Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come

“There’s no balance here, you see. Everything is negative and this reverse animation feeds upon itself, creating more and more disorder. This is a level of extremes-and extremes of even a lesser nature can create a painful habitat. You see their auras?”

I hadn’t noticed in the paucity of light but, as he called them to my attention, I did. All consisted of drab shades of gray and brown; dismal, muddy colors. “These people are all the same then,” I said.

“Fundamentally,” Albert replied. “Which is one of the curses of this realm. There can be no rapport between the people because they’re all alike in essence and can find no companionship, only mirror images of their own shortcomings.”

Abruptly, Albert turned to his right. I looked in that direction and saw the first-relatively-rapid movement I’d observed in this place-the lumbering hobble of a man behind a hut.

“Mark!” Albert shouted.

I looked at him in startlement. He knew the man?

Albert sighed unhappily as the man remained out of sight. “He always runs away from me now,” he said.

“You know him?”

“I’ve been working with him for a long, long time,” he answered. “There’ve been times when I thought I’d almost gotten through, convinced him that he wasn’t a prisoner here but had brought himself to such a plight.” He shook his head. “He won’t believe it though.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“A businessman,” he said. “A man who, in life, concerned himself with nothing but the acquisition of wealth. He spent almost no time with his family or friends. Days and nights, for seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, he thought only of monetary gain.

“And yet he feels betrayed. He thinks he should be rewarded for what he did. I worked damned hard , is his constant lament. No matter what I say, he tells me that. As though his total absorption in profit was its own justification. As though he had no responsibility to anyone or anything else. An occasional donation to some charitable cause convinced him of his generosity.

“Remember Marley with his chains?” Albert asked. “The simile is apt. Mark is encumbered with chains too. He just can’t see them.”

I looked to my left and stopped in sudden alarm as I saw a woman who looked so much like Ann that I was sure it was her and started toward her.

Albert held me back. “It isn’t Ann,” he said.

“But-” I struggled in his grip.

“Don’t let your anxiety to find her make you see her where she isn’t,” he cautioned.

I looked at him in surprise, then started turning back toward the woman. She did look like Ann, I told myself.

I stared at her. There was little actual resemblance. I blinked and looked more closely. I had never suffered from hallucinations in my life. Was it to start now?

I kept staring at the woman. She was sitting, huddled, on the ground, covered from head to toe by a network of thin, black threads. She didn’t move but stared ahead with lifeless eyes. I take that back. Like the young man, she was staring inwardly, gazing at the darkness of her mind.

“Can’t she break those threads?” I asked.

“With the least of effort,” Albert answered. “The thing is, she doesn’t believe she can and the mind is everything. I’m sure her life on earth must have been one of great, self-pitying frustration. Here, that feeling is exaggerated to the point you see.”

“I thought she looked like Ann,” I said, confused.

“Remember what that man said,” Albert told me. “Be alert at all times.”

I looked at the woman as we walked off. She didn’t look at all like Ann. Still, she made me wonder. Was Ann in a similar plight, imprisoned in some other place like this? The thought was harrowing.

As we continued through the silent, formless village, past its mute and wretched population, I began to feel so tired that it brought back memories of the weariness I’d felt just after death. Lacking the strength to do otherwise, I found myself beginning to hunch over as I walked, taking on the posture of some of the nearby people.

Albert took hold of my arm and straightened me. “Don’t let yourself be drawn in or we’ll never reach Ann,” he said. “We’re just starting out.”

I forced myself to walk erectly concentrating on resistance to the weariness. It helped immediately.

“Be aware,” Albert repeated what the man had told us.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

A wave of depression beset me. Albert was right. We were just starting out. If I was vulnerable already, how could I hope to reach-?

“You’re hunching over again,” Albert warned.

Dear God, I thought. It has happened so quickly , the slightest thought affecting me. I would resist it though, I vowed. I wouldn’t let myself succumb to the dark blandishments of this realm.

“A powerful place,” I murmured.

“If you let it be,” Albert replied.

Speech, I thought. Silence was the enemy; negative reflection. “What are those threads around that woman?” I asked.

“The mind is like a spinning wheel,” Albert told me. “In life, it constantly weaves a web which, on the day of our passing, surrounds us for better or worse. In that woman’s case, the web became a snare of selfish concerns. She can’t-”

I didn’t hear the rest of what he said because my gaze was drawn to a group of people crouching and kneeling around something I couldn’t see, their backs to us, their hands rapidly conveying something to their mouths. All of them looked bloated.

Hearing the sounds they made-grunting, snarling, rending noises-I asked what they were doing.

“Eating,” Albert said. “No, change that. Gluttonizing.”

“But if they have no bodies-”

“They can never be satisfied, of course,” he said. “They do it all from memory, only believing that they eat. They might, as easily, be drunkards swilling nonexistent liquor.”

I diverted my eyes from the sight. Those people, Robert, were like creatures gorging on a kill. I hate this place, I thought.

“Chris, walk erect,” Albert said.

I almost groaned. That instant of hatred had been strong enough to bend me forward. More and more, I was beginning to appreciate the import of that man’s words: Be aware .

To our left now, I could see a tall, gray structure which resembled a rotting warehouse. Its massive doors were open and, seeing hundreds of people moving about inside, I started in that direction. Maybe Ann-

I was forced to stop as vibrations from the structure hit me so hard that I gasped as though physically struck.

I stared at the figures moving in the cavernous gloom, their clothes hanging loosely on their bodies, their features distended and pale. Each person walked with bowed head, taking no notice of anyone around, pushing others aside without a vestige of reaction if they happened to collide. I don’t know how I knew it but their thoughts were open to me, massed on one dark theme: We’re here forever and there is no hope for us .

“That isn’t true,” I said. For Ann’s sake, I couldn’t let myself believe that.

“It’s true as long as they believe it,” Albert said.

I turned my head to shut away the sight. This must be hell, I thought; limitless and grim, a place of-

“Chris!”

“Oh, God,” I murmured, frightened. I was hunched again, my movements slowing, aging. Would I never be able to resist the baleful influences of this realm? Was there no hope at all that I-?

“Chris!” Albert stopped and forced me upward. Holding my arms tightly, he gazed into my eyes and I felt a flow of something coursing through my body, restoring energy. “You’ve got to remain alert ,” he said.