Richard Matheson: Ride the Nightmare

“Lock the kitchen door,” he told her.

She hesitated, watching him crank the front windows shut.

“Helen, move!” he snapped. Twitching, she turned and hurried across the rug.

“And turn out the light!” he called as she pushed at the kitchen door to make certain that the latch caught.

“All right,” she answered. She turned the lock on the knob and tested the door with shaking fingers. It held. Hurriedly, she pulled the shade down over the window on the door, then, almost lurching for the wall switch, pushed it down.

The house was now completely dark. Helen stood restively in the kitchen doorway, watching Chris draw the blinds and drapes across the picture window that faced the backyard. The living room grew even darker, blocked from the faint illumination of the moon and the street light on the next block. Chris’s body became a formless shadow.

“Draw the kitchen blinds,” he told her. “And the shade over the sink.”

Helen turned back into the kitchen and drew the blinds, wondering what she’d do if the man were to appear outside. She cranked the windows shut, wincing at the grating sound they made. That done, she turned for the sink, her slippers scuffing across the linoleum. She bumped into the dishwasher, crying out faintly at the clank of crockery and silverware inside it.

“What is it?” Chris called urgently.

“Nothing,” she answered. She pulled the shade down and leaned heavily against the sink, eyes shut.

When she came back into the living room, she could hear the furtive sound of Chris cranking shut the two windows in Connie’s room and pulling down the shades. She hurried across the rug and into her and Chris’s room to close the windows and draw the blinds.

This part alone was a nightmare; the two of them rushing through the darkness from room to room, shutting window after window, drawing blind after blind, lowering shade after shade. What if this were a twenty room house? she thought. Before the windows were all shut and covered it would be dawn. The sob that trembled in her throat, under other circumstances, would have been a laugh. When all the blinds were drawn in their room, Helen pulled one back and looked out at the street.

It was quiet except for a slight wind which stirred the bushes just outside the window. Under the street lamp, a pool of pale light flooded up across the curb, immersing a segment of the lawn. On the parkway, the skeletal limbs of the small Chinese elm were shaking.

Helen could see directly into Bill Albert’s house across the street. In the darkness of their living room, the television flickered. She knew that Bill and his wife were in there and it gave her an eerie feeling. They knew nothing of the terror across the street from them. Engrossed, perhaps even laughing, they were completely separated.

Nearby, there was a sound and Helen whirled, her hands retracting spasmodically.

“You locked the kitchen door?” Chris asked.

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“Then he can’t get in.”

“Chris.”

“What?”

“Do you think that, maybe we should—leave? I mean, go across to Bill’s house or—?”

“No, we can’t.”

She stared at his outline in the darkness.

“Chris, what if the police don’t get here in time?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment. Helen felt a weight of terror pressing at her. Suddenly a sob forced back her lips and Chris put his arms around her. But what good were his arms if he couldn’t do anything? She tried to push the thought aside but couldn’t In a moment of fear, she turned, naturally, to Chris. If he acted unafraid—seemed to know what he was doing, then she wasn’t so distressed. Even if he pretended and she sensed it, it still gave her assurance.

But when he was as lost and frightened as she was…

“It’s all right.” he murmured. “It’s all right, Helen.”

“But what are we going to do?” She had the premonition that, once more, he was going to say he didn’t know.

“You’re going to stay in here,” he told her.

“What?”

“Come here,” he said. “Here. Sit down on the bed.”

”Chris, what are you—?”

“I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Outside.’

“No!“ She lurched up from the bed and caught his arm. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Honey, I’m not going to just stand here and risk your life and Connie’s,” he said. “He has a gun and—”

“A gun?”

“Of course he has a gun. What do you—?”

“But the police will be here any second now.”

“Wait here,“ he ordered.

“Chris, don’t!”

As he moved across the hall, she caught his arm again. “Chris, you mustn’t!”

“Honey, let me go,” he said.

Helpless, she followed as he pulled away and walked into the kitchen. There, in the darkness, she heard him pulling out a drawer. She shivered violently at the sound of knife blades sliding against each other.

“Oh… God, why don’t we have a gun?” Chris muttered savagely.

Helen shivered again; this time not from fear but from something in his voice—a tone she’d never heard before. It was as if, abruptly, he had been transformed into a man she didn’t know. She drew back, staring at the dark shadow of him turning from the cupboard with something long and pointed in his right hand.

“Chris, no,” she said.

Then, suddenly, both of them had stopped moving and were standing frozenly, their heads turned toward the living room as they listened to the sound of the front door knob being turned from side to side.

A dry gasp tensed her throat as Chris’s ringers closed on her wrist and pulled her into the kitchen.

“Don’t make a sound,” he told her. His voice was the stranger’s voice again.

“Chris, we—”

“Shhhh!”

She bit her lower lip.

“Stay in here,” he whispered. “Don’t move.” He pushed her against the wall, one hand pressing at her shoulder.

“What are you going to do?”

“Never mind,” he said. “Just stay here.”

He stepped into the living room and stood there looking toward the front porch. The man had stepped in front of the windows now, his body framed against the light of the street lamp. Helen thought that he had his face pressed against one of the windows as though he was trying to see through the blinds. She had the hideous sensation that he was watching Chris.

“Chris,” she whispered.

As he stepped back into the kitchen, the shadow of the man stepped off the porch and disappeared.

“I told you to be quiet!” Chris said.

“But I have an idea.”

“What?”

“If the man saw you he’d know he made a mistake.”

“What?” The sharpness of his whisper made her flinch.

“Well, isn’t it true?” she asked. “If we turned on the light and—”

“Helen, he has a gun!” Chris said. “He’s not here to look at me!”

She bumped against the door jamb as he spoke.

His voice was so harsh and alien. “Now stay here,” he said, “and—”

He stopped instantly, his right hand clamping on her wrist. Helen felt a crawling on her scalp at the sound of fingernails scraping on the back living room screens.

“Don’t move,” Chris said.

Outside, she heard heels clicking on the patio, moving, it seemed, quite casually. I’m going to scream, she thought, and frantically pressed her lips together.

The clicking of the heels stopped and she felt Chris’s grip loosen. “Go in our bedroom,” he told her.

He pushed her from the kitchen and she found herself walking across the living room. She wanted to stay with Chris. Yet, at the same time, his remoteness seemed to drive her from him. She stumbled into the hall and stopped there, looking back toward the kitchen. Chris was not in sight.