Ride the Nightmare by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online Page A

lack of knowledge, feeling, in the security of her love, that she knew him just as well as if she were apprised of the statistical data of his past. These formed the surface of a man, she decided, not the core. The core, she felt, she understood. Had she been right? Did she really understand Chris? Was this revelation, for all its hideousness, only a belated filling in of really unimportant details? Was he still the man she’d believed she knew? Or had the filling in of his background revealed basic differences in him? In short, must she allow that she had been living with a stranger for all these years? This was the thought that tortured her in the dark silence of—
    Silence.
    She was chilled with the sudden awareness. That meant that Chris had finished digging the grave. Now he was lowering the body into it. In a moment or two, he would be…
    She shuddered as the first shovelful of dirt was thrown. She sat there rigidly, listening, all the past swallowed in the black pain of the present. All she could think of now was that Helen Martin was lying in that grave too. She tried to think of something else but she couldn’t. There was only the one thought.
    Helen Martin was dead.

THURSDAY MORNING

CHAPTER SIX
    Chris opened his eyes.
    Overhead, a DC-7 was circling for International Airport. He listened to the burring stridency of its engines until the noise had faded. It was a dream, he told himself, but the thought did not deceive him.
    Sluggishly, he turned his head and looked over at the clock on his bedside table. It was a little after eight. He stared at the second hand as it pointed at the numbers—eleven, twelve, one.
    Exhaling, Chris turned his head and looked at the ceiling. He didn’t have to get up yet. For that matter he didn’t have to go to the store at all. Jimmy could handle it well enough without him. Maybe he wouldn’t go. Maybe he’d just—
    Abruptly, he realized that Helen wasn’t in bed with him.
    He pushed up on one elbow and looked around the room. Hastily, he threw the blankets back and dropped his legs across the edge of the mattress.
    The floorboards were chilly beneath his feet. He shivered as he hurried across the room and opened the door. Stepping out into the hall, he looked into Connie’s room. The tension faded instantly.
    She was still asleep, lying on her back, her lips parted, a curl of hair twisted across her forehead. On any other day she’d be up by now, out with the neighborhood children.
    Chris turned and walked across the living room. In the kitchen, he could hear the dishwasher operating. It clicked once and there was a sibilant rush of water from its nozzle.
    He found Helen in the alley, scrubbing blood spots from the sidewalk. She didn’t see him at first. He stood on the porch and watched her, twitching at the sound the wire brush made on the concrete. He remembered dragging Cliff’s lifeless body down the alley. Apparently, it had bled all the way.
    He remembered, too, the druglike horror of the burial, the long drive home, the painfully silent preparation for bed. The sleepless lying in darkness, wanting to move close to Helen, to put his arms around her, to feel her body pressing close. Lying there in wordless agony, filled with thoughts about the years passed by. Fearing thatshe lay beside him wondering how many lies there’d been in the seven years of their relationship; knowing that there had only been the one. Listening to hear if she were still awake. Lying tortured by indecision until the only sleep that could come came at last—the hollow, uncleansing sleep of exhaustion.
    Helen turned her head and saw him. Chris stepped down off the porch, feeling the chill of the morning air through his pajamas.
    “I’ll do it,” he said.
    “I’m almost done.”
    Helen looked back at her work and he saw how her fingers tensed on the wooden handle of the brush.
    “I should have done it last night,” he said. “I didn’t think.”
    He stood awkwardly, watching her