I Am Legend and Other Stories

by Richard Matheson

  When the dog didn’t return that afternoon, he took a dish of milk and put it under the house where the dog was. The next morning the bowl was empty. He was going to put more milk in it when he realized that the dog might never leave his lair then. He put the bowl back in front of his house and prayed that the dog was strong enough to reach it. He was too warned even to criticize his inept prayer.

  When the dog didn’t come that afternoon he went back and looked in. He paced back and forth outside the opening and almost put milk there anyway. No, the dog would never leave then.

  He went home and spent a sleepless night. The dog didn’t come in the morning. Again he went to the house. He listened at the opening but couldn’t hear any sound of breathing. Either it was too far back for him to hear or…

  He went back to the house and sat on the porch. He didn’t have breakfast or lunch. He just sat there.

  That afternoon, late, the dog came limping out between the houses, moving slowly on its bony legs. Neville forced himself to sit there without moving until the dog had reached the food. Then, quickly, he reached down and picked up the dog.

  Immediately it tried to snap at him, but he caught its jaws in his right hand and held them together. Its lean, almost hairless body squirmed feebly in his grasp and pitifully terrified whines pulsed in its throat.

  “It’s all tight,” he kept saying. “It’s all right, boy.”

  Quickly he took it into his room and put it down on the little bed of blankets he’d arranged for the dog. As soon as he took his hand off its jaws the dog snapped at him and he jerked his hand back. The dog lunged over the linoleum with a violent scrabbling of paws, heading for the door. Neville jumped up and blocked its way. The dog’s legs slipped on the smooth surface, then it got a little traction and disappeared under the bed.

  Neville got on his knees and looked under the bed. In the gloom there he saw the two glowing coals of eyes and heard the fitful panting.

  “Come on, boy,” he pleaded unhappily. “I won’t hurt you. You’re sick. You need help.”

  The dog wouldn’t budge. With a groan Neville got up finally and went out, closing the door behind him. He went and got the bowls and filled them with milk and water. He put them in the bedroom near the dog’s bed.

  He stood by his own bed a moment, listening to the panting dog, his face lined with pain.

  “Oh,” he muttered plaintively, “why don’t you trust me?”

  He was eating dinner when he heard the horrible crying and whining.

  Heart pounding, he jumped up from the table and raced across the living room. He threw open the bedroom door and flicked on the light.

  Over in the corner by the bench the dog was trying to dig a hole in the floor.

  Terrified whines shook its body as its front paws clawed frenziedly at the linoleum, slipping futilely on the smoothness of it.

  “Boy, it’s all right!” Neville said quickly.

  The dog jerked around and backed into the corner, hackles rising, jaws drawn back all the way from its yellowish-white teeth, a half-mad sound quivering in its throat.

  Suddenly Neville knew what was wrong. It was nighttime and the terrified dog was trying to dig itself a hole to bury itself in.

  He stood there helplessly, his brain refusing to work properly as the dog edged away from the corner, then scuttled underneath the workbench.

  An idea finally came. Neville moved to his bed quickly and pulled off the top blanket. Returning to the bench, he crouched down and looked under it.

  The dog was almost flattened against the wall, its body shaking violently, guttural snarls bubbling in its throat.

  “All right, boy,” he said. “All right.”

  The dog shrank back as Neville stuck the blanket underneath the bench and then stood up. Neville went over to the door and remained there a minute looking back. If only I could do something, he thought helplessly. But I can’t even get close to him.

  Well, he decided grimly, if the dog didn’t accept him soon, he’d have to try a little chloroform. Then he could at least work on the dog, fix its paw and try somehow to cure it.

  He went back to the kitchen but he couldn’t eat. Finally he dumped the contents of his plate into the garbage disposal and poured the coffee back into the pot. In the living room he made himself a drink and downed it. It tasted flat and unappetizing. He put down the glass and. went back to the bedroom with a somber face.

