A Stir of Echoes

ANNE TOLD ME TO GO NEXT DOOR and get back some pie pans Elsie had borrowed. I said all right and I walked across the living room, stepping over the poker which was lying on the rug and went outside. Elizabeth was across the street lying on the grass. Doctors were bending over her. I felt very bad about it but I couldn't stop because Anne was anxious to get those pie pans. I went up the alley to Elsie's back porch. There was a sign on the door that read Elsie's House. I knocked and she opened the door. She was wearing a wet yellow housecoat that clung to her body. Come in, she said. I asked her if I could get the pie pans. She said yes and she stooped down to get them out of the cupboard. The skirt of her housecoat slipped off her right leg and she looked up at me, smiling. Tommy? she asked. I backed away. She stood up with the pie pans and brought them over to me. She handed them to me and they gave me an electric shock. I couldn't move and she began running her fingers through my hair. Tommy, she said, Tommy. The front of her housecoat came apart. She was naked underneath. Tommy, she begged, Tommy.



I tore away from her and pulled open the door. It stuck.' She caught at my arm. Come to me, Tommy, she said. She pressed her body against me and started kissing my cheek. I jerked the door open and pulled away. Anne was standing on our back porch looking at us. Elsie giggled and said, Now you stop that, Tommy! Anne, for God's sake, I yelled, can't you see that it's her doing, not mine? Anne recoiled. She backed toward the kitchen door. Anne! I shouted. Get away from me! she cried. I turned and struck Elsie in the face and, with a gasp, she fell back on the kitchen floor, white limbs thrashing. I'll kill you! she yelled. I whirled and ran down the alley. I turned left at the street and started running toward the boulevard. Dorothy passed me and I asked her where she thought she was going. To sit for Elsie, she said sullenly. Just stay away from our house, I told her. You go to hell, she said. I kept running. Across the street I saw Frank pull up in his car and help out a little redhead. Just taking the boss home to dinner, he called to me with a grin. You animal! I shouted back. He snickered. He and the redhead walked past Elizabeth who was writhing on the grass, screaming with pain. Now I was running and running. The houses rushed past me. At the boulevard I came to railroad tracks. That's funny, I thought, I never knew there were railroad tracks here. I started running along them, gasping for breath. Far ahead I saw spotlights glaring in the night like novas. I wonder what that is, I thought. I ran faster. I realized that I'd lost the pie-pans and Anne would be angry. Then I remembered Elsie and knew that Anne wasn't going to talk to me anyway.



I kept running. I wonder what this is up here, I thought. Certainly looks like a lot of activity. Lights, men working and rushing around, sirens sounding.



Suddenly I stopped in my tracks, aghast. I stared at the awful scene. I was surrounded by it. There was a train but it was a vast tangle of wreckage. I saw the locomotive lying on its side, wheels still turning slowly, steam hissing from its funnel like the breath of a dying animal congealing in icy night air. I couldn't move. I stared at the scene. There were stretcher-bearers racing back and forth between ambulances and the bodies strewn about. I saw a head lying on some gravel. Just a head. I couldn't take my eyes off it.



One side, please, I heard a voice telling me. I turned and a policeman was leading some doctors past. My God, what happened? I asked him. Train derailed, he said.



I looked at the wreckage again. I could see how it had happened now. The locomotive had struck some object on the track and lurched over the tracks, gouged its juggernaut way through about twenty yards of earth before pitching over on its right side and flinging over the rest of the attached cars, then raked them, screeching and bouncing over the gravel spread dirt until its own weight had stopped it suddenly and the lighter cars behind, still moving by their own inertia, had telescoped into a jagged, murderous heap.



Oh, no, I said. Oh, God, no.



I sat up. The darkness pressed coldly at my eyes. I heard Anne beside me, breathing heavily in her sleep. I don't know why I did it; except that the dream still clung so strongly to my mind. I got up and stumbled into the kitchen. I switched on the light and pulled open a cupboard drawer. I took out Anne's grocery pad and pencil and took them over to the table. I sat down and wrote down every detail of my dream as I recalled it. It took up one and a half pages of short, chopped-off sentences like - Train derailed. Ploughed through gravel. Turned on side. People fell from windows. Crushed underneath.



It took me about five minutes to scrawl it all down. When I was finished I sat there limply, staring at what I'd written. Then I put down the pencil and stood, walked back to the bedroom not even wondering why I didn't see Helen Driscoll. I crawled back into bed with Anne and closed my eyes. For a moment I wonder why I'd dreamed what I had; why I'd bothered to write it down. I fell asleep without the answer.



The alarm clock buzzed at six-forty the next morning.



I opened my eyes and winced. My head was throbbing, my stomach twisted in knots. I groaned. Anne pushed in the clock stop and turned back to me.



"What's the matter?" she asked.



"I don't feel so good," I said. The pain came in waves in my head. I had to brace myself to meet them. I had to lie motionless. Even when Anne shifted her weight on the mattress, it sent extra twinges of pain through my head.



"What is it?" she asked.



"Stomach-ache," I said. "Headache."



