aunt evvie chalmers lived close by , and tad 's shouts of terrified glee were the last sounds she heard as she died ; her heart gave out , one of its paper-thin , walls breaching suddenly ( and almost painlessly ) as she sat in her kitchen chair , a cup of coffee by one hand and a straight-eight herbert tareyton by the other ; she leaned back and her vision darkened and somewhere she heard a child crying , and for a moment it seemed that the cries were joyful , but as she went out , suddenly propelled as if by a hard but not unkind push from behind , it seemed to her that the child was screaming in fear , in agony ; then she was gone , and her niece abby would find her the following day , her coffee as cold as she was , her cigarette a perfect and delicate tube of ash , her lower plate protruding from her wrinkled mouth like a slot filled with teeth .