  The dog had dug itself under the folds of the blanket and there it was still shaking, whining ceaselessly. No use trying to work on it now, he thought; it’s too frightened.

  He walked back to the bed and sat down. He ran his hands through his hair and then put them over his face. Cure it, cure it, he thought, and one of his hands bunched into a fist to strike feebly at the mattress.

  Reaching out abruptly, he turned off the light and lay down fully clothed. Still lying down, he worked off his sandals and listened to them thump on the floor.

  Silence. He lay there staring at the ceiling. Why don’t I get up? he wondered. Why don’t I try to do something?

  He turned on his side. Get some sleep. The words came automatically. He knew he wasn’t going to sleep, though. He lay in the darkness listening to the dog’s whimpering.

  Die, it’s going to die, he kept thinking, there’s nothing in the world I can do.

  At last, unable to bear the sound, he reached over and switched on the bedside lamp. As he moved across the room in his stocking feet, he heard the dog trying suddenly to jerk loose from the blanketing. But it got all tangled up in the folds and began yelping, terror-stricken, while its body flailed wildly under the wool.

  Neville knelt beside it and put his hands on its body. He heard the choking snarl and the muffled click of its teeth as it snapped at him through the blanket.

  “All right,” he said. “Stop it now.”

  The dog kept struggling against him, its high-pitched whining never stopping, its gaunt body shaking without control. Neville kept his hands firmly on its body, pinning it down, talking to it quietly, gently.

  “It’s all right now, fella, all right. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Take it easy, now. Come on, relax, now. Come on, boy. Take it easy. Relax. That’s right, relax. That’s it. Calm down. Nobody’s going to hurt you. We’ll take care of you.”

  He went on talking intermittently for almost an hour, his voice a low, hypnotic murmuring in the silence of the room. And slowly, hesitantly, the dog’s trembling eased off. A smile faltered on Neville’s lips as he went on talking, talking.

  “That’s right. Take it easy, now. We’ll take care of you.”

  Soon the dog lay still beneath his strong hands, the only movement its harsh breathing. Neville began patting its head, began running his right hand over its body, stroking and soothing.

  “That’s a good dog,” he said softly. “Good dog. I’ll take care of you now. Nobody will hurt you. You understand, don’t you, fella? Sure you do. Sure. You’re my dog, aren’t you?”

  Carefully he sat down on the cool linoleum, still patting the dog.

  “You’re a good dog, a good dog.”

  His voice was calm, it was quiet with resignation.

  After about an hour he picked up the dog. For a moment it struggled and started whining, but Neville talked to it again and it soon calmed down.

  He sat down on his bed and held the blanket-covered dog in his lap. He sat there for hours holding the dog, patting and stroking and talking. The dog lay immobile in his lap, breathing easier.

  It was about eleven that night when Neville slowly undid the blanket folds and exposed the dog’s head.

  For a few minutes it cringed away from his hand, snapping a little. But he kept talking to it quietly, and after a while his hand rested on the warm neck and he was moving his fingers gently, scratching and caressing.

  He smiled down at the dog, his throat moving.

  “You’ll be all better soon,” he whispered. “Real soon.”

  The dog looked u
p at him with its dulled, sick eyes and then its tongue faltered out and licked roughly and moistly across the palm of Neville’s hand.

  Something broke in Neville’s throat. He sat there silently while tears ran slowly down his cheeks.

  In a week the dog was dead.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THERE WAS NO DEBAUCH of drinking. Far from it. He found that he actually drank less. Something had changed. Trying to analyze it, he came to the conclusion that his last drunk had put him on the bottom, at the very nadir of frustrated despair. Now, unless he put himself under the ground, the only way he could go was up.

  After the first few weeks of building up intense hope about the dog, it had slowly dawned on him that intense hope was not the answer and never had been. In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle, and he realized it now, understood it at long last. And understanding it seemed to give him a sort of quiet peace, a sense of having spread all the cards on his mental table, examined them, and settled conclusively on the desired hand.

