A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson Page B

phone kept ringing.
    "What is it?" Her voice was hollow, ready to shatter.
      I swallowed but the lump stayed in my throat. The phone kept ringing, ringing, I tried to speak but couldn't. I shook my head again. That's all I could do; shake my head.
      Suddenly, with a gasp, she pushed by me and I stayed rooted there as she ran across the living room into the hall. The ringing stopped.
     
      "Hello," I heard her say. Silence. "Dad!"
      And that was all. Absolute silence. I pressed both shaking palms down on the sink counter and stood there staring at the spread ringers.
      I heard her hang up. I stood waiting. Don't, I thought. Don't come in here. Don't look at me. I heard her footsteps, slow and heavy, moving across the living room rug. Don't, I begged. Please. Don't look at me.
      I heard her stop in the kitchen doorway. She didn't speak. I swallowed dryly. Then I had to turn. I couldn't bear it, just standing there with all her thoughts assailing me.
      I turned.
      She was staring at me. I'd seen a stare like that only once before in my lifetime. It was on the face of a little girl who was looking at her dog lying crushed in the street; a look compounded of speechless horror and complete, overwhelming disbelief.
      "You knew," she said.
      I reached out an imploring hand.
      "You knew" she said-and there was no hiding the revulsion in her voice now; the fear. "You knew this too. You knew before he called."
      "Anne-"
      With a gagging sound, she whirled and fled the living room. I started after her. "Anne!"
      She rushed into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. I banged against it just after she'd locked it. Inside, I heard the start of her dry, chest-racking sobs.
      "Anne, please!"
      "Get away from me!" she cried. "Get away from me!"
      I stood there, shaking helplessly, listening to her heartbroken sobs as she wept for her mother who had died that morning.
     
    * * *
     
      She left for Santa Barbara early that afternoon, taking Richard with her. I didn't even ask if she wanted me to go along. I knew she didn't. She hadn't spoken a word to me from the time she'd come out of the bathroom till the time she drove away. Dry-eyed and still, she'd packed a few of her and Richard's things into an overnight bag, then dressed Richard and herself and left. I didn't speak to her. Can you speak to your wife at a time when you are a horror in her eyes?
      After she'd gone, I stood on the lawn looking at the spot where the car had turned left onto the boulevard. The sun was hot on my back. It made my eyes water the way it glinted metallically off the sidewalks. I stood there a long time, motionless, feeling empty and dead.
      "You too, haah?"
      I twitched sharply as someone called to me. Looking across the street I saw Frank in his shorts coming out of his garage with a lawn mower.
      "I thought you were a staunch supporter of Saturday work," he called.
      I stared at him. He put down the mower and started toward me. With a convulsive shudder, I turned away and went back into the house. As I closed the door behind me, I saw him picking up the mower again, squinting quizzically toward our house. He shook his head and then bent over to adjust the grass-catcher.
      I turned from the door and walked to the sofa. I sat down and lay my head back. I closed my eyes and saw, in my mind, the look on her face when she had come back from the telephone. And I remembered something I'd said to Anne the night after Phil had hypnotized me.
      Maybe we're all monsters underneath, I'd said.
      About two-thirty I got the lawn mower out of the garage and started working on the front lawn. Staying in the house was more than I could manage; it was a closet of cruel reminders. So I put on my shorts and tennis shoes and tried to forget by labouring.
      It was a fruitless effort. The monotonous act of pushing the whirring mower back and forth across the grass, if anything, enhanced