Earthbound

by Richard Matheson

  Unmoved, she looked at her body again, sliding back her feet until her knees were high, raising her hips. “My body,” she said.

  “Marianna!”

  She dropped her trunk and, leaning back her head again, looked up, amused. “I don’t know who this Marianna is,” she chided, “but you must not like her very much.”

  He begged. “Don’t do this, please don’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  He closed his eyes, shivering convulsively. “Marianna, leave her be.”

  “You know?” she said. “I bet I can tell you what these five X’s mean. I bet they mean that a certain someone got laid five times in one hour. I bet that’s what it means; you want to bet?”

  “Marianna, for God’s sake!”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” she said. “I’m your wife.” She smiled at him wantonly. “You said you wanted sex; depravity. I’m going to give it to you—all you want. Orgies and defilement, that’s what you said. Fine. I want it too. Why not? Why should I be moral anymore?” Her teeth clenched savagely and, rearing up her hips, she jerked off her underpants, kicking them aside. “That’s what you want? Take it then! Glut yourself! You’re married to a whore now, a pig!” Her face contorted, flushed, she grabbed for him with hands like blood-drained talons. “Grovel in the mud with your pig!” she snarled.

  David backed off, paling, his expression one of dazed confusion. Ellen flung her legs across the mattress edge and, lurching upward, threw herself against him. “Now!” she raged. “I want it now!” He grabbed her wrists and started wrestling with her, struck with terror by the demoniac contortion of her face, the torrents of foul-mouthed language which spewed from her. “Stop it, Ellen!” But it wasn’t Ellen, it was Marianna, it had to be. Still, he wasn’t sure and, struggling with her, panic rising, he waited for her to break, burst into conscience-stricken tears, unmask herself. With increasing desperation, he searched her face for some revealing sign.

  It failed to come. Unable to control him physically, she began to curse him, flogging his mind with a succession of the most virulent profanities he’d ever heard in his life. The brutality of them enervated his grip so that she was able to jerk one hand free and claw at his face with it; he gasped as her nails raked savagely across his cheek. The pain drove reactive strength into his arms and, grabbing her again, he squeezed her wrists as hard as he could, trying to make her cry, relent. If it was Ellen—but it wasn’t—but if it was—yet it couldn’t be—his mind rocked back and forth disorderedly, unable to resolve itself.

  Instead of crying, she ceased her struggles and leaned against him, making him think that she’d given up. Then, she started writhing. “Tear my clothes off,” she muttered. “Hurt me.” She licked his neck. “Rape me,” she said.

  With a faint, near delirious sob, David shoved her away, making her slip and fall. Instantly, she rolled onto her back and spread her legs apart, clasping her hands behind her neck. “All right lover, give it to me.” Baring teeth, she thrust her loins up, jerked them down, thrust them up again. “Let’s go, you bastard, go!”

  David whirled and ran, careening, toward the hall. As he staggered past the door, he saw a key protruding underneath the knob and, lurching around, pulled the door shut, cutting off the sight of her standing up, a look of fury on her face. His fingers trembled on the key; he barely managed to twist it before the knob was wrenched at from the other side. “Let me out, you son of a bitch!” she screamed. “If you won’t give me what I want, let me find somebody else who will!” She pounded on the door with her fists. “God damn you, open up this door, you dirty fucking bastard!”

  David’s legs gave way; shuddering, he crumpled to his knees and leaned against the wall. Dear God, dear God, what had he done? If it was Marianna, he had paved the way for her to strike at Ellen and possess her. Worse, if it was really Ellen, his neglect and cruelty had driven her insane. He shook his head impotently. No, it couldn’t be that; the mind did not give way that easily. He drove his fist against the floor, grimacing at the pain. It couldn’t be that!

  Inside the bedroom, Ellen beat at the door, shouting dementedly. David clenched his teeth and straightened up. It wasn’t Ellen. He had to set his mind on that. In order to retain his sanity, he had to believe that it was Marianna in the bedroom, housed within the body of his wife. Which meant that only one person could help him now.

