Come Fygures, Come Shadowes
Published by Gauntlet Press.
COME FYGURES, COME SHADOWES, a previously unpublished novel by Richard Matheson, will be released in its entirety for the first time in February/March 2003. This is an UNSIGNED COPY of the book. If you want a SIGNED copy of the book (and at a discount), you must purchase it directly from the Gauntlet Press website.
The story behind this novel is almost as fascinating as the book itself...
Matheson intended on COME FYGURES, COME SHADOWES to be a 2000-page novel (he discusses the book in Gauntlet’s HUNGER AND THIRST). His editor, after seeing the first section of the book, told Matheson that there was no way such a massive novel would sell. Matheson reluctantly discontinued his work on the novel. As he discusses in the Afterword of the book, which Matheson wrote expressly for this edition, not completing the book was a decision he will forever regret.
A portion of COME FYGURES, COME SHADOWES appeared in a book of Matheson’s novellas and short stories years ago – but this is the first time all of what he wrote for this book is being published.
COME FYGURES, COME SHADOWES deals with a medium who desperately wants her daughter to follow in her footsteps. It’s both a supernatural thriller and a story of child abuse that won’t soon be forgotten by the reader. In his Afterword, Matheson provides the rest of the plot of the 2000-page book he originally envisioned.
Although Matheson only wrote 144-pages of COME FYGURES COME SHADOWES, it is in and of itself a novel, ending perfectly. It is some of Matheson’s most gripping and intense work, and is destined to join A STIR OF ECHOES, I AM LEGEND and THE SHRINKING MAN as a Matheson classic.
Richard Matheson
Richard Burton Matheson (1926–2013) was an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He may be known best as the author of I Am Legend, a 1954 horror novel that has been adapted for the screen four times, although five more of his novels have been adapted as major motion pictures: The Shrinking Man, Hell House, What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return (filmed as Somewhere in Time), A Stir of Echoes and The Box. Matheson also wrote numerous television episodes of The Twilight Zone for Rod Serling, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "Steel". He later adapted his 1971 short story "Duel" as a screenplay which was promptly directed by a young Steven Spielberg, for the television movie of the same name.