Somewhere in Time

by Richard Matheson

  I was so dehydrated, I suppose, so dazed I couldn’t manage, for what seemed like endless moments, to realize that dates fall on different days each year, only coinciding periodically. I stared at the page in baffled disbelief, then, abruptly, shook myself in anger as it came to me.

  My gaze leaped to the columns headed Names, Residence, Rooms, and Time; ran down the list. The writing blurred in front of me. I rubbed a shaking hand across my eyes. E. C. Penn. Comad Scherer and wife (odd way to write it, I remember thinking). K. B. Alexander. C. T. Laminy. I looked in dull confusion at the word DO written many places in the columns. Only now do I realize that what it meant was ditto and that it was used instead of the ditto marks we use today.

  I looked to the very bottom of the page but it wasn’t there. The sound I made had to be one of pain. I stared at the dried-ink patterns on the blotter page. The smell of musty paper and dust filled my nostrils and lungs. Feebly, I turned the page to FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1896.

  And started crying. Not since I was twelve years old have I cried like that; not with sadness but with joy. Suddenly without strength, I sank down, cross-legged, to the floor, the heavy hotel register on my lap, tears streaming down my cheeks, lost in rivulets of perspiration, my choking sobs the only sound in that dead, hot oven of a room.

  It was the third name down.

  R. C. Collier, Los Angeles. Room 350. 9:18 A.M.

  One twenty-seven p.m. Lying in bed, a delicious sense of expectation in me. Took a shower, bathed away the dust and grime and sweat, threw my clothes into the laundry bag. Glad I was able to lock the storage rooms and leave before Marcie Buckley returned. I telephoned her office several moments ago to thank her again.

  It’s a temptation—because I feel so good, so certain—to do nothing now but lie here and wait for the inevitable to happen.

  Yet I sense, despite assurance, that this isn’t a matter of inevitability at all. I still have to make it happen. I believe completely that it has been done but, after reading Priestley’s book, I also believe that there are, in fact, multiple possibilities not only for the future but the past as well.

  I could still miss it.

  Accordingly, my work is not yet over. Although I believe without reservation that, tomorrow night, I’ll watch her perform in The Little Minister, I also believe that I have to put out effort before this is possible.

  I’ll do it in a little while; right now, I want to bask. It was a horrible experience down there until I found the hotel register with my name on it. I need to let my strength build up again before I start.

  I wonder why I wrote R. C. Collier. I’ve never written my name that way before.

  I also wondered about moving to Room 350 but decided against trying. I don’t know exactly why but, somehow, it felt wrong to me. And, since most of what I have to go on is feeling, I’d best go along with it.

  It is November 19, 1896. You’re lying on your bed, eyes closed, relaxed, and it’s November 19, 1896. No tension. No distress. If you hear a sound outside, it will be carriage wheels turning, the thud of horses’ hooves. No more; you’ll hear no more. You are at peace, at utter peace. It’s November 19,1896. November 19, 1896. You’re lying on a bed in the Hotel del Coronado and it’s November 19, 1896. Elise McKenna and her company are in the hotel at this very moment. The stage is being set for their performance of The Little Minister tomorrow night. It’s Thursday afternoon. You’re lying on the bed in your room at the Hotel del Coronado and it’s Thursday afternoon, November 19,1896. Your mind accepts this absolutely. There is no question in your mind. It is November 19, 1896, Thursday November 19, 1896. You’re Richard Collier. Thirty-six. Lying on your hotel bed, eyes closed, on Thursday afternoon, November 19, 1896. 1896. 1896. Room 527. Hotel del Coronado. Thursday afternoon, November 19,1896. Elise McKenna is in the hotel at this very moment. Her mother is in the hotel at this very moment. Her manager, William Fawcett Robinson, is in the hotel at this very moment. Now. This moment. Here. Elise McKenna. You. Elise McKenna and you. Both in the Hotel del Coronado on this Thursday afternoon in November; Thursday, November 19,1896.

