he'd been sitting the picture folded up and went outaltogether, plunging the room into total darkness. Harrybriefly had time to register that no light was finding itsway through the windows from the street. Then theinsanity began.

Something moved in the blackness: vague forms roseand fell. It took him a moment to recognise them. Theflowers! Invisible hands were tearing the wreaths andtributes apart, and tossing the blossoms up into theair. He followed their descent, but they didn't hit theground. It seemed the floorboards had lost all faith inthemselves, and disappeared, so the blossoms just keptfalling - down, down - through the floor of the roombelow, and through the basement floor, away to Godalone knew what destination. Fear gripped Harry, likesome old dope-pusher promising a terrible high. Eventhose few boards that remained beneath his feet werebecoming insubstantial. In seconds he would go the wayof the blossoms.

He reeled around to locate the chair he'd got up from- some fixed point in this vertiginous nightmare. Thechair was still there; he could just discern its form in thegloom. With torn blossoms raining down upon him hereached for it, but even as his hand took hold of the arm,the floor beneath the chair gave up the ghost, and now,by a ghastly light that was thrown up from the pit thatyawned beneath his feet, Harry saw it tumble away intoHell, turning over and over 'til it was pin-prick small.

Then it was gone; and the flowers were gone, and thewalls and the windows and every damn thing was gonebut him.

Not quite everything. Swann's casket remained, itslid still standing open, its overlay neatly turned backlike the sheet on a child's bed. The trestle had gone,as had the floor beneath the trestle. But the casketfloated in the dark air for all the world like somemorbid illusion, while from the depths a rumblingsound accompanied the trick like the roll of a snare-