Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online Page B

madman.
    The strange thing is that, now that the worst of the pain has gone, now, as I sit here at the writing table, looking at the sunswept strand of beach, the blue ocean breaking whitely on the gray sand, now, when one would assume that the notion would be dispelled by daytime logic, it persists somehow; why, I don't know.
    I mean, let's face it: in the aforementioned cold light of day it does strike one as the grand daddy of all pipe dreams. Go back in time? How nutty can you get? And yet some deep, indefinable conviction buoys me. I have no idea what- ever how such an idea can make sense but, to me, it does make sense.
    Evidence for my uplifting conviction? Scant. Yet that single item seems larger every time I think about it: that she looked at me as though she knew me and, that very night, died of a heart attack.
    A sudden thought.
    Why didn't she speak to me?
    Don't be ridiculous. How could she? In her late eighties, talk to a boy not yet twenty about a love they might have shared fifty-seven years before?
    If it had been me, I would have done the same thing: remained silent, then died.
    Another thought.
    One even harder to adjust to.
    If I really did all this, wouldn't it be kinder not to go back? Then her life would go on, undisturbed. She might not achieve the same heights of stardom but at least-
    I had to stop and laugh.
    How casually I sit here talking about changing history.
    Another thought.
    Making my ideas seem more possible than ever.
    I've read these books. Many of them printed decades, even a generation ago.
    What was done to her has already been done.
    Therefore, I have no choice.
    I must go back.
    Again, I had to laugh. I'm laughing as I say this. Not a laughter of amusement, true; more like that which notes the presence of a fool.
    That established, let's examine the poser in detail.
    No matter what I want or feel or believe I can do, my mind and body, every cell within me knows it's 1971.
    How could I break loose from that conditioning?
    Don't confuse me with facts, Collier. At least, not with facts that prove it can't be done. What I have to fill my head with now are facts which prove it can be done.
    Where do I find those facts though?
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    Another fast round trip to San Diego. Barely felt it this time. Must have been the hotel's influence with me; worn it like a suit of armor.
    Went to Wahrenbrock's again. Immediate good luck. J. B. Priestley authored and compiled a giant book on the subject: Man and Time. Expect to get much insight from it.
    Also bought a bottle of red Bordeaux. Also a frame for her photograph. Lovely thing. Looks like aged gold with an oval opening in the mat. I call it a mat but it looks as though it's made of aged gold too, with delicate scrollwork on it that twists like a golden vine around her head. Now she looks proper. Not pressed into a book as though she were a part of history. In a frame, standing on the bedside table.
    Alive. My love alive.
    The one thing that disturbs me still is knowing I'm the one who will put that tragic look on her face.
    I won't think about it now. There are many possibilities. I'll shower and then, sitting on the bed, her favorite music in my head, her favorite wine trickling down my throat, I'll begin to learn about the time I mean to circumvent.
    And all this here. In this hotel. This precise location where, seventy-five years distant, even as I speak these words, Elise McKenna breathes and moves.
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    (Richard spent a great deal of time transcribing and analyzing the Priestley book. Accordingly, it is in this section of his manuscript that I have done the heaviest pruning, since the subject, while fascinating to him, tends to slow his account considerably.)
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    The opening chapter is about time-measuring devices. I don't see how it could be of any value to me but I'll study it, nonetheless, take notes on it the way I used to do at college.
    That's the way to look at it. I'm taking a course on Time.
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