Table of Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
One
November 14, 1971
November 15, 1971
November 16, 1971
November 17, 1971
November 18, 1971
November 19, 1971
Two
November 19, 1896
November 20, 1896
November 21, 1896
Note by Robert Collier
ALSO BY RICHARD MATHESON
Postscript by Robert Collier
Copyright Page
With grateful love for my mother
Recollection of our past together is the happiest of time travel.
I want to thank Miss Marcie Buckley for her generous assistance in the compilation of research materials for this story.
—RM
O call back yesterdays, bid time return
—Richard II, Act III, Sc. 2
One
November 14, 1971
Driving down Long Valley Road. Lovely day; bright sunshine, blue sky. Past the three-rail fences painted white. A horse appraises me. Ranch country in Los Angeles. Down one side of a road dip, up the other. Sunday morning. Peaceful. Pepper trees on each side of the road, foliage stirring in the breeze.
Almost out now. Away from Bob and Mary, from their house, from my little guest house out in back; from Kit who came to visit while I worked, clomped hooves, sighed, nickered, groaned, and, all else failing to evoke attention and potential feed, bumped her nose against my wall. No more.
The last dip and the final speed bump. Up ahead, Ventura Freeway and the world. Adios Amigos printed on the sign above the gatehouse. Farewell, Hidden Hills.
Standing in the car wash. Strangely empty. Everyone at church? A beige Mercedes-Benz just inched by. Always meant to get one someday. Scratch another project. Drinking beef broth purchased from the vending machine. Here comes my dark blue Galaxie. Staid, acceptable, and moderately priced; my kind of car. The nozzles greet it, shooting out their long, thin streams of lather.
In the empty parking lot outside the post office. Last visit to my box. Won’t bother stopping service. Mailed my last bill payments off to Ma Bell and The Broadway
Waiting at the stop sign by Topanga Boulevard. An opening now. A quick turn left—ease over—right turn—up the ramp and onto the Ventura Freeway. Farewell, Woodland Hills.
A really gorgeous day. The sky bright blue; thin pale streamers of clouds. The air like cold, white wine. Past Gemco, past the Valley Music Theatre. Both behind me now, no longer real. Solipsism is my game now.
Flipped a coin before I left the house; heads north, tails south. Heading for San Diego. Odd to think that one more penny flip and I’d be in San Francisco late this afternoon.
My luggage is spare: two bags. In one, my dark brown suit, my dark green sport coat, slacks, a few shirts, underwear, socks, shoes, and handkerchiefs, my small zip case of toiletries. In the other suitcase, my phonograph, headphones, and ten Mahler symphonies. By my side, my faithful ol’ cassette recorder. Clothes on my back; the works. Except, of course, the traveler’s checks and cash. Five thousand seven hundred and ninety-two dollars and thirty-four cents.
Funny. When I went to the Bank of America Friday, and stood in line, I started to become impatient. Then it came to me. No need to be impatient any longer. I looked at all the people, feeling sorry for them. They were still subordinate to clock and calendar. Absolved of that, I stood becalmed.
Just missed the turnoff for the San Diego Freeway. No sweat. May as well observe my footloose scheme right off. I’ll readjust, go downtown, hit the Harbor Freeway, and reach San Diego by another route.
A billboard up ahead commending Disneyland. Should I pay a final visit to the Magic Kingdom? Haven’t been there since Mom visited in 1969 and Bob and Mary and their kids and I took her out there. No; Disneyland is out. The only attraction there, for me, would be the Haunted Mansion.
Another billboard. Blurb: Now Open—The Queen Recommends Long Beach. That sounds more like it. Never been aboard her; Bob went overseas on her in World War II. Why not take a look at her?
To my left, the obelisk, the big, black tombstone: Universal Tower. How many times have I been in there on appointments? Strange to realize I’ll never see another producer, never prepare another script. Never again have to call my agent. “Hey, for Chrissake, where’s my check? I’m overdrawn.” A peaceful thought, that. Super timing too; to leave when hardly anyone is working anyway.
Nearly to the Hollywood Bowl. Haven’t been there since late August. Took that Screen Gems secretary. What was her name again? Joan, June, Jane? I can’t recall. All I remember is she said she just adored classical music. Bored her silly. Insignificant stuff too, Bowl-style. Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto? Joanjunejane had never even heard it.
You’d think that, after all these years, I would have met someone. Bad Karma? Something bad. To never, in your whole life, meet a female who gets through to you? Incredible. Something hidden in my past, no doubt. Obsession with my tricycle. Boo, Freud. Can’t you just accept the fact I never met a woman I could love?
In heavy traffic near the Harbor Freeway. Cars surround me. Men and women everywhere. They don’t know me, I don’t know them. Smog down here. Hope it’s clear in San Diego. Never been there; don’t know what it’s like. One could describe death that way.
The Music Center. Stunning place. Went there a week or so ago, B.C.—before Crosswell. Mahler’s Second Symphony performed. Mehta did a brilliant job. When the chorus came in softly in the final movement, I began to tingle.
