FRIC IN A QUANDARY1, LYING FACEDOWN ON the sofa, looked at the telephone on the library floor. He had moved it from the writing desk to the maximum length of its cord.
He’d relocated it for extra security, in the event that he needed to make a quick call for help.
While that was true, it represented only part of the truth. He also toyed with the idea of keying in *69.
Fric didn’t embrace self-destruction. He wasn’t one of those Hollywood brats2 who were eager to grow up and become a rich heroin3 junkie. He had no intention of killing4 himself with a sports car, a handgun, a shotgun, diet pills, hard liquor, marijuana-induced lung cancer, or women.
Sometimes during a party, when Palazzo Rospo was crawling with hundreds of famous and semifamous and craving-to-be-famous people, Fric made himself invisible, the better to eavesdrop5. In a crowd of that kind, you could easily become invisible, because half of the guests were barely aware of anyone but themselves, anyway, and the other half were intently focused on the handful of directors, agents, and studio honchos who could make them either filthy6 rich or filthier7 rich than they already were.
[316] During one of these spells of invisibility, Fric had heard it said of the third—or possibly the fourth—biggest movie star in the world that “the stupid prick8 will kill himself with women, the way he’s going.” Fric had no slightest idea how one could kill oneself with women, or why a suicidal person would not just buy a pistol.
That intriguing9 statement had remained with him, however, and he intended to be careful. These days, when he met new women, he studied them surreptitiously for indications that they were the potentially dangerous type.
Until this weird10 night, he had likewise never imagined that death could be rung up just by pressing *69.
Maybe what came through the phone would not kill him. Maybe it would imprison11 his soul and take control of his body and make him so miserable12 that he would wish he were dead.
Or perhaps it would take control of him and run him headfirst into a brick wall, into an open cesspool (assuming an open cesspool could be found in Bel Air), off the roof of Palazzo Rospo, or into the arms of a deadly blonde (with which Bel Air apparently13 was infested).
His quandary was that he didn’t know whether to believe anything that Mysterious Caller had said.
On the one hand, the entire rap about being a guardian14 angel, about moving by mirrors and moonlight—it might all be a shitload of nonsense. A bigger pile even than Ghost Dad’s unicorn15 movie.
On the other hand—and there was always another hand—Mysterious Caller had walked out of a mirror. He had flown through the rafters. His performance in the attic—and later in the shiny surfaces of the Christmas-tree ornaments—had been so incredible that it had earned him some credibility.
Yet what kind of guardian angel wore a suit and tie straight out of a big-bucks Rodeo Drive shop, had skin as pale as fish flesh, looked a lot less holy than scary, and had gray eyes as cold as ashes in ice?
[317] Possibly Mysterious Caller, for reasons unknown, had been lying, leading Fric toward wrong conclusions, setting him up. ... He’d once overheard his father say that virtually everyone in this town was setting someone up for a fall, that if they weren’t doing it for money, then they were doing it for sport.
Mysterious Caller said Fric must not use *69 because it would connect him with the dark eternity16. Maybe the truth was that the guy just didn’t want Fric to try tracking him.
Still belly-down on the sofa, leaning out toward the phone, Fric picked up the handset. He pressed the button for his private line.
He listened to the dial tone.
The angels on the tree looked like angels. You could trust an angel with a harp17, with a trumpet18, wearing white, sporting wings.
He pressed * and 6 and 9.
The phone was picked up not on the fourth ring, as it had been previously19, but on the first. No one said hello. As before, only silence greeted him.
Then, after a few seconds, he heard breathing.
Fric intended to outwait the breather, make the pervert20 speak first. After twenty or thirty seconds, however, he grew so nervous that he said, “It’s me again.”
His concession21 didn’t bring a response.
Trying to strike a light and somewhat jokey tone, but largely failing, Fric asked, “How’re things in the dark eternity?”
The breathing grew rougher, heavier.
“You know—the dark eternity?” Fric asked tauntingly23 but also with a faint tremor24 that he could not control and that put the lie to his pose of bold self-assurance. “Also known on some maps as the bottomless abyss. Or the darkness visible.”
The freak continued to breathe at him.
“You don’t sound so good. You have a bad sinus thing going on there,” said Fric.
[318] With his head hanging over the edge of the sofa, he began to feel a little dizzy.
