A Stir of Echoes - By Richard Matheson Page 0,10

the fantastic things they'll swallow whole when their emotions are brought into play. Because the emotions have no limits on belief. The emotions will swallow anything-and they do. As witness yourself. You're an intelligent man, Tom. But the only thing you thought of was ghost."

He paused and Anne and I stared at him. He'd sounded just like Alan Porter.

"The end," he said, grinning. "Pass the basket."

"So you don't think I saw it then," I said.

"You did see it," he answered, "but in your mind's eye. And, believe me, brother man, seeing it that way can be just as realistic to you as seeing it the ordinary way. Sometimes a lot more realistic." He grinned. "Hell, man," he said, "you were a medium last night." We talked about it some more. I didn't have much to offer, though-except objections. It's a little hard to let go of a thing like that. Maybe the human reaction is to cling to it a little. As Phil had indicated, it's a lot more "romantic" to see a ghost. Not so really thrilling to write it off as "mere" telepathy. It was Anne who broke it up.

"Well, we're doing a lot of talking about this," she said with her true woman's mind, "but we're missing the whole point. What I want to know is-who was this woman?"

Phil and I both had to laugh at the combination of curiosity and wifely suspicion in her voice.

"Who else?" Phil said. "One of his girl friends."

I shook my head.

"I wish I knew," I said, "but I can't remember ever seeing her." I shrugged. "Maybe it was-what's her name?-Helen Driscoll."

"Whoozat, whoozat?" Phil asked.

"She's the woman who used to live in this house," Anne told him. "She's Mrs. Sentas' sister; the woman who lives next door."

"Oh." Phil shrugged. "Could be."

"So I saw the ghost of Helen Driscoll," I said, straight-faced.

"Except for one little thing," Anne said.

"What?" Phil asked.

"She's not dead. She just went back east."

"Not west," said Phil.

The headache got worse. So much worse that I had to beg off going to the beach that afternoon. I made them go without me; told Anne not to worry, I'd take an aspirin and lie down until the headache went away.

They went a few minutes past two, piling into Phil's coupe with basket, blanket, beach bag, lotions, et al. I stood on the porch waving to Richard as the Mercury gunned up Tulley Street. Like so many young men Phil liked to be doing about fifty before he shifted into third.

I watched until the car turned left onto the boulevard; then I went back inside the house. As I started to close the door I saw Elizabeth out on her lawn again, white gloved, poking a trowel at the garden soil. She had on a wide-brimmed straw hat that she and Frank had bought in Tijuana. She didn't look over at me. I stood there a moment watching her slow, tired movements. The term "professional martyr" occurred to me and I put it off as unworthy.

I shut the sight of her away with the door. Anyway, I had my own troubles. For a moment I wondered where Frank was, deciding that he was either sleeping in his house or else stretched out on the beach, ogling girls. I shook that off too. It simply wasn't my business.

I turned and stood looking at the spot where the woman had been. A shudder plaited down my back. I tried to visualize her but it was hard in the daylight. I went over to the exact spot and stood on it, feeling the warmth of the sunlight on my ankles. It was almost impossible to believe that it hadn't been a dream. I went into the kitchen and put on some water for coffee. I leaned against the edge of the sink counter while I waited for it to boil. It was very quiet in the house. I stared down at the multicoloured spatter design on the linoleum until it swam before my eyes. In the cupboard I could hear the alarm clock ticking. It reminded me of Poe's story about the telltale heart. It sounded like a heart beating hollowly behind the shielding of the cabinet door. I closed my eyes and sighed. Why couldn't I believe Phil? Everything he'd said had been so sensible-on the surface.

There was my answer, I decided. What I felt wasn't on the surface. It was a subterranean trickle of awareness far beneath the level of consciousness. All right, it