How many downtowns will I see? Denver? Salt Lake City? Kansas City? Have to stay in Columbia for a day or two.
Amusing thought. I’m going to be a criminal because I don’t intend to mail in any more car payments. And you know what, Mr. Ford? I don’t even care.
Jesus!
A truck just veered in front of me and I had to switch lanes fast. My heart began to pound because I didn’t have time to see if anyone was close behind me in that lane.
My heart is still pounding and I feel relief at being safe.
How pointless can you get?
I see her three red, black-tipped smokestacks now. Is she cemented there? Already, I feel sad for her. Rooting such a ship in place is like stuffing an eagle. The figure may look impressive but its soaring days are over.
The Queen just spoke; a deafening cry that shook the air. How huge she is. An Empire State Building lying on its side.
I paid my money at the red booth, rode the escalator up, and now trudge slowly along the covered walk, approaching her. To my right is Long Beach Harbor, water very blue and moving fast. To my left, a small boy stares at me. Who’s the funny man talking into a black box?
Another escalator ahead, very long. How tall is the Queen? Twenty stories, I’d estimate.
Sitting in the Main Lounge. Woodwork finish of the thirties. Odd they thought it chic. Broad columns. Tables, chairs. A dance floor. On the stage, a grand piano.
An arcade; shops around a tile-floored plaza. Overhead lights the size of truck wheels. Tables, chairs, and sofas. All this floated once? Amazing. What was it like on the Titanic? Imagine a place like this awash with icy sea. A frightening vision.
What I’d like to do is sneak below; to the dark part, where the cabins are. Walk along the silent, shadowed corridors. I wonder if they’re haunted.
I won’t, of course. I’ll obey the rules.
Old habits die harder than those who follow them.
A blown-up photo on the bulkhead. Gertrude Lawrence with her white dog. Like the one they used in David Lean’s Oliver Twist; ugly, squat, and pointy-eared.
Miss Lawrence
smiles. She does not realize, as she strolls the Queen’s deck, that mortality walks close behind her.
Photos in a case titled Memorabilia.
David Niven doing a Scottish jig. He looks quite merry. He doesn’t know his wife is going to die soon. I gaze at that frozen moment and feel uncomfortably godlike.
There’s Gloria Swanson in her furs. There’s Leslie Howard; how young he looks. I remember seeing him in a movie called Berkeley Square. I recall him time-traveling back to the eighteenth century.
In a way, I’m doing something like that at this moment. Being on this ship is being partially in the 1930s. Even to the music piped around. It has to be music played aboard the Queen at that time; it’s so dated, so magnificently ricky-tick.
An announcement on the board states, Christened by Her Majesty The Queen, 26th Sept., 1934. Five months before my birth.
Sitting in the Observation Bar. No business-suited men around me though, no drink before me on the table. Only tourists and black coffee in a plastic cup, an apple danish baked in Anaheim.
Does she mind? I wonder. Does the Queen accept her fall from grace? Or is she angry? I’d be.
Looking at the counter section. What was it like in those days? Give us a gin and tonic, Harry. A glass of white wine. J.B. on the rocks, please. Now, submarine sandwiches and ice-cold milk and burning-hot coffee.
Above the counter is a mural. People dancing, holding hands, a long thin oval of them. Who are they supposed to be? All of them are frozen like this ship.
I feel an odd sensation in my stomach. Something like the feeling I get watching a movie about racing when they show a point-of-view shot from inside the car; my body knows it’s sitting still, yet visually I’m traveling at high speed and the irreconcilable contrast makes me queasy.
Here the feeling is reversed yet equally uncomfortable. I’m the one who’s moving and the Queen’s environment is fixed. Does that make sense? I doubt it. But this place is starting to give me the creeps.
Officers’ Quarters. No one here but me, in between two tour groups. The sensation is intense now; something pressing at my solar plexus. Sounds enhance it; announcements made aboard the Queen back then: “Will Miss Molly Brown please contact the Information Bureau?” The Unsinkable?
A bell rings as I stare into the Captain’s Dayroom. Were they smaller people then? Those chairs look undersized to me. Another announcement: “Angela Hampton has a telegram awaiting her at the Purser’s Office.” Where is Angela now? Did she get her telegram? I hope it was good news.
Invitations on the wall. Uniforms hanging motionless behind glass windows. Books on shelves. Curtains, clocks. A desk, a pale white telephone. All suspended, static.
Navigating Bridge; the Nerve Center they called it. Polished, bright, and dead. Those wheels will never turn again. That telegraph will never relay orders to the Engine Room. That radar screen will be forever darkened.
Had to leave the tour part of the ship. Still feel odd. Sitting on a bench in the Museum. Extremely modern here; out of sync with where I’ve been. I feel depressed. Why did I come here anyway? A bad idea. I need a forest, not a landlocked mortuary.
Well, okay, I’ll see it through. That’s my way. Never break off in the middle. Never put aside a book, however dull. Never walk out on a play or movie or a concert, boring though it is. Eat everything on your plate. Be polite to older people. Don’t kick dogs.
