by Ray Bradbury
‘Kim!’ You cannot help yourself. ‘It’s me! Kim!’
You push your face forward into the light. Her face pales. She does not cry out; but her eyes widen and her mouth opens as if a terrific lightning bolt has hit the earth beneath her. She pulls back slightly.
‘Kim!’ you cry. ‘Kim.’
She says your name, but you can’t hear it. She wants to run but instead she opens the window and, sobbing, stands back as you climb up and into the light.
You close the window and stand, swaying there, only to find her far across the room, her face half turned away.
You try to think of something to say, but cannot, and then you hear her crying.
At last she is able to speak.
‘Six months,’ she says. ‘You’ve been gone that long. When you went away I cried. I never cried so much in my life. But now you can’t be here.’
‘I am!’
‘But why? I don’t understand,’ she says. ‘Why did you come?’
‘I was lost. It was very dark and I started to dream; I don’t know how. And there you were in the dream and I don’t know how, but I had to find my way back.’
‘You can’t stay.’
‘Until sunrise I can. I still love you.’
‘Don’t say that. You mustn’t, anymore. I belong here and you belong there, and right now I’m terribly afraid. It’s been so long. The things we did, the things we joked and laughed about, those things I still love, but—’
‘I still think those thoughts. I think them over and over, Kim. Please try to understand.’
‘You don’t want pity, do you?’
‘Pity?’ You half turn away. ‘No, I don’t want that. Kim, listen to me. I could come visit you every night, we could talk just like we used to. I can explain, make you understand, if only you’ll let me.’
‘It’s no use,’ she says. ‘We can never go back.’
‘Kim, one hour every evening, or half an hour, anytime you say. Five minutes. Just to see you. That’s all, that’s all I ask.’
You try to take her hands. She pulls away.
She closes her eyes tightly and says simply, ‘I’m afraid.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve been taught to be afraid.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Yes, I guess that’s it.’
‘But I want to talk.’
‘Talking won’t help.’
Her trembling gradually passes and she becomes more calm and relaxed. She sinks down on the edge of the bed and her voice is very old in a young throat.
‘Perhaps…’ A pause. ‘Maybe. I suppose a few minutes each night and maybe I’d get used to you and maybe I wouldn’t be afraid.’
‘Anything you say. You won’t be afraid?’
‘I’ll try not to be.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I won’t be afraid. I’ll meet you outside the house in a few minutes. Let me get myself together and we can say good night.’
‘Kim, there’s only one thing to remember: I love you.’
You climb back out the window and she pulls down the sash.
Standing there in the dark, you weep with something deeper than sorrow.
Across the street a man walks alone and you recognize him as the one who spoke to you earlier that night. He is lost and walking like you, alone in a world that he hardly knows.
And suddenly Kim is beside you.
‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘I’m better now. I don’t think I’m afraid.’
And together you stroll in the moonlight, just as you have so many times before. She turns you in at an ice-cream parlor and you sit at the counter and order ice cream.
You look down at the sundae and think how wonderful, it’s been so long.
You pick up your spoon and put some of the ice cream in your mouth and then pause and feel the light in your face go out. You sit back.
‘Something wrong?’ the soda clerk behind the fountain says.
‘Nothing.’
‘Ice cream taste funny?’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘You ain’t eating,’ he says.
‘No.’
You push the ice cream away and feel a terrible loneliness steal over you.
‘I’m not hungry.’
You sit up very straight, staring at nothing. How can you tell her that you can’t swallow, can’t eat? How can you explain that your whole body seems to be solid, like a block of wood, and that nothing moves, nothing can be tasted?
Pushing back from the counter, you rise and wait for Kim to pay for the sundaes, and then you swing wide the door and walk out into the night.
‘Kim—’
‘It’s all right,’ she says.
You walk down toward the park. You feel her hand on your arm, a long way off, but the feeling is so soft that it is hardly there. Beneath your feet the sidewalk loses its solidity. You move without shock or bump, as if you’re in a dream.
Kim says, ‘Isn’t that great? Smell the lilacs.’
You sniff the air but there is nothing. Panicked, you try again, but no lilac.
Two people pass in the dark. They drift by, smiling to Kim. As they move away one of them says, fading, ‘Smell that? Something’s rotten in Denmark.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t see—’
‘No!’ Kim cries. And suddenly, at the sound of those voices, she starts to run.
You catch her arm. Silently you struggle. She beats at you. You can hardly feel her fists.
‘Kim!’ you cry. ‘Don’t. Don’t be afraid.’
‘Let go!’ she cries. ‘Let go.’