  Burying the dog had not been the agony he had supposed it would be. In a way, it was almost like burying threadbare hopes and false excitements. From that day on he learned to accept the dungeon he existed in, neither seeking to escape with sudden derring-do nor beating his pate bloody on its walls.

  And, thus resigned, he returned to work.

  It had happened almost a year before, several days after he had put Virginia to her second and final rest.

  Hollow and bleak, a sense of absolute loss in him, he was walking t he streets late one afternoon, hands listless at his sides, feet shuffling with the rhythm of despair. His face mirrored nothing of the helpless agony he felt. His face was a blank.

  He had wandered through the streets for hours, neither knowing nor caring where he was going. All he knew was that he couldn’t return to the empty rooms of the house, couldn’t look at the things they had touched and held and known with him. He couldn’t look at Kathy’s empty bed, at her clothes hanging still and useless in the closet, couldn’t look at the bed that he and Virginia had slept in, at Virginia’s clothes, her jewelry, all her perfumes on the bureau. He couldn’t go near the house.

  And so he walked and wandered, and he didn’t know where he was when the people started milling past him, when the man caught his arm and breathed garlic in his face.

  “Come, brother, come,” the man said, his voice a grating rasp. He saw the man’s throat moving like clammy turkey skin, the red-splotched cheeks, the feverish eyes, the black suit, unpressed, unclean. “Come and be saved, brother, saved.”

  Robert Neville stared at the man. He didn’t understand. The man pulled him on, his fingers like skeleton fingers on Neville’s arm.

  “It’s never too late, brother,” said the man. “Salvation comes to him who…”

  The last of his words were lost now in the rising murmur of sound from the great tent they were approaching. It sounded like the sea imprisoned under canvas, roaring to escape. Robert Neville tried to loose his arm.

  “I don’t want to-”

  The man didn’t hear. He pulled Neville on with him and they walked toward the waterfall of crying and stamping. The man did not let go. Robert Neville felt as if he were being dragged into a tidal wave.

  “But I don’t-”

  The tent had swallowed him then, the ocean of shouting, stamping, hand-clapping sound engulfed him. He flinched instinctively and felt his heart begin pumping heavily. He was surrounded now by people, hundreds of them, swelling and gushing around him like waters closing in. And yelling and clapping and crying out words Robert Neville couldn’t understand.

  Then the cries died down and he heard the voice that stabbed through the half-light like knifing doom, that crackled and bit shrilly over the loud-speaker system.

  “Do you want to fear t he holy cross of God? Do you want to look into the mirror and not see the face that Almighty God has given you? Do you want to come crawling back from the grave like a monster out of hell?” The voice enjoined hoarsely, pulsing, driving.

  “Do you want to be changed into a black unholy animal? Do you want to stain the evening sky with hell-born bat wings? I ask you-do you want to be turned into godless, night-cursed husks, into creatures of eternal damnation?”

  “No!” the people erupted, terror-stricken. “No, save us!”

  Robert Neville backed away, bumping into flailing-handed, white-jawed true believers screaming out for succor from the lowering skies.

  “Well, I’m telling you! I’m telling you, so listen to the word of God! Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation and the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth! Is that a lie, is that a lie?”

  “No! No!”

  “I tell you that unless we become as little children, stainless and pure in the eyes of Our Lord-unless we stand up and shout out the glory of Almighty God and of His only begotten son, Jesus Christ, our Savior-unless we fall on our knees and beg forgiveness for our grievous offenses-we are damned! I’ll say it again, so listen! We are damned, we are damned, we are damned!

  “Amen!”

  “Save us!"

  The people twisted and moaned and smote their brows and shrieked in mortal terror and screamed out terrible hallelujahs.

  Robert Neville was shoved about, stumbling and lost in a treadmill of hopes, in a crossfire of frenzied worship.

