Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. No, don’t be sorry, be strong! I told myself.

I tried to concentrate on resisting as we moved on through the nebulous light, leaving the dingy sprawl of huts behind.

This place was not silent.

As we neared it, sounds of anger and contention rose in volume; people quarreling, their voices strident, savagely vindictive.

Soon I saw them.

No one touched another person. Contact was entirely by words; vicious, cruel, assaulting words. A malicious haze hovered just above the people, an intermingling of their murky auras, ugly red flashes of fury darting between them.

Albert had warned me that we approached an area where violent spirits crowded together. This section was the least of it, he told me as we walked. The violence here was, at least, confined to verbal abuse.

“Is this a place you’ve gone to before?” I asked. I had to speak loudly to make myself heard.

“One of them,” he answered.

As we circuited the mobs of clashing people, I began to feel their icy thrusts of venom at us. They didn’t even know who we were yet they hated us completely.

“Can they harm us?” I asked, uneasily.

“Not if we refuse to accept their wrath,” Albert told me. “They’re far more likely to do harm to living people who aren’t aware of their existence. Fortunately, their mass thought rarely focuses. If, on occasion, it does, stronger mentalities above become aware of it and dissipate the output so it cannot hurt the innocent on earth.

“Of course there are individuals on earth whose nature is receptive to these thoughts; who provide an access to them. These cannot be helped. That’s the pitfall of free will. Any man or woman possess the capacity to give entry to dark thoughts.”

THE MORE WE WALKED NOW, THE MORE REPELLED AND NERVOUS I became. A kind of aching restlessness filled me. I felt cramped and stifled as though the atmosphere were closing in around my body. The air in my lungs tasted vile, unclean, as thick as mucilage.

“Adjust your system again,” Albert said.

Once again-I’d done it five times now; or had it been six?-I visualized myself as I would have to be to function under these new conditions. Not function in comfort, God knew; that concept had long since left my system. Survival was all that I could hope for now.

Once more, I felt my body clotting. So much so, now, that I might have been alive on earth again, my flesh congealed and weighted, my bones coagulated into hardness.

“Adjust your mind as well,” Albert told me. “This will be the worst you’ve seen.”

I drew a deep breath, grimacing at the taste and odor of the fetid air. “Is this really helping?” I asked.

“If there were any other way to find her, rest assured we’d take it,” Albert said.

“Are we any closer to her?”

“Yes,” he said, “and no.”

I turned to him in irritation. “What does that mean?” I demanded.

His urgent look reminded me to quell my anger. At first, I couldn’t, then, realizing that I must, I strained to keep myself controlled. “ Are we any closer?” I asked.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” he replied. “I just haven’t been able to locate her yet.”

He stopped and looked at me. “I’m sorry that I can’t explain it any better,” he said. “I can say that, yes, it’s helping. Please believe me.”

I nodded, returning his look.

“Tell me if you want to go back,” he said.

“Go back ?”

“Let me look for her-”

“I want to find her, Albert. Now .”

“Chris, you’ve got to-”

I turned away from him in fury, then looked back as quickly. He was only warning me. My new impatience with him was a sign that the environment was affecting me again.

I started to apologize, then felt myself begin to tense with anger once again. I almost lashed out at him. Then a beam of reason pierced the dark resentment in my mind and I knew, once more, that he was only trying to help. Who was I to argue with a man who had come to this awful place to help others? What in God’s name was the matter with me?

My sentiments reversed themselves again. I was disconsolate once more, stricken by my inability to-

“Chris, you’re hunching again,” Albert said. “Concentrate on something positive.”

A burst of alarm. I willed my clouding mind to think of Summerland. Albert was my friend. He was taking me to find Ann, his only motivation, love.

“Better.” Albert squeezed my arm. “ Hold to that, whatever it is.”

“I’ll try,” I said. “I’m sorry I slipped again.”

“It isn’t easy to remember here,” he said. “And simple to forget.”

Even those words, meant as explanation, like a shadowy magnetism, had a tendency to pull me down. Again, I thought of Summerland, then of Ann and of my love for her. That was better.

I would concentrate on Ann.

The light was getting dimmer as we walked now. Even with my concentration on an area of light around me, the nimbus seemed to shrink as though some outside pressure forced it in. Albert’s light was stronger but even his illumination soon became no brighter than that of a dying candle flame. It seemed as though I felt a gathering thickness in the air. We might have been moving along the bottom of a deep and murky sea. There were no people anywhere in sight, no structures. All I saw ahead were rocks, a line of craggy boulders.

Moments later, we had reached the crater edge.

Leaning forward, I looked down into the blackness of it, then pulled back sharply at a rush of something from below-something toxic and malignant. “What?” I muttered.

“If there is any place I’ve been to that deserves the name of Hell, this is it,” Albert told me. It was the first time I had ever heard the sound of misgiving in his voice and it made my fear increase. The constant throughout all of this had been his strength. If this place frightened him . . .

“We must go down there though,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was telling me or steeling himself for the ordeal.

I drew in laboring breath. “Albert, she isn’t down there ,” I said, I pleaded.

“I don’t know,” he answered. His expression was grave. “I only know we have to go there if we want to find her.”

Shuddering, I closed my eyes and tried to remember Summerland. To my dismay, I found myself unable to do it. I strained to conjure up a vision of the lake shore I had stood on, the exquisite scenery-

The thought was gone. I opened my eyes and stared out at the vast, dark crater.

It was miles in circumference with precipitous walls. All I could make out on its floor-it was like trying to pick out details in a night-shrouded valley-were huge masses of rock as though some cataclysmic landslide had occurred in eons past. I thought I made out openings but wasn’t certain. Were there tunnels in the rock? I shuddered again, trying not to let myself imagine what sort of beings might exist in those tunnels.

“We have to go this way?” I asked. I knew the answer in my mind but heard my voice speak nonetheless, my tone one of faltering dread.

“Chris, let’s go back,” he said. “Let me look on my own.”

“ No .” I braced myself. I loved Ann and would help her. Nothing in the depths of Hell would keep me from it.

Albert looked at me and I returned his gaze. His appearance had changed. He was as I remembered him on earth. Nothing of perfection could survive in this place and his features bore the cast I recollected from my youth. He’d always looked a little pale, a little ill. He looked that way again-as I was sure I looked.