...of stopped time

The bedstead holds a mattress, but no sheets or blankets. I place the child, with all possible care, onto this crude couch. He is still unconscious, with no sign of life except for a very faint breathing. His pulse is almost imperceptible. But his large eyes, remaining open, shine in the gloomy light.
I glance around for an electric switch or something else that might provide light. But I see nothing of the kind. I notice, at this point, that there isn't a single light - chandelier, shaded lamp or bare bulb - in the entire room.
I step back out on the landing and I call out, in a low voice at first, then louder. No answer whatsoever reaches my ears. The whole house is plunged into total silence, as though abandoned. I don't know what else to do. I am abandoned myself, outside of time.
Then, a sudden thought takes me back to the windows of the room: Where was the kid going on his brief run? He was crossing the road from one side to the other, straightaway. He might, therefore, live on the other side.
But, on the other side of the street there are no houses: only a long brick wall with no apparent opening at all. A little further on the left there is a fence in disrepair. I go back to the stairs and I call out again, still in vain. I listen to the pounding of my own heart. I have a very strong feeling, now, that time has stopped.
A faint creaking sound, in the room, calls me back to my patient. Two steps away from the bed I am jolted, instinctively recoiling. The boy is in exactly the same position as before, but now he has a large crucifix laid on his chest, a dark wooden cross with a silver Christ, that reaches from shoulder to waist.
I glance all around. There is no one but the child lying outstretched. So my first thought is that he himself is responsible for this macabre setting: he pretends to have fainted, but he moves when my back is turned. I examine his face very closely; his features are as frozen as those of a wax figure, and his complexion just as pallid. He looks like an effigy sculpted upon a tomb.
At that moment, looking up, I become aware of the presence of a second child, standing at the threshold of the room; a little girl of about seven or eight, motionless in the doorway. Her eyes are fixed upon me.
Where does she come from? How did she get here? No sound has signalled her approach. In the dim light, I clearly distinguish, nevertheless, her white, old-fashioned dress with fitted bodice and wide gathered skirt, full but rather stiff, falling all the way to her ankles.
"Hello," I say, "is your mama here?"
The girl keeps staring at me silently. The whole scene is so unreal, ghostly, frozen, that the sound of my own voice rings strangely off-key to me, unlikely, as it were, in this spell-bound atmosphere under the weird bluish light...
As there is nothing else to do but venture a few words, I force myself to speak this innocuous sentence:
"Your brother fell."
My syllables fall, too, awakening neither response nor echo, like useless objects deprived of sense. And silence closes in again. Have I really spoken? Cold, numbness, paralysis begin to spread through my limbs.

[Djinn, Robbe-Grillet, A.]