“I’ll give you my doctor’s name. He’ll write a prescription25. You’ll be able to breathe better. You’ll thank me.”
A creaking-grinding voice, issuing from a throat clogged26 with razor blades, drier than the ashes of ashes twice burnt, arising from a terrible depth, through crevices27 in the broken stones of strange ruins, said just one word: “Boy.”
In Fric’s ear, the word crawled as if it were an insect, maybe one of those earwigs that legend said could find its way into your brain and lay eggs in there, transforming you into a walking hive filled with squirming legions.
Remembering all those posters of his father looking noble and brave and full of steely resolve, Fric held fast to the phone. He summoned an iron weight of determination to press the wrinkles of fear from his voice, and he said, “You don’t scare me.”
“Boy,” the other repeated, “boy,” and additional voices arose on the phone, initially28 just four or five, at a lower volume than the first, male and female, punctuating29 their gabble with “boy ... boy.” Their voices were urgent, eager. Desperate. Voices whispery and smooth, voices rough. “... who’s there?” “... the way, he’s the way …” “... sweet flesh ...” “... stupid little piglet, easy for the taking ...” “... ask me in ...” “... ask me ...” “... no, ask me ...” In seconds their numbers swelled30 to a dozen, a score, a crowd. Maybe because they were all talking at once, their speech sounded as though it descended32 into bestial33 mutterings and snarls34, and what words remained were as often as not obscenities strung together in incoherent sequences. Chilling cries of fear, pain, frustration35, and raw anger sewed these rags of raucous36 noise into a tapestry37 of need.
Fric’s strong heart rapped hard against his ribs38, pulsed in his throat, throbbed39 in his temples. He had claimed not to be scared, but he was scared, all right, too scared to come up with a single smart-ass remark or to speak at all.
[319] Yet the churning voices intrigued40 him, compelled his attention. The hunger in them, the intense yearning41, the pitiful desperation, the melancholy42 longing43 wove a poignant44 song that strummed the cords of his abiding45 loneliness, that spoke46 to him and assured him that he need not suffer solitude47, that companionship was his for the asking, that purpose and meaning and family were all his if only he would open his heart to them.
Even when wordless, when bursting with ripe obscenities that ought to have repelled48 Fric, the guttural chorus, full of growl49 and hiss50, steadily51 soothed52 his terror. His heart continued to pound, but moment by moment, the power driving its frenzied53 hammering was less fear than excitement. Everything could change. Utterly54. Completely. Now and forever. Change in an instant. He could have a new life and a better one simply for the asking, a life from which all loneliness would be banished56, all uncertainty57, all confusion and self-doubt and weakness. ...
Fric opened his mouth to issue what all but certainly would have been an invitation similar to those that users of a Ouija board were well advised to avoid. Before he could speak, he was distracted by movement at the periphery58 of his vision.
When he turned to look at what had drawn59 his attention, Fric saw that the stretchy, coiled cord between the handset and the telephone, once a clean white length of vinyl-coated wires, now appeared to be organic, pink and slick, like that rope of tissue that tied a mother to a newborn baby. A pulse throbbed through the cord, slow and thick, but strong, moving from the phone box on the floor to the handset that he held, toward his ear, as if in anticipation60 of the invitation that trembled on his tongue.
Sitting at the desk in his study, eating a ham sandwich, trying to puzzle meaning from Reynerd’s six taunting22 gifts, Ethan found his thoughts drifting repeatedly to Duncan Whistler.
[320] In the garden room at Our Lady of Angels, when he had initially learned that Dunny’s body had gone missing, he had known intuitively that the uncanny events at Reynerd’s apartment and Dunny’s dead-man-walking stunt61 were related. Later, Dunny’s apparent involvement in the murder of Reynerd, though unexpected, had been no surprise.
What did surprise Ethan, the more he thought about it, was the close encounter with Dunny in the hotel bar.
More than coincidence must be involved. Dunny had been in the bar because Ethan was in the bar. He had been meant to see Dunny.
If he’d been meant to see Dunny, then he’d been meant to follow him. Perhaps he had also been meant to catch up with Dunny.
Outside the hotel, in the bustle62 and the rain, unable to get a glimpse of his quarry63, Ethan had received the urgent phone call from Hazard. Now he paused to think what he would have done next, if he had not been obliged to meet Hazard at the church.