  Pushing to his feet, he ran downstairs, pulled on his jacket and hurried out to the car. The key was still in the ignition slot. Starting the motor, he gunned the car away from the house and started up the hill toward the main road.

  The mind betrays, he thought. Time and again, instinct had warned him that there was something wrong about Marianna Yet, every time it had, he’d retreated automatically to what he had chosen to think of as logic, letting so-called rationality drive him further from the truth with every passing day. He winced, his fingers tensing on the wheel. And, with every passing day, Marianna had strengthened her hold on him.

  Or had she?

  David strained to freeze the pendulum and prevent it from swinging back again to “logic.” It was Marianna he was fighting. “It is,” he muttered.

  He had just turned onto the hilltop road when the Bentley appeared around the curve ahead. “Thank God,” he said. Honking the horn, he steered to the side of the road and stopped. As he pulled out the handbrake and switched off the motor, Mrs. Brentwood pulled the Bentley to the other side of the road and stopped. Pushing from the car, David slammed its door and dashed across the rain-swept road. Mrs. Brentwood lowered the window as he ran up.

  “Are you going to the house?” he asked.

  “I was bringing you those things you asked to see.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” he said.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  David braced himself. “She’s taken over my wife.”

  Mrs. Brentwood stared at him. “Oh, no,” she murmured.

  “I’ll turn around and follow you,” he told her. Wheeling, he ran across the road and got back into the car. Starting the engine, he glanced across his shoulder, then drove up the road a way and made a U-turn. As he started back, he frowned, a sense of indefinable alarm oppressing him. Mrs. Brentwood’s car was in the same place, its motor still turned off.

  Pulling up behind it, he waited anxiously; then, seeing that she wasn’t going to move, he pushed outside and ran to her window. This time she didn’t open it. She was sitting motionless, looking at her hands which were clasped together on her lap.

  “Mrs. Brentwood?”

  She neither answered nor turned. David stared at her, his insides going cold and tight He tried to open the door but found it locked. Grimacing, he ran around the front of the car and pulled open the other door. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She looked at him without replying.

  “What is it, Mrs. Brentwood?”

  Her lips moved but no sound emerged. Quickly, David got inside and pulled the door shut. “Mrs. Brentwood, what’s the matter?” he demanded.

  “Here are the—things,” she said. She fumbled with her purse. David almost told her not to bother, then decided that he wanted verification. He took the wrinkled envelope from her hand and, opening its flap, slid out a folded form, a time-faded news clipping.

  It gave him a sense of total unreality to sit inside the car, rain drumming on its roof, reading, in the greyish, wavering light, the certificate of death for Marianna Catherine Brentwood. Swallowing, he looked at the newspaper clipping, its headlines reading: Local Tragedy, its subhead: Marianna Brentwood Dies in Accident. As he read the brief account, he felt a strange—and even more unreal—perception that he still wasn’t sure; that he had no way of knowing for certain, whether the Marianna mentioned was the one he knew. Since Thursday, he had been enveloped in a web of lies and counter lies. This could be merely an addition to them.

  He shook away the feeling. It was proof; he had to believe that. Turning to Mrs. Brentwood, he said,
“All right” and handed them back. “Now let’s go.”

  With maddening deliberation, she slid the certificate and clipping back into their envelope and placed the envelope inside her purse. The click of the purse’s catch made David twitch. “Well?” he said.

  She turned to him, drawing in a quavering breath and forcing to her face the look of assurance which she usually displayed. “Well, what, Mister Cooper?” she replied.

  His mouth fell open in astonishment and, for several moments, he couldn’t speak. Finally, he snapped, “Well, what? Aren’t you going to the house with me?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Obviously, you’ve made a study of—ghosts,” he said; he still had trouble speaking the word. “You must know how they can be put to rest. Isn’t there some kind of—ritual? Some way to …?”

  His voice trailed off, her look of detachment cowing him. “Well, isn’t there?” he asked.

  Mrs. Brentwood turned away. “There is not.”