  “God has punished us for our great transgressions! God has unleashed the terrible force of His almighty wrath! God has set loose the second deluge upon us-a deluge, a flood, a world-consuming torrent of creatures from hell! He has opened the grave, He has unsealed the crypt, He has turned the dead from their black tombs-and set them upon us! And death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them! That’s the word of God! O God, You have punished us, O God, You have seen the terrible face of our transgressions, O God, You have struck us with the might of Your almighty wrath!”

  Clapping hands like the spatter of irregular rifle fire, swaying bodies like stalks in a terrible wind, moans of the great potential dead, screams of the fighting living. Robert Neville strained through their violent ranks, face white, hands before him like those of a blind man seeking shelter.

  He escaped, weak and trembling, stumbling away from them. Inside the tent the people screamed. But night had already fallen.

  He thought about that now as he sat in the living room nursing a mild drink, a psychology text resting on his lap.

  A quotation had started the train of thought, sending him back to that evening ten months before, when he’d been pulled into the wild revival meeting.

  “This condition, known as hysterical blindness, may be partial or complete, including one, several, or all objects.”

  That was the quotation he’d read. It had started him working on the problem again.

  A new approach now. Before, he had stubbornly persisted in attributing all vampire phenomena to the germ. If certain of these phenomena did not fit in with the bacilli, he felt inclined to judge their cause as superstition. True, he’d vaguely considered psychological explanations, but he’d never really given much credence to such a possibility. Now, released at last from unyielding preconceptions, he did.

  There was no reason, he knew, why some of the phenomena could not be physically caused, the rest psychological. And, no w that he accepted it, it seemed one of those patent answers that only a blind man would miss. Well, I always was the blind-man type, he thought in quiet amusement.

  Consider, he thought then, the shock undergone by a victim of the plague.

  Toward the end of the plague, yellow journalism had spread a cancerous dread of vampires to all corners of the nation. He could remember himself the rash of pseudoscientific articles that veiled an out-and-out fright campaign designed to sell papers.

  There was something grotesquely amusing in that; the frenetic attempt to sell pape
rs while the world died. Not that all newspapers had done that. Those papers that had lived in honesty and integrity died the same way.

  Yellow journalism, though, had been rampant in the final days. And, in addition, a great upsurge in revivalism had occurred. In a typical desperation for quick answers, easily understood, people had turned to primitive worship as the solution. With less than success. Not only had they died as quickly as the rest of the people, but they had died with terror in their hearts, with a mortal dread flowing in their very veins.

  And then, Robert Neville thought, to have this hideous dread vindicated. To regain consciousness beneath hot, heavy soil and know that death had not brought rest. To find themselves clawing up through the earth, their bodies driven now by a strange, hideous need.

  Such traumatic shocks could undo what mind was left. And such shocks could explain much.

  The cross, first of all.

  Once they were forced to accept vindication of the dread of being repelled by an object that had been a focal point of worship, their minds could have snapped. Dread of the cross sprang up. And, driven on despite already created dreads, the vampire could have acquired an intense mental loathing, and this self-hatred could have set up a block in their weakened minds causing them be blind to their own abhorred image. It could make them lonely, soul-lost slaves of the night, afraid to approach anyone, living a solitary existence, often seeking solace in the soil of their native land, struggling to gain a sense of communion with something, with anything.

  The water? That he did accept as superstition, a carryover of the traditional legend that witches were incapable of crossing running water, as written down in the story of Tam

  O’Shanter. Witches, vampires-in all these feared beings there was a sort of interwoven kinship. Legends and superstitions could overlap, and did.

  And the living vampires? That was simple too, now.

  In life there were the deranged, the insane. What better hold than vampirism for these to catch on to? He was certain that all the living who came to his house at night were insane, thinking themselves true vampires although actually they were only demented sufferers. And that would explain the fact that they’d never taken the obvious step of burning his house. They simply could not think that logically.