He obtained the number of the hotel from information and called it. “I’d like to speak to one of your guests. I don’t know his room number. The name’s Duncan Whistler.”
After a pause to check the hotel computer, the desk clerk said, “I’m sorry, sir, but we have no registration64 for Mr. Whistler.”
Previously, only a few table lamps had been lit here and there throughout the big room, but now all the lamps glowed, as did the ceiling lights, the cove65 lights, and the looping strings66 of tiny twinkle bulbs on the Christmas tree. The library had been nearly as purged67 of shadows as any surgery would have been; but it was still not bright enough for Fric.
He had returned the phone to the desk. He’d unplugged it.
He supposed that the phones were ringing in his third-floor rooms and that they would ring for a long while. He wasn’t going to go up there to listen. When Hell was calling, it could be persistent68.
[321] He had dragged an armchair close to the Christmas tree. Close to the angels.
Maybe he was being superstitious69, childish, stupid. He didn’t care. Those desperate people on that phone, those things ...
He sat with his back to the tree because he figured that nothing could come through all those branches full of roosting angels to take him by surprise from behind.
If he had not earlier lied to Mr. Truman, he could now have gone directly down to the security chief’s apartment to seek help.
Here in Fricburg, USA, the time was always high noon, and the sheriff could not expect backup from the townsfolk when the gang of outlaws70 rode in for the showdown.
Ethan concluded his conversation with the hotel desk clerk and picked up the remaining wedge of his ham sandwich, but one of his two phone lines rang before he could take a bite.
When he answered the call, he was met with silence. He said, “Hello,” again, but failed to elicit71 a response.
He wondered if this might be Fric’s pervert.
He heard no heavy breathing, suggestive or otherwise. Only the hollowness of an open line and a hiss of static so thin as to be just this side of subaudible.
Ethan rarely received calls this late: nearly midnight. Because of the hour and the events of this day, he found even silence to be significant.
Whether instinct or imagination was at work, he could not be sure, but he sensed a presence on the line.
During the years that he had carried a badge, he’d conducted enough stakeouts to learn patience. He listened to the listener, trading silence for silence.
Time passed. Ham waited. Still hungry, Ethan also grew thirsty for a beer.
[322] Eventually, he heard a cry, repeated three times. The voice was faint neither because it whispered nor because it was feeble but because it arose from a great distance, so fragile that it might have been merely a mirage72 of sound.
More silence, more time, and then the voice rose again, no less frail73 than before, so ephemeral that Ethan could not confidently say whether it was the voice of a man or a woman. Indeed, it might have been the mournful cry of a bird or an animal, repeated three times again, with a damped quality similar to that provided by a filter of fog.
He had ceased to expect heavy breathing.
Although no louder than before, the quiet hiss of static had acquired a menacing quality, as though each soft tick represented the impact of a radioactive particle on his eardrum.
When the voice came a third time, it didn’t resort to the short cry that it had previously repeated. Ethan detected patterns of sound surely meant to convey meaning. Words. Not quite comprehensible.
As though broadcast from a distant radio station into an ether troubled by storms, these words were distorted by fading, by drift, by scratchy atmospherics. A voice out of time might sound like this, or one sent by spacefarers from the night side of Saturn74.
He didn’t remember leaning far forward in his chair. Neither did he recall when his arms had slid off the arms of the chair nor when he had propped75 his elbows on his knees. Yet here he sat in this compacted posture76, both hands to his head, one holding the phone, like a man humbled77 by remorse78 or bent79 by despair upon the receipt of terrible news.
Although Ethan strained to capture the content of the faraway speaker’s conversation, it continuously sifted80 through him without sticking, as elusive81 as cloud shadows projected by moonlight upon a rolling seascape.
Indeed, when he struggled the hardest to find meaning in these [323] might-be words, they receded82 farther behind a screen of static and distortion. He suspected that if he relaxed, the flow of speech might clarify, the voice grow stronger, but he could not relax. Although he pressed the handset to his head with such force that his ear ached, he was unable to relent; as if a brief moment of less-intense focus would prove to be the very instant when the words would come clearly, but only to he who faithfully attended them.
The voice possessed83 a plaintive84 quality. Although unable to grasp the words and deduce their meaning, Ethan detected an urgent and beseeching85 tone, and perhaps a yearning sadness.