"The same thing," she said, looking at me concernedly. I didn't reply. I kept my eyes closed.



"Do you... want me to call a doctor?" she asked.



"No. No. I'll be all right. Just... phone the plant and tell them I can't make it to-" I gasped as a cramp hit my stomach. I turned on my side and drew up my legs.



"Honey, are you all right?"



The cramp eased. "I'm all right," I muttered. "I'll...just stay in bed a while."



"I'll call the plant."



I turned on my back as she went into the hall to phone. I stared at the ceiling thinking that it wasn't only the shocks and the waiting for them that could undo me. It was also the increasingly violent after effects. I felt ill and depleted; as if some invisible vampire had sucked at my throat all night, draining away blood and life.



"I... don't suppose you want any breakfast," Anne said. She was back in the doorway.



"No. Thank you."



She came over and sat down beside me. She began to stroke my hair but even that slight pressure of her fingers increased the pain. Her hand twitched away.



"I'm sorry," she said.



"It's all right."



She swallowed. "Shall I-get you an aspirin?" she asked.



"I can try one," I said. I knew it was rest I needed, though.



"Tom, did you..." she began, then faltered and stopped. I knew she was thinking that I'd seen the woman again while she slept and it had, somehow, caused this.



"No," I said, "I didn't see her." I didn't even bother waiting for her to finish her sentence. Why hide it now? I thought.



"I see."



She sat there a moment longer as if she wanted to ask me questions. Then she got up and brought me an aspirin. She left me alone, closing the door softly behind her.



I lay there trying to sleep but unable to, listening to her and Richard in the next bedroom. Once, the door opened and Richard started in with a cheery, "Hi, daddy!" but Anne drew him back, saying, "No, no, baby. Daddy doesn't feel good."



"He don fee goo?" Richard was asking as the door shut. I smiled to myself even though it hurt. I had to keep my face immobile for the pain to stay down.



I tried to sleep but I couldn't. I kept telling myself that something had to be done. Anne was right. I had to do something. There must be an answer. Maybe my friend Alan Porter could help. I didn't see how but-well, I couldn't go on like this indefinitely. The drawbacks were starting to outweigh the dubious advantages of this thing.



It was about ten minutes after she'd left that Anne returned.



She looked white.



She stood by the bed looking down at me fixedly. It was the same look she'd given me the morning her mother died.



I started to ask what it was, then stopped. There was no bridge needed; suddenly, no need for explanations. I had only to see that look on her face-and the grocery pad in her hand.



"You... heard it on the radio," I said, hollowly.



She couldn't speak.



"Did you?" I raised up on an elbow and winced at the pain. She stared at me. "Anne, did you?" She nodded. Slowly.



"Oh, my God." I sank back on the pillow weakly and looked up at her, my chest rising and falling in fitful little movements. "Wh-when did it happen?"



"Last night," she said.



"Oh." It was all I could say.



"When did you write this thing?" she asked, quietly.



"Last night," I told her. "I... I dreamed it. Then I-woke up and wrote it down. I don't know why. I-" She sank down slowly on the bed, looking dazed.



She glanced down at the pad, then at me. Her lips stirred soundlessly. She couldn't seem to find the right words.



"Maybe you'll believe me now," I remember saying.



She drew in a shaky breath.



"I don't know," she murmured. She looked down at the pad. "This," she said, "this." We sat there silently, Anne staring at the pad, me staring at her. There was nothing to say. It was all there on the surface where it could be easily seen.



In a short while she got up and walked out of the room. I heard her go out of the house. A few minutes later she was back. She came into the bedroom again. She'd gone next door to borrow Elsie's Mirror-News.



We spent the next half hour matching up what I'd written with what was in the paper. Train derailed, I'd written. "According to the fireman, Maxwell Taylor," the paper wrote, "there was an obstruction in their path which caused the locomotive to leap the tracks." Spotlights. Ambulances. Stretcher-bearers, I'd written. The paper reported: "The scene was a nightmare under glaring spotlights as stretcher-bearers raced back and forth between their ambulances and the victims who were strewn across an area of a hundred square yards." Head on ground, I'd written. Columnist Paul Coates had written: "I saw a head lying on the ground. Just a head. An intern got a blanket and covered it."



I slumped back on the pillow and looked at Anne. My hands stirred feebly on the bedclothes. She shook her head.



"I... I don't know," she said. "I just don't know what to say." She looked at page one of the paper, at the glaring, horrific headline: TRAIN WRECK KILLS 47. At the picture which I might have taken in my dream.



"I don't know," she said. "I just don't know."



I slept most of the day; a heavy, drugged sleep, my body building up the energy that had been drawn from me.



I woke about three and dressed. Anne was in the kitchen, shelling peas. As I crossed the living room I saw Richard and Candy in the back yard. They had found a kitten and were shrieking with delight as it chased its tail. I smiled weakly and went into the kitchen.



Anne looked up from the table. I sat down across from her.



"Feel better?" she asked.



"Yes."



"Good. Are you hungry?"



"Not much. I'd like some coffee, though."



