The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (23 page)

Sally Bishop’s face reddened. She gripped Tommy’s shoulders tightly. “Tommy,” she said softly. “Stop that kind of talk, honey.”

Steve’s eyes never left the boy’s face. “That’s all right, Tom. We’ll be right back. You’ll see. That wasn’t a ship or anything like it. That was just a—a meteor or something, likely as not—” He turned to the group, trying to weight his words with an optimism he didn’t quite feel. “No doubt it did have something to do with all this power failure and the rest of it. Meteors can do crazy things. Like sun spots.”

“That’s right,” Don said, as if picking up a cue. “Like sun spots. That kind of thing. They can raise Cain with radio reception all over the world. And this thing being so close—why, there’s no telling what sort of stuff it can do—” He wet his lips nervously. “Come on, Steve. We’ll go into town and see if that isn’t what’s causing it all.”

Once again the two men started away.

“Mr. Brand!” Tommy’s voice was defiant and frightened at the same time. He pulled away from his mother and ran after them. “Please, Mr. Brand, please don’t leave here.”

There was a stir, a rustle, a movement among the people. There was something about the boy. Something about the intense little face. Something about the words that carried such emphasis, such belief, such fear. They listened to these words and rejected them because intellect and logic had no room for spaceships and green-headed things. But the irritation that showed in the eyes, the murmuring and the compressed lips had nothing to do with intellect. A little boy was bringing up fears that shouldn’t be brought up; and the people on Maple Street this Saturday afternoon were no different from any other set of human beings. Order, reason, logic were slipping, pushed by the wild conjectures of a twelve-year-old boy.

“Somebody ought to spank that kid,” an angry voice muttered.

Tommy Bishop’s voice continued defiant. It pierced the murmurings and rose above them. “You might not even be able to get to town,” he said. “It was that way in the story. Nobody could leave. Nobody except—”

“Except who?” Steve asked.

“Except the people they’d sent down ahead of them. They looked just like humans. It wasn’t until the ship landed that—”

His mother grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back. “Tommy.” she said in a low voice. “Please, honey...don’t talk that way.”

“Damn right he shouldn’t talk that way,” came the voice of the man in the rear again. “And we shouldn’t stand here listening to him. Why this is the craziest thing I ever heard. The kid tells us a comic-book plot and here we stand listening—”

His voice died away as Steve stood up and faced the crowd. Fear can throw people into a panic, but it can also make them receptive to a leader and Steve Brand at this moment was such a leader. The big man in the ex-Marine dungarees had an authority about him.

“Go ahead, Tommy,” he said to the boy. “What kind of story was this? What about the people that they sent out ahead?”

“That was the way they prepared things for the landing, Mr. Brand,” Tommy said. “They sent four people. A mother and a father and two kids who looked just like humans. But they weren’t.”

There was a murmur—a stir of uneasy laughter. People looked at one another again and a couple of them smiled.

“Well,” Steve said, lightly but carefully, “I guess we’d better run a check on the neighborhood to see which ones of us are really human.”

His words were a release. Laughter broke out openly. But soon it died away. Only Charlie Farnsworth’s horse whinny persisted over the growing silence and then he too lapsed into a grim quietness, until all fifteen people were looking at one another through changed eyes. A twelve-year-old boy had planted a seed. And something was growing out of the street with invisible branches that began to wrap themselves around the men and women and pull them apart. Distrust lay heavy in the air.

Suddenly there was the sound of a car engine and all heads turned as one. Across the street Ned Rosen was sitting in his convertible trying to start it, and nothing was happening beyond the labored sound of a sick engine getting deeper and hoarser and finally giving up altogether. Ned Rosen, a thin, serious-faced man in his thirties, got out of his car and closed the door. He stood there staring at it for a moment, shook his head, looked across the street at his neighbors and started toward them.

“Can’t get her started, Ned?” Don Martin called out to him.

“No dice,” Ned answered. “Funny, she was working fine this morning.”

Without warning, all by itself, the car started up and idled smooth, smoke briefly coming out of the exhaust. Ned Rosen whirled around to stare at it, his eyes wide. Then, just as suddenly as it started, the engine sputtered and stopped.

“Started all by itself!” Charlie Farnsworth squealed excitedly.

“How did it do that?” Mrs. Sharp asked. “How could it just start all by itself?”

Sally Bishop let loose her son’s arm and just stood there, shaking her head. “How in the world—” she began.

Then there were no more questions. They stood silently staring at Ned Rosen who looked from them to his car and then back again. He went to the car and looked at it. Then he scratched his head again.

“Somebody explain it to me,” he said. “I sure never saw anything like that happen before!”

“He never did come out to look at that thing that flew overhead. He wasn’t even interested,” Don Martin said heavily.

“What do you say we ask him some questions,” Charlie Farnsworth proposed importantly. “I’d like to know what’s going on here!”

There was a chorus of assent and the fifteen people started across the street toward Ned Rosen’s driveway. Unity was restored, they had a purpose, a feeling of activity and direction. They were doing something. They weren’t sure what, but Ned Rosen was flesh and blood—askable, reachable and seeable. He watched with growing apprehension as his neighbors marched toward him. They stopped on the sidewalk close to the driveway and surveyed him.

Ned Rosen pointed to his car. “.I just don’t understand it, any more than you do! I tried to start it and it
wouldn’t
start. You saw me. All of you saw me.”

His neighbors seemed massed against him, solidly, alarmingly.

