A Stir of Echoes - By Richard Matheson Page 0,18

trying to make myself get up and go in there. But I couldn't. Will power was swept away. I saw her in my mind and it was more than I could do to get up, walk in there and find her, white and still, staring at me with her dark eyes.

"Again?"

I started with a frightened grunt and my heart leaped so hard it seemed to jolt against the wall of my chest. Then I swallowed with effort and drew in a long, shaking breath.

"Yes," I muttered.

"And... she's in there?"

"Yes. Yes."

I felt her shudder against me.

"Tom," she said and there was something different in her voice; something that didn't question. "Tom, what does she want?"

"I don't know," I answered as if, all along, we had both accepted the woman as objective reality.

"She's-still there?"

"Yes."

"Oh..." I thought I heard her sob and I reached out to touch her. I felt her hand against her mouth. She was biting the heel of it-hard.

"Anne, Anne," I whispered, "it's all right. She can't hurt us." She pulled away her hand. Her voice broke over me in the darkness.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "Are you just going to lie here and let this thing go on? If she's really in there, if she's what you say she is..."

I think we both stopped breathing at the same time. I stared at the dark outline of her, feeling my heart thud slowly, draggingly.

"Anne?" I heard myself murmur.

"What?"

"Don't... don't you believe what Phil said? That it's-"

"Do you believe it?"

I felt my hands shaking and I couldn't answer her.

Because suddenly I realized that I didn't believe what Phil had said. That I'd never believed him. It wasn't telepathy; it was something more.

But what?
Chapter Seven
"ARE YOU GOING TO TELL FRANK AND Elizabeth about it?" It was almost five on Wednesday; we were in the bedroom. Anne was sitting on the bed brushing Richard's hair, and I was putting on a fresh shirt. In a few minutes we'd be going across the street for dinner.

I slipped the sport shirt over my head, then stood looking at their reflection in the bureau mirror.

"Are you?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"No, why bother?" I said. "Frank would laugh at the whole thing." It was quiet then. I knew what Anne was thinking. I'd been thinking the same thing. I also knew she didn't want to think it. I didn't want to either. It was too important. And, really, we had no right to dwell on it. What did we have for evidence? A shapeless feeling in the dead of night. The flash of an instinct, a brief second during which the yearning to believe in something beyond seemed to have become a realization, an acceptance. That wasn't enough; not enough at all.

I turned and leaned against the edge of the bureau. Anne avoided my eyes.

"Pitty shirt, daddy," Richard said.

"Thank you, baby," I said.

"Welcome," Richard said; and, for a moment, something seemed to pass between us; a sort of understanding. Then he had turned away.

I looked at him and thought how much easier it would be to raise him if I could only believe. All those ever-present dreads would be ameliorated fatal illness, being run down by a car, being killed by any one of the myriad accidents to which a child is so horribly vulnerable. I thought how wonderful it would be if I could believe that he was safe.

For a moment Anne's eyes met mine.

"I do know one thing," I said impulsively. "There's something around us. I don't know what it is but it's something. And it's there, Anne. It's there."

I remember the look she gave me. How, for a moment, she pressed her lips to Richard's white-blond hair.

"It would be so nice," she said, almost to herself, "so nice." Frank let us in.

"Greetings, fellow sufferers," he slurred. His beer-sweet breath fogged over us. "Hobble the hell on in." As we entered the living room, Elizabeth came out of the kitchen. It wasn't hard to tell they'd been fighting. Even if I hadn't sensed the swelling of tension in the air, I could see that Elizabeth had been crying.

"Hello." She came toward us, forcing a smile, not looking at Frank. "Hello, dear," she said to Richard.

Frank caught her around the waist as she came up to us and I saw his white fingers dig into the soft flesh of her stomach.

"This is my wife, Lizzie," he said. "Lizzie, mother of my unborn brat." Elizabeth pulled away with a pained grimace and stooped down