Richard Matheson - Ride the Nightmare

Suddenly, Connie appeared, fleeing around the bend of the road.

“Connie!”

Connie rushed across the uneven ground and flung herself against her mother’s legs. She couldn’t speak. She clung tightly to Helen, her body trembling. Before Helen could say a word to her, Adam came racing around the curve, the revolver in his hand. When he saw them, he skidded to a halt.

“All right,” he said. He gestured toward the shack with his gun. “Go on.”

His lips flared back in a grimace of fury as Helen stared at him. “I said go on!” he ordered.

“Mommy, no,” begged Connie, her face buried in Helen’s skirt.

“It’s all right, baby,” Helen told her. She leaned over hastily and kissed the top of Connie’s head. “Please. We have to go. Mommy will stay with you. I promise.”

“No, Mommy.”

Helen shuddered at the look on Adam’s face. “So help me God, lady,” he muttered, pointing the revolver at Connie’s head.

“Baby, walk with me,” Helen said. She tightened her arm around Connie’s shoulders. “You have to come with Mommy now. You have to, Connie.”

“No.” Connie stumbled beside her, her face still pressed against Helen’s body.

”It’s all right, sweetie.” Helen said in a hollow, shaking voice. “Just walk with Mommy. That’s a good girl.” She held Connie’s head against her side with rigid fingers as they walked past Adam.

“Don’t hurt her,” she whispered.

Adam said nothing. He gestured jerkily with his head and Helen tried to quicken her step. Connie stumbled and had to be pulled erect. She started to whimper again.

“It’s all right, baby.” Helen felt a spill of tears down her cheeks. “It’s all right,” she said, faintly. She glanced across her shoulder and saw Adam getting the keys out of the Ford.

When she saw Chris lying in the road, she stiffened in her tracks, eyes widening. She stared at his body, a thin wavering sound starting in her throat. She could barely feel Connie against herself.

“Come on.”

She twitched as Adam pushed the barrel end against her back. Involuntarily, she started forward, drawing Connie with her. She couldn’t take her eyes off Chris. He was so still, his body sprawled on the rutted ground, one leg twisted beneath the other, his hands above his shoulders as if, in falling, he had flung them up to ward off the blow that had put him there.

“Chris,” she murmured.

In the shack.” Adam’s hand was clamping suddenly on her right arm. redirecting her instinctive move toward Chris. Helen gasped, twisting around so quickly that it sent a prickling shock along the muscles of her neck. Connie cried out and she had to pull her close again, stopping to hold her. Adam cursed and shoved her back, almost knocking her over.

“Get in the shack!” he ordered.

She started up the steep incline, drawing Connie beside her, conscious of her own voice soft and trembling as she comforted Connie, not hearing a single word of it She kept glancing back across her shoulder at Chris and saw Adam lean over, reach under Chris’s coat.

He straightened up angrily “You have the money?” he called up after her.

She turned and stared at him. “The money.”

She remembered then and reached into her coat pocket It was empty.

“I—I can’t—” she started, standing there awkwardly on the steep, rutted ground. Abruptly, she recalled that the clump of bills was in her other pocket. She tried to ease Connie away, but Connie held on with talon-like fingers.

“Baby, let me get—” Helen bit her lip and tried not to cry. She forced her left hand in between her own and Connie’s body and slipped it into the pocket of her coat.

“Come on!” snarled Adam.

Her fingers closed over the money and started to pull it out. As she did, the rubber band slipped off and several of the bills went fluttering to the ground. She tried to stoop and pick them up but couldn’t because Connie was holding on to her so tightly. She heard Adam curse again, then shrank back as he clambered up the rise and snatched the pack of money from her shaking hand.

“Get in the shack,” he told her.

“Don’t hurt her,” she said instinctively.

He jerked her around and shoved her toward the door. Helen felt a rush of dizzying shock as she found herself looking at the other man who was leaning against the shack, his left hand pressed against his shoulder, blood running between his fingers and down his wrist.

“Shut her up,” she heard Adam order from behind her and she was suddenly conscious of Connie’s terrified crying.

“Connie, don’t—” she pleaded. She pulled her daughter against her, shielding Connie’s eyes from the sight of the bleeding man. She almost carried her past him into the fetid chill of the shack. Pulling her to a chair, she sat down and lifted Connie onto her lap, pressing her close, brushing at her hair with short, trembling strokes. “Shhh, baby, shhh. It’s all right.”

Outside, she heard the two men talking and she raised her face from where she’d had it buried in Connie’s hair,

“—doctor,” she heard the wounded man finish.

“Use your head,” Adam answered stiffly and the wounded man said something she didn’t hear except for the curse of pain.

Suddenly, there was a sliding, scraping sound.

Unaware of it, Helen pressed back slowly against the chair, the old wood creaking in the silence of the shack. She hardly heard Connie’s sobbing. All she could hear was the raking noise outside that was drawing closer and closer. She felt a chilling tingle up the back of her neck and her gaze, unblinking, held on the doorway.

Abruptly, Adam appeared dragging Chris into the cabin, one hand twisted around the collar of Chris’s jacket. Her mouth opened as if to breathe but there was no breath in her. Air seemed to stifle in her lungs and in the heavy length of her body. it seemed the only thing that lived was her heart.

“Is he dead?” she heard the other man ask as he stumbled into the shack after Adam.

“I don’t know,” Adam answered carelessly. He released his fingers and Chris’s head and shoulders thumped down on the floor. Helen couldn’t restrain the faint gagging sound in her throat. Adam glanced over at her, then turned to the wounded man.

“Let’s see,” he said, drawing Steve’s hand off the wound. Helen twisted her gaze from the sight of the man’s blood-pulsing shoulder. She pressed her eyes to Connie’s head again, her arms tightening convulsively around her daughter’s body.

“I gotta have a doctor,” she heard Steve insist.

“And end up in the gas chamber?” Adam snapped.

“I’m bleeding, damn it!”

“Hold still.”

There was a moment’s silence, then the sound of cloth being torn. Blotted out, in an instant, by Steve’s hoarse cry of pain. Helen glanced up instinctively and saw the torn, blood-pumping hole in his shoulder.

“I need a doctor,” said Steve. There was a shakiness beneath the hard sound of his voice. Helen looked at Chris again. He didn’t move.

“Come here. Sit down while I bandage it,” said Adam.

Helen looked up, startled, and saw him leading Steve toward her. She shuddered as his eyes met hers and, hastily, she struggled to her feet, holding Connie against her. Connie started to look around but Helen pressed her head down to keep her from seeing.

“It’s all right, baby,” she said. She edged away, watching Steve sink down heavily onto the chair, his face ashen, his teeth clenched together so rabidly she could see the bulge of his jawbone beneath his ears.

“For Christ’s sake, hurry up,” he said.

Turning, Helen moved over to where Chris was lying. She felt numb, almost dreamlike. The entire situation had such an air of unreality about it that, somehow, the dread in her could rise no higher. Simply, the mind would not accept more. She looked down intently at Chris’s pain-twisted face. There was an ugly, purplish welt across his forehead. She bit her lip and looked at his chest. At first she couldn’t see any movement and the horror she had repressed seemed to flood through her body like a cold slime.