Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come

“You’re lying. Lying .” Her voice was guttural, her teeth clenched tightly, her expression one of malignant wrath.

“Shall I tell you what you said to Perry at the house?”

She tried to stand again but couldn’t. The filming of her gaze came and went. “Not interested,” she mumbled.

“You said ‘I don’t believe in survival after death. I believe that when we die we die and that’s the end of it.’ “

“That’s right!” she cried.

A leap of futile hope. “That is what you said?”

“Death is the end of it!”

I fought off momentary loss. “Then how do I know these things?” I asked.

“You made them up!”

“You know that isn’t true! You know that everything I’ve described is exactly the way it happened!”

She managed to stay on her feet this time. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but you’d better get out of here before it’s too late.”

“Too late for whom?” I asked. “You or me?”

“You!”

“No, Ann,” I said. “I know what’s happened. You’re the one who doesn’t understand.”

“And you’re my husband?” she asked.

“I am.”

“Mister,” she said; she almost spat the word at me. “I’m looking right at you and you’re not my husband.”

I felt a sudden, wrenching coldness in my chest.

She saw the depth of my reaction and took immediate advantage of it. “If you were my husband,” she said, “you wouldn’t say such things to me . Chris was kind. He loved me.”

“I love you too.” I felt depression rising. “I’m here because I love you.”

Her laugh was a cynical, chilling sound. “Love,” she said. “You don’t even know me.”

The ground was slipping out from under me. “I do!” I cried. “I’m Chris! Can’t you see that?! Chris! ”

My loss was complete as she smiled in cold victory. “How can you be here then?” she asked. “He’s dead.”

It had all been in vain. There was no way of convincing her because she, literally, could not conceive of afterlife. No one can conceive of the impossible. And, to Ann, survival after death was an impossibility.

She turned and walked from the living room, followed by Ginger.

At first, the shock of it failed to register. I sat watching her go as if it had no importance to me. Then it struck and I stood in dumbfounded shock. I’d done everything I could to convince her, thought I’d had her on the razor edge of belief only to discover I’d accomplished nothing.

Nothing .

I moved after her but, now, without hope. Each step seemed to bring another condensation to my mind and body-a curdling of thought, a clogging of flesh which grew increasingly worse.

For a ghastly moment, I thought I was home again, that this was where I belonged .

Stopping, I resisted the hideous process. I couldn’t bear to stay in that place. It was too horrible.

Ann’s cry of terror from our bedroom made me break into a run.

I say a run but it was more a hobble, my legs coated with lead. It was then that I knew what Ann had described. Like her, I could barely lift my feet. And it was worse for her .

I stopped in the bedroom doorway, Ginger whirling to face me. Ann was pressed against the wall, staring at our bed.

Across its dingy, faded spread, a tarantula the size of a man’s fist was crawling.

The moment was frozen. Ann against the wall. Ginger staring at me. Me in the doorway.

The only thing that moved, with bloated sluggishness, was the enormous, furry spider.

As it started up the pillow on Ann’s side, she made a gagging noise.

I wondered, for a dreadful moment, if she’d done this to herself; an unconscious punishment for not believing what I’d told her. Created an image of the most repugnant thing she could imagine-a huge tarantula walking on the place where she lay her head in sleep.

I don’t know why Ginger made no move as I entered the room. Was it because she, now, sensed that I was really there to help Ann? I have no answer. I only know that she let me walk by Ann and reach the bed.

Picking up the pillow gingerly, I started to turn. I gasped and flung it from me as the spider made a sudden, hitching movement toward my right hand. Ann cried out, sickened, as the tarantula thudded on the bedspread.

Hastily, I snatched up the pillow and dropped it on top of the spider. Then, as quickly as I could, I grabbed the spread at each corner and pulled it over the pillow. Picking up the bundle, I carried it to the door and slide it open. Tossing the spread outside, I shut the door again and locked it.

As I turned back, Ann was stumbling to the bed and falling on it, stonelike.

Motionless, I stared at her.

There were no movements left to make. I’d exhausted all possibilities.

The encounter was over, the battle ended.

ANN LAY IMMOBILE ON HER LEFT SIDE, LEGS DRAWN UP, HANDS clasped tightly underneath her chin. Her eyes stared sightlessly, still glistening with tears that no longer fell. She hadn’t even stirred when I’d sat down on the other side of the bed and, if she sensed my gaze on her masklike face, she gave no indication of it.

Ginger slept, exhausted, at the foot of the bed. I turned to look at her and felt a rush of pitying love. She was so unquestioning in her devotion. If only there was some way she could understand what was happening.

I looked back at Ann. My body felt cold and aching and I knew that, as I sat there, that dark, terrible magnetism was waiting to draw me to the void where she existed. I had only to allow it and the atmosphere would totally absorb me, making me as she was, a prisoner forgetting everything that had gone before.

I knew, with dreadful clarity, how foolish and misplaced my hopes had been. Albert had tried to warn me but I hadn’t listened. Now I understood at last.

There was no way to reach Ann .

Still, words came. Words I wanted her to hear, now when I could speak them to her, face to face. Words which I knew could not affect her but words that filled my mind and heart.

“You remember how you used to write thank-you notes to people all the time?” I asked. “For dinners, presents, favors? I used to tease you because you wrote so many of them. But they were lovely gestures, Ann. I always knew that.”

No sound from her. Completely inanimate on the bed. I reached out and took her right hand. It was cold and limp. I held it in both of mine and continued speaking.

“I want to give you thanks in words now,” I told her. “I don’t know what will happen to us. I pray we’ll be together somewhere, sometime, but, at the moment, I have no idea if that’s possible.

“That’s why I’m going to thank you now for everything you’ve done for me, everything you’ve meant to me. Someone you never met told me that thoughts are real and eternal. So, even if you don’t understand my words now, I know the time will come when what I say will reach you.”

I pressed her hand between my palms to warm it and I told her what I felt.

“Thank you, Ann, for all the things you did for me in life, from the smallest to the largest. Everything you did had meaning and I want you to know my gratitude for them.

“Thank you for keeping my clothes clean, our homes clean, yourself clean. For always being fresh and sweet smelling, always being well groomed.

“Thank you for feeding me. For the preparation of so many lovely meals. For baking for me at a time when so few women bother anymore.