The Delayed Awareness of Screaming

The author does a strange thing with screaming in this book. He has a lot of the characters screaming at different points but he does it in a really weird way.  Here are a few:

pg 129

"It is no wonder that you are yawning, the sergeant said..."

"I was only screaming, I blurted."

pg 140

"When nearly on the threshold I was arrested in my step by a call from the sergeant which rose nearly to the pitch of a woman's scream."

pg 162

"Here from my throat bounded a sharp cry rising to a scream."

The way the passages are written, it's almost as if the characters (and the reader) only become aware of the scream AFTER it's already happening. Like it slowly dawns on them that someone, or they themselves, are screaming. As a reader, you get set up with a scene or an image and then you have to go back and re-imagine it, this time with screaming.

On pg 129, you are given the yawn image and then the scream comes in as a shock. On pg 140, you can hear the sergeant "calling" which all the sudden transforms into a scream. And on 162, the scream comes flying out of the narrator on it's own. (This one is a little different from the delayed awareness angle, but still very creepy.)