A Stir of Echoes - By Richard Matheson Page 0,11

was emotion. Perhaps emotion was a better gauge for things like that.

"I said come in here!"

I started with a gasp, my head jerking up so fast it sent electric twinges along my neck muscles. For a moment, I actually expected to see the woman in the strange black dress standing before me again.

"Ron!" I heard then. "I mean now!"

I swallowed and blew out a long, trembling breath.

"All right," I heard. "All right. What about that?" I couldn't hear Ron's answer. You never could. Elsie might have been conducting a vituperative monologue across the alley.

"I told you at breakfast, damn it, I don't want your damn clothes laying all over my house!" Amusement broke into sound in my throat and I shook my head slowly. Dear God, I thought; her house. She didn't want his clothes lying all over her house. Ron was a boarder there, not the legal owner. A man's home is his castle, I thought, unless his wife makes him live in the dungeon. I wondered for a diverting moment what kind of match Ron and Elizabeth would make. One thing for sure, I decided, it would be the quietest damn house on the block.

"And what about the oven?" Elsie asked. "You said you were going to clean it this weekend. Well, have you?"

It made me cringe to hear talk like that. I felt my hands curling up into instinctive fists.

"One of these days," I muttered, half myself, half imagining myself as Ron, "one of these days. Pow!

Right to the moon!"

My punch at the air sent jagged lines of pain through my head. Laughter faded with a wince. I couldn't stay amused anyway. There was my own problem. It wasn't over. No matter what Phil said, it wasn't over.

I was drinking my coffee when I heard bare feet padding in the alley. I looked up and saw Elsie come up onto the back porch. Through the film of the door curtains, I saw that she was wearing a black bathing suit.

She knocked. "Anne?" she called.

I got up and opened the door.

"Oh, hi" she said, quickly rearranging her smile from one of polite neighbourliness to one of mathematical seduction. At least that was the effect I got.

"Good afternoon," I said.

The bathing suit clung to her plumpness as if she'd been dipped into it rather than pulled it on.

"Tom, could I borrow those raffia-covered glasses?" she asked. "I'm having some relatives over tonight."

"Yeah. Sure." I backed away a step, then turned for the cupboard. I heard her come in the kitchen and shut the door.

"Where's Anne?" she asked. The sound of the question was innocent. Yet, for some reason, I knew it wasn't.

"Gone to the beach," I told her.

"You mean you're all alone?" she said. "Yum yum." It was supposed to be a joke but, like Frank, Elsie was incapable of obscuring her motive with words.

"That's right," I said, pulling open the cabinet door. Suddenly I felt that tingling in my temples again. It made my hand twitch. I looked back over my shoulder, half expecting to see that woman. There was only Elsie.

"You should have told me," she minced. "I'd have put on something more-appropriate." I swallowed and took down the glasses. I had the very definite inclination to tell her to get out of the house. I didn't know why. There was just something about her that disturbed me. And it wasn't the obvious thing either.

"How long are they going to be gone?" Elsie asked.

I turned with the glasses.

"Why do you ask?" I made the mistake of smiling as I said it. To Elsie it probably looked as if I slipped at that moment. I didn't. I reeled as a wave of raw sensation hit me. I caught for balance at the sink and managed to catch myself without breaking a glass.

"No reason," she said, obviously taking my slip for a form of fluster. "Why? Should I have?" I stood there looking at her. She wasn't smiling. She stood there without moving, one hand on the out-jutting curve of a hip. I noticed the line of dewy sweat across her upper lip and how the sunlight behind her was shining through the golden aura of hair along the edges of her shoulders, arms and neck.

"Guess not." I walked over and handed her the glasses. I don't know whether it was an accident that our hands touched. I jerked mine away a little too quickly to hide it.

"What's the matter, Tom?" she asked with the tone of voice used