Read Online A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson - Free Book Online

the refrigerator so we wouldn't have to bother having a kid." Chuckling, he reached for his can of beer. He held it out.
      "Here's to un-knocked-up femininity," he toasted. "Long may the hell they wave." He hiccupped and drained the can. Abruptly his face grew flatly sullen. He dropped the empty can on the rug.
      "Babies," he said, bitterly, loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. "Who the hell invented them?"
      If I'd had any intention of telling them about the woman, Frank dispelled it quickly. He kept drinking until dinner was on the table and then kept on all through it, barely touching his food. It got to the point where, when Elizabeth-in a desperate search for diverting conversation-mentioned my strange phone call when Anne had been knocked unconscious, I shrugged and said it had only been a coincidence. I just didn't want to talk about it there.
      I thought of the way mediums often describe their entrances into haunted houses-how they sense alien presences in the air. Well, that house was haunted too. I felt it strongly. Haunted by despairs, by the ghosts of a thousand cruel words and acts, by the phantom residue of unresolved angers.
      "Babies," Frank kept saying as he stabbed vengefully at his food, "babies. Are they valid? Are they integral? Do they add up? Are they the goddamn sum of their parts? I ask you."
      "Frank, you're making it-" Elizabeth started.
      "Not you," he interrupted, "I'm not asking you. You're sick in the head about babies. Babies are your mania. You live babies, you breathe babies." He looked at Anne and me. "Lizzie," he said, "is baby happy. Alla time, alla time-'when we gonna make a baby?' 'When we gonna put sperm to egg?' and-"
     
    "Frank. . ." Elizabeth's fork clinked onto her plate; she covered her eyes with a trembling hand. Richard stared at her, wide-eyed. Anne reached across the table and put her hand on Elizabeth's.
      "Take it easy, man," I said. "You trying to give us indigestion or something?"
      "Sure," Frank said. "Easy he says. Easy. You try to take it easy when something that isn't even alive yet eats up all your money."
      He shook his head dizzily.
      "Babies, babies, babies," he chanted. He glanced at me suddenly. "What are you looking at me for?" Superficials were gone. He looked at me as if he hated my guts.
      I blinked and lowered my eyes. I hadn't been conscious of staring at him. I'd only been conscious of the twisted, angry wellings in his mind.
      "Just looking at an idiot I know," I said.
      He hissed in disgust.
      "I'm an idiot, all right," he said. "Any guy's an idiot who makes babies."
      "Frank, for God's sake! " Elizabeth pushed up from the table shakily and put her plate in the sink.
      "Richard," said Frank, "don't make babies. Make girls. Make whoopee. Make trouble. But don't make babies."
      The remainder of the meal, dessert and all, was eaten in a tense silence broken only by vain attempts at dinner conversation.
      Later, Frank and I went out for a drive. He'd kept on drinking and was getting more and more abusive to Elizabeth so I suggested we go for a ride. I took our car so I could do the driving. I told him I had to get gas for the next day anyway.
      "Don't matter," he said, "I'm not going to work anyhow. Why should I?"
      As we pulled away from the curb Elsie came out of the house in a sun suit and waved to us, then bent over to pick up the hose.
      "Fat bitch," Frank snapped. The impression I got from him was not one of anger, though-unless it was angry lust.
      We drove in silence a while. Frank had rolled down the window on his side all the way and his head lolled out of it, the cold night wind whipping his dark hair. I kept my eyes straight ahead, heading toward the ocean. Once in a while Frank muttered something but I paid no attention. I kept thinking about life going on, every little realism driving one farther from any thinking about the other things.
      Once we'd seen a hypnotist on