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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 . . .
His face was powdered to white, his lips painted red. Ruislip, the Fop’s opponent, looked like the kind of dream one might have if one fell asleep watching sumo wrestling on the television with a Bob Marley record playing in the background.
Richard was thunderstruck: it had been like watching Emma Peel, Bruce Lee, and a particularly vicious tornado, all rolled into one and sprinkled with a generous helping of footage he had once seen on a wildlife program of a mongoose killing a king cobra.
She had a remarkable scream: it could, with no artificial assistance, go through your head like a new power drill with a bone-saw attachment. And amplified . . . It was simply unearthly.
“As old as my tongue,” said Hunter, primly, “and a little older than my teeth.”
Hammersmith enveloped Richard’s hand in one several sizes up. His handshake was enthusiastic, but very gentle, as if he had, in the past, had a number of accidents shaking hands, and had practiced it until he got it right.
He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile, into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.
