Duel (27 page)

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Authors: Richard Matheson

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“Bill, what is â¦ ?” I started.

“Shhh!”

We were both quiet. Bill stayed there a moment longer. Then he straightened up and his face was blank.

“I can't hear her,” he said.

“Oh,
no
!”

Ruth fell forward before the couch.

“Tina! Oh, God, where
is
she!”

Bill was up on his feet, moving quickly around the room. I watched him, then looked back at Ruth slumped over the couch, sick with fear.

“Listen,” Bill said, “do you hear anything?”

Ruth looked up. “
Hear
â¦ anything?”

“Move around, move around,” Bill said. “See what you hear.”

Like robots Ruth and I moved around the living room having no idea what we were doing. Everything was quiet except for the incessant whining and scratching of Mack. I gritted my teeth and muttered a terseâ
“Shut up!”
âas I passed the balcony door. For a second the vague idea crossed my mind that Mack knew about Tina. He'd always worshiped her.

Then there was Bill standing in the corner where the closet was, stretching up on his toes and listening. He noticed us watching him and gestured quickly for us to come over. We moved hurriedly across the rug and stood beside him.

“Listen,” he whispered. We did.

At first there was nothing. Then Ruth gasped and none of us were letting out the noise of breath.

Up in the corner, where the ceiling met the walls, we could hear the sound of Tina sleeping.

Ruth stared up there, her face white, totally lost.

“Bill, what the â¦” I gave up.

Bill just shook his head slowly. Then suddenly he held up his hand and we all froze, jolted again.

The sound was gone.

Ruth started to sob helplessly.
“Tina.”

She started out of the corner.

“We have to find her,” she said despairingly.
“Please.”

We ran around the room in unorganized circles, trying to hear Tina. Ruth's tear-streaked face was twisted into a mask of fright.

I was the one who found her this time.

Under the television set.

We all knelt there and listened. As we did, we heard her murmur a little to herself and the sound of her stirring in sleep.

“Want my dolly,” she muttered.

“Tina!”

I held Ruth's shaking body in my arms and tried to stop her sobbing. Without success. I couldn't keep my own throat from tightening, my heart from pounding slow and hard in my chest. My hands shook on her back, slick with sweat.

“For God's sake,
what is it?
” Ruth said but she wasn't asking us.

Bill helped me take her to a chair by the record player. Then he stood restlessly on the rug, gnawing furiously on one knuckle, the way I'd seen him do so often when he was engrossed in a problem.

He looked up, started to say something then gave it up and turned for the door.

“I'll let the pooch in,” he said. “He's making a hell of a racket.”

“Don't you have any idea what might have happened to her?” I asked.

“Bill
â¦
?”
Ruth begged.

Bill said, “I think she's in another dimension,” and he opened the door.

What happened next came so fast we couldn't do a thing to stop it.

Mack came bounding in with a yelp and headed straight for the couch.

“He
knows!
” Bill yelled and dived for the dog.

Then the crazy part happened. One second Mack was sliding under the couch in a flurry of ears, paws and tail. Then he was goneâ
just like that
. Blotted up. The three of us gaped.

Then I heard Bill say, “Yes.
Yes.
”

“Yes,
what?
” I didn't know where
I
was by then.

“The kid's in another dimension.”

“What are you talking about?” I said in worried, near-angry tones. You don't hear talk like that everyday.

“Sit down,” he said.

“Sit down? Isn't there anything we can do?”

Bill looked hurriedly at Ruth. She seemed to know what he was going to say.

“I don't know if there is,” was what he said.

I slumped back on the couch.

“Bill,” I said. Just speaking his name.

He gestured helplessly.

“Kid,” he said, “this has caught me as wide open as you. I don't even know if I'm right or not but I can't think of anything else. I think that in some way, she's gotten herself into another dimension, probably the fourth. Mack, sensing it, followed her there. But how did they get there?âI don't know. I was under that couch, so were you. Did you see anything?”

I looked at him and he knew the answer.

“Another â¦
dimension?
” Ruth said in a tight voice. The voice of a mother who has just been told her child is lost forever.

Bill started pacing, punching his right fist into his palm.

“Damn, damn,” he muttered. “How do things like this happen?”

Then while we sat there numbly, half listening to him, half for the sound of our child, he spoke. Not to us really. To himself, to try and place the problem in the proper perspective.

“One dimensional space, a line,” he threw out the words quickly. “Two dimensional space, an infinite number of linesâan infinite number of one dimensional spaces. Three dimensional space an infinite number of planesâan infinite number of two dimensional spaces. Now the basic factor â¦ the basic factor â¦”

He slammed his palm and looked up at the ceiling. Then he started again, more slowly now.

“Every point in each dimension a
section
of a line in the next higher dimension. All points in line are
sections
of the perpendicular lines that make the line a plane. All points in plane are sections of perpendicular lines that make the plane a solid.

