Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come

“It wouldn’t help to challenge him,” Albert told me. “He wouldn’t understand. These people here are in a strange condition. In life, they never did actual harm to anyone and are causing no harm here-hence the relative graciousness of their surroundings.

“On the other hand, there is no way to pierce their shell of affectation. They live a limited existence which they, nonetheless, believe to be completely appropriate to their class.

“They think they’re in a ‘smart’ location, you see, a spot restricted to those of their social standing. They have no conception of the fact that, in Summerland, there are no sets or cliques. They are living a delusion of group superiority which words cannot affect.”

I shook my head as we left the park. “Grotesque,” I said.

“It’s nothing compared to what you face if we continue on.”

We walked in silence for a while. Somehow, I sensed that we were not continuing toward the edge of Summerland but circling where we were, Albert giving me time to make up my mind.

At last, I did.

“Since the risk is mine, not Ann’s,” I said, “I want to continue. She can only be helped.”

“Except,” he reminded me, “in the sense that, if you become imprisoned in the etheric world, your reunion could be delayed-” He stopped and I knew he’d been about to tell me how long our reunion might be delayed. A hundred years? A thousand? Fear took hold of me again. Was I foolish to attempt this? Wasn’t twenty-four years preferable to-?

The decision came at that: the thought of Ann alone in God only knew what dreadful place for nearly a quarter of a century. I couldn’t let that happen without trying to help.

I wouldn’t.

“All right,” Albert said, knowing my decision as I made it. “We’ll go on then. And I admire your devotion, Chris. You may not realize it yet but what you’re about to do is very courageous.”

I didn’t reply but, as we walked on, realized that, subtly, we had altered our direction and were, once more, moving toward the edge of Summerland.

Ahead, I saw a small church. Like the park, it was not unattractive yet lacked that perfection which marked everything I’d seen before in Summerland. Its color was a dingy brown, its brickwork chipped and faded. As we drew closer to it, I began to hear a congregation singing. “Weary of earth and laden with my sins. I gaze at heaven and long to enter in.”

I looked at Albert, startled. “But they’re here ,” I said.

“They don’t know it,” he replied. “So they spend their time singing dreary hymns and listening to dreary sermons.”

I felt a sense of anxiety pervading me again. If it could be like this in Summerland itself, what would it be like when we’d left this realm entirely?

Albert stopped.

We faced a stretch of flinty ground with patches of grass that looked dry and wasted.

“We’d better change our clothing now,” he said. “Wear shoes.”

I was about to ask him why, then knew he wouldn’t have suggested it if it weren’t a necessity. I concentrated on the change. The fluttering sensation on the surface of my skin seemed slower here, as though it labored. I looked down, seeing, with a start, that, once more, I was wearing the outfit I’d had on the night of the accident.

I turned my gaze to Albert. He was wearing a blue shirt and trousers, a beige jacket.

“The clothes I was wearing when they took me to the hospital,” he said.

I felt myself grimace as he spoke. “Is it going to be like this from now on?” I asked. The air felt liquid and granular in my throat.

“We’ll have to start adjusting to the changes in environment,” he told me. “Visualize yourself as you’d have to be to exist here without discomfort.”

I tried and, gradually, began to have the impression of feeling myself thicken . The feeling was subtle, but distinct. The texture of my flesh took on a certain density and now the air was breathable. How different in my lungs though, no longer crystal clear and invigorating. This air was heavy. It supported my existence, nothing more.

I looked around the countryside as we walked on-if countryside is the word for what I saw. No fruitful landscape here; only barren ground, dying grass, stunted, virtually defoliated trees, no sign of water. And no houses which came as little surprise. Who would, willingly, reside here? was my thought.

“You’ll see those who-willingly-reside in places which are so appalling that, by comparison, this is a place of beauty,” Albert said.

I tried not to shudder. “Are you trying to dissuade me?” I asked.

“Prepare you,” he said. “Even so, no matter what I say, you cannot possibly envision what you may be forced to see.”

Again, I was about to question him, again decided not to do it. He knew; I didn’t. I had better not waste energy contesting anything he told me. I needed my resources for whatever lay ahead.

What lay immediately ahead was a desolate prairie-like expanse. As we walked across it, the turf grew less and less resilient and I noted the beginning of jagged cracks in the ground. There were no breezes now. The air lay still and weighted, getting cooler as we progressed. Or was it retrogressed?

“Am I imagining the light fading again?” I asked.

“No,” he answered quietly. His tone of voice seemed, to me, to be declining with the look of the terrain, growing more withdrawn as moments passed. “Except it isn’t fading to help you rest. It’s fading because we’re almost to the lower realm-which is, also, called the darker realm.”

There was a man ahead. He stood impassive, watching our approach. I thought that he was someone who, for some unknowable reason, chose to live there.

I was wrong.

“This is where the lower realm begins,” he told us. “It’s no place for the curious.”

“I’m here to help someone,” I said.

The man looked at Albert who nodded and said, “That’s right.”

“You aren’t entering just to look,” the man said warningly.

“No,” Albert told him. “We’re searching for this man’s wife to try and help her.”

The man nodded and put his hand on our shoulders. “Go with God then,” he said. “And be alert at all times. Be aware .”

Albert nodded again and the man removed his hands from our shoulders.

The very second we crossed the border I was uncomfortable, oppressed, filled with an almost overwhelming desire to turn and flee back to that safer place. I had to will myself from retreating.

“Tell me if you want to go back,” Albert said. Had he gotten my thought or was it obvious what I’d be thinking at that moment?

“All right,” I said.

“No matter when you feel it,” he added.

I knew, then, that he couldn’t reach my mind anymore. “We have to speak aloud now, don’t we?” I said.

“Yes,” he answered. It was disconcerting to see his lips move again. Somehow, that sight did more to convince me we were in the lower realm than anything I felt or saw.

What did I see? Almost nothing, Robert. We walked through a colorless vista, the dull sky blending with the ground until it seemed as though we trudged across a gray continuum.

“Is there no scenery here at all?” I asked.

“Nothing permanent,” he said. “Whatever you may see-a tree, a bush, a rock-will only be a thought form created by some person on this level. The overall appearance represents the composite mental image of its inhabitants.”

“ This is their composite mental image?” I asked. Soundless; hueless; lifeless.

“It is,” he said.

“And you work here?” I felt stunned that anyone who had the choice would elect to work in this forbidding place.