Chapter 13

The students tend to stick close to campus. There is nothing for them to do in Blacksmith proper, no natural haunt orattraction. They have their own food, movies, music, theater, sports, conversation and sex. This is a town of drycleaning shops and opticians. Photos of looming¹ Victorian homes decorate the windows of real estate firms. Thesepictures have not changed in years. The homes are sold or gone or stand in other towns in other states. This is a townof tag sales and yard sales, the failed possessions arrayed in driveways and tended by kids.

　　Babette called me at my office in Centenary Hall. She said Heinrich had been down at the river, wearing hiscamouflage cap and carrying an Instamatic, to watch them drag for the bodies, and while he was there word camethat the Treadwells had been found alive but shaken in an abandoned cookie shack² at the Mid-Village Mall, a vastshopping center out on the interstate. Apparently³ they'd been wandering through the mall for two days, lost, confusedand frightened, before taking refuge in the littered kiosk. They spent two more days in the kiosk, the weak andfaltering sister venturing out to scavenge food scraps⁴ from the cartoon-character disposal baskets with swingingdoors. It was sheer luck that their stay at the mall coincided with a spell of mild weather. No one knew at this pointwhy they didn't ask for help. It was probably just the vastness and strangeness of the place and their own advancedage that made them feel helpless and adrift in a landscape of remote and menacing figures. The Treadwells didn't getout much. In fact no one yet knew how they'd managed to get to the mall. Possibly their grandniece had droppedthem off in her car and then forgotten to pick them up. The grandniece could not be reached, Babette said, forcomment.

　　The day before the happy discovery, the police had called in a psychic⁵ to help them determine the Treadwells'

　　whereabouts and fate. It was all over the local paper. The psychic was a woman who lived in a mobile home in awooded area outside town. She wished to be known only as Adele T. According to the paper, she and the police chief,Hollis Wright, sat in the mobile home while she looked at photos of the Treadwells and smelled articles from theirwardrobe. Then she asked the chief to leave her alone for an hour. She did exercises, ate some rice and dahl,proceeded to trance in. During this altered state, the report went on, she attempted to put a data trace on whateverdistant physical systems she wished to locate, in this case Old Man Treadwell and his sister. When chief Wrightre-entered the trailer, Adele T. told him to forget the river and to concentrate on dry land with a moonscape lookabout it, within a fifteen-mile radius⁶ of the Treadwell home. The police went at once to a gypsum processingoperation ten miles down river, where they found an airline bag that contained a handgun and two kilos of uncutheroin.

　　The police had consulted Adele T. on a number of occasions and she had led them to two bludgeoned bodies, aSyrian in a refrigerator and a cache of marked bills totaling six hundred thousand dollars, although in each instance,the report concluded, the police had been looking for something else.

　　The American mystery deepens.

1 looming   

n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近

参考例句：

• The foothills were looming ahead through the haze. 丘陵地带透过薄雾朦胧地出现在眼前。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Then they looked up. Looming above them was Mount Proteome. 接着他们往上看，在其上隐约看到的是蛋白质组山。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 回顾与展望

2 shack   

adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚

参考例句：

• He had to sit down five times before he reached his shack.在走到他的茅棚以前，他不得不坐在地上歇了五次。
• The boys made a shack out of the old boards in the backyard.男孩们在后院用旧木板盖起一间小木屋。

3 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

4 scraps   

油渣

参考例句：

• Don't litter up the floor with scraps of paper. 不要在地板上乱扔纸屑。
• A patchwork quilt is a good way of using up scraps of material. 做杂拼花布棉被是利用零碎布料的好办法。

5 psychic   

n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的

参考例句：

• Some people are said to have psychic powers.据说有些人有通灵的能力。
• She claims to be psychic and to be able to foretell the future.她自称有特异功能，能预知未来。

6 radius   

n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限

参考例句：

• He has visited every shop within a radius of two miles.周围两英里以内的店铺他都去过。
• We are measuring the radius of the circle.我们正在测量圆的半径。