...of terror

Then the music stopped and there was silence. It wasn't the simple silence that sometimes comes when you are in the world the silence which is merely the absence of noise. It wasn't even the silence that comes to deaf people. It was something like the silence you hear when you put a seashell to your ear the silence of time itself that is so great it makes a noise. It was a silence like thunder in the distance. It was silence so dense that it ceased to be silence. It changed from a thing to a thought and in the end it was only fear.

[Johnny Got His Gun, Trumbo, D.]