The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (11 page)

“The Sloan house?” the little boy asked.

Martin’s eyes grew a little wider. “That’s right. You still call it that?”

“Still call it what?”

“The Sloan house. My name’s Sloan. I’m Martin Sloan. What’s your name?”

He held out his hand but the boy backed away, frowning at him. “You’re not Marty Sloan,” the boy said accusingly. “I know Martin Sloan and you’re not him.”

Martin laughed. “I’m not, huh? Well, let’s see what the driver’s license says.”

He reached into his breast pocket for his wallet. When he looked up the little boy was running down the street and then across a lawn to the house opposite his. Martin got slowly to his feet and began to walk again. It was the first slow walk, Martin reflected, that he’d taken in a long, long time. The houses and lawns went by and he drank them all in. He wanted this slow. He wanted to relish it all. In the distance he could hear children’s laughter and the tinkle of an ice-cream wagon bell. It all fitted, sight and sound and mood. He got a tight feeling in his throat.

He didn’t know how long he had walked but later he found himself in the park. Like the drugstore, like the houses, like the sounds—nothing had changed. There was the pavilion with the big, round, band-concert stand. There was the merry-go-round, loaded with kids, the brassy, discordant calliope music still chasing it round and round. There were the same wooden horses, the same brass rings, the same ice-cream stands, cotton candy vendors. And always the children. Short pants and Mickey Mouse shirts. Lollipops and ice-cream cones and laughter and giggling. The language of the young. The music—the symphony of summer. The sounds swirled around him. Calliope, laughter, children. Again the tight feeling in his throat. Bittersweet again. All of it he had left so far behind and now he was so close to it.

A pretty young woman walked by him, wheeling a baby carriage. She stopped, caught by something she saw in Martin Sloan’s face, as he watched the merry-go-round. She’d never seen a look quite like that before. It made her smile at him, and he smiled back.

“Wonderful place, isn’t it?” he said.

“The park? It certainly is.”

Martin nodded toward the merry-go-round. “That’s a part of summer, isn’t it? The music from the merry-go-round. The calliope.”

The pretty woman laughed. “And the cotton candy and the ice cream and the band concert.”

There was no smile on Martin’s face now. It had been replaced by an intensity, a yearning. “There isn’t anything quite as good ever,” he said softly. “Not quite as good as summer and being a kid.”

The woman stared at him. What was there about this man? “Are you from around here?” she asked.

Martin said, “A long time ago. I lived just a couple of blocks from here. I remember that bandstand. God, I should. I used to sneak away at night, lie over there on the grass staring up at the stars, listening to the music.” His voice took on an excitement now. “I played ball on that field over there,” he continued. “Third base. And I grew up with that merry-go-round.” He pointed to the concert pavilion. “I carved my name on that post over there one summer. I was eleven years old and I carved my name right on—” He stopped abruptly and stared.

There was a small boy sitting on the railing of the pavilion carving something on the post with a jackknife. Martin Sloan walked slowly toward him. He felt a sensation he had never felt before. It was cold and heat and excitement. It was shock and surprise and a mystery he couldn’t fathom. He looked up at the small boy and saw his own face of twenty-five years ago. He was looking at himself. He stood shaking his head from side to side, squinting up against the sun and then he saw what the boy was carving on the post. It was a kid’s printed scrawl, the letters uneven. It read, “Martin Sloan.” Martin caught his breath and pointed at the boy who was suddenly aware of him.

“Martin Sloan!
You’re Martin Sloan.
”

The boy slid down from the railing. He looked frightened. “Yes, sir, but I didn’t mean nothing, honest. Lots of kids carve their names here. Honest. I’m not the first one—”

Martin took a step closer to the boy. “You’re Martin Sloan. Of course you’re Martin Sloan, that’s who you are. That’s the way I looked.”

He was unaware that his voice had suddenly become loud and of course he couldn’t know how intense his face looked. The boy backed off and then scurried down the steps.

“Martin!” Sloan’s voice followed him. “Martin, please come back. Please, Martin.”

He started to chase him and the boy disappeared in the multi-colored crowd of shorts and Mickey Mouse shirts and mothers’ cotton dresses.

“Please, Martin,” Sloan called again, trying to find him. “Please—don’t be frightened. I don’t want to hurt you. I just wanted to—I just wanted to ask you some questions.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Martin continued gently, now more to himself, “I just wanted to tell you what is going to happen.”

He turned to see the pretty woman beside him again. He closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face, confused, bewildered.

“I don’t know,” he said vaguely. “I really don’t know.” He opened his eyes and dropped his hand. “If it’s a dream—I suppose I’ll wake up!’