When he assumed that he had spent five minutes striving without success to net those words from the sea of static and silence, Ethan glanced at his wristwatch. 12:26. He had been riveted86 to the phone for nearly half an hour.
Having been crushed so long against the earpiece, his ear burned and throbbed. His neck felt stiff, his shoulders ached.
Surprised and somewhat disoriented, he sat up straight in his chair. He had never been hypnotized; but he imagined that this must be how it would feel to shake off the lingering effects of a trance.
Reluctantly, he put down the phone.
The suggestion of a voice in the void might have been that and nothing more, merely a suggestion, an audial illusion. Yet he had pursued it with the single-minded sweaty expectation of a submarine sonar operator listening for the ping of an approaching battleship as it off-loaded depth charges.
He didn’t quite understand what he’d done. Or why.
Although the room was not excessively warm, he blotted87 his brow with his shirt sleeve.
He expected the phone to ring again. Perhaps he would be wise not to answer it.
That thought disturbed him because he didn’t understand it. Why not answer a ringing phone?
[324] His gaze traveled across the six items from Reynerd, but his attention settled longest on the three small bells from the ambulance in which he’d never ridden.
When the phone had not rung after two or three minutes, he switched on the computer and again accessed the telephone log. The most recent entry was the call that he had placed to the hotel to inquire about Dunny Whistler.
Subsequently, the call that he’d received, which had lasted nearly half an hour, had not registered in the log.
Impossible.
He stared at the screen, thinking about Fric’s calls from the heavy breather. He’d been too quick to dismiss the boy’s story.
When Ethan glanced at the phone, he discovered the indicator88 light aglow89 at Line 24.
Sales call. Wrong number. And yet ...
Had it been easy to satisfy his curiosity, he would have gone up to the third floor where the answering machine serving Line 24 was isolated90 in a special chamber91 behind a locked blue door. By the very act of entering that room, however, he would be surrendering his job.
To Ming du Lac and Charming Manheim, the room behind the blue door was a sacred place. Entry by anyone but them had been forbidden.
In the event of an emergency, Ethan was authorized92 to use his master key anywhere in the house. The only door that it didn’t open was the blue one.
A flock of angels, the pleasant smell of spruce, and the comfort of the huge armchair could not lull93 Fric into sleep.
He got out of the chair, ventured warily94 to the nearest shelves of books, and selected a novel.
Although ten, he read at a sixteen-year-old level. He took no pride in this, for in his experience, most sixteen-year-olds, these days, weren’t whiz kids, probably because no one expected them to be.
[325] Even Ms. Dowd, his English and reading tutor, didn’t expect him to enjoy books; she doubted they were good for him. She said books were relics95; the future would be shaped by images, not by words. In fact, she believed in “memes,” which she pronounced meems and defined as ideas that arose spontaneously among “informed people” and spread mind-to-mind among the populace, like a mental virus, creating “new ways of thinking.”
Ms. Dowd visited Fric four times a week, and after each session, she left behind enough manure96 to fertilize97 the lawns and flower beds of the estate for at least a year.
In the armchair once more, Fric discovered that he couldn’t concentrate well enough to become involved in the story. This didn’t mean that books were obsolete98, only that he was tired and scared.
He sat for a while, waiting for a meme to pop into his mind and give him something radically99 new to think about, something that would blow out of his head all thoughts of Moloch, child sacrifices, and strange men who traveled by mirrors. Apparently, however, there was currently no même epidemic100 underway.
As his eyes began to feel hot and grainy but no heavier, he took from a pocket of his jeans the photo that had been passed to him out of a mirror. He unfolded the picture and smoothed it on his leg.
The lady looked even prettier than he remembered. Not supermodel beautiful, but pretty in a real way. Kind and gentle.
He wondered who she was. He spun101 a story for himself about what life would be like if this woman were his mother and if her husband were his father. He felt a little guilty for dumping Nominal102 Mom and Ghost Dad out of this imaginary life, but they lived make-believe, so he didn’t think they would begrudge103 him a fantasy family for one night.
After a while, the smile of the woman in the photo fostered a smile in Fric, which was better than catching104 a meme.
