The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (24 page)

He sat there on the railing, observing the little points of light spotted around in the darkness. He knew he was surrounded. He was the animal at bay.

His wife came out on the porch and brought him a glass of lemonade. Her face was white and strained. Like her husband, Ann Rosen was a gentle person, unarmored by temper or any proclivity for outrage. She stood close to her husband now on the darkened porch feeling the suspicion that flowed from the people around lanterns, thinking to herself that these were people she had entertained in her house. These were women she talked to over clotheslines in the back yard; people who had been friends and neighbors only that morning. Oh dear God, could all this have happened in those few hours? It must be a nightmare, she thought. It had to be a nightmare that she could wake up from. It couldn’t be anything else.

Across the street Mabel Farnsworth, Charlie’s wife, shook her head and clucked at her husband who was drinking a can of beer. “It just doesn’t seem right though, Charlie, keeping watch on them. Why he was right when he said he was one of our neighbors. I’ve known Ann Rosen ever since they moved in. We’ve been good friends.”

Charlie Farnsworth turned to her disgustedly. “That don’t prove a thing,” he said. “Any guy who’d spend his time lookin’ up at the sky early in the morning—well there’s something wrong with that kind of person. There’s something that ain’t legitimate. Maybe under normal circumstances we could let it go by. But these aren’t normal circumstances.” He turned and pointed toward the street. “Look at that,” he said. “Nothin’ but candles and lanterns. Why it’s like goin’ back into the Dark Ages or something!”

He was right. Maple Street had changed with the night. The flickering lights had done something to its character. It looked odd and menacing and very different. Up and down the street, people noticed it. The change in Maple Street. It was the feeling one got after being away from home for many, many years and then returning. There was a vague familiarity about it, but it wasn’t the same. It was different.

Ned Rosen and his wife heard footsteps coming toward their house. Ned got up from the railing and shouted out into the darkness.

“Whoever it is, just stay right where you are. I don’t want any trouble, but if anybody sets foot on my porch, that’s what they’re going to get—trouble!” He saw that it was Steve Brand and his features relaxed.

“Ned,” Steve began.

Ned Rosen cut him off. “I’ve already explained to you people, I don’t sleep very well at night sometimes. I get up and I take a walk and I look up at the sky. I look at the stars.”

Ann Rosen’s voice shook as she stood alongside of him, “That’s exactly what he does. Why this whole thing, it’s—it’s some kind of madness or something.”

Steve Brand stood on the sidewalk and nodded grimly. “That’s exactly what it is—some kind of madness.”

Charlie Farnsworth’s voice from the opposite yard was spiteful. “You’d best watch who you’re seen with, Steve. Until we get this all straightened out, you ain’t exactly above suspicion yourself.”

Steve whirled around to the outline of the fat figure that stood behind the lantern in the other yard. “Or you either, Charlie!” he shouted. “Or any of the rest of us!”

Mrs. Sharp’s voice came from the darkness across the street. “What I’d like to know is—what are we going to do? Just stand around here all night?”

“There’s nothin’ else we can do,” Charlie Farnsworth said. He looked wisely over toward Ned Rosen’s house. “One of ’em’ll tip their hand. They
got
to.”

It was Charlie’s voice that did it for Steve Brand at this moment.

The shrieking, pig squeal that came from the layers of fat and the idiotic sport shirt and the dull, dumb, blind prejudice of the man.

“There’s something
you
can do, Charlie,” Steve called out to him. “You can go inside your house and keep your mouth shut!”

“You sound real anxious to have that happen, Steve,” Charlie’s voice answered him back from the little spot of light in the yard across the street. “I think we’d better keep our eye on you, too!”

Don Martin came up to Steve Brand, carrying a lantern. There was something hesitant in his manner, as if he were about to take a bit in his teeth, but wondered whether it would hurt. “I think everything might as well come out now,” Don said. “I really do. I think everything should come out.”

People came off porches, from front yards, to stand around in a group near Don who now turned directly toward Steve.

“Your wife’s done plenty of talking, Steve, about how odd you are,” he said.

Charlie Farnsworth trotted over. “Go ahead. Tell us what she said,” he demanded excitedly.

Steve Brand knew this was the way it would happen. He was not really surprised but he still felt a hot anger rise up inside of him. “Go ahead,” he said. “What’s my wife said? Let’s get it
all
out.” He peered around at the shadowy figures of the neighbors. “Let’s pick out every Goddamned peculiarity of every single man, woman and child on this street! Don’t stop with me and Ned. How about a firing squad at dawn, so we can get rid of all the suspects! Make it easier for you!”

Don Martin’s voice retreated fretfully. “There’s no need getting so upset, Steve—”

“Go to hell, Don,” Steve said to him in a cold and dispassionate fury.

Needled, Don went on the offensive again but his tone held something plaintive and petulant. “It just so happens that, well, Agnes has talked about how there’s plenty of nights you’ve spent hours in your basement working on some kind of a radio or something. Well none of us have ever
seen
that radio—”

“Go ahead, Steve,” Charlie Farnsworth yelled at him. “What kind of a ‘radio set’ you workin’ on? I never seen it. Neither has anyone else. Who do you talk to on that radio set? And who talks to you?”

Steve’s eyes slowly traveled in an arc over the hidden faces and the shrouded forms of neighbors who were now accusers. “I’m surprised at you, Charlie,” he said quietly “I really am. How come you’re so Goddamned dense all of a sudden? Who do I talk to? I talk to monsters from outer space. I talk to three-headed green men who fly over here in what look like meteors!”