“That means that in the third dimension â¦”

“Bill, for God's sake!” Ruth burst out. “Can't we
do
something? My
baby
is in â¦ in
there.
”

Bill lost his train of thought. He shook his head.

“Ruth, I don't â¦”

I got up then and was down on the floor again, climbing under the couch. I
had
to find it! I felt, I searched. I listened until the silence rang. Nothing.

Then I jerked up suddenly and hit my head as Mack barked loudly in my ear.

Bill rushed over and slid in beside me, his breath labored and quick.

“God's sake,” he muttered, almost furiously. “Of all the damn places in the world â¦”

“If the â¦ the
entrance
is here,” I muttered, “why did we hear her voice and breathing all over the room?”

“Well, if she moved beyond the effect of the third dimension and was entirely in the fourthâthen her movement, for us, would seem
to spread over all space. Actually she'd be in one spot in the fourth dimension but to us â¦”

He stopped.

Mack was whining. But more importantly Tina started in again. Right by our ears.

“He brought her back!” Bill said excitedly. “Man, what a mutt!”

He started twisting around, looking, touching, slapping at empty air.

“We've got to find it!” he said. “We've got to reach in and pull them out. God knows how long this dimension pocket will last.”

“What?” I heard Ruth gasp, then suddenly cry, “Tina, where are you? This is mommy.”

I was about to say something about it being no use but then Tina answered.

“Mommy, mommy! Where are you, mommy?”

Then the sound of Mack growling and Tina crying angrily.

“She's trying to run around and find Ruth,” Bill said. “But Mack won't let her. I don't know
how
but he seems to know where the joining place is.”

“Where
are
they for God's sake!” I said in a nervous fury.

And backed right into the damn thing.

To my dying day I'll never really be able to describe what it was like. But here goes.

It was black, yesâto
me.
And yet there seemed to be a million lights. But as soon as I looked at one it disappeared and was gone. I saw them out of the sides of my eyes.

“Tina,” I said, “where are you? Answer me! Please!”

And heard my voice echoing a million times, the words echoing endlessly, never ceasing but moving off as if they were alive and traveling. And when I moved my hand the motion made a whistling sound that echoed and reechoed and moved away like a swarm of insects flowing into the night.

“Tina!”

The sound of the echoing hurt my ears.

“Chris, can you hear her?” I heard a voice. But was it a voiceâor more like a thought?

Then something wet touched my hand and I jumped.

Mack.

I reached around furiously for them, every motion making whistling echoes in vibrating blackness until I felt as if I were surrounded by a multitude of birds flocking and beating insane wings around my head. The pressure pounded and heaved in my brain.

Then I felt Tina. I say I felt her but I think if she wasn't my daughter and if I didn't
know
somehow it was her, I would have thought I'd touched something else. Not a shape in the sense of third dimension shape. Let it go at that, I don't want to go into it.

“Tina,” I whispered. “Tina, baby.”

“Daddy, I'm scared of dark,” she said in a thin voice and Mack whined.

Then I was scared of dark too, because a thought scared my mind.

How could I get us all out?

Then the other thought cameâChris, have you got them?

“I've got them!” I called.

And Bill grabbed my legs (which, I later learned, were still sticking out in the third dimension) and jerked me back to reality with an armful of daughter and dog and memories of something I'd prefer having no memories about.

We all came piling out under the couch and I hit my head on it and almost knocked myself out. Then I was being alternately hugged by Ruth, kissed by the dog and helped to my feet by Bill. Mack was leaping on all of us, yelping and drooling.

When I was in talking shape again I noticed that Bill had blocked off the bottom of the couch with two card tables.

“Just to be safe,” he said.

I nodded weakly. Ruth came in from the bedroom.

“Where's Tina?” I asked automatically, uneasy left-overs of memory still cooking in my brain.

“She's in our bed,” she said. “I don't think we'll mind for one night.”

I shook my head.

“I don't think so,” I said.

Then I turned to Bill.

“Look,” I said. “What the hell happened?”

“Well,” he said, with a wry grin, “I told you. The third dimension is just a step below the fourth. In particular, every point in our space is a section of a perpendicular to every point in the fourth dimension. They wouldn't be parallelâto us. But if enough of them in one
area
happened to be parallel in
both
dimensionsâit might form a connecting corridor.”

“You mean â¦ ?”

“That's the crazy part,” he said. “Of all the places in the worldâunder the couchâthere's an area of points that are sections of parallel linesâparallel in both dimensions. They make a corridor into the next space.

“Or a hole,” I said.

Bill looked disgusted.

“Hell of a lot of good my reasoning did,” he said. “It took a
dog
to get her out.”

I groaned softly.

“You can have it,” I said.

“Who wants it?” he answered.

“What about the sound?”

“You're asking me?” he said.