Richard Matheson - Ride the Nightmare

“Mommy—Mommy.

“Yes, sweetheart.”

She held her child in the darkness and whispered comfort to her even though she knew that she was living in a comfortless world.

When Connie had gone back to sleep, Helen went into the bathroom to wash. The face she saw in the mirror was not a pleasant one.

As she was drying herself, she became conscious of her bare foot and remembered the sliver of glass she’d stepped on. Sitting down on the edge of the bathtub, she looked at the bottom of her foot

The sliver was a small one. She had to get a pair of tweezers from the medicine cabinet before she could remove it. Pressing out the blood, she cleaned the tiny gash with alcohol. She didn’t bother to bandage it.

She sat there with her eyes shut, knowing that she’d have to go back to the kitchen. All she wanted to do was get into bed and stay there, She’d never felt so tired in her life.

She tried to visualize performing as a wife and mother the next day but it was impossible. The continuity of her life seemed to have ceased in that moment when she realized that, for more than seven years, she’d loved only part of a man.

Helen stood and left the bathroom. In the living room, she found her slipper and eased her foot into it. She noticed that the kitchen light was out and wondered if Chris had gone. As she did, he came in by the front door, shut it behind himself and locked it

“No one seems to have heard anything,” he said. “It’s lucky Grace and Jack are gone.” Grace and Jack were their neighbors on the left.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s lucky “

“I didn’t mean it that way.” he said.

Helen let herself down onto the sofa and leaned back heavily It was so quiet in the house she could hear the humming of the electric clock in the kitchen. Chris stayed by the door, watching her.

“Well… ?” she finally asked.

His shoulders slumped, “It’s up to you,” he said.

“Why me?”

He made no reply.

“No, it isn’t up to me,” she said, “I don’t fit in anywhere.”

“Helen, that isn’t so!”

“Isn’t it?”

“Do you think I enjoyed keeping it from you all these years?”

“I’m sure it doesn’t matter.”

“But it does!” he cried. “It made me miserable to—!”

“You’ll wake up Connie.”

Chris stopped.

“If it made you so miserable,” she said, “why did you do it”?

He sank down on one of the arm chairs. He put a hand across his eyes. “I was afraid to tell you,” he said. “Afraid I might lose you. Afraid I might—”

“—have to go to prison?”

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“Well, what do you expect?” Helen turned her head and looked away from him. Suddenly, it occurred to her that she’d never been married. To the world, she was Mrs. Helen Martin; but there was no such person. There was no Christopher Martin and no Connie Martin either. All of them were illusions.

“I thought I’d never have to tell you,” Chris said. “I never thought he’d find me. Then that—picture had to be taken. It’s fantastic,” he went on. “A secret I’ve kept for almost fifteen years. Ended in a second because some kids won a baseball game!” His laugh was closer to a sob. “It’s practically hilarious,” he said.

Helen closed her eyes. Now it was as if the other end of the balance—his end—were being weighted. He had risked his life for Connie. He had planned to intercept the man. Wasn’t it possible that he’d been less motivated by a desire to hide his secret than by a wish to protect his wife and child? That Chris loved them was beyond denial

No! Helen sat back stiffly. That he was suffering was his own doing, not hers. He had lied to her. All these years, he had trusted her so little that, rather than speak a simple truth, he had constructed a world of falsehoods around himself. A world which was now at an end.

Chris got up and headed for the hall.

“Where are you going?” she asked, suddenly frightened.

He turned in the hall doorway. “To call the police,” he said.

She stared at him. “And then?” she asked.

“I’ll be arrested.”

She couldn’t stop the cold knotting in her throat and upper chest.

His hands closed slowly into fists.

“I’ll go to prison. Helen,” he said.

“No, Chris!” She didn’t realize how anguished her expression had become.

He stood motionless for a few seconds. Then he walked over to the sofa and sat down beside her. “Do you mean that?” he asked.

“What?”

”That you don’t want me to go to prison?”

“That you’re willing to—to consider doing something else besides call the police?”

Abruptly she was thrust back into nightmare again. Now it was a penny thriller, absurd and ghastly. A murdered man sprawled in the kitchen, her husband sitting beside her. asking her if she was willing to consider— “I don’t know,” she said, unable to keep her voice from breaking, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Listen to me,” he said. “If the body isn’t found, there’ll be no way for anyone to know what happened.”

Helen stared at him blankly. She didn’t understand.

Christ looked down at his clenching hands.

“I could take him into the hills,” he said in a voice that sounded hideously calm to her. “I could bury him. No one would ever find out.”

He looked at her.

“It’s either that,” he said, or call the police.”

She couldn’t answer him. “Well?”

“Chris, I—”

“Do you want me to go to prison, Helen?” he asked. “I’ve lived a decent life ever since it happened. You know that. I’ve done everything I could to atone for my past. Is that all to end because of— him?”

“No. She grasped his hand impulsively.

“Helen.” His fingers tightened in hers. “Thank you.”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“I mean—” She shuddered fitfully. “Oh, God, let’s get it over with.” she said.

The folded newspaper page fell from the man’s pocket as Chris was lifting him. Helen picked it up and was about to throw it in the wastebasket when she noticed the story outlined in pencil.

Three convicts sentenced to life imprisonment for a 1943 murder escaped last night from—

Helen looked up, shocked. “Murder?”

When Chris saw the expression on her face, he put the body down. Helen handed him the paper and he looked at it.

“Helen, I had nothing to do with it,” he said.

She stared at him.

“I had nothing to do with it.”

She lowered her gaze from his. “All right, Chris.”

“Helen, if you don’t believe me—”

“All right, Chris.”

He stood quietly for a moment, then put down the paper and went back to the body. Helen heard the man’s heels scraping slightly on the linoleum, then the door bumping against him as Chris opened it.

She listened to the sound of the body being dragged down the alley and into the garage through the side door. When the door was closed, she lifted the dishwasher again and reloaded it. Then, turning to the sink, she opened one of the doors beneath it. Taking out the pail, she poured in a mound of soap powder, then ran hot water over it, watching it billow into cloud-like suds.

When Chris came back, she was running the mop back and forth across the puddle of blood on the linoleum, her lips pressed together, her eyes looking straight ahead.

“Here, I’ll do it,” Chris took the mop from her.

“What about—?”

“What, Helen?”

She cleared her throat. “The—knife,” she said.