Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come

Her smile was bitter. “That’s the way people are,” she said. “Whoever did it just left without telling me.”

“You were shopping?” I asked. “I thought you said you never left the house.”

I heard a tinge of instability in her voice as she answered, “That was before the battery went dead.”

We were back where we started, the convoluted turnings of her mind endlessly thwarting me. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t make a point she’d recognized much less react to. This gray world she existed in made sense to her. Horrible, depressing sense but sense nonetheless.

The wheels in my mind were turning more slowly now. I could think of nothing new to try and, so, returned to an earlier approach. Maybe if I pushed it harder.

“You never told me what your children’s names are,” I said.

“Don’t you have to leave?” she asked.

I started, not expecting that. I’d forgotten this was life to her. In life, she would have wondered why a strange man lingered in her house.

“I’ll leave soon,” I said. “I just want to talk to you a little longer.”

“Why?”

I swallowed. “Because I’m new in the neighborhood.” It seemed like a feeble answer but, for some reason, she didn’t question it. “What did you say your children’s names are?” I asked.

She turned from the window, walking toward the living room.

It was the first time she’d avoided a question by refusing to answer, I thought. Was this a positive sign? I followed her and Ginger, asking, “Is your younger son named Ian?”

“He’s in school,” she answered.

“Is his name Ian?”

“He’ll be home later.”

“Is his name Ian?”

“You’d better leave. He’s very strong.”

“Is his name Ian?”

“Yes!”

“My son’s name is Ian too,” I told her.

“Really?” Disinterest. Was it feigned or actual?

“Is your older girl named Louise?” I asked.

She glanced across her shoulder as she moved into the living room. “Why don’t you-?”

“Louise?”

“Why don’t you go home?”

“Louise?”

“What if it is?” she demanded.

“My older daughter’s name is Louise too.”

“How interesting .” Sarcasm as resistance now. She walked to the glass door, Ginger at her heels. Was she retreating from me bodily now? And did she know that she was doing it?

“Is your older son’s name Richard?”

“Look at that pool,” she murmured.

“Is your older son’s name Richard?”

She turned, an expression of resentment on her face. “Look, what do you want?” she asked, her voice rising.

I almost said it all-unvarnished, laid out in a row. Then something stopped me. It was amazing I still had that much awareness. My perceptions were becoming more and more blunted as time passed.

I smiled as nicely as I could. Love, I thought. It has to be done with love. “I’m just interested in the remarkable similarities in our lives,” I said.

“ What similarities?” she lashed out.

“That I look like your husband for one.”

“You don’t .” She cut me off. “Not at all.”

“You said I did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Then I was wrong!” she flared. Growling, Ginger showed her teeth once more.

“All right, I’m sorry,” I said. I had to be more careful. “I wasn’t trying to make trouble. It just seemed remarkable to me.”

She gazed out through the glass door again. “I don’t see anything remarkable at all,” she muttered.

“Well . . . my wife named Ann. My children’s names the same as yours.”

She turned on me again. “Who said they were the same?” she demanded.

“And my name Chris,” I said.

She twitched sharply, gaping at me. For an instant, something lifted from her eyes instead of settling over them. I felt my heartbeat jolt.

It passed as quickly as it came.

A burst of raging anguish filled me. Damn this filthy place! I thought. I shuddered with the rage.

And felt myself grow denser with it .

Stop! I thought. I couldn’t though. I had no ability to reverse the process. Instead of helping her, I was descending to her world.

No , I thought. I won’t do that. I was here to take her from this place, not join her there.

She’d turned away again by then, staring through the murky glass, once more drawing her oppression around her like a guarding mantle.

“I don’t know why I don’t just put this place up for sale and leave,” she said. Another sound of embittered humor. “Who’d buy it though?” she continued. “The best real estate agent in the world couldn’t sell it.” She shook her head in disgust. “The best real estate agent in the world couldn’t give it away.”

She closed her eyes now, lowering her head.

“I keep polishing the furniture,” she said, “but dust keeps settling on it. It’s so dry; so dry . We haven’t had a drop of rain in such a long time, I-”

She broke off. That, too, I thought, despondently. Of course that would be part of Ann’s particular hell: lack of rain and browning greenery.

“I can’t stand filth and confusion,” she said, her voice beginning to break. “Yet all I see is filth and confusion.”

I started forward once again and Ginger braced herself to leap.

“Damn it, can’t you see I only want to help,” I said, my voice rising.

Ann jerked around, recoiling from me and I felt a burst of agonized reproach inside myself. I drew back quickly as Ginger started for me, snarling. “All right, all right,” I murmured, raising my hands in front of me.

“Ginger,” Ann said sharply.

Ginger stopped and looked at her.

My mind felt numb with defeat. Everything I’d tried had failed. Now this blunder. For all I knew, I was farther from helping Ann now than before I’d arrived. How vividly I saw what Albert had meant.

This level was a cruel and cunning trap.

“People borrow books and don’t return them,” Ann said, continuing as though nothing had occurred. “My best jewelry is gone. I can’t find it anywhere. My best clothes are missing.”

I stared at her with no idea whatever what to say or do. She was hiding again, holding the details of her plight between herself and any possible understanding of them.

“I don’t know who took those chessmen either,” she said.

“My wife had a chess set like that made for me,” I told her. “One Christmas. A man named Alexander built it.”

Ann shuddered. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

I lost control.

“You must know why I’m here,” I said. “You must know who I am.”

That maddening look in her eyes again; the filming away, the blind withdrawal.

“Ann,” I said. I reached out, touching her.

She gasped as though my fingers burned and, suddenly, I felt Ginger’s teeth clamp hard into my arm. I cried out and tried to pull away but she tightened her grip so that I dragged her across the carpeting by her hind legs. “Ginger!” I shouted.

My voicing of her name came simultaneously with Ann’s. Immediately, the bite was released and she was back beside Ann, trembling with reaction.

Raising my arm, I looked at it. Yes, pain was definitely possible there. And blood. I watched it oozing darkly from the punctures.

Afterlife , I thought. It seemed a mockery.

No flesh, yet pain and blood.

I LOOKED UP FROM MY ARM TO SEE ANN START TO CRY. SHE WAS stumbling across the room, tears running down her cheeks. As I watched, she slumped down on the sofa and pressed her left hand over her eyes.