  (This hypnotic self-instruction by my brother continues on for the equivalent of twenty-one more pages.)

  I have forty-five minutes on the cassette now. I’ll lie down, close my eyes, and listen to it.

  Two forty-six p.m. I feel more confident than ever. It’s a strange sensation, one beyond logic, but I’m convinced that this transition will take place. The conviction forms an undercurrent of excitement beneath the mental calm I also feel; the tranquillity of absolute assurance.

  Lying on the bed those forty-five minutes, I don’t know whether I eventually slept or went into a hypnotic state or what. All I know is I believed what I was hearing. After a while, it was as though some voice other than my own was speaking to me. Some disembodied personality instructing me from some spaceless, timeless zone. I believed that voice without question.

  What was the phrase I read so many years ago? The one I was so impressed with that, at one point, I considered having it printed on a piece of wood and hanging it on my office wall.

  I remember. What you believe becomes your world.

  Lying here before, I believed that the voice I heard was telling me the truth and that I was lying on this bed, with my eyes closed, not in 1971 but in 1896.

  I’ll do this again and again until that belief has so completely overwhelmed me that I’ll literally be there and rise and leave this room and reach Elise.

  Three thirty-nine p.m. End of another session. Similar results. Conviction; peace; assurance. At one point, I actually considered opening my eyes and looking around to see if I were there yet.

  A bizarre thought just occurred to me.

  What if, when I open my eyes in 1896, it is to see somebody in the room with me, gaping at me in shock? Could I cope with that? What if—Good God!—some married couple had just begun to experience “nupital conjugation” as I suddenly appear in bed with them, most likely under or on top? Grotesque. Yet how can I avoid it? I have to lie on the bed. I suppose I could lie under it, just in case, but the discomfort would undo my mental concentration.

  I’ll have to risk it, that’s all. I can’t see any other way. My hope is that—recalling Babcock’s letter to Elise—the winter season bringing fewer guests, this room will be unoccupied.

  Regardless, the risk must be taken. I’m certainly not going to let that problem undo the project.

  A brief time-out, then back to it again.

  Four thirty-seven p.m. A problem; two in fact, one irremediable, the other with a hoped-for solution.

  First problem: The sound of my voice, during this third session, began to lose its abstract quality and become more identifiable. Why is that? It should be drifting further from recognition each time I hear it, shouldn’t it?

  Maybe not, though. Maybe problem two ties in with it, said problem being this: Although the conviction remained as I listened, it began to fade because I was hearing the same words over and over—which was valuable hypnotically but not of value to the portion of my mind that still supports logic as its king. That mental portion finally asked the question openly: Is that all you know about this day in November 1896?

  Got it! Will run downstairs and buy a copy of Marcie Buckley’s book in the Smoke Shop, give it a quick reading, and pick up facts pertinent to 1896, then record a different forty-five minute instruction and enlarge upon the evidence that I am here in November 19, 1896; set the stage with more detail, as it were.

  Elise would approve of that.

  Later. An interesting book. Well, not a book actually; she’s working on a full-length version now. This is more an oversize pamphlet, sixty-four pages in length with sketches, chapters on the building of the hotel, some on its history and the history of Coronado, photographs of its present appearance and a few of its past, photographs of celebrities who’ve visited the hotel (the Prince of Wales, no less), plus notes and drawings re the contemplated future of the hotel.

&
nbsp; I’ve compiled enough items to enrich my next instruction, which I’ll start in a few minutes.

  It’s Thursday November 19,1896. You’re lying on your bed in Room 527, eyes closed. The sun has gone down and it’s dark now. Night is falling on this Thursday at the Hotel del Coronado; Thursday November 19, 1896. The lights are being turned on in the hotel now. The light fixtures are for both gas and electricity but the gas is not used.

