come alive.
And then it died.
Silence returned.
The air grew warm again.
The frost left the window, and outside the white cat still chased the scrap of paper.
Chapter 9
问题
1. What’s the main idea of this chapter?
2. After reading this chapter, what impressed you most?
翻译
1. The cat pounced, missed its prey, stumbled, scared itself, and flashed lightning-quick into another yard.
2. For a few seconds the silence was split by an electronic squeal as sharp as an ax blade.
3. The radio ceased scanning, stopping on an open frequency that hissed and popped with distant static.
思考
The radio clicked on.
The bed shook.
Silence returned.
作者安排许多短句自成一段，寓意何在？