‘I can’t.’
Again the word: ‘Can’t.’ She weakens and hangs, lightly sobbing against you. At your touch she trembles.
You hold her close, shivering. ‘Kim, don’t leave me. I have such plans. We’ll travel, anywhere, just travel. Listen to me. Think of it. To eat the best food, to see the best places, to drink the best wine.’
Kim interrupts. You see her mouth move. You tilt your head. ‘What?’
She speaks again. ‘Louder,’ you say. ‘I can’t hear you.’
She speaks, her mouth moves, but you hear absolutely nothing.
And then, as if from behind a wall, a voice says, ‘It’s no use. You see?’
You let her go.
‘I wanted to see the light, flowers, trees, anything. I wanted to be able to touch you but, oh God, first, there, with the ice cream I tasted, it was all gone. And now I feel like I can’t move. I can hardly hear your voice, Kim. A wind passed by in the night, but I hardly feel it.’
‘Listen,’ she says. ‘This isn’t the way. It takes more than wanting things to have them. If we can’t talk or hear or feel or even taste, what is left for you or for me?’
‘I can still see you and I remember the way we were.’
‘That’s not enough, there’s got to be more than that.’
‘It’s unfair. God, I want to live!’
‘You will, I promise that, but not like this.’
You stop. You turn very cold. Holding to her wrist, you stare into her moving face.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Our child. I’m carrying our child. You see, you didn’t have to come back, you’re always with me, you’ll always be alive. Now turn around and go back. Believe me, everything will work out. Let me have a better memory than this terrible night with you. Go back where you came from.’
At this you cannot even weep; your eyes are dry. You hold her wrists tightly and then suddenly, without a word, she sinks slowly to the ground.
You hear her whisper, ‘The hospital. Quick.’
You carry her down the street. A fog fills your left eye and you realize that soon you will be blind.
‘Hurry,’ she whispers. ‘Hurry.’
You begin to run, stumbling.
A car passes and you flag it down. Moments later you and Kim are in the car with a stranger, roaring silently through the night.
And in the wild traveling you hea
r her repeat that she believes in the future and that you must leave soon.
At last you arrive and Kim has gone; the hospital attendant rushed her away without a good-bye.
You stand there, helpless, then turn and try to walk away. The world blurs.
Then you walk, finally, in half darkness, trying to see people, trying to smell any lilacs that still might be out there.
You find yourself entering the ravine just outside the park. The walkers are down there, the night walkers that gather. Remember what that man said? All those lost ones, all those lonely ones are coming together tonight to destroy those who do not understand them.
You stumble on the ravine path, fall, pick yourself up, and fall again.
The stranger, the walker, stands before you as you make your way toward the silent creek. You look around and there is no one else anywhere in the dark.
The strange leader cries out angrily, ‘They did not come! Not one of those walkers, not one! Only you. Oh, the cowards, damn them, the damn cowards!’
‘Good.’ Your breath, or the illusion of breath, slows. ‘I’m glad they didn’t listen. There must be some reason. Perhaps–perhaps something happened to them that we can’t understand.’
The leader shakes his head. ‘I had plans. But I am alone. Yet even if all the lonely ones should rise, they are not strong. One blow and they fall. We grow tired. I am tired…’
You leave him behind. His whispers die. A dull pulse beats in your head. You leave the ravine and return to the graveyard.
Your name is on the gravestone. The raw earth awaits you. You slide down the narrow tunnel into satin and wood, no longer afraid or excited. You lie suspended in warm darkness. You relax.
You are overwhelmed by a luxury of warm sustenance, like a great yeast; you feel as if you are buoyed by a whispering tide.
You breathe quietly, not hungry, not worried. You are deeply loved. You are secure. This place where you lie dreaming shifts, moves.
Drowsy. Your body is melting, it is small, compact, weightless. Drowsy. Slow. Quiet. Quiet.
Who are you trying to remember? A name moves out to sea. You run to fetch it, the waves bear it away. Someone beautiful. Someone. A time, a place. Sleepy. Darkness, warmth. Soundless earth. Dim tide. Quiet.
A dark river bears you faster and yet faster.
You break into the open. You are suspended in hot yellow light.
The world is immense as a snow mountain. The sun blazes and a huge red hand seizes your feet as another hand strikes your back to force a cry from you.
A woman lies near. Sweat beads her face, and there is a wild singing and a sharp wonder to this room and this world. You cry out, upside down, and are swung right side up, cuddled and nursed.
