Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come

Ann loved that afternoon as I did. There was something about nature-in particular the stillness of a forest-to which she reacted well; the total silence seeping into one’s very flesh. Outside of our home, it was one of the few places she felt entirely free of anxieties.

When we walked back to the campground, it was nearing sunset. We stopped at an enormous, sloping rock face that overlooked a vista of giant stands of redwood trees.

We sat there watching the sunset, talking quietly. First about the landscape and what it must have been like before the first man saw it. Then about how man has taken this magnificence and methodically demolished it.

Gradually, we talked about ourselves; our twenty-six years together.

“Twenty-six,” Ann said as though she couldn’t quite believe it. “Where did they go, Chris?”

I smiled and put my arm around her. “They were well spent.”

Ann nodded. “We’ve had our times though.”

“Who hasn’t?” I answered. “It’s better now than ever, that’s all that matters.”

“Yes.” She leaned against me. “Twenty-six years,” she said. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

“I’ll tell you what it seems like,” I told her. “It seems like last week that I spoke to a cute little X-ray technician trainee on the beach in Santa Monica and asked her what time it was and she pointed at a clock.”

She laughed. “I wasn’t very friendly, was I?”

“Oh, I persevered,” I said, squeezing her. “You know, it’s odd. It really does seem like last week. Does Louise actually have two children of her own? Is ‘baby’ Ian on the verge of college? Have we really lived in all those houses, done all those things?”

“We really have, Chief,” Ann said. She grunted, amused. “How many open houses have we gone to at the children’s schools, I wonder? All those desks we sat at, hearing what our kids were being taught.”

“Or what they were doing wrong.”

She smiled. “That too.”

“All those cookies and coffee in Styrofoam cups,” I recalled.

“All those horrible fruit punches.”

I laughed. “Well . . .” I stroked her back. “I think we did a reasonable job of raising them.”

“I hope so,” she said. “I hope I haven’t hurt them.”

“ Hurt them?”

“With my anxieties, my insecurities. I tried to keep it all from them.”

“They’re in good shape, Mother,” I told her. I rubbed her back slowly, looking at her. “So, I might add, are you.”

She looked at me with a tiny smile. “We’ve never had the camper to ourselves before.”

“I hope it doesn’t rock too much at night,” I said. “We’ll be the scandal of the campground.”

She made an amused sound. “I hope not too.”

I sighed and kissed her temple. The sun kept going down, the sky bright red and orange. “I love you, Ann.” I told her.

“And I love you.”

We sat in silence for a while before I asked, “Well, what next?”

“You mean right now?”

“No; in years to come.”

“Oh, we’ll do things,” she told me.

Sitting there, we planned the things we’d do. Lovely plans, Robert. We’d come to Sequoia in the autumn to see the changing colors. We’d camp on the river at Lodgepole in the spring, before the crowds began arriving. We’d backpack into the high country, maybe even try cross-country skiing in the winter if our backs held out. We’d ride a raft down a rushing river; rent a houseboat and sail it through the back rivers of New England. We’d travel to the places in the world we’d never seen. There was no end to the things we could do now that the children were grown and we could spend more time together.

I woke up suddenly. Ann was crying out my name. Confused, I looked around in the darkness, trying to remember where I was.

I heard her cry my name again, and suddenly, remembered. I was in the camper, in Sequoia. It was the middle of the night and she had taken Ginger outside. I’d woken when she left, then fallen back asleep again.

I was out of the camper in seconds. “Ann?!” I shouted. I ran to the front of the truck and looked toward the meadow. There was a flashlight beam.

I began to smile as I started toward it. This had already happened, I knew. She’d walked into the meadow with Ginger and suddenly her flashlight beam had startled a feeding bear. She’d screamed my name in fright and I’d gone running to her, held her in my arms and comforted her.

But, as I moved toward the flashlight beam, it changed. I felt myself go cold as I heard the growling of a bear, then Ginger snarling. “Chris!” Ann shrieked.

I rushed across the uneven ground. This isn’t really happening, I remembered thinking. It didn’t go this way at all.

Abruptly, I was on them, gasping at the sight: Ginger fighting with the bear, Ann sprawled on the ground, the flashlight fallen. I snatched it up and pointed it at her, crying out in shock. There was blood on her face, skin hanging loose.

Now the bear hit Ginger on the head and, with a yelp of pain, she fell to the ground. The bear turned toward Ann and I jumped in front of it, bellowing to chase it away. It kept coming and I hit it on the head with the flashlight, breaking it. I felt a bludgeoning pain on my left shoulder and was knocked to the ground. I twisted around. The bear was on Ann again, snarling ferociously. “Ann!” I tried to stand but couldn’t; my left leg wouldn’t hold my weight and I crumbled back to the ground. Ann screamed as the bear began to maul her. “Oh, my God,” I sobbed. As I crawled toward her, my right hand touched a rock and I picked it up. I lunged at the bear and grabbed its fur, began to smash at its head with the rock. I felt blood running warmly on my hands; Ann’s blood, mine. I howled in rage and horror as I pounded on the bear’s head with the rock. This couldn’t be! It had never happened!

“Chris?”

I started violently, refocusing my eyes.

Albert was standing next to me; the music still played. I looked up at his face. His tight expression harrowed me. “What’s wrong?” I asked. I stood up quickly.

He looked at me with an expression of such anguish that it seemed as though my heart stopped beating. “What is it?” I asked.

“Ann has passed on.”

First, a jolt; as though I’d been struck. Then a feeling of excitement mixed with sorrow. Sorrow for the children, excitement for myself. We’d be together again!

No. The look on Albert’s face did not encourage such a feeling and a sense of cold, aching dread engulfed me. “Please, what is it? ” I begged.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Chris, she killed herself,” he said. “She’s cut herself away from you.”

It was the return of nightmare.

I FELT NUMB AS I SAT ON THE GRASS, LISTENING TO ALBERT. HE’D led me from the amphitheatre; we were seated in a quiet glade.

I say that I was listening but I really wasn’t. Words and phrases reached my consciousness disjointedly as thoughts of my own opposed the continuity of what he said. Troubled recollections mostly; of the times I’d heard Ann say “If you died, I’d die too.” “If you went first, I don’t think I could make it.”

I knew, then, why I’d felt that sense of constant dread despite the fascinations of my first exposure to Summerland. Somewhere, deep inside, an apprehension had been mounting; an inner knowledge of something terrible about to happen to her.