Agnes Brand walked across the street to stand at her husband’s elbow. She pulled at his arm with frightened intensity “Steve! Steve, please,” she said. “It’s just a ham radio set,” she tried to explain. “That’s all. I bought him a book on it myself. It’s just a ham radio set. A lot of people have them. I can show it to you. It’s right down in the basement.”

Steve pulled her hand off his arm. “You show them nothing,” he said to her. “If they want to look inside our house, let them get a search warrant!”

Charlie’s voice whined at him. “Look, buddy, you can’t afford to—”

“Charlie,” Steve shouted at him. “Don’t tell me what I can afford. And stop telling me who’s dangerous and who isn’t. And who’s safe and who’s a menace!” He walked over to the edge of the road and saw that people backed away from him. “And you’re with him—all of you,” Steve bellowed at them. “You’re standing there all set to crucify—to find a scapegoat—desperate to point some kind of a finger at a neighbor!” There was intensity in his tone and on his face, accentuated by the flickering light of the lanterns and the candles. “Well look, friends, the only thing that’s going to happen is that we’ll eat each other up alive. Understand?
We are going to eat each other up alive
!”

Charlie Farnsworth suddenly ran over to him and grabbed his arm.

“That’s not the
only
thing that can happen to us,” he said in a frightened, hushed voice. “Look!”

“Oh, my God,” Don Martin said.

Mrs. Sharp screamed. All eyes turned to look down the street where a figure had suddenly materialized in the darkness and the sound of measured footsteps on concrete grew louder and louder as it walked toward them. Sally Bishop let out a stifled cry and grabbed Tommy’s shoulder.

The child’s voice screamed out, “It’s the monster! It’s the monster!”

There was a frightened wail from another woman, and the residents of Maple Street stood transfixed with terror as something unknown came slowly down the street. Don Martin disappeared and came back out of his house a moment later carrying a shotgun. He pointed it toward the approaching form. Steve pulled it out of his hands.

“For God’s sake, will somebody think a thought around here? Will you people wise up? What good would a shotgun do against—”

A quaking, frightened Charlie Farnsworth grabbed the gun from Steve’s hand. “No more talk, Steve,” he said. “You’re going to talk us into a grave! You’d let whoever’s out there walk right over us, wouldn’t yuh? Well, some of us won’t!”

He swung the gun up and pulled the trigger. The noise was a shocking, shattering intrusion and it echoed and re-echoed through the night. A hundred yards away the figure collapsed like a piece of clothing blown off a line by the wind. From front porches and lawns people raced toward it.

Steve was the first to reach him. He knelt down, turned him over and looked at his face. Then he looked up toward the semicircle of silent faces surveying him.

“All right, friends,” he said quietly. “It happened. We got our first victim—Pete Van Horn!”

“Oh, my God,” Don Martin said in a hushed voice. “He was just going over to the next block to see if the power was on—”

Mrs. Sharp’s voice was that of injured justice. “You killed him, Charlie! You shot him dead!”

Charlie Farnsworth’s face looked like a piece of uncooked dough, quivering and shaking in the light of the lantern he held.

“I didn’t know who he was,” he said. “I certainly didn’t know who he was.” Tears rolled down his fat cheeks. “He comes walking out of the dark—how am I supposed to know who he was?” He looked wildly around and then grabbed Steve’s arm. Steve could explain things to people. “Steve,” he screamed, “you know why I shot. How was I supposed to know he wasn’t a monster or something?”

Steve looked at him and didn’t say anything. Charlie grabbed Don. “We’re all scared of the same thing,” he blubbered. “The very same thing. I was just tryin’ to protect my home, that’s all. Look, all of you, that’s all I was tryin’ to do!” He tried to shut out the sight of Pete Van Horn who stared up at him with dead eyes and a shattered chest.

“Please, please, please,” Charlie Farnsworth sobbed, “I didn’t know it was somebody we knew. I swear to God I didn’t know—”

The lights went on in Charlie Farnsworth’s house and shone brightly on the people of Maple Street. They looked suddenly naked. They blinked foolishly at the lights and their mouths gaped like fish’s.

“Charlie,” Mrs. Sharp said, like a judge pronouncing sentence, “how come you’re the only one with lights on now?”

Ned Rosen nodded in agreement. “That’s what I’d like to know,” he said. Something inside tried to check him, but his anger made him go on. “How come, Charlie? You’re quiet all of a sudden. You’ve got nothing to say out of that big, fat mouth of yours. Well, let’s hear it, Charlie? Let’s hear why you’ve got lights!”

Again the chorus of voices punctuated the request and gave it legitimacy and a vote of support. “Why, Charlie?” the voices asked him. “How come you’re the only one with lights?” The questions came out of the night to land against his fat wet cheeks. “You were so quick to kill,” Ned Rosen continued, “and you were so quick to tell us who we had to be careful of. Well maybe you
had
to kill, Charlie. Maybe Pete Van Horn, God rest his soul, was trying to tell us something. Maybe he’d found out something and had come back to tell us who there was among us we should watch out for.”

Charlie’s eyes were little pits of growing fear as he backed away from the people and found himself up against a bush in front of his house. “No,” he said. “No, please.” His chubby hands tried to speak for him. They waved around, pleading. The palms outstretched, begging for forgiveness and understanding. “Please—please, I swear to you—it isn’t me! It really isn’t me.”

A stone hit him on the side of the face and drew blood. He screamed and clutched at his face as the people began to converge on him.