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Authors: Richard Matheson

BOOK: Duel
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“What?”
“Isn't there some other way?”
Johnny looked at him without speaking. Collier's head dropped forward and his eyes closed. After a moment he made a sound of bitter amusement.
“Isn't there some other way,” he mocked himself. “What a stupid question.”
“She insists she's had no …”
Collier nodded wearily.
“Yes,” he said. “She … yes.”
“I don't know,” Johnny said, running the tip of a forefinger over his lower lip. “Maybe she's hysterical. Maybe … David,
maybe she isn't pregnant at all.
”
“What!”
Collier's head snapped up, his eyes looking eagerly into Johnny's.
“Don't jump the gun, Dave. I don't want that on my conscience. But, well … hasn't Ann always wanted a baby? I think she has—wanted it bad. Well … it may be just a crazy theory but I think it's possible that the emotional …
drain
of being separated from you for six months could cause a false pregnancy.”
A wild hope began to surge in Collier, irrational he knew but one he clutched at, desperately.
“I think you should talk to her again,” Johnny said. “Try to get more
information from her. Maybe even do what she suggests and try hypnosis, truth serum, anything. But …
boy,
don't give up! I
know
Ann. And I trust her.”
 
As he half ran down the street he kept thinking how little credit was due him for finding the trust he needed. But, at least, thank God, he had it for now. It filled him with hope, it made him want to cry out—it has to be true, it
has
to be!
Then, as he turned into the path of the house, he stopped so quickly that he almost fell forward and his breath drew in with a gasp.
Ann was standing on the porch in her nightgown, an icy January wind whipping the fragile silk around the full contours of her body. She stood on the frost-covered boards in her bare feet, one hand on the railing.
“
Oh, my God,
” muttered Collier in a strangled voice as he raced up the path to grab her.
Her flesh was bluish and like ice when he caught her and when he looked into her wide, staring eyes, a bolt of panic drove through him.
He half led, half dragged her into the warm living room and set her down in the easy chair before the fireplace. Her teeth were chattering and breath passed her lips in wheezing gasps. His hands shook as he ran around frantically getting blankets, plugging in the heating pad and placing it under her icy feet, breaking up wood with frenzied motions and starting a fire, making hot coffee.
Finally, when he'd done everything he could, he knelt before her and held her frigid hands in his. And, as he listened to the shivering of her body reflected in her breath, a sense of utter anguish wrenched at his insides.
“Ann, Ann, what's the
matter
with you?” he almost sobbed. “Are you out of your mind?”
She tried to answer but could not. She huddled beneath the blankets, her eyes pleading with him.
“You don't have to talk, sweetheart,” he said. “It's all right.”
“I … I … I … h-
had to go out,
” she said.
And that was all. He stayed there before her, his eyes never leaving her face. And, even though she was shaking and gripped by painful seizures of coughing, she seemed to realize his faith in her because she smiled at him and, in her eyes, he saw that she was happy.
 
By supper time she had a raging fever. He put her in bed and gave her nothing to eat but all the water she wanted. Her temperature fluctuated, her flushed burning skin becoming cold and clammy in almost seconds.
Collier called Kleinman about six and the doctor arrived fifteen minutes later. He went directly to the bedroom and checked Ann. His face became grave and he motioned Collier into the hall.
“We must get her to the hospital,” he said quietly.
Then he went downstairs and phoned for an ambulance. Collier went back in to the bedside and stood there holding her limp hand, looking down at her closed eyes, her feverish skin. Hospital, he thought, oh my God, the hospital.
Then a strange thing happened.
Kleinman returned and beckoned once more for Collier to come out in the hall. They stood there talking until the downstairs bell rang. Then Collier went down to let them in and the two orderlies and the intern followed him up the stairs carrying their stretcher.
They found Kleinman standing by the bed staring down at Ann in speechless amazement.
Collier ran to him.
“What is it!” he cried.
Kleinman lifted his head slowly.
“She is cured,” he said in awed tones.
“What?”
The intern moved quickly to the bed. Kleinman spoke to him and to Collier.
“The fever is gone,” he said. “Her temperature, her respiration, her
pulse beat—all are normal. She has been completely cured of pneumonia in …”
He checked his pocket watch.
“
In seventeen minutes,
” he said.
 