In your small hunger, you forget talking, you forget all things. Her voice, above, whispers:
‘Dear baby. I will name you for him. For…him…’
These words are nothing. Once you feared something terrifying and black, but now it is forgotten in this warmth. A name forms in your mouth, you try to say it, not knowing what it means, only able to cry it happily. The word vanishes, fades, an erased ghost of laughter in your head.
‘Kim! Kim! Oh, Kim!’
Remembrance, Ohio
They came running through the hot still dust of town, with their shadows burned black under them by the sun.
They held on to picket fences. They clutched trees. They seized lilac bushes, which gave no support, so they swayed and grabbed at each other, then ran on and looked back. With abrupt focus, the empty street rushed at them. They gasped and wheeled in a clumsy dance.
And then they saw it and made sounds like travelers at noon finding a landfall mirage, an incredible isle promising cool breezeways and water glades melted out of forgotten snows.
Ahead stood a cream-white house with a grape-arbor porch hummed about by bees with golden pelts.
‘Home,’ said the woman. ‘We’ll be safe there!’
The man blinked at the house in surprise. ‘I don’t understand…’
But they helped each other up onto the porch and sat precisely down in the swing, which hung like a special scale weighing them, and them afraid of the total.
The only movement for a long time now was the drift of the swing going nowhere with two people perched precariously, birdlike, in it. The street laid out its hot roll of dust on which no footprints or tire marks were stenciled. On occasion a wind paraded from nowhere, down the center of the dusty road to lie down under cool green trees. Beyond that, everything was baked solid. If you ran up on any porch and spat on any window and rubbed the grime away, you might peek in to find the dead, like so many clay mummies, scattered on the carpetless floors. But nobody ran, spat, or looked.
‘Shh,’ she whispered.
There were hummingbird flickers of leafy sunlight on their still faces.
‘You hear?’
Somewhere far off, a drift of voices slid away. A siren bubbled, rose, then stopped. The dust settled. The noises of the world drifted lazily to rest.
The woman glanced over at her husband on the seat beside her.
‘Will they find us? We did escape, we are free, aren’t we?’
He barely nodded. He was about thirty-five, a man all bristly and pink. The pink veins in his eyes made the rest of him seem infinitely redder, warmer, more irritable. He often told her he had this great hair ball in him, which made it hard to speak, much less breathe, in hot weather. Panic was a continual way of life for both of them. If one drop of rain fell on his hand from the blind sky now, it might jolt him into rabbiting off and leaving her alone.
She moved her tongue on her lips.
The small motion fretted him. Her coolness was a bother.
She took a chance on speaking again. ‘It’s nice to sit.’
His nod made the porch swing glide.
‘Mrs Haydecker’ll be coming up the street with a whole crate of fresh-picked strawberries any moment,’ she said.
He frowned.
‘Right out of her garden,’ she added.
The grapevines grew quietly over the cool dark porch. They felt like children hiding out from parents.
Sunlight picked the tiny silver hairs on a geranium stalk potted on the railing. It made the man feel like he was trapped in his winter underwear.
She arose suddenly and went to peer at the doorbell button and reached out as if to touch it.
‘Don’t!’ he said.
Too late; she had planted her thumb on the button.
‘It’s not working.’ She slapped her hand over her mouth and talked through the fingers. ‘Silly! Ringing your own doorbell. To see if I came to the door and looked out at myself?’
‘Get away from there.’ He was on his feet now. ‘You’ll spoil everything!’
But she could not keep her child’s hand from prowling to twist the doorknob.
‘Unlocked! Why, it was always locked!’
‘Hands off!’
‘I won’t try to go in.’ Suddenly she reached up to run her fingertips along the top of the sill. ‘Someone stole the key, that explains it. Stole it and went in and I bet robbed the house. We stayed away too long.’
‘We only been gone an hour.’
‘Don’t lie,’ she said. ‘You know it’s been months. No…what? Years.’
‘An hour,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’
‘It was such a long trip. I think I will.’ But she still held on to the doorknob. ‘I want to be fresh when I yell at Mama, “Mama, we’re here!” I wonder where Benjamin is? Such a good dog.’
‘Dead,’ said the man, forgetting. ‘Ten years ago.’
‘Oh…’ She backed off and her voice softened. ‘Yes…’ She eyed the door, the porch, and beyond, the town. ‘Something’s wrong. I can’t name it. But something’s wrong!’
The only sound was the sun burning the sky.
‘Is this California or Ohio?’ she said, at last turning to him.
‘Don’t do that!’ He seized her wris
t. ‘This is California.’
‘What’s our town doing here?’ she demanded, wildly out of breath. ‘When it used to be in Ohio!’