She got it for me. I sat sipping it while she went on with her shelling.



"Have you-told anyone?" I asked.



She made a sound which to anyone else but me would have sounded like a sound of amusement.



"Who would I tell?" she asked. "Elsie? Elizabeth?"



"I don't know."



"I have no intention of telling anyone," she said.



"No," I said, "of course not."



She put down her knife. "Tom," she said firmly.



"What?"



"What else has happened?"



"What else?"



"While I was in Santa Barbara," she said, "and before that." She saw the look on my face and added,



"I won't say a word, Tom. I... have to believe you. After what happened this morning."



"You mean you don't think I'm-"



"How can I now?" she said.



So I told her-about Helen Driscoll, about Elizabeth's comb, about the poker, about Elsie (but not about the dream). It was all told in a very short time.



When I was finished she looked at me a few moments. Then, with a sigh, she picked up her knife and began shelling peas again.



"And you-believe all this?" she asked, not looking at me.



"Don't you?" I asked.



I saw her throat move.



"Don't ask me," she said. "I don't want to think about it. And, if you have any-notions about what's going to happen to me, don't tell me that either."



"I won't."



She looked up. "You mean you have?" she asked in a thin voice. I shook my head. "No."



She went back to her work. "For how long?" she asked. "When will you start on me?"



"Honey-"



She put down the knife. "Tom, what are you going to do?" she asked. "Is it just going to go on and on like this?"



I couldn't look at her. I had no answer.



"I told you I wouldn't let it hurt you," I said.



"Very funny," she murmured.



I got up and put my cup in the sink. "I'll do something soon," I said. "I don't know what but... I will. I promise."



She shrugged and I knew she didn't believe me.



"Will you take back Elsie's paper?" she asked.



"All right."



I left the kitchen and went into the living room. I picked the paper up off the sofa and folded it. I was halfway across the porch when Anne called. I went to the window and asked what she wanted.



"Would you get back the pie pans Elsie borrowed?" she asked.



Before it hit me I'd said yes. Then I stood there rigidly, staring through the screen into the living room. I couldn't seem to catch my breath. They were such simple words. Get back the pie pans Elsie borrowed. They were absurdly simple. Yet they made me feel as if I were being lowered into a pit of lunacy in which not only the mundane objects around me were sources of horror but even the most ordinary of words spoken between people.



At first I was going to go back into the house, say I felt sick again and would she get the pie pans herself? But I knew that would sound false and start her all over again on a treadmill of suspicions and fears. So I found myself turning, walking around the house and starting up the alley beside Elsie's house, although my flesh cringed from it.



It was the dream all over again. Late afternoon, the sky a hazy light, and me walking up on the porch and knocking; almost expecting to find that sign on the door. Elsie opening the door. The yellow housecoat clinging to her body; it wasn't wet. That was the only difference.



"Hi," she said.



"I brought your paper," I said mechanically. It sounded like someone else's voice.



"Oh. Good." She took it.



I stood there.



"Something else?"



"You have-" I swallowed hard. "You have our pie pans?" I asked.



"Oh, yes." She turned.



I looked automatically toward the lower cupboard-and felt my scalp prickle as she stooped down and pulled open the door.



When the housecoat slipped off her right leg, I felt myself drawing back. Elsie clucked. She tried to cover her leg but the housecoat slid off again. "Oh, well," she said. With a shudder, I pulled open the door and walked out of the house.



"Where are you going?" I heard Elsie call after me.



I jumped down the porch steps and ran to the foot of the alley, dashed around the end of the fence, past our garage door and around the corner of our house. Only then did I stop and lean weakly against the wall. I was shaking badly. Reality and dream seemed to be running together. I didn't know one from the other. If Helen Driscoll had come walking out of our living room it would have frightened but not surprised me. If I'd seen Elizabeth lying on her lawn with doctors bending over her I might have thought it frightening-but not unbelievable. My breath grew heavier and heavier. I felt my mind approaching some kind of peak.



Suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the pie-pans. They worried me. I couldn't go back without them. Anne would ask me why I hadn't gotten them and I couldn't tell her. I had to get some pie pans, I thought wildly. Any pie pans.



I pushed away from the wall and started running across the lawn. I glanced back automatically and saw Elsie on her back porch, looking at me strangely. She started to say something but I ran faster and went across the street. I jumped the curb and ran across Frank and Elizabeth's lawn. I jumped up onto the porch.



And staggered to a halt.



In on the living room floor I saw Frank crumpled in a limb-twisted heap, blood gushing in crimson spurts across his white shirt front.



"Frank!"



I burst in through the door, screaming his name a second time.



A flurry of actions then. Me standing in the doorway, gaping down at the empty floor. Elizabeth rushing out of the kitchen, face tight with alarm. Frank running out of the bedroom, saying, "What the-?" I stood there, weaving dizzily.



"Oh, no," I muttered. "Oh, no."



You're going mad! The words clawed at my mind.



"What in the hell's going on?" Frank asked. They both stared at me in amazement. I felt the room rocking and tilting.



"No!" I remember crying out.



Then blackness.