A Stir of Echoes - By Richard Matheson Page 0,15

twelve minutes.

I skidded to a halt and was out of the car before the motor sound had faded. I raced across the lawn, leaped onto the porch and slammed through the front doorway.

I found them in the bedroom, Anne on the bed, Elizabeth sitting beside her. Richard slipped off the bed as I entered and ran to me.

"Hi, daddy!" he said, cheerfully.

"Hello, baby." I stroked his head distractedly and moved quickly to the bed. Elizabeth got up and I sat where she'd been.

Anne smiled weakly at me. Her eyes didn't seem to focus very well. I saw that Elizabeth had put the ice-bag on her head.

"Are you all right, honey?" I asked.

Anne swallowed slowly and smiled again. "I'm all right." She more framed the words with her lips than spoke them aloud.

"Where's the doctor?" I asked Elizabeth.

"He hasn't come yet," she told me.

"Well... where in God's name is he?" I muttered. I looked back at Anne. "What happened?" I asked.

"No, no, never mind. Don't talk. You're sure you're all right? You don't want me to take you to the hospital?"

"No." Her head stirred slightly on the pillow.

"Daddy, mama faw down." Richard was by my side now, looking at me very intently. For a second I seemed to see Anne standing in the kitchen, reaching upward "Yes, baby, I know," I said, putting my arm around him. I looked back at Anne. "You're sure you're all right?"

"It's all right." Her voice was a little clearer.

"How long ago did you call the doctor?" I asked Elizabeth.

"Just a few minutes before you called," she said.

"How did it happen?" I asked. "Did she faint?"

"I came over to say hello," Elizabeth said. "I found Anne on the kitchen floor. I think a large can of tomatoes fell off the top shelf and hit her."

I stared at her blankly. Then I turned to Anne.

"On... the top of your head?" I asked, slowly.

Her lips moved. "Yes."

The doctor came about three and said that the only complication was a big goose egg on Anne's skull. I phoned the plant and said I wouldn't be back. Elizabeth said she'd pick up Frank at four fifteen. A little before five o'clock Anne insisted she was all right and got up to make supper. While she was at the stove I sat at the table with Richard on my lap and told her what had happened. She stopped stirring and looked over at me strangely.

"But that's fantastic," she said.

"I know it is. But it happened."

She stood there motionlessly, staring at me.

"No, why bother telling him?" I said.

Her face went blank. "What?" she asked.

"I said why bother telling him?"

"Telling who?"

"You just said we should-tell Phil," I said, "didn't you?"

"Tom, I didn't say anything."

There was a hanging pause. "You didn't?" I finally said.

"No."

I swallowed. I leaned back against the wall, hearing Richard tell me about a worm he and Candy had found in the back yard; not aware of the fact that I could see, in my mind, the actual scene of the two children kneeling on the soil, bent over, staring intently at the wriggling coils of the worm.

"What next?" I murmured. "Good God, what next?"

The dream again. Waking up with a gasp of terror, staring at the blackness, knowing she was in the living room waiting for me. Wanting to shout Get out of here! Burrowing under the covers instead, pressing close to Anne, shaking and terrified. Hearing the sound of a rustling skirt in the hallway, rushing to Richard once again as he woke up, crying. And, in the morning, another, dull, clinging headache, another stomach ache. A sense of depletion-of having been used. And the inevitable attempt to convince myself it was only a dream. Futile now.
Chapter Six
WHEN I GOT HOME FROM WORK Tuesday afternoon I put the bag on the kitchen table.

"What's that?" Anne asked after we'd kissed.

"The sugar," I said.

She looked at me a moment.

"Do I dare ask," she said, "how you knew we needed sugar?"

"You didn't ask me to get it?" I asked, already knowing the answer. Anne shook her head. "Well," she said, "maybe this thing will come in handy after all." It was a poor attempt at a joke.

I put the box of sugar in the cupboard and took off my suit coat.

"Hot," I said.

"Yes."

Anne started to set the table and I stood by the kitchen window watching Richard and Candy run in erratic circles as they chased a butterfly.

"Tom?" I heard Anne say. I looked back. "What are you going to do?"

"You mean