- Things to do. People to damage.
- London grew into something huge and contradictory. It was a good place, and a fine city, but there is a price to be paid for all good places, and a price that all good places have to pay.
- Richard had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.
-
- And then they set foot on Night's Bridge and Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light. He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gliding through his mind. It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth...
- With each step they took the light of the candle became dimmer. He realized the same thing was happening to the leather woman's flashlight. It felt not so much as if the lights were being turned down but as if the darkness were being turned up. Richard blinked, and opened his eyes on nothing—nothing but darkness, complete and utter. Sounds. A rustling, a squirming. Richard blinked, blinded by the night. The sounds were nastier, hungrier. Richard imagined he could hear voices: a horde of huge, misshapen trolls, beneath the bridge...
- Something slithered past them in the dark. "What's that?" squeaked Anaesthesia. Her hand was shaking in his.
- "Hush," whispered the woman. "Don't attract its attention."
- "What's happening?" whispered Richard.
- "Darkness is happening," said the leather woman, very quietly. "Night is happening. All the nightmares that have come out when the sun goes down, since the cave times, when we huddled together in fear for safety and for warmth, are happening. Now," she told them, "now is the time to be afraid of the dark." Richard knew that something was about to creep over his face. He closed his eyes: it made no difference to what he saw or felt. The night was complete. It was then that the hallucinations started.
- "I'm not scared of falling," he told himself. "The part I'm scared of is where you finish falling."
- "I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane."
aug 30 2014 ∞
sep 7 2014 +
sep 7 2014 +