  They’re installing, on this very day, a steam heating system which is scheduled for completion by next year. At the moment, every room is heated by a fireplace. This room, 527, is being heated by a fireplace. At this very moment, in the darkness of this Thursday, November 19,1896, a fire is burning in the hearth across from you; crackling softly, sending waves of heat into the room, illuminating it with firelight.

  In their rooms, other guests are dressing, now, for dinner in the Crown Room. Elise McKenna is in the hotel at this very moment; perhaps in the theater checking some detail of her production of The Little Minister, which is scheduled for tomorrow night, perhaps changing clothes in her room. Her mother is in the hotel. So, too, is her manager, William Fawcett Robinson. So, too, is her acting company. All their rooms are being heated by fireplaces; as is this room, Room 527, on this late afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1896. There is a wall safe in the room as well.

  You’re lying quietly, at peace, your eyes closed, in this room in 1896, November 19, 1896; Thursday afternoon, November 19, 1896. Soon you will get up and leave the room and find Elise McKenna. Soon you will open your eyes on this now dark afternoon in November 1896 and walk into the corridor and go downstairs and find Elise McKenna. She is in the hotel now. At this very moment. Because it is November 19,1896. November 19,1896. November 19, 1896.

  (And so on, for another twenty pages.)

  Six forty-seven p.m. Had a meal brought to my room. Some soup, a sandwich. A mistake. I was so imbued with 1896 conviction—despite the 1971 appearance of the room—that the entry of the waiter was a jarring intrusion.

  No more of that. A backslide but not beyond remedy. I’ll buy some crackers, cheese, et cetera, in the Smoke Shop, eat in the room from now on. Just enough to keep me going while I continue with my project.

  Still another problem. Well, actually, the same one.

  The sound of my voice.

  It’s becoming increasingly distracting. No matter how far I drift mentally, I know inside of me, in some deep core of realization that will not be deceived, that it’s my voice talking to me. I can’t imagine what else to do, but it is unsettling.

  Well, I’ll deal with that problem if it gets out of hand. Maybe it never will.

  I’m thinking more and more of the fact that, in going back, I am to be the cause of the tragedy which fills this face; I have her photograph in front of me on the writing table.

  Have I the right to do this to her?

  I know I’ve already done it. Yet, there again, increasingly, I sense a variable factor in the past as well as in the future. I don’t know why I feel it but I do. A feeling that I have the choice of not going back if I wish. I feel this intensely.

  But why would I not go back now? Even if I knew (and I don’t), that I would have no more than moments with her. After all this, to not go back? It’s unthinkable.

  Beyond that, I have other thoughts. Thoughts about choice which can make the situation far more complicated than it already is.

  What did Priestley say? Let me check it out again.

  Here is what he says, in the final chapter, entitled “One Man and Time.”

  He speaks of a woman’s dream in Russia; Countess Toutschkoff in 1812. She dreamed, three times in one night, that her husband, a general in the army, was going to die in a battle at a place called Borodino. When she woke up and mentioned it to her husband, they couldn’t even find the name on a map.

  Three months later, her husband died in the Battle of Borodino.

  Priestley then mentions another dream; by an American woman in the twentieth century. This woman dreamed that her baby drowned in a stream. Months later, she found herself in the identical place she’d dreamed of, her baby dressed the same as in the dream and about to be involved in the identical predicament which resulted in its drowning in the dream.

  The woman, recognizing the parallel, altered the foreseen tragedy by saving her child’s life.

  What Priestley suggests is that the scope of the event determines whether it is subject to alteration in any way. Such a mass of details were contributing to the actualization of the Battle of Borodino that in no way could such a complex event be interfered with.

  On the other hand, the potential drowning of one baby (unless, presumably, that baby were a Caesar or a Hitler) constituted an event of such a lesser nature that it could be intervened upon and changed.

  This being true of future events, I believe that the same conditions must apply to past events. I was here in 1896 and caused a change in Elise McKenna’s life. But that change did not have the vastly historical scope of a Battle of Borodino. It was, like the impending death of a child, a smaller event.

