and since all were silent inside the gray building but for the ubiquitous soft cackles and the cackles were so uniform they had neither place nor origin and their sources went undifferentiated , and footsteps were pondered and suffocated by the slow bloodflows and the caked bloods , and lights were dimmed and all who drew silent breath were perfectly absorbed into blindness in their holistic veneration of the sacrifice , no one had any way of discerning anothers movement or position relative to themselves .