A Stir of Echoes - By Richard Matheson Page 0,1
as he did then, the ends of his mouth curling up slightly.
"Come in," he said in his quiet, polite voice.
Frank and Elizabeth were already there, Elizabeth settled on the red sofa like a diffident patient in a dentist's waiting room, Frank's thin body slouched in one of the red arm chairs. He brightened only a little when we came in, raising his bored gaze from the green rug, straightening up in the chair, then standing. I introduced Phil around.
"Hi!"
I glanced over and saw Elsie peering around the corner of the kitchen doorway. She'd cut her dark hair still shorter and bobbed it still tighter, I noticed. When we'd moved into the neighbourhood, she'd had long, drabby blond hair.
We all said hello to her and she disappeared a moment, then came into the room with a tray of drinks in her hands. She was wearing a red, netlike dress which clung tightly to the curves of her plump body. When she bent over to put the tray down on the blondwood coffee table, the bosom of the dress slipped away from her tight, black brassiere. I noticed Frank's pointed stare, then Elsie straightened up with a brassy, hostess like smile and looked at Phil. Anne introduced them.
"Hel- lo," Elsie said. "I'm so glad you could come." She looked at us. "Well," she said, "name your poison."
What happened that evening up to the point when it all began is not important. There were the usual peregrinations to the kitchen and the bathroom; the usual breaking up and re-gathering of small groups - the women, the men, Frank, Phil and myself, Elizabeth and Anne, Elsie and Phil, Ron and me-and so on; the drifting knots of conversation that take place at any get-together.
There was record music and a little sporadic attempt at dancing. There was Candy stumbling into the living room, blinking and numb with only half-broken sleep; being tucked back into her bed. There were the expected personality displays-Frank, cynical and bored; Elizabeth, quietly radiant in her pregnancy; Phil, amusing and quick; Ron, mute and affable; Anne, soft-spoken and casual; Elsie, bouncing and strainedly vivacious.
One bit of conversation I remember: I was just about to go next door to check on Richard when Elsie said something about our getting a baby-sitter.
"It doesn't matter when you just go next door like this," she said, "but you do have to get out once in a while." Once in a while, to Elsie, meant an average of four nights a week.
"We'd like to," Anne said, "but we just haven't been able to find one."
"Try ours," said Elsie: "She's a nice kid and real reliable." That was when I left and checked on Richard-and had one of my many night time adorations; that standing in semi-darkness over your child's crib and staring down at him. Nothing else. Just standing there and staring down at his little sleep flushed face and feeling that almost overwhelming rush of absolute love in yourself. Sensing something close to holy in the same little being that nearly drove you out of your mind that very afternoon.
I turned up the heat a little then and went back to Elsie's house.
They were talking about hypnotism. I say they but, outside of Phil, Anne and maybe Frank, no one there knew the least thing about it. Primarily, it was a dissertation by Phil on one of his favourite topics.
"Oh, I don't believe that," Elsie said as I sat down beside Anne and whispered that Richard was fine.
"People who say they were hypnotized weren't, really."
"Of course they were," Phil said. "If they weren't, how could they have hatpins jabbed into their throats without bleeding? Without even crying out?"
Elsie turned her head halfway to the side and looked at Phil in that overdone, accusingly dubious way that people affect when they have to bolster their own uncertain doubts.
"Did you ever really see anyone get a hatpin jabbed in their throat?" she said.
"I've had a five-inch hatpin in my throat," Phil answered. "And, once, I put one halfway through a friend of mine's arm at school-after I'd hypnotized him."
Elsie shuddered histrionically. "Uhh," she said, "how awful"
"Not at all," Phil said with that casual tone undergraduates love to affect when they are flicking off intellectual bomb-shells. "I didn't feel a thing and neither did my friend."
"Oh, you're just making that up," Elsie said, studiedly disbelieving.
"Not at all," said Phil.
It was Frank who gave it the final, toppling push.
"All right," he said, "let's see you hypnotize somebody then." He