  Why then should I not be able to go back, just as before, but, instead of causing sorrow in her life, cause only joy? Surely that sorrow was caused not by her meeting me or by anything I did to her but by her somehow losing me to the same phenomenon of time which brought me to her. I know this sounds mad but I believe it.

  I also believe that, when the moment comes, I can alter that particular phenomenon.

  Another solution occurs to me!

  I’ll ignore the new instruction. Since the sound of my voice distracts me, let me eliminate that sound. I’ll write instructions to my subconscious—twenty—five, fifty, a hundred times each. As I do this, I’ll listen to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony on my headphones, let it be my candle flame, my swinging pendant as I send written instructions to my subconscious that today is November 19, 1896.

  An amendment. I will listen only to the final movement of the symphony.

  The movement in which, wrote Bruno Walter, “Mahler peacefully bids farewell to the world.”

  I will also use it to bid farewell to this world—of 1971.

  I, Richard Collier, am now in the Hotel del Coronado on November 19, 1896.

  I, Richard Collier, am now in the Hotel del Coronado on November 19, 1896.

  I, Richard Collier, am now in the Hotel del Coronado on November 19, 1896.

  (Written fifty times by Richard.)

  Today is Thursday November 19, 1896.

  Today is Thursday, November 19, 1896. (Written one hundred times.)

  Elise McKenna is in the hotel now.

  (One hundred times.)

  Every moment brings me closer to Elise.

  (One hundred times.)

  It is now November 19, 1896.

  (Sixty-one times.)

  Nine forty-seven p.m. It happened.

  I don’t recall exactly when. I was writing It is now November 19, 1896. My wrist and arm were aching. I seemed to be in a fog. I mean literally. A mist appeared to be gathering around me. I could hear the adagio movement in my head. I was playing it for the umpteenth time. I could see the pencil moving on the paper. It seemed to be writing by itself. The connection between myself and it had vanished. I stared at its movement, mesmerized.

  Then it happened. A flicker. I can think of no better word. My eyes were open but I was asleep. No, not asleep. Gone somewhere. The music stopped and, for an instant—but a totally distinct and unmistakable instant—I was there.

  In 1896.

  It came and went so fast, I think it may have been no longer than an eye blink.

  I know it sounds insane and unconvincing. It even does to me as I hear my voice describing it. And yet it happened. Every fiber in my system knew that I was sitting here—in this exact spot—not in 1971 but in 1896.

  My God, the very sound of my voice as I say 1971 makes me cringe. I feel as though I’m back in a cage. I was released before. In that miraculous instant, the doo
r sprang open and I stepped out and was free.

  I have a feeling that the headphones were responsible for it not lasting longer than it did. As much as I love the music, I’m appalled to think that I had these headphones on at that moment, holding me back.

  Now that I know it works and the project is simplified to the status of repetition, a most important practical consideration occurs to me.

  Clothes.

  Weird—but I mean weird—that, all this time, it never crossed my mind that to be in 1896 with the clothes I’m wearing now would prove so calamitous it could undo the entire project.

  Obviously, I have to find myself an outfit fitting to the time I’ll be in.

  Where do I find it though? Tomorrow’s Friday. I don’t know why I have this conviction that it has to happen tomorrow. I do have the conviction though and don’t intend to fight it.

  Which leaves only one possibility regarding clothes.

  Looking through the Yellow Pages. Costume houses. Obviously no time to have one tailor-made. A shame I didn’t foresee the need. Well, how could I? It wasn’t till after noon today that I even accepted the possibility of reaching her. Last night and this morning, I was calling it a delusion. A delusion! God, that’s incredible.

  Here’s one. The San Diego Costume Company on 7th Avenue. I’ll go there first thing in the morning.

  No point in continuing tonight. It might even be dangerous. What if I broke through inadvertently, wearing this damned jumpsuit? I’d look bizarre wearing an outfit like this in 1896.