Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come

I could only pray that, underneath his pallor, the resolution of the man I’d met in Summerland was still intact.

We were climbing down an angling, rocky fissure. It was far too dim to see clearly but I could feel slime on the surface of the rocks, a jellylike matter which exuded a smell of decay. Once in a while, some small thing crawled across my fingers, startling me. When I twitched my fingers, whatever they were darted swiftly into cracks. Teeth clenched, I forced myself to concentrate on Ann. I love her and was here to help her. Nothing else was stronger than that. Nothing.

As we descended gradually, the feeling of-how shall I describe it?- materiality began to crowd the air. It was as though we climbed down through some unseen, grumous fluid. Adjustments came by seconds now. We were part of the environment, our very flesh adapting to it automatically.

The air-could it be called that?-was totally repulsive-dense and sticky, foul of odor. I could feel it ooze around my body, crawling down into my lungs as we descended and descended.

“You’ve actually been here?” I asked. I was gasping for breath. We might as well have been alive, I thought, so complete was the sense of bodily function.

“Again and again,” Albert said.

“I couldn’t do it.”

“Someone has to help,” he replied. “They can’t help themselves.”

They , I thought. A convulsive shudder wracked my body. What did they look like, the denizens of this forbidding pit? I hoped I didn’t have to find out. I prayed that Albert would-with a sudden burst of discovery-know exactly where Ann was and take me there, away from this hideous place. I couldn’t stand much-

No . I stopped myself. I mustn’t think that way. I could stand anything I had to in order to reach Ann.

The lower realm . Not an adequate description for this region. Not bad enough by half. No light; the blackness of unfathomable night. No vegetation. Nothing but chilled stone. A foul, repugnant, never ceasing odor. An atmosphere to make the strongest man feel sick and helpless.

The blackness was enshrouding now. It took every bit of concentration I possessed to keep alive the weakest glimmer of illumination. I couldn’t see my hands any more. Spelunking must be just like this, the thought occurred. The darkness pressed against my flesh as well as we descended, down and down. Would we be safer not to carry light at all? I wondered. So as not to be caught sight of by-?

I gasped as, with the thought, abysmal blackness covered me. “Albert!” I whispered.

“Conceive of light,” he told me quickly.

I clung to the cold rock wall and strained to do as he had said, my brain laboring to create an image of illumination. In thought, I struck a match that would not ignite. Again and again, I raked its head across the rocky surface but the best I could manage was the vision of a furtive, random spark in the distance.

I tried to imagine a torch in my hand, a lantern, a flashlight, a candle. Nothing worked. The darkness tightened its grip and I began to panic.

Abruptly, I felt Albert’s hand clamp down across my shoulder. “ Light ,” he said.

Relief washed over me as illumination came back like a pale corona around my head. I felt a glow of reassurance: at the light but, even more, at Albert’s still intact ability to restore, in me, the strength to bring it back.

“Keep it strong in your mind,” he said. “There is no darkness in the universe to match that of the lower realm. You do not want to be devoid of light here .”

I reached out with my right hand to squeeze his arm in gratitude. At the same moment, something cold and many-legged scurried across my left hand and I almost jerked it from the wall, remembering only at the last instant to keep myself from doing so. I clutched back at the wall with my right hand and closed my eyes. After a few moments, I murmured, “Thank you.”

“All right,” Albert said.

As we continued down, I wondered what would have happened if I’d fallen. I couldn’t die. Still, that was little comfort. In Hell, death has to be the least of threats.

The curdled air was getting colder now, clinging to my skin with a crawling dampness that felt alive. Conceive of warmth, I told myself. I struggled to envisage the air of Summerland, to feel its warmth on my skin.

It helped a little. But the smell was getting worse now. What did it remind me of? At first, I couldn’t recall, climbing downward, ever downward; would we never reach the bottom?

Then it came to me. A summer afternoon. Marie returning from a ride on Kit. Just before she wiped Kit’s lathered coat, I smelled it. I pressed my teeth together ‘til they ached. The odor of Hell is the odor of a sweating horse, I thought. Was this the place that Dante had confronted in his awful visions?

It came to me, at that moment-slowly, far too slowly, every thought an effort now-that, just as I was able to repress the dark and cold, I could, by logic, shut away the odor as well. How? I wondered. My brain turned over like a foundering ship. Think , I ordered myself-and managed to evoke a memory of the fresh aroma in Summerland. Not a perfect memory by any means but enough to ease the smell, to make my downward climb more bearable.

Thinking to tell him what I’d done, I looked around for Albert and a sudden burst of terror struck me as I failed to see him.

I spoke his name aloud.

No answer.

“Albert?”

Silence.

“Albert!”

“Here.” His voice just reached me and, by peering hard, I presently was able to see the faint glow of this presence moving toward me.

“What happened ?” I asked.

“You lost attention,” he told me. “And, looking down, I did the same.”

Breath shook inside me as I looked down. All I saw was total and immeasurable blackness. How could he see anything there?

I caught my breath then, listening.

From the dark pit, I could hear a collection of nearly inaudible sounds-screams and cries of agony, mad, raucous laughter, howlings of derangement. I tried not to shudder but I didn’t have the strength. How could I go down to that? I closed my eyes and pleaded: God, please help me to survive .

Whatever lay below me on the floor of Hell.

I WONDER, NOW, IF SOMEONE WITH A PSYCHIC BIRTHRIGHT-someone who, in supraconsciousness, had traveled to this place-had named the English sanitarium Bedlam.

A noisome pestilence , the phrase occurred as we reached the bottom of the crater.

The air was rent by every horrible sound which man is capable of emitting.

Screams and howlings. Shouted curses. Laughter of every demented variety. Snarls and hisses. Bestial growlings. Unimaginable groans of agony. Shrill utterances of pain. Savage roars and lamentations. Screeches, bellows, wails, clamorings and outcries. The jangled tumult of countless souls in throes of derangement.

Albert leaned in close and shouted in my ear. “Hold on to me!”

I needed no encouragement. Like a child terrorized by every known and unknown dread in his mind, I clung to his arm as we started across the crater base, threading our way among forms that sprawled in almost every spot, some moving fitfully, some with spasmed jerks and hitches, some crawling virtually like snakes, some as motionless as corpses.

All of them resembled the dead.

What I could make out, through the feeble light we carried with us, cowed my soul.

A cloud of vapor hung above the rock-strewn ground, threatening to suffocate us until, once again-for what innumerable time-we adjusted our systems to survive it.