  It was as though invisible hands had clamped around his skull and were squeezing it. David gaped at her. “There isn’t?”

  “No.”

  “But there must be!”

  “I know of no such ritual.” she said. “Now if you’ll please get out.”

  David felt as if the car were turning on its side. “Mrs. Brentwood, you’ve spent the last few days warning me about Marianna. Are you going to tell me now that—?”

  “You didn’t take those warnings, Mister Cooper,” she interrupted. “Now it’s too late.”

  “Too late?” He felt completely numb, unreal again. “You’re telling me that—?”

  “I am telling you that there is nothing I can do.”

  Without warning, fury burst inside him. “Well, I don’t believe it!”

  Mrs. Brentwood closed her eyes. “I have told you that—”

  “And I’m telling you that I don’t believe it! You knew enough to answer every argument I gave before! What’s happened to all that knowledge now? Has it vanished?” He cut her off. “I think you know exactly how to get rid of her!”

  “If I knew how to get rid of her, don’t you think I would have done it years ago?”

  David gazed at her, a prickling of awareness in him. “I don’t know,” he said. He peered into her eyes. “I’m not so sure.”

  She shuddered. “That is your prerogative,” she answered stiffly. “Now if you’ll get out of this car.”

  “You do know,” he said. “You know but you won’t do it”

  “Mister—!”

  “You know but you won’t do it.”

  “Get out of this car, Mister Cooper!”

  “Isn’t that right?” he broke in. “You know but you won’t do anything about it!”

  “All right!” she erupted, her face a mask of sudden rage. “I do know how to get rid of her but I won’t! You’re right! I will not do it!”

  “Why?!”

  She pressed together shaking lips and glared at him.

  “Why?!” he shouted.

  “Because I will not give her peace!” she shouted back.

  David jolted, stunned by the malice in her voice. “I will not give her peace,” she said again. “Why should I? Did she ever give me peace? In all this world, I wanted only one thing—Terry Lawrence. I was engaged to marry him. I worshipped him.

  “But Marianna wanted him; desired him, that is. Not enough for her she could have any man she chose. She had to steal my fiancé as well. She had to take Terry away from me, debauch him and destroy him. Yes! Destroy him! He was horrified of water, couldn’t swim a stroke. And yet, to please her, he took up sailing. God in heaven, sailing! I warned him not to do it, begged him. But no. He was her inamorata, her devoted slave; he did what she asked.

  “And so she took him out one time too often; there was a squall, the sailboat overturned and he was lost. Not her, of course. Oh, no. She was an accomplished swimmer. She reached the shore without any trouble. Did she try to save him? She did not. She let him drown. What did he mean to her anyway? A body to play with, that was all. And there were lots of other bodies to be had.”

  Her smile made David shiver.

  “Give her peace?” she said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll give her. What I’ve given her for more than forty years. Justice. There’s no owner in the city, Mr. Cooper; I own that cottage—and whenever men come there I let them stay a few days, let her think she’s going to have her way with them. Then I warn them off and ruin her plans, deprive her of the one thing she exists for. Justice, Mister Cooper. Well-earned punishment. And I’ll do nothing to end it. Nothing.”

  “Then it wasn’t me,” he murmured, shaken. “You weren’t concerned about saving me. You were only interested in making sure that Marianna was alone.”

  “That is quite correct,” she announced. “Keeping her alone is all that I exist for.”

  “And the man who went insane?”

  She set her mouth obdurately. “He chose his way,” she said. “As you chose yours.”

  “My wife didn’t choose it, Mrs. Brentwood. Will you punish her as well?”

  Her assurance seemed to waver but she forced it back. “Marianna will doubtless leave her when the novelty of having a body again is outweighed by its limitations.”

  “And when may I expect that, Mrs. Brentwood?”

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “A day? A week?”

  “I said—”

  “A month? A year? Ten years? Twenty?”

  “Perhaps!” she flared.

  He felt his muscles quivering with repressed fury. “And in the meantime, Mrs. Brentwood?”

