Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come

I knew why I’d had those nightmarish visions of her begging me to save her. Again, in memory, I saw her look of terror as she slid across the cliff edge, sank beneath the churning waters of the pool, fell in bloody shock before the bear’s attack. The cliff and pool and bear had all been symbols of my fear for her, not dreams but premonitions. She’d been pleading for my help, asking me to stop her from doing what she’d felt herself about to do.

Albert’s voice reached my attention. “Because of her childhood traumas, the children grown, your death-” I stared at him. Had he said something about sleeping pills? His thought broke off and he nodded.

“God.” I put my face in my hands and tried to weep. But I could summon nothing; I was empty.

“The death of someone with whom a person has been long and closely associated leaves a literal vacuum in that person’s life,” Albert said. “The streams of psychic energy directed toward that lost someone now have no object.”

Why was he telling me these things? I wondered.

“That sitting may have played a part as well,” he said. “They, sometimes, distort the mental balance.”

I looked up at him; not with understanding.

“Despite what your wife said,” he continued, “I think she hoped there was an afterlife. I think she placed considerable reliance on that sitting. When it turned out to be, from her standpoint, a delusion, she-” His voice trailed off.

“You said you’d keep an eye on her,” I reminded him.

“We did ,” he said. “There was no way of knowing what she planned to do though.”

“Why was I told that she was scheduled to come across at the age of seventy-two?”

“Because she was ,” he said. “In spite of what was scheduled though, she possessed the will to circumvent that scheduling. That’s the problem, don’t you see? There’s a natural time fixed for each of our deaths but-”

“Then why am I here?” I asked. “Was that accident the natural time for my death?”

“Presumably so,” he answered. “Maybe not. At any rate, you weren’t responsible for that death. Ann was responsible for hers. And to kill one’s self is to violate the law because it deprives that self of working out the needs of its life.”

He looked upset now, shaking his head. “If only people would realize,” he said. “They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it , Chris. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A continuation under circumstances so much more painful-”

“ Where is she , Albert?” I interrupted.

“I have no idea,” he said. “When she killed herself, she merely discarded the denser part of her body. What remains is held magnetically by earth-but where on earth could be impossible to discover. The corridor between the physical and astral worlds is, to all intents and purposes, endless.”

“How long will she be there?”

He hesitated.

“Albert?”

His sigh was heavy. “Until her natural departure time arrives.”

“You mean-?” I stared at him in disbelieving shock. I couldn’t restrain my gasp. “Twenty-four years?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to; I knew the answer myself by then. Nearly a quarter of a century in the “lower realm”-that place I hadn’t dared to even think about before because it had evoked such apprehensions in me.

A sudden hope. I clutched at it. “Won’t her etheric body die as mine did?”

“Not for twenty-four years,” he said. “It will survive as long as she’s held in the etheric world.”

“It isn’t fair ,” I said. “To punish someone who was out of her mind.”

“Chris, it isn’t punishment ,” he said. “It’s law .”

“But she had to be out of her mind with grief,” I persisted.

He shook his head. “If she had been, she wouldn’t be where she is,” he answered. “It’s as simple as that. No one put her there. That she’s there is proof that she made a willful decision.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said. I stood and walked away from him.

Albert rose and followed me. When I stopped to lean against a tree, he stood beside me. “It can’t be all that awful where she is,” he tried to reassure me. “She always tried to live an honorable life, was a good wife and mother, a decent human being. Her plight certainly isn’t that of those who have lived basely. It’s just that she’s lost her faith and has to stay where she is until her time comes.”

“No,” I said, determinedly.

He didn’t reply. I sensed his confusion and looked at him.

He knew, then, what I had in mind and, for the first time since we’d come together, I saw a look of disquiet on his face. “Chris, you can’t,” he told me.

“Why?”

“Well . . . in the first place, I don’t believe it can be done,” he said. “I’ve never seen it done, never heard of anyone even attempting it.”

A cold dread seized me. “Never?”

“Not at this level,” he answered.

I gazed at him helplessly. Then resistance came again, restoring my determination. “Then I’ll be the first,” I said.

“Chris-” He regarded me with deep concern. “Don’t you understand? She’s there for a purpose . If you help, you distort that purpose, you-”

“I have to, Albert,” I said, desperately. “Don’t you understand? I can’t just leave her there for twenty-four years. I have to help her.”

“Chris-”

“I have to help her,” I repeated. I braced myself. “Will someone try to stop me?”

He avoided the question. “Chris, even if you found her, which is probably impossible, she’d look at your face and not recognize you. Hear your voice and not remember it at all. Your presence would be incomprehensible to her. Not only would she not accept your offers of help, she wouldn’t even listen to you.”

I asked again. “Will someone try to stop me?”

“That’s not the point, Chris,” he said. “You have no conception of the dangers in-”

“I-don’t-care!” I said. “I want to help her!”

“Chris, there’s nothing you can do.”

I struggled to control myself. “Albert, isn’t there the remotest possibility that my talking to her might make a difference? That she might, in some infinitesimal way, achieve some kind of understanding which might help to make her state a little more endurable?”

He looked at me in silence for what seemed an endless time before replying. “I wish I could say yes,” he said, “but I can’t.”

I felt myself slump. Willfully, I stood erect again. “Well, I have to try,” I told him. “I will try, Albert. I don’t care how dangerous it is.”

“Chris, please don’t speak so thoughtlessly about those dangers,” he said. Another first. I’d never heard the faintest tinge of criticism in his voice before. I’d heard it now.

We stood in silence, looking at each other. Finally, I spoke. “Will you help me find her, Albert?” I asked. He began to speak but I cut him off. “Will you help me, Albert? Please?”

Silence again. At last, he replied. “I’ll try ,” he said. “I don’t believe it’s possible but-” He raised a hand to keep me from speaking. “I’ll try , Chris,” he said.

Time with its multiple torments had returned to my existence.