在寂靜的深夜，躲在被窩里讀一本驚悚小說，可謂一件賞心樂事；但如果就在你深深陷入故事情節(jié)當(dāng)中之時，從房間的黑暗角落里突然發(fā)出吱吱怪響……

By William Arthur Delaney

王丁玎 選注

We lived in a two-story wooden house in a part of Berkeley[1] where the tall shade trees were as old as the University of California itself.

I was a bookworm, the kind who would read with a flashlight[2] under the covers after he was supposed to be asleep. Occasionally, I would be left alone at night, and I would lie on my stomach with my book propped on my pillow, immersed in fantasy as only an imaginative boy can be immersed in the creations of writers like Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and, of course, Edgar Allan Poe.[3]

My bed lamp hooked over the headboard was the only light on in the entire house, and my bed was like Robinson Crusoe’s island.[4]

Whenever I was home alone like that, I would hope I could enjoy my snug solitude until I heard our car outside, the front door opening downstairs, and had my evening of pleasure capped with a glass of milk and a peanut-butter-and-marmalade sandwich.[5] But sometimes I was disturbed by noises I would try my best to ignore.[6]

One of the noises was an eerie creaking—a prolonged ee-ee-ahh-ahh—which, try as I might, I couldn’t help imagining was the sound of a secret door being opened by a hooded figure who shared the house with us and only came out when he knew I was alone.

There it was again—that ee-ee-ahh-ahh, so much like rusty hinges.[7] And occasionally there was something much worse—the clump[8], clump, clump that seemed to be coming up the stairs. It was no good trying to retreat back into whatever I had been reading. The words under the glaring light bulb became as incomprehensible as hieroglyphics.[9]

The ensuing[10] silence was just as bad, because I kept listening even more intently for the next creak or clump, or imagining that whoever was making those noises had decided to be more careful so as not to alarm me. Then I might only hear a click or a tick ... or a tap.[11]

I suffered through these episodes[12] of terror for several years. But then one night—about the time I was entering puberty[13] —something unexpected came over me, making me feel as if I were a different person. I suddenly became outraged at the thought that I should be trembling there in my own bed imagining creatures that not only had no business trespassing in my house—my house!—but probably didn’t even exist.[14]

I flung aside the covers, jumped out of bed, pulled my door open, and stomped out to the top of the stairway,[15] ready to confront the worst and order it to be gone. “Present fears,” as Shakespeare says, “are less than horrible imaginings.” When we face our fears they shrink in size or turn out to have been nothing but illusions.

The staircase[16] was empty. They were the same familiar, green-carpeted steps I had seen a million times before. With newfound courage, I skipped down to the landing, made a 90-degree turn, and continued to the bottom. Everything looked exactly the same as usual.

Without even switching on any lights, I turned right and walked through the living room with all its shadows and bulky furniture, through the dining room with its oval table surrounded by empty high-backed chairs, across the cold linoleum of our big kitchen in my bare feet, and back into the front hallway, which was furnished only with a little three-legged table and a tall free-standing antique coat rack nobody ever used.[17] Everything was dark but friendly and familiar.

This was my home. All of it was mine. And any intruder had better watch out for me. I had come of age[18].

That house—with its generously proportioned rooms, its superfluous glass-front cabinets, its rows of long bookshelves filled with complete sets of venerable authors like Charles Dickens and Mark Twain as well as the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Harvard Classics, its cozy window seats, and its neighborly front porch—is still standing on the corner.[19] But it has been converted to a rooming house for college students.[20]

I used to see one boy silhouetted against the drawn blind, studying into the wee hours in my former bedroom on the top floor, and I wondered if he was ever troubled by weird sounds while reading something like The Cask of Amontillado or The Fall of the House of Usher.[21] I could have told him they were only the sounds of an old house growing older. The heavy beams[22] could be forgiven for creaking under the weight they were supporting so faithfully. The squeaks and squeals, as I had long since realized, were only the protests of tenacious old iron nails being tugged by weathering lumber.[23]

Vocabulary

1. Berkeley: 伯克利，美國加利福尼亞州西部城市。

2. flashlight: 手電筒。

3. 本句中提到的作家依次為英國小說家羅伯特?路易斯?史蒂文森、英國小說家亨利?賴德?哈格德、英國作家阿瑟?柯南?道爾爵士和美國小說家埃德加?愛倫?坡。prop: 支撐；immerse: 沉浸。

4. hook: 鉤住，吊住；headboard床頭板；Robinson Crusoe:魯賓遜?克魯索，是英國18世紀(jì)重要作家丹尼爾?笛福（Daniel Defoe）所著小說《魯濱遜漂流記》中的敘述者和主人公，該作品是一部流傳很廣、影響很大的文學(xué)名著。

5. snug: 溫暖而舒適的；solitude: 獨(dú)處，孤獨(dú)；be capped with: 為……籠罩；peanut-butter-and-marmalade sandwich: 花生果醬三明治。

6. eerie: 可怕的；creaking: 嘎吱聲；hooded: 戴頭巾的。

7. rusty: 生銹了的；hinge: 鉸鏈。

8. clump: 笨重的腳步聲。

9. 那些單詞在電燈泡刺眼的強(qiáng)光下變得如象形文字般難以理解。

10. ensuing: 接下來的。

11. click: 卡嗒聲；tick: （鐘的）嘀嗒聲；tap: 輕敲。

12. episode: 片段，情節(jié)。

13. puberty: 青春期。

14. outraged: 憤怒的；trespass: 擅入，侵占。

15. fling: 拋，扔；stomp: 跺腳，重踏。

16. staircase: 樓梯。

17. bulky: 龐大笨重的；oval橢圓形的；high-backed: 高椅背的；linoleum: 油地毯；free-standing: 不需依靠支撐物的；antique: 古舊的；rack: 衣架。

18. come of age: 達(dá)到法定年齡。

19. 本句提到的作家和書籍依次為查爾斯?狄更斯、莎士比亞和《不列顛百科全書》和《哈佛經(jīng)典》。superfluous: 過多的；venerable: 令人尊重的。

20. convert: 改變?yōu)椋籸ooming house: 公寓。

21.本句提到的小說為埃德加?愛倫?坡的兩部小說《阿芒提拉多的酒桶》和《厄舍古屋的倒塌》。silhouette: 使現(xiàn)出輪廓；blind: 百葉窗；wee: 極小的。

22. beam: 梁，柱。

23. 正如我很早就認(rèn)識到的，那些吱吱聲和尖叫聲只不過是頑固的舊鐵釘被自然老化的家具猛拉時發(fā)出的抗議而已。tenacious: 粘住的，抓牢的。

（來源：英語學(xué)習(xí)雜志）