Vestiges

All of a sudden, during a brief hesitation in their game, one of the children screamed. It was a singular utterance as abrupt and violent as a sneeze, yet resounding enough to rattle the walls. The others huddled together in the far corner of the room and sat watching in mute awe as the strange cry reverberated around them. The whole house trembled for several long minutes. Gradually the shaking dwindled to a slight, moribund vibration; and the remnants of that scream—its vestiges which still ricocheted softly within the interstices of the house—began to emerge after a while in a series of plump, colorless disks. The disks joined together one after the other until they formed a slender cord that resembled a rat’s tail. It twisted there briefly like a ribbon in the wind, then flew away in an instant, leaving a trail of echoes