Button, Button: Uncanny Stories

“As she hung up, she remembered Arthur’s life insurance policy for $25,000.”

In a moment of supreme cynicism, Matheson confirms the fundamental selfishness of Norma’s nature, for even as she realizes that her husband was just killed through her ill-advised action, the first thing she thinks about is the money that she will receive from his life insurance policy. Her superficial nature and shortsightedness are examples of The Devastating Effects of Selfishness, and Matheson uses this story to imply that much of humanity’s suffering arises from similarly selfish acts.

“He paused for a moment of dramatic emphasis, enjoying the moment fully.”

In this passage, it becomes clear that Greg revels in deliberate sadism and delights in exploiting Carrie’s prophetic talents for his own gain. He also enjoys holding power over the people whose loved ones are doomed to die. However, Matheson soon indicates that Greg’s arrogance and self-centeredness will be his undoing. By prophesying his death on the verge of her own, Carrie gains a unique form of revenge by stripping Greg’s power away from him.

“He couldn’t see her clearly either; she kept wavering behind a film of blinding rage. Everything was finished! She’d blown the deal! The Big One was gone! God damn it, I’ll kill you! He wasn’t certain if the words exploded in his mind or if he was shouting them into her face.”

As Greg’s all-consuming rage pushes him to murder Carrie, Matheson uses short, wrathful sentences and exaggerated syntax to emphasize the extent to which Greg has turned inward and utterly lost control. The moment is intense, vivid, and graphic as he beats her brutally and demonstrates the true extent of his hatred for her. Matheson’s descriptions of Greg’s cloudy perceptions as he commits this act bring to life the experience of being completely “blinded” by rage.

“A minute passed. She noticed that the man in the back booth was looking at her. Her throat contracted and the fingers of her right hand began drumming slowly on the counter. She felt her stomach muscles drawing in. Her right hand twitched suddenly as a fly settled on it.”

By describing Jean’s visceral reactions to the silent threat of the men in the café, Matheson creates suspense and tension and foreshadows the difficulties that she and her husband are about to experience. Each gesture, motion, passing thought, and feeling is put into words, and the author strategically draws out these few brief moments into a much longer, more intense experience. Notably, although the story is of a considerable length, it takes place over a few short minutes that are illustrated in extreme detail.

“She moved into the sunlight and started toward the car, almost closing her eyes completely to shut out the glare of the windshield. She smiled to herself thinking about her foolish worrying.”

As Jean’s mind begins to settle, the narrative slows down, and Jean’s inner dialogue relaxes. Ironically, Jean tells herself that she should never have worried when in truth, she has great reason to worry. In this context, the sunlight symbolizes the truth beaming down on her, waiting for her to acknowledge it. In this way, Matheson vividly illustrates the human tendency to disregard instinctive impressions, thereby walking into danger rather than avoiding it.

“She was still standing on the porch when the dusty blue patrol car braked in front of the café. The door opened and a tall, red-haired man got out, dressed in gray shirt and trousers, with a dull, metallic star pinned over his heart.”

The sheriff in “Dying Room Only” is a stock character embodying the stereotypical role of law and order. In many psychological thrillers and horror stories featuring similar scenarios, the sheriff is often either a target or an accomplice of the criminals. However, Matheson chooses to challenge these tropes and therefore renders the sheriff a welcome ally to Jean’s cause.

“She held his head in her lap, and when his eyes fluttered open, she felt as if the earth had been taken off her back.”

In this passage, Matheson draws on the common idiom, “having the weight of the world on one’s shoulders.” When Jean discovers Bob alive, Matheson reverses the metaphor and uses the image of a lifted weight to symbolize Jean’s profound relief. Notably, this is one of the few stories in the collection that creates a positive portrayal of marriage, featuring spouses who are unfailingly loyal to one another.

“Sylvia mustn’t see it, he thought. It would hurt her. Besides, he had to keep the porch neat. Besides, it was important evidence.”

The short, staccato sentences that Frank uses in this passage betray his nervousness as he undergoes a series of internal arguments, taking one inexorable step after another toward the decision to contact the sex worker and betray his wife Sylvia. In this scene, he has traveled only part of this path, and the repeated word “besides” illustrates his repeated attempts to rationalize his actions despite his keen awareness that he is being tempted into making a disastrous choice. Perhaps most importantly, Frank tells himself that this betrayal will make his life more exciting. This battle between temptation and fidelity is one of The Dilemmas of Marriage used in literature to illustrate the lengths to which people will go to lie to themselves.

“Frank sat like a Medusa victim. Only his mouth moved. It opened slowly. His gaze rooted on the jutting opulence of Margie as she waggled along the aisle, then came to gelatinous rest on a leather-topped bar stool.”