Later, when Fric was living with his new mom and her husband, whom he had not yet met, in a cozy105 cottage in Goose Crotch, [326] Montana, where no one knew who he had once been, the gray-eyed mirror man stepped out of the shine on the side of a toaster, patted the dog on the head, and warned that it would be dangerous to *69 him. “If an angel uses the idea of a phone to call me,” Fric said, “and then if I star sixty-nine him, why would I be connected to a place like Hell instead of to Heaven?” Instead of answering the question, the man breathed a dragon’s snort of fire at him and disappeared back through the shine on the toaster. The flames singed106 Fric’s clothes and caused wisps of smoke to rise from him, but he wasn’t set afire. His wonderful new mother poured him another glass of lemonade to cool him off, and they continued to talk about favorite books as he ate a fat slice of the homemade chocolate cake that she had baked for him.
In a tumultuous darkness filled first with gunfire and the roar of approaching engines, then with a voice crying out of a void, Ethan turned and turned, tumbling across wet blacktop, until he turned one last time into a quiet darkness of damp tangled107 sheets.
Sitting up in bed, he said, “Hannah,” for in sleep, where all his psychological defenses were removed, he had recognized her voice as the one that he had heard on the telephone.
Initially, she had repeated the same cry three times, and then three times again. In sleep, he had recognized the word, his name: “Ethan ... Ethan ... Ethan.”
What else she had said to him, the urgent message that she had struggled to convey across the gulf108 between them, continued to elude109 him. Even in sleep, that room next door to death, he had not been close enough to Hannah to hear more than his name.
As the shrouds110 of sleep slipped off him, Ethan was overcome by a conviction that he was being watched.
Every child knows well the feeling of waking from a dream to the perception that the bedroom darkness grants cover to vicious fiends of innumerable descriptions and appetites. The presence of demons111 [327] seemed so real that many a small hand had hesitated on a lamp switch, for fear that seeing would be even worse than the images that the fevered imagination provided; yet always the terrors evaporated in the light.
Ethan wasn’t sure that light would banish55 unreason this time. He sensed that what watched him were owls112 and crack-beaked crows, ravens113 and fierce-eyed hawks114, that they perched not on his furniture but in somber115 black-and-white photographs on the walls, pictures that hadn’t hung there when he’d gone to sleep. Although hours ago the night had melted into the predawn blackness of a new day, he had no reason to suppose that Tuesday would be less stained by irrationality116 than Monday had been.
He didn’t reach for the lamp switch. He reclined once more, head upon his pillows, resigned to the presence of whatever the darkness might conceal117.
He doubted that he would be able to doze31 off again. Sooner than later, however, his eyes grew heavy.
On the rim118 of sleep’s whirlpool, as Ethan drifted lazily around, around, he heard from time to time a tick-tick-tick that might have been the talons119 of sentinel crows as they shifted position on an iron fence. Or perhaps it was only claws of cold rain scratching at the windows.
As he began to revolve120 more rapidly around the relentless121 pull of black-hole gravity that was sleep, Ethan’s eyes fluttered one last time, and he noticed a small light in the lampblack gloom. The phone. Without investigation122, he couldn’t with certainty identify the number of the indicator light, but he knew instinctively123 that it must be Line 24.
He slid off the rim of the whirlpool, into the vortex, down into whatever dreams might come.
收听单词发音 |
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quandary
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| n.困惑，进迟两难之境 | |
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brats
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| n.调皮捣蛋的孩子( brat的名词复数 ) | |
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heroin
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| n.海洛因 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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eavesdrop
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| v.偷听，倾听 | |
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filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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filthier
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| filthy（肮脏的，污秽的）的比较级形式 | |
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prick
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| v.刺伤，刺痛，刺孔；n.刺伤，刺痛 | |
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intriguing
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| adj.有趣的；迷人的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的现在分词)；激起…的好奇心 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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imprison
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| vt.监禁，关押，限制，束缚 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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unicorn
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| n.(传说中的)独角兽 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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harp
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| n.竖琴；天琴座 | |
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trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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pervert
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| n.堕落者，反常者；vt.误用，滥用；使人堕落，使入邪路 | |
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concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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taunting
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| 嘲讽( taunt的现在分词 )； 嘲弄； 辱骂； 奚落 | |
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tauntingly
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| 嘲笑地，辱骂地； 嘲骂地 | |
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tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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prescription
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| n.处方，开药；指示，规定 | |
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clogged
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crevices
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initially
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| adv.最初，开始 | |
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punctuating
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| v.（在文字中）加标点符号，加标点( punctuate的现在分词 )；不时打断某事物 | |
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swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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doze
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| v.打瞌睡；n.打盹，假寐 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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bestial
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| adj.残忍的；野蛮的 | |
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snarls
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| n.（动物的）龇牙低吼( snarl的名词复数 )；愤怒叫嚷（声）；咆哮（声）；疼痛叫声v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的第三人称单数 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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raucous
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| adj.(声音)沙哑的，粗糙的 | |
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tapestry
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| n.挂毯，丰富多采的画面 | |
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ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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39
throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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40
intrigued
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| adj.好奇的，被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式)；激起…的兴趣或好奇心；“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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41
yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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42
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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43
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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44
poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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45
abiding
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| adj.永久的，持久的，不变的 | |
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46
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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47
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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48
repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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49
growl
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| v.（狗等）嗥叫，（炮等）轰鸣；n.嗥叫，轰鸣 | |
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50
hiss
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| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
