A Stir of Echoes - By Richard Matheson Page 0,13

word as any."

"It's-such a remote word," she said. "You hear it spoken once in a blue moon. You read about it occasionally. But you never really think about it in personal terms."

"Well, maybe I'm just jumping to conclusions," I said. "It may just be a simple old nervous breakdown."

She put her hand over mine.

"Well, if this... sort of thing goes on," she said, "we'll go to Alan Porter." She smiled wryly. "Or something."

I smiled back. "Or something; maybe to an asylum."

"Honey, don't talk like that."

"I'm sorry." I put my arms around her and we pressed together.

"I got a friend in here needs a daddy," she murmured. "Not some character in a padded cell." I kissed her. "Tell your friend," I said, "I accept his terms." I saw her again. It was the same as it had been the first time; the strange dark dress, the string of pearls at her throat, the hair all uncombed, a frame of tangled blackness around her white face. She was standing in the same way by the back window, looking at me. This time I could see more because I wasn't incapacitated by shock. I could see that she had a look of pleading on her face. As if she were asking me for something.

"Who are you?" I asked again.

Then I woke up.

For a few moments, a surge of almost overwhelming relief flooded through me-and, with it, recognition. Phil was right, it hadn't been a ghost. It hadn't even been telepathy but only a dream. She wasn't real. I was safe. All these thoughts in the space of seconds.

And gone sooner. Because I felt that tingling in my head again, that cramping tension in my guts. That same twisting aggravation of the flesh that had driven me from my bed the night before. And I knew-as surely as anything I had ever known that, if I got up and walked into the living room, she'd be there waiting for me.

I pushed my face into the pillow and lay there shuddering, fighting it. I wasn't going in there. I simply wasn't going in there!

Suddenly I froze, listening. There was something in the hall; I heard the sound of it. A swishing crackle of a sound- like the skirt of a moving woman.

Abruptly, there was a cry.

Richard! A blade of terror plunged into my heart. Gasping, I threw back the covers and jumped up, rushed across the floor, lunging into the hall, into Richard's room. He was standing in his crib, crying and shivering in the darkness. Quickly, I pulled him up and pressed my cheek to his.

"Shhh, baby, it's all right," I whispered. "It's all right, daddy's here." I felt a shudder ripple down my back and I held him tightly, patting his back with shaking fingers. "It's all right baby; daddy's here. Go to sleep, sweetheart. It's all right."

I felt his fear; felt it as distinctly as if it were a current of icy water trickling from his brain to mine. "It's all right," I said. "Go to sleep now. Daddy's here." I kept on talking to him until he fell asleep again. "It's just a dream, baby. Just a dream."

It had to be.

Sunlight. And, with it, what passes for reason-a desperate groping for solace. I'd only dreamed about the woman, imagined the rustling skirt; and Richard had only had a nightmare. The rest was fancy, a disorder of the nerves. That was my conclusion as I shaved. It is amazing how much one is willing to distort belief in the name of reason; how little one is willing to trust the intuitions of the flesh.

A combination of things served to bolster my conclusion. The aforementioned sunlight-always a strong factor in enabling one to deny the fears of the night. Add to that a tasty breakfast, a sunny-countenanced wife, a happy, laughing baby son, the first day of a week's work, and you have arrayed a potent force against belief in all things that have no form or logic.

By the time I left the house I was convinced. I walked across the street and up the alley beside Frank and Elizabeth's house; it was Frank's turn to drive. I knocked on the back door and went into their kitchen. Frank was still at the table, drinking coffee.

"Up, man," I said, "we'll be late."

"That's what you always say," he said. "Are we ever late?"

"Often," I answered, winking at Elizabeth who was standing at the stove.

"False," said Frank, "false as hell." He got up and stretched,