  She made no reply and David looked at her contemptuously. “Why does any human being want to protect another?” he quoted her. He shook his head, revulsed. “How stupid you must have thought me,” he said. Shoving open the door, he got out quickly.

  Anger failed him as he slid behind the wheel of the car. Sick with fear, he watched the Bentley turned and driven toward the bluff. All his strength seemed drained away. “My God.” He clutched a trembling hand across his eyes. “Oh, my God, my God.”

  What was he to do?

  He listened at the door for several minutes before unlocking it quickly and entering the room.

  She was on the bed again, now completely nude and lying on her back, her face heavily, almost grotesquely made up. She’d removed the wall mirror from above the bureau and set it at the foot of the bed, leaning it against the baseboard. Intent on her reflection, she didn’t even glance around. Removing the key, David shut the door and re-locked it. He crossed the room, dropping the key into his trouser pocket.

  As he stood beside the bed, looking down at her, her pose and actions grew increasingly lascivious. He felt nothing but despair. It wasn’t Ellen doing these things. Still, unless he, somehow, managed to coerce Marianna into identifying herself, he couldn’t be completely sure. He withstood a fluttering rise of panic. If it was Marianna (and he had to believe that) she was limited to Ellen’s mind and body now, her scope, as an opponent, considerably reduced.

  He steeled himself to begin. One step at a time, he thought; first: identification.

  “Marianna?”

  She continued eyeing her reflection, running both hands over her body in slow, lingering caresses. David felt himself bristle. He wouldn’t call her Ellen. That was, clearly, what she wanted.

  “You may as well look up,” he said.

  Her gaze shifted. “All right, I’m looking.” The corners of her mouth twitched as she restrained a smile. “So are you.”

  Through sex, the thought came. David tightened, fearing momentarily that she could tell what he was thinking. She couldn’t though; not now. He effected a smile. “Why shouldn’t I look?” he asked.

  Her returned smile made him feel a fragment of advantage. “That’s right,” she said. “Why shouldn’t you? I’m your wife.”

  He let it pass unchallenged. She was toying with him, that was obvious. He mustn’t let it ma
ke him lose his temper anymore. She was a twenty-three year old woman now and he could deal with that if he kept his mind to it. He was grateful that she’d put on so much make-up. It altered her appearance enough to be a constant reminder that she wasn’t Ellen.

  He tried to look intrigued as he watched what she was doing to herself with the middle finger of her right hand. “Like?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh.” He felt his stomach muscles throbbing. Easy.

  “You want to do it?”

  He drew in skittish breath. “Maybe.”

  “Take your clothes off then.”

  He had to swallow and she mocked him. “Nervous? With your own wife?”

  If you were my wife, you’d go home to your daughter! The accusation lashed across his mind. He forced back the anger but knew that she’d seen his change of expression. “Oh,” she chided. “Mad?”

  “No.”

  “Well, make up your mind, lover,” she said. “Or give me the keys so I can find somebody else to play with.”

  David shivered. “How about the studio?” he asked.

  “The studio?”

  “We’ll do it there,” he said. A wave of hopeless apprehension swept across him. What good would that do? he thought as he watched her sit up, smiling. “If you insist” she said. The smile disappeared. “You’d better make it good though.” She dropped her legs across the side of the bed and stood. He put his arms around her as she pushed against him. Immediately, her breathing quickened and she started nibbling moistly at his ear lobe. “Sure you want to wait?” she murmured.

  “Nicer in the studio.” He had to strain to keep his voice from trembling.

  “Why?” she teased.

  “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  “Tell me now.” She rubbed against him. “Show me.”

  He felt powerless again. Abruptly, he pulled away and moved to the bedside table. Pulling out its drawer, he took out the box of incense. “We’ll burn this,” he said, trying to sound interested. He looked at her with sudden curiosity, wondering what she’d say.

  She asked, “What’s that?”

  You know what it is! he wanted to shout. He twitched, repressing the desire. “Don’t you remember?”