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51
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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52
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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53
frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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54
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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55
banish
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| vt.放逐，驱逐；消除，排除 | |
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56
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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57
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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58
periphery
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| n.(圆体的)外面；周围 | |
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59
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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60
anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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61
stunt
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| n.惊人表演，绝技，特技；vt.阻碍...发育，妨碍...生长 | |
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62
bustle
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| v.喧扰地忙乱，匆忙，奔忙；n.忙碌；喧闹 | |
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63
quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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64
registration
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| n.登记，注册，挂号 | |
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65
cove
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| n.小海湾，小峡谷 | |
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66
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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67
purged
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| 清除（政敌等）( purge的过去式和过去分词 )； 涤除（罪恶等）； 净化（心灵、风气等）； 消除（错事等）的不良影响 | |
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68
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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69
superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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70
outlaws
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| 歹徒，亡命之徒( outlaw的名词复数 )； 逃犯 | |
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71
elicit
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| v.引出,抽出,引起 | |
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72
mirage
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| n.海市蜃楼，幻景 | |
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73
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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74
Saturn
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| n.农神，土星 | |
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75
propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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76
posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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77
humbled
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| adj. 卑下的，谦逊的，粗陋的 vt. 使 ... 卑下，贬低 | |
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78
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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79
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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80
sifted
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| v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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81
elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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82
receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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83
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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84
plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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85
beseeching
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| adj.恳求似的v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的现在分词 ) | |
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86
riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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87
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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88
indicator
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| n.指标；指示物，指示者；指示器 | |
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89
aglow
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| adj.发亮的；发红的；adv.发亮地 | |
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90
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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91
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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92
authorized
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| a.委任的，许可的 | |
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93
lull
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| v.使安静，使入睡，缓和，哄骗；n.暂停，间歇 | |
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94
warily
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| adv.留心地 | |
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95
relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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96
manure
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| n.粪，肥，肥粒；vt.施肥 | |
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97
fertilize
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| v.使受精，施肥于，使肥沃 | |
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98
obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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99
radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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100
epidemic
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| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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101
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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102
nominal
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| adj.名义上的；(金额、租金)微不足道的 | |
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103
begrudge
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| vt.吝啬，羡慕 | |
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104
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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105
cozy
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| adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的 | |
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106
singed
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| v.浅表烧焦( singe的过去式和过去分词 )；（毛发）燎，烧焦尖端[边儿] | |
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107
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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108
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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109
elude
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| v.躲避，困惑 | |
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110
shrouds
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| n.裹尸布( shroud的名词复数 )；寿衣；遮蔽物；覆盖物v.隐瞒( shroud的第三人称单数 )；保密 | |
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111
demons
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| n.恶人( demon的名词复数 )；恶魔；精力过人的人；邪念 | |
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112
owls
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| n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 ) | |
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113
ravens
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| n.低质煤；渡鸦( raven的名词复数 ) | |
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114
hawks
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| 鹰( hawk的名词复数 )； 鹰派人物，主战派人物 | |
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115
somber
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| adj.昏暗的，阴天的，阴森的，忧郁的 | |
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116
irrationality
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| n. 不合理，无理性 | |
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117
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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118
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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119
talons
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| n.（尤指猛禽的）爪( talon的名词复数 )；（如爪般的）手指；爪状物；锁簧尖状突出部 | |
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120
revolve
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| vi.(使)旋转；循环出现 | |
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121
relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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122
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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123
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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