Stand up, damn it. Move.
Walking through the main room of the Museum. Giant blow-up of a front page grabs my eye: The Long Beach Press-Telegram . The headlines read: CONGRESS DECLARES WAR.
Lord. An entire division aboard this ship. Bob experienced it too. Ate off a partitioned tray like that one, with eating utensils like those. Wore a long brown overcoat like that, a brown wool hat, a helmet with a liner like that, combat boots like that. Carried a duffel bag like that and slept in a bunk like one of those stacked three high. That would be my brother’s memorabilia of the Queen. No Scottish jigs or walking one’s pointy-eared, white dog. Just being nineteen years old and crossing an ocean toward likely death.
That sensation again. A core of deadness hanging in my stomach.
More memorabilia. Dominoes. Dice in a leather cup. A mechanical pencil. Books for religious services; Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Christian Scientist—that old, familiar book. I feel as though I were an archaeologist excavating in a temple. More photographs. Mr. and Mrs. Don Ameche. Harpo Marx. Eddie Cantor. Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Robert Montgomery. Bob Hope. Laurel and Hardy. Churchill. All suspended in time, forever smiling.
I’ve got to leave.
Sitting in my car again, depleted. Is this what psychics feel like after entering a house filled with a presence of the past? I felt it growing in me constantly, a drawing, twisting discomfort. The past is in that vessel. I doubt it will endure with all those people tramping through. Presently, it must be dissipated. But it’s there now.
Then again, maybe it was just the apple danish.
Twenty minutes after two, on my way to San Diego, listening to some weird, cacophonous music; no melodic line, no content.
Lordy, there I go again. Held up by a camper, pulling out into the next lane, speeding up and passing, jockeying to gain position. Don’t you get the point, R.C.?
The music ended. Didn’t hear what it was. Now they’re starting “Ragtime for Eleven Wind Instruments” by Stravinsky. Just turned off the radio.
Los Angeles has vanished now. So, too, has Long Beach and the Queen. San Diego is a fantasy. All that’s real is here; this piece of highway unreeling in front of me.
Where will I stop in San Diego?—assuming it exists, of course. What difference does it make? I’ll find a place, go out to eat; maybe a Japanese restaurant. I’ll catch a movie, read a magazine or take a walk, I’ll drink, pick up a girl, stand on a dock, throw stones at boats, I’ll decide when I get there. Boo to schedules.
Listen, cheer up, kiddo! It’s going to be a ball! There’re months and months ahead!
There’s a seafood restaurant. Think I’ll start eating swordfish. Open my meals with bowls of Bon Vivant vichyssoise.
San Juan Capistrano is kaput.
A godlike feeling to uncreate entire communities with a stroke of will.
The clouds ahead are like mountains of snow piled into giant, castlelike shapes against the blue sky.
No character at all. Just turned on the radio again. They’re playing Liszt’s Les Préludes. Music of the nineteenth century suits me better.
Clouds look like smoke now. As though the world is burning up.
That feeling in my stomach is returning. Makes no sense now that the Queen is far behind.
I guess it was the apple danish after all.
The traffic is thickening as I enter San Diego proper. Got to get out of it.
Isn’t there a place called Sea World down here? Think so. See a whale jump through a hoop. Downtown. Getting hemmed in. Billboards popping up like toadstools. Just past four o’clock. I’m getting nervous.
Why did I come here? It all seems senseless now. A hundred and twenty-eight miles for what?
Tomorrow I’ll turn east. I’ll wake up early, sweat out the headache, start for Denver.
Christ, it’s like being back in Los Angeles! Surrounded by cars switching lanes, red lights blinking, angry driver faces.
Ah; a bridge ahead. I’ll take it. Don’t care where it leads so long as it’s away from this.
Coronado says the sign.
Driving straight into the sun. It blinds me. Fiery, golden disc.
Cliffs in the distance; the Pacific Ocean.
What’s that on the edge of the water? Huge, weird structure.
I’ll pay my toll and take a look.
Just turned left onto A Avenue. Looks old, this place. There’s an English cottage on my right. No traffic here. A quiet, tree-lined street. Maybe I can stay here overnight. Has to be a motel somewhere. There’s an old house like a mansion from the nineteenth century. Made
of brick; bay windows, giant chimneys.
Is that it up ahead? Look at that red-shingled tower.
I don’t believe it.
Just drove in the wrong way Sitting in a parking lot behind the building. Must be sixty, seventy years old. Enormous place. Five stories high, painted white, red-shingled roof.
Have to find the front of it.
There’s a motel across the way if this turns out not to be—it is a hotel!
I’m in Room 527, looking out a window at the ocean. The sun is almost down, a vivid orange slice of it above the horizon to the left of a dark cliff line. No one on the strand of pearl-gray beach. I can see and hear the surf, a tumbling thunder. A little past four thirty. This is such a restful spot, I may stay here for more than one night.
Must look around.
Glazed by twilight, the patio looks unreal; huge, with curving walks and green manicured lawns. The sky looks like a painted studio backdrop. Maybe this is Disneyland South.