“I don’t understand it!” he cried. “I swear—I don’t understand. What’s happening?”

Charlie Farnsworth stood out in front of the others. “Maybe you better tell us,” he demanded. “Nothing’s working on this street. Nothing. No lights, no power, no radio. Nothing except one car—
yours
!”

There were mutterings from the crowd. Steve Brand stood back by himself and said nothing. He didn’t like what was going on. Something was building up that threatened to grow beyond control.

“Come on, Rosen,” Charlie Farnsworth commanded shrilly, “let’s hear what goes on! Let’s hear how you explain your car startin’ like that!”

Ned Rosen wasn’t a coward. He was a quiet man who didn’t like violence and had never been a physical fighter. But he didn’t like being bullied. Ned Rosen got mad.

“Hold it!” he shouted. “Just hold it. You keep your distance. All of you. All right, I’ve got a car that starts by itself. Well, that’s a freak thing—I admit it! But does that make me some sort of a criminal or something? I don’t know why the car works—it just does!”

The crowd was neither sobered nor reassured by Rosen’s words, but they were not too frightened to listen. They huddled together, mumbling, and Ned Rosen’s eyes went from face to face till they stopped on Steve Brand’s. Ned knew Steve Brand. Of all the men on the street, this seemed the guy with the most substance. The most intelligent. The most essentially decent.

“What’s it all about, Steve?” he asked.

“We’re all on a monster kick, Ned,” he answered quietly. “Seems that the general impression holds that maybe one family isn’t what we think they are. Monsters from outer space or something. Different from us. Fifth columnists from the vast beyond.” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Do you know anybody around here who might fit that description?”

Rosen’s eyes narrowed. “What is this, a gag?” He looked around the group again. “This a practical joke or something?” And without apparent reason, without logic, without explanation, his car started again, idled for a moment sending smoke out of the exhaust, and stopped.

A woman began to cry, and the bank of eyes facing Ned Rosen looked cold and accusing. He walked to his porch steps and stood on them, facing his neighbors.

“Is that supposed to incriminate me?” he asked. “The car engine goes on and off and that really does it, huh?” He looked down into their faces. “I don’t understand it. Not any more than you do.” He could tell that they were unmoved. This couldn’t really be happening, Ned thought to himself. “Look,” he said in a different tone. “You all know me. We’ve lived here four years. Right in this house. We’re no different from any of the rest of you!” He held out his hands toward them. The people he was looking at hardly resembled the people he’d lived alongside of for the past four years. They looked as if someone had taken a brush and altered every character with a few strokes. “Really,” he continued, “this whole thing is just...just weird—”

“Well, if that’s the case, Ned Rosen,” Mrs. Sharp’s voice suddenly erupted from the crowd, “maybe you’d better explain why—” She stopped abruptly and clamped her mouth shut, but looked wise and pleased with herself.

“Explain what?” Rosen asked her softly.

Steve Brand sensed a special danger now “Look,” he said, “let’s forget this right now—”

Charlie Farnsworth cut him off. “Go ahead. Let her talk. What about it? Explain what?”

Mrs. Sharp, with an air of great reluctance, said, “Well, sometimes I go to bed late at night. A couple of times—a couple of times I’ve come out on the porch, and I’ve seen Ned Rosen here, in the wee hours of the morning, standing out in front of his house looking up at the sky.” She looked around the circle of faces. “That’s right, looking up at the sky as if—as if he was waiting for something—” She paused for emphasis, for dramatic effect. “As if he was looking for something!” she repeated.

The nail in the coffin, Steve Brand thought. One dumb, ordinary, simple idiosyncrasy of a human being—and that probably was all it would take. He heard the murmuring of the crowd rise and saw Ned Rosen’s face turn white. Rosen’s wife, Ann, came out on the porch.

She took a look at the crowd and then at her husband’s face.

“What’s going on, Ned?” she asked.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Ned answered. “I just don’t know, Ann. But I’ll tell you this. I don’t like these people. I don’t like what they’re doing. I don’t like them standing in my yard like this. And if any one of them takes another step and gets close to my porch—I’ll break his jaw. I swear to God, that’s just what I’ll do. I’ll break his jaw. Now go on, get out of here, all of you!” he shouted at them. “Get the hell out of here.”

“Ned,” Ann’s voice was shocked.

“You heard me,” Ned repeated. “All of you get out of here.”

None of them eager to start an action, the people began to back away. But they had an obscure sense of gratification. At least there was an opponent now. Someone who wasn’t one of them. And this gave them a kind of secure feeling. The enemy was no longer formless and vague. The enemy had a front porch and a front yard and a car. And he had shouted threats at them.

They started slowly back across the street forgetting for the moment what had started it all. Forgetting that there was no power, and no telephones. Forgetting even that there had been a meteor overhead not twenty minutes earlier. It wasn’t until much later, as a matter of fact, that anyone posed a certain question.

Old man Van Horn had walked through his back yard over to Bennett Avenue. He’d never come back. Where was he? It was not one of the questions that passed through the minds of any of the thirty or forty people on Maple Street who sat on their front porches and watched the night come and felt the now menacing darkness close in on them.

There were lanterns lit all along Maple Street by ten o’clock. Candles shone through living-room windows and cast flickering, unsteady shadows all along the street. Groups of people huddled on front lawns around their lanterns and a soft murmur of voices was carried over the Indian-summer night air. All eyes eventually were drawn to Ned Rosen’s front porch.