With a single, casual allusion to the mythological figure of the gorgon, Medusa (from Hesiod’s Theogony), who can turn men to stone with one glance, Matheson creates an immediate and visceral sense of Frank’s stunned desire as he beholds Margie, the sex worker who has captured his imagination. Just as Medusa’s glance meant utter destruction to the men she looked upon, so too does Margie’s attention threaten to destroy Frank’s relationship with Sylvia. However, given that Frank himself is the one to make this fateful decision, Matheson’s stylistic decision to imply that Frank has little agency or choice in the matter is disingenuous at best.

“In the early autumn of the year 18— Madame Alexis Gheria awoke one morning to a sense of utmost torpor. For more than a minute, she lay inertly on her back, her dark eyes staring upward. How wasted she felt. It seemed as if her limbs were sheathed in lead. Perhaps she was ill, Petre must examine her and see.”

The opening lines of “No Such Thing as a Vampire” invoke the parlance and syntax commonly found in classic Gothic tales, thereby setting the false expectation that the story really is about a vampire. Likewise, the character’s references to feeling “wasted” and immersed in “a sense of utmost torpor” invoke stereotypical images of pale, fearful, and corset-bound women who become the targets of supernatural predators. Ironically, in this case, the character’s very human husband is the only predator in the house.

“Dr. Gheria drew a chair beside the bed and seated himself. Removing his glasses, he massaged the bridge of his nose with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Then, sighing, he began to watch his wife. How incredibly beautiful she was. Dr. Gheria’s breath grew strained.”

One of the most common dilemmas of marriage portrayed in literature is the idea that a person can come to feel both love and hatred for their partner. In this passage, Dr. Gheria experiences this duality, taking care of his wife even as he plots to hurt her and seek revenge for her infidelity. However, at this early point in the narrative, the detailed description of his weary gesture humanizes him and deflects suspicion that he might be the culprit.

“I tell you, Michael, there is nothing! Yet, there is something—something which assaults us nightly, draining us of life. The village is engulfed by terror—and I as well!”

Once again, Dr. Gheria’s melodramatic pattern of speech mimics the conventions of Gothic literature, as though he is truly from the 1800s and is living in a world straight out of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The atmosphere of the story is designed to be dark and eerie, and Dr. Gheria’s dialogue with his friend about the nature of the attacks is also intentionally deceptive. He hopes to convince his friend that he fears for his own safety as well as his wife’s.

“Up, up. Like cool hands drawing him to rarified heights. Tendrils of acute consciousness rose toward the peak, searching desperately for a holding place. The hands began breaking into clouds. The clouds dispersed.”

After Paal is taken to the sheriff’s house, he uses his psychic abilities to mentally return to his home and confirm that his parents are dead. To indicate the boy’s altered state of mind and superior abilities, this act is described in a vague, almost poetic fashion, creating intangible impressions rather than articulating a concrete scene. By employing language that is simultaneously vivid yet ineffectual, Matheson conveys the sense that Paal’s inner experiences cannot be encapsulated by empty words.

“Words. Blunt, sawed-off lengths of hemmed-in meaning; incapable of evocation, of expansion. Black figures on white. This is a cat. This is a dog. Cat, dog. This is a man. This is a woman. Man, woman. Car. Horse. Tree. Desk. Children. Each word a trap, stalking his mind. A snare set to enclose fluid and unbounded comprehension.”

Paal grew up without using language or dialogue, instead relying on telepathic images to communicate with his parents. As a result, Paal has the unique ability to fully experience complex concepts, just as his father used to communicate emotions, feelings, and sensory experiences through his mind alone. Given Paal’s heightened sensibilities, he finds that words fail to capture the deeper essence of everything that they attempt to label.

“He couldn’t stop saying it. It was as if he were whipping himself on, knowing what had happened and trying to suffer as much as possible with the knowledge.”

Matheson uses a metaphor of whipping to emphasize the idea that Paal is forcefully torturing himself into conforming to this new, word-bound world. In this new life with the sheriff and his wife, Paal has no choice but to learn to speak aloud, and by invoking the imagery of “whipping,” Matheson indicates that this learning process is akin to self-flagellation for Paal. He is essentially flaying the nuance from his mind by bludgeoning himself with words. The moment signifies that he has let go of his other life and is abandoning his telepathic ability.

“The pamphlet also failed to mention the psychological phenomenon known as ‘Beach Seeking,’ a delusion under which masses of people, wearing bathing suits and carrying towels and blankets, wandered helplessly across the plains and prairies searching for the Pacific Ocean.”

