Aftershocks [antikvár]

CHAPTER 1 The four-poster bucked Harrison Barnes White to the hardwood floor and then attacked him. White - dodged the bed by rolling away, spinning himself into his bedclothes like a crepe suzette. But the four-poster reared like a stallion, landed like a wrecking ball, and pinned him to the floor, which gave way under him and then delivered an uppercut to his flailing body. After that the floor lurched sideways, like a rocking cradle, heaving him this way and that. He felt sheets tear under him. He heard glass shattering and the tinkle of shards on the maple flooring. A strange, unearthly thunder rose from the bowels of the earth, the sound of a thousand cataracts, punctuated with cannon and rifle shots. The humping of the floor slowed, and the rhythm seemed almost predictable, except when it wasn't, and another unseen fist poked him in the gut. Then the thunderous noise retreated outside, but he heard it echoing over the peninsula as if it had come from the core of the earth. The spacious house bounced and its members groaned and creaked and snapped as the unseen force toyed with its two thousand nails. He could not believe what he had experienced and knew he could never describe it because no words, in any tongue, existed to convey it to any other mortal. The house returned to its foundations, and rocked gently, the rhythm a memory of the previous moments, and then settled into resignation. Bits of plaster landed on him. He felt the night air, cool and fresh off the Pacific, eddy through the room. A predawn light filled the heavens. He reckoned it was about five, and a unique way to begin an April day.