"Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come" - читать интересную книгу автора (Matheson Richard)

who'd wept herself to sleep. My precious Ann. I reached out to touch her face, my hand like iron.

My fingers disappeared inside her head.

She woke up with a start, her gaze alarmed. "Chris?" she said. Again, that momentary leap of hope.
Shattered when it quickly grew apparent that she wasn't looking at me but through me. Tears began
to well in her eyes. She drew up her legs and clutched her pillow tightly in her arms, pressing
her face against it, body shaking with sobs.

"Oh, God, no sweetheart, please don't cry." I was crying too. I would have given up my soul if
only she'd been able to see me for a minute, hear my voice, receive my comfort and my love.

I knew she couldn't though. And knew, as well, the nightmare hadn't ended. I turned from her and
closed my eyes, desperate to escape in sleep again, let the darkness pull me far from her. Her
weeping tore my heart. Please take me away from this, I pleaded. If I can't comfort her, take me
away!

I felt my mind begin a downward slide, descending into blackness.

Now it was a dream. It had to be. My life was unreeling before me, a succession of living
pictures. Something about it struck me. Hadn't I experienced this before, more briefly, more
confusingly?

This was not confusing in the least. I might have been a viewer in an auditorium, watching a film
entitled My Life, every episode from start to finish. No, amend that. Finish to start; the film


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began with the collisionтАФwas it real thenтАФ and evolved back toward my birth, each detail
magnified.

I won't go into all those details, Robert. It's not the story I want to tellтАФit would take too
long. Each man's life is a tome of episodes. Consider all the moments of your life enumerated one
by one with full description. A twenty-volume encyclopedia of events; at the very least.

Let me discuss it in brief then, this display of scenes. It was more than a "flash before my
eyes." I was more than just a viewer; that became apparent very soon. I relived each moment with
acute perception, experiencing and understanding simultaneously. The phenomenon was vivid, Robert,
each emotion infinitely multiplied by level upon level of awareness.

The essence of it allтАФthis is the important partтАФwas the knowledge that my thoughts had been real.
Not just the things I said and did. What went on in my mind as well, positive or negative.

Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I
rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience with total cognizance, unprotected by
pretense. Self-delusion was impossible, truth exposed in blinding light. Nothing as I thought it
had been. Nothing as I hoped it had been. Only as it had been.