In the most humorously-inclined story in the collection, Matheson describes the phenomenon of Los Angeles coming to life and physically taking over the entire United States. He does not hesitate to poke fun at the stereotypes of the people of Los Angeles, but he does so lightheartedly. Matheson also takes on the stereotypical tone of a news report for this story, and this deliberately serious tone is designed to render the story’s subject matter all the more absurd.

“A single tone poured out into the shadowed air. The old man pressed a volume pedal and the note grew louder. It pierced the air, tone and overtones bouncing off the church dome like diamonds hurled from a sling.”

In this scene from “Shock Wave,” Matheson uses strategic details to conjure up the physical presence of the sound emanating from the sentient organ. The auditory experience of this first note is rendered in deliberately violent language, and as Matheson uses a vivid simile to compare the sound of the organ to “diamonds hurled from a sling,” the passage invokes the idea of a primitive yet deadly weapon that threatens to harm all who remain within its range.

“The windows went first. They exploded from their frames as though cannon shells had pierced them. A hail of shattered rainbow showered on the congregation. Women shrieked, their voices pricking at the music’s vast ascension. People lurched from their pews. Sound flooded at the walls in tidelike waves, breaking and receding.”

In the story’s climax, the organ bursts to full volume and breaks the church windows and walls, and Matheson’s descriptions shift from bellicose images such as “cannon shells” to something much more primal as the music “floods” the church with “tidelike waves, breaking and receding.” In this way, the sound is no longer a mere attack; it is akin to a natural disaster that cannot be averted or avoided.

“Up in the trembling loft, the organ played alone, its stops all out, its volume pedals down, its motor spinning, its bellows shuddering, its pipe mouths bellowing and shrieking.”

At the height of the organ’s sonic onslaught, Matheson personifies sound itself as the organ expresses the suppressed rage of Mr. Moffat, who rails against his perceived obsolescence and his fear of being cast aside—both from his purpose and from his life. As the ruined instrument sits “shuddering,” “bellowing,” and “shrieking,” the resulting cacophony becomes a manifestation of impotent wrath that destroys the one who dares to express such an extreme form of emotion.

“Oh, no. A man isn’t a man without his shoes, he said. He couldn’t even walk without them. This burned Miranda up. Half the time, she says, I don’t know whether I’m married to a man or a wardrobe.”

In “Clothes Make the Man,” Matheson takes an old adage literally and uses it as the premise for a whimsical yet philosophical narrative that illustrates the dangers of placing too much emphasis on outward appearances. While the original proverb suggests that how a man dresses is a direct indication of his character, Matheson turns this proverb on its head, creating a story about a man whose clothing takes over his entire life, leaving him as nothing more than an empty suit—a superficial shell of a man.

“That’s not the worst part…They tell me that Miranda is…is going steady with the suit. Telling all her friends the damn thing has more sex appeal than Charlie ever had.”

In a moment of dark irony and humor, the speaker confesses that his brother’s suit has stolen his wife and is dating her. The suggestion that items of clothing could be more interesting than a person is hyperbolic and absurd, but Matheson uses this deliberately bizarre metaphor to articulate one of the more challenging dilemmas of marriage: the idea that a carefully cultivated external image can overshadow the reality of who a man really is.

“A secret tongue with which the legions of abused

Cry out their misery and their troubled hatred.

This language has a million dialects and accents

It may be a tone of bittersweetness whispered in a brass-lined throat

Or rush of frenzy screaming out of reed mouths

Or hammering at strings in vibrant piano hearts

Or pulsing, savage, under taut-drawn hides.”

“The Jazz Machine” is written in verse to invoke a sense of jazz music’s wordlessly articulate nature, and Matheson uses this passage to fully acknowledge the genre as a unique creation born of the highest essence of Black voices in all their “million dialects and accents.” As a whole, the story also condemns those like the white man in the narrative, who would wantonly exploit an art form born of the language of the oppressed. Matheson’s visceral descriptions of “brass-lined throats,” “reed mouths,” and “vibrant piano hearts” also marry two distinct categories of imagery, implying that jazz music is inseparable from the people who first gave it voice.

“You cruel us and you kill us

But listen, white man,

These are only needles in our skin

But if I’d let you keep on working your machine

You’d know all our secrets

And you’d steal the last of us.”

The jazz musician reflects on the white man’s motivation for creating the jazz machine, which by its very nature is designed to rob Black people of the last thing they truly own: their voices and their music. He sees jazz music as sacred and as something that is directly attached to the experience of racism and social injustice. The jazz musician finds it abhorrent to consider the idea that an oppressor would dare to invent a machine in order to manufacture the essence of such an experience, and he defends his decision to destroy the jazz machine.