Richard Matheson: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

It is too white I said all white and clean and silky.

No she said she was so mad and red it has a hole in it. I got more madder. If my momma was here shed show you I said. You got no momma she said all ugly. I hate her.

I have. I said it way loud. I pointed my finger to momma’s picture. Well who can see in this stupid dark room she said. I pushed her hard and she hit against the bureau. See then I said mean look at the picture. That’s my momma and she’s the most beautiful lady in the world.

She’s ugly she has funny hands Mary Jane said. She hasn’t I said she’s the most beautiful lady in the world!

Not not she said she has buck teeth.

I don’t remember then. I think the dress moved in my arms. Mary Jane screamed. I don’t remember what. It got dark and the curtains were closed I think I couldn’t see anyway. I couldn’t hear nothing except buck teeth funny hands buck teeth funny hands even when no one was saying it.

There was something else because I think I heard someone call don’t let her say that! I couldn’t hold to the dress. And I had it on me I can’t remember. Because I was grown up strong. But I was a little girl still I think I mean outside.

I think I was terrible bad then.

Granma took me away from there I guess. I don’t know. She was screaming god help us it’s happened it’s happened. Over and over. I don’t know why. She pulled me all the way here to my room and locked me in. She won’t let me out. Well I’m not so scared. Who cares if she locks me in a million billion years? She doesn’t have to even give me supper. I’m not hungry anyway.

I’m full.

The people on the block decided definitely that Jules was crazy when they heard about his composition.

There had been suspicions for a long time.

He made people shiver with his blank stare. His coarse guttural tongue sounded unnatural in his frail body. The paleness of his skin upset many children. It seemed to hang loose around his flesh. He hated sunlight.

And his ideas were a little out of place for the people who lived on the block.

Jules wanted to be a vampire.

People declared it common knowledge that he was born on a night when winds uprooted trees. They said he was born with three teeth. They said he’d used them to fasten himself on his mother’s breast drawing blood with the milk.

They said he used to cackle and bark in his crib after dark. They said he walked at two months and sat staring at the moon whenever it shone.

Those were things that people said.

His parents were always worried about him. An only child, they noticed his flaws quickly.

They thought he was blind until the doctor told them it was just a vacuous stare. He told them that Jules, with his large head, might be a genius or an idiot. It turned out he was an idiot.

He never spoke a word until he was five. Then, one night coming up to supper, he sat down at the table and said “Death.”

His parents were torn between delight and disgust. They finally settled for a place in between the two feelings. They decided that Jules couldn’t have realized what the word meant.

But Jules did.

From that night on, he built up such a large vocabulary that everyone who knew him was astonished. He not only acquired every word spoken to him, words from signs, magazines, books; he made up his own words.

Like— nightouch. Or— killove. They were really several words that melted into each other. They said things Jules felt but couldn’t explain with other words.

He used to sit on the porch while the other children played hopscotch, stickball and other games. He sat there and stared at the sidewalk and made up words.

Until he was twelve Jules kept pretty much out of trouble.

Of course there was the time they found him undressing Olive Jones in an alley. And another time he was discovered dissecting a kitten on his bed.

But there were many years in between. Those scandals were forgotten.

In general he went through childhood merely disgusting people.

He went to school but never studied. He spent about two or three terms in each grade. The teachers all knew him by his first name. In some subjects like reading and writing he was almost brilliant.

In others he was hopeless.

One Saturday when he was twelve, Jules went to the movies. He saw Dracula.

When the show was over he walked, a throbbing nerve mass, through the little girl and boy ranks.

He went home and locked himself in the bathroom for two hours.

His parents pounded on the door and threatened but he wouldn’t come out.

Finally he unlocked the door and sat down at the supper table. He had a bandage on his thumb and a satisfied look on his face.

The morning after he went to the library. It was Sunday. He sat on the steps all day waiting for it to open. Finally he went home.

The next morning he came back instead of going to school.

He found Dracula on the shelves. He couldn’t borrow it because he wasn’t a member and to be a member he had to bring in one of his parents.

So he stuck the book down his pants and left the library and never brought it back.

He went to the park and sat down and read the book through. It was late evening before he finished.

He started at the beginning again, reading as he ran from street light to street light, all the way home.

He didn’t hear a word of the scolding he got for missing lunch and supper. He ate, went in his room and read the book to the finish. They asked him where he got the book. He said he found it.

As the days passed Jules read the story over and over. He never went to school.

Late at night, when he had fallen into an exhausted slumber, his mother used to take the book into the living room and show it to her husband.

One night they noticed that Jules had underlined certain sentences with dark shaky pencil lines.

Like: “The lips were crimson with fresh blood and the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death robe.”

Or: “When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight and, with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound…”

When his mother saw this, she threw the book down the garbage chute.

In the next morning when Jules found the book missing he screamed and twisted his mother’s arm until she told him where the book was.

Then he ran down to the cellar and dug in the piles of garbage until he found the book.

Coffee grounds and egg yolk on his hands and wrists, he went to the park and read it again.

For a month he read the book avidly. Then he knew it so well he threw it away and just thought about it.

Absence notes were coming from school. His mother yelled. Jules decided to go back for a while.

He wanted to write a composition.

One day he wrote it in class. When everyone was finished writing, the teacher asked if anyone wanted to read their composition to the class.

Jules raised his hand.

The teacher was surprised. But she felt charity. She wanted to encourage him. She drew in her tiny jab of a chin and smiled.

“All right,” she said. “Pay attention children. Jules is going to read us his composition.”

Jules stood up. He was excited. The paper shook in his hands.

“My Ambition by…”

“Come to the front of the class, Jules, dear.”

Jules went to the front of the class. The teacher smiled lovingly. Jules started again.

“My Ambition by Jules Dracula.”

The smile sagged.

“When I grow up I want to be a vampire.”

The teacher’s smiling lips jerked down and out. Her eyes popped wide.

“I want to live forever and get even with everybody and make all the girls vampires. I want to smell of death.”