Collier sat in Kleinman's waiting room staring sightlessly at the magazine in his lap. Inside, Ann was being x-rayed.
There was no doubt anymore, Ann was pregnant. X-rays at six weeks had shown the fetus inside her. Once more their relationship suffered from doubt. He was still concerned for her health but, once more, was unable to speak to her and tell her that he believed in her. And, though he'd never actually told her of his renewed doubt, Ann had felt it. She avoided him at home, sleeping half the time, the other half reading omniverously. He still couldn't understand that. She'd gone through all his books on the physical sciences, then his texts on sociology, anthropology, philosophy, semantics, history and now she was reading geography books. There seemed no sense to it.
And, all during this period, while the form in her body changed from a small lump to a pear shape, to a globe, then an ovoid—she'd been eating an excess of salt. Doctor Kleinman kept warning her about it. Collier had tried to stop her but she wouldn't stop. Eating salt seemed a compulsion.
As a result she drank too much water. Now her weight had come to the point where the over-size fetus was pressing against her diaphragm causing breathing difficulty.
Just yesterday Ann's face had gone blue and Collier had rushed her to Kleinman's office. The doctor had done something to ease the condition. Collier didn't know what. Then Ann had been x-rayed and Kleinman told Collier to bring her back the next day.
The door opened and Kleinman led Ann out of his office.
“Sit, my dear,” he told her. “I want to talk to David.”
Ann walked past Collier without looking at him and sat down on the leather couch. As he stood, he noticed her reaching for a magazine.
The Scientific American.
He sighed and shook his head as he walked into Kleinman's office.
As he moved for the chair, he thought, for what seemed the hundredth time, of the night she'd cried and told him she had to stay because there was no place else to go. Because she had no money of her own and her family was dead. She'd told him that if it wasn't for the fact that she was innocent she'd probably kill herself for the way he was treating her. He had stood beside the bed, silent and tense, while she cried, unable to argue, to console, even to reply. He'd just stood there until he could bear it no longer and then walked out of the room.
“What?” he said.
“I say look at these,” Kleinman said grimly.
Kleinman's behavior had changed too in the past months, declining from confidence to a sort of confused anger.
Collier looked down at the two x-ray plates, glanced at the dates on them. One was from the day before, the other was the plate Kleinman had just taken.
“I don't …” Collier stared.
Kleinman told him, “Look at the size of the child.”
Collier compared the plates more carefully. At first he didn't see. Then his startled eyes flicked up suddenly.
“Is it possible?” he said, feeling a crushing sense of the unreal on him.
“It has happened,” was all Kleinman said.
“But …
how?
”
Kleinman shook his head and Collier saw the doctor's left hand on the desk grip into a fist as if he were angered by this new enigma.
“I have never seen the like of it,” Kleinman said. “Complete bone structure by the seventh week. Facial form by the eighth week. Organs complete and functioning by the end of the second month. The mother's insane desire for salt. And now this … .”
He picked up the plates and looked at them almost in belligerence.
“How can a child decrease its size?”
he said.
Collier felt a pang of fear at the mystified tone in Kleinman's voice.
“It is clear, it is clear,” Kleinman shook his head irritably. “The child had grown to excess proportions because of the mother drinking too much water. To such proportions that it was pressing dangerously against her diaphragm. And now, in
one
day, the pressure is gone, the size of the child markedly decreased.”
Kleinman's hands snapped into hard fists.
“It is almost,” he said nervously, “as if the child knows what is going on.
 
“No more salt!”
His voice rose in pitch as he jerked the salt shaker from her hand and stamped over to the cupboard. Then he took her glass of water and emptied most of it into the sink. He sat down again.
She sat with her eyes shut, her body trembling. He watched as tears ran slowly from her eyes and down her cheeks. Her teeth bit into her lower lip. Then her eyes opened; they were big, frightened eyes. She caught a sob in the middle and hastily brushed her tears aside. She sat there quietly.
“Sorry,” she murmured and, for some reason, Collier got the impression that she wasn't talking to him.
She finished the remaining water in a gulp.
“You're drinking too much water again,” he said. “You know what Doctor Kleinman said.”
“I … try,” she said, “but I can't help it. I feel such a need for salt and it makes me so thirsty.”
“You'll have to quit drinking so much water,” he said coldly. “You'll endanger the child.”
She looked startled as her body twitched suddenly. Her hands slipped from the table to press against her swollen stomach. Her look implored him to help her.
“What is it?” he asked hurriedly.
“I don't know,” she said. “The baby kicked.”
He leaned back, muscles unknotted.
“That's to be expected,” he said.
They sat quietly a while. Ann toyed with her food. Once he saw her reach out automatically for the salt, then raise her eyes in slight alarm when her fingers didn't find the shaker.
“David,” she said after a few minutes.
He swallowed his food.
“What?”
“Why have you stayed with me?”
He couldn't answer.
“Is it because you believe me?”
“I don't know, Ann. I don't know.”
The look of slight hope on her face left and she lowered her head.
“I thought,” she said, “maybe … because you were staying …”
The crying again. She sat there not even bothering to brush aside the tears that moved slowly down her cheeks and over her lips.
“Oh,
Ann,
” he said, half irritably, half in sorrow.
He got up to go to her. As he did her body twitched again, this time more violently, and her face went blank. Again she cut off her sobs and rubbed at her cheeks with almost angry fingers.
“I can't
help
it,” she said slowly and loudly.
Not to him. Collier was sure it was not to him.
“What are you talking about?” he said nervously.
He stood there looking down at his wife. She looked so helpless, so afraid. He wanted to pull her against himself and comfort her. He wanted to …
Still sitting, she leaned against his chest while he stroked her soft brown hair.
“Poor little girl,” he said. “My poor little girl.”
“Oh David,
David
, if only you'd believe me. I'd do anything to make you believe me, anything. I can't stand to have you so cold to me. Not when I know I haven't done anything wrong.”

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