Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come

I became so absorbed in what I was doing that I jumped when Marie gasped suddenly and jerked her hand from the desk. As she stared at the paper in stunned silence, I looked down at it.

She’d written on the paper: Annthsiscris-istilexst .

“Show it to Mom,” I told her excitedly. I concentrated on the words. Show it to Mom, Marie. Right now . Quickly, repeatedly.

Marie got up and moved toward the hall, the paper in her hand. “That’s it, that’s it,” I said. That’s it , I thought.

She went into the hall and turned toward the doorway of our bedroom. There, she stopped. Following eagerly, I stopped too. What was she waiting for?

She looked in at Ann and Richard. Ann still had his hand against her cheek. Her eyes were closed, she looked asleep.

“Take it in,” I told Marie. I grimaced at the sound of my voice. Take it in , I told her mentally. Show it to Mom, to Richard.

Marie stood motionless, gazing at Richard and Ann, her expression uncertain. “Marie, come on ,” I told her; tensed again. Marie, take it to them, I thought. Let them see.

She turned away. “Marie!” I cried. I caught myself. Take it in! I cried with my mind. She hesitated, then turned back toward our bedroom. That’s it, take it in to her, I thought. Take it in, Marie. Now .

She remained immobile.

Marie, I pleaded mentally, for God’s sake, take it to your mother .

Abruptly, she turned toward her room and strode there quickly, passing through me. I whirled and ran after her. “What are you doing?” I cried. “Don’t you hear-?”

My voice failed as she crumpled the sheet of paper and dropped it into her wastebasket. “Marie!” I said. I stared at her, appalled. Why had she done that?

I knew though, Robert; it was not a difficult thing to understand. She thought it was her own subconscious surfacing. She didn’t want Ann to suffer any more than she had. It was done out of love. But it dashed my last hope of conveying my survival to Ann.

A wave of paralyzing grief swept over me. Dear God, this has to be a dream! I thought, reverting suddenly. It can’t be real!

I blinked. Below my feet, I saw the plaque: Christopher Nielsen/1927-1974 . How had I gotten there? Have you ever “come to” in your car and wondered how you’d driven so far without remembering a moment of it? I had the same sensation then. Except that I didn’t know what I was doing there.

Soon enough, it came to me. My mind had cried: It can’t be real! That same mind still knew that there was a way of finding out for certain. I’d started doing it once before, it came back to me; then had been restrained by something. I would not be restrained now. There was only one way to know if this were dream or reality. I began descending into the ground. It presented no more hindrance to me than the doors. I sank into blackness. One way to be sure, I kept thinking. I saw the casket lying just below. How could I see in the dark? I wondered. I let that go. Only one thing mattered; finding out. I moved inside the casket.

My scream of horror seemed to echo and re-echo in the confines of the grave. I stared in petrified revulsion at my body. It had started to decay. My face was tight and mask-like, frozen in a hideous grimace. The skin was rotting, Robert. I saw mag-no, let that go. No point in sickening you as I was sickened.

I closed my eyes and, screaming still, drove myself away from there. Coldness swirled around me, clinging wetness. Opening my eyes, I looked around. The fog again, that gray, eddying mist I could not escape.

I started to run. It had to end somewhere. The more I ran the thicker it got. I turned and started running in the opposite direction but it didn’t help. The fog continued getting more dense no matter which way I ran. I could see no more than inches ahead. I started sobbing. I might wander in this mist forever! Suddenly, I cried out: “Help me! Please!”

A figure approached from the murk; that man again. I felt as though I knew him even though his face was unfamiliar. I ran to him and clutched at his arm. “Where am I?” I asked.

“In a place of your own devising,” he replied.

“I don’t understand you!”

“Your mind has brought you here,” he said. “Your mind is keeping you here.”

“Do I have to stay here?”

“Not at all,” he told me. “You can break the binding any time.”

“How?”

“By concentrating on what’s beyond this place.”

I began to ask another question when I felt Ann’s sorrow pulling at me once again. I couldn’t leave her alone. I couldn’t .

“You’re slipping back,” the man said, warningly.

“I can’t just leave her,” I told him.

“You have to, Chris,” he said. “You either move on or stay the way you are.”

“I can’t just leave her,” I repeated.

I blinked and looked around. The man was gone. So quickly that I had to think he’d been a figment of my mind.

I sank down on the cold, damp ground, inert and miserable. Poor Ann, I thought. She’d have to start a new life now. All our plans were ruined. The places we were going to visit, the exciting projects we had planned. To write a play together, combining her intense memories of the past and her insight with my abilities. To buy a piece of woods somewhere where she could photograph the wild life while I wrote about it. To buy a motor home and take a year to drive around the country, seeing every detail of it. To travel, finally, to the places we had always talked about but never seen. To be together, enjoying life and each other’s company.

All ended now. She was alone; I’d failed her. I should have lived. It was my own fault I’d been killed. I’d been stupid and careless. Now she was alone. I didn’t deserve her love. I’d wasted many moments in life we could have spent together. Now I’d thrown away the remainder of our time.

I’d betrayed her .

The more I thought about it, the more despondent I became. Why wasn’t she right in her belief? I thought bitterly. Better that death was an end, a cessation. Anything was preferable to this. I felt devoid of hope, hollowed by despair. There was no meaning to survival. Why go on like this? It was futile and pointless.

I don’t know how long I sat like that and thought like that. It seemed an eternity, Robert-just me, abandoned in chilling, mucilaginous fog, sunk in abject sorrow.

Only after a long, long time, did I begin to alter what I thought. Only after a long, long time recall what the man had told me: that I could leave this place by concentrating on what was beyond it. What was beyond it though?

Does it matter? I thought. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than this.

All right, try then , I told myself.

I closed my eyes and tried to visualize a better place. A place with sunlight, warmth, with grass and trees. A place like the ones we used to take our camper to all those years.

I finally settled, in my mind, on a glade of redwood trees in northern California where the six of us-Ann, Louise, Richard, Marie, Ian and I-had stood one August afternoon at twilight, none of us speaking, listening to the vast, enveloping silence of nature.

I seemed to feel my body pulsing ; forward, upward. I opened my eyes in startlement. Had I imagined it?

I closed my eyes and tried again, re-visualizing that immense, still glade.

I felt my body pulsing once more. It was true. Some incredible pressure-gentle, yet insistent-was behind me, pushing, bearing. I felt my breath grow larger, larger, achingly large. I concentrated harder and the move accelerated. I was rushing forward, rushing upward. The sensation was alarming but exhilarating too. I didn’t want to lose it now. For the first time since the accident, I felt a glimmer of peace within myself. And the beginning of a knowledge; an astonishing insight.