He was conscious of the laughter once more, the calliope music, the voices of the children. “I don’t want it to be a dream,” he said. “Oh, God, I don’t want it to be a dream.”

When he looked at the young woman there were tears in his eyes. “I don’t want time to pass, do you understand? I want it to be the way it is now”

The young woman didn’t understand what there was about this man that made her feel such pity. She wanted to comfort him, but did not know how. She watched him turn and walk out of the park, and she wondered about him all the rest of the day, this strange man with the intense look, who stood in the middle of the park, in love with it.

Martin knew where to go now. It was all he knew. Except that something odd was happening to him. Something unreal. He was not frightened. Merely disquieted. He went back to Oak Street and stood in front of his house. Again he felt memories sweep over him. He went up the front walk, up the steps and rang the bell. He was trembling and did not know why. He heard footsteps approaching, the door opened and a man looked at him through the screen.

“Yes?” the man inquired.

Martin Sloan didn’t answer. For a moment he couldn’t speak. Eighteen years ago he’d attended his father’s funeral on a rainy, cold, wind-swept March afternoon and now he was looking into his father’s face on the other side of a screen door. The square jaw, the deep-set blue eyes, the wonderfully etched lines that gave him a look of both humor and wisdom. His father’s face. A face he loved. And it was looking at him through the screen.

“Yes?” His father stopped smiling and the voice became edged with impatience. “Whom did you want to see?”

Martin’s voice was a whisper. “Dad! Dad!”

From inside the house he heard his mother’s voice. His mother was dead fourteen years, but there was her voice. “Who is it, Robert?” his mother asked.

“Mom?” Martin’s voice shook. “Is that Mom?”

Robert Sloan’s eyes narrowed and his lips compressed. “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want here!”

Mrs. Sloan arrived at her husband’s elbow, took one look at her husband’s face and then stared out at Martin.

“Why are you both here?” Martin asked. “How can you be here?”

Questioning and concerned, Mrs. Sloan looked from Martin to her husband. “Who is it?” she asked. “What do you want, young man?”

Martin shook his head in disbelief, feeling every part of him yearn toward the man and woman who stood before him. He wanted to touch them, feel them, embrace them.

“Mom,” he said finally. “Don’t you know me? It’s Martin. Mom. It’s Martin!”

The woman’s eyes grew wide. “Martin?” She turned to her husband, whispering, “He’s a lunatic or something.”

Robert Sloan started to close the door. Martin tried the handle. It was locked.

“Please, Dad, wait a minute. You mustn’t be frightened of me. My God, how can you be frightened of me?” He pointed to himself as if he represented all the logic in the world. “I’m Martin,” he repeated. “Don’t you understand? I’m Martin. I grew up here.”

He saw the coldness on both faces, the fear, the rejection. He was like a little boy now, He was like a little boy who had been lost and then come home and been stopped at the front door.

“I’m your son,” he said. “Don’t you recognize me? Mom? Dad? Please—look at me.”

The door slammed shut in his face and it was several minutes before he could walk down the steps. Then he paused to look back at the house. Questions assaulted him, questions without form. Questions that made no sense. What in God’s name was happening here? Where was he? When was he? Trees and houses converged on him and he felt the street coming up at him. Oh God, he didn’t want to leave. He had to see his parents again. He had to talk to them.

The sound of a car horn intruded upon him. In the next yard, there was a kid who seemed familiar. He was standing beside a roadster with a rumble seat.

“Hi,” the boy shouted at him.

“Hi!” Martin answered. He went toward the car.

“Nice, huh?” the boy asked. “First one of its kind in town. My dad just bought it for me.”

“What?” Martin asked.

“New car,” the boy’s smile was persistent. “First one of its kind. Beauty, huh?”

Martin looked from the front bumper to the rear light. “Got a rumble seat,” he said softly.

The boy tilted his head questioningly. “Sure, it’s got a rumble seat. It’s a roadster.”

“I haven’t seen a rumble seat in twenty years.”

There was a silence and the boy’s face tried to recapture the enthusiasm of a moment before. “Where you been, mister? Siberia?

Martin Sloan didn’t answer him. He just stared at the roadster. First one of its kind in town, the boy had said. First one. Brand new. A 1934 automobile and it was brand new.

It was night when Martin Sloan returned to Oak Street and stood in front of his house looking at the incredibly warm lights that shone from within. The crickets were a million tambourines that came out of the darkness. There was a scent of hyacinth in the air. There was a quiet rustle of leaf-laden trees that screened out the moon and made odd shadows on cooling sidewalks. There was a feeling of summer, so well-remembered.

Martin Sloan had walked a lot of pavements and thought a lot of thoughts. He knew now with a clear and precise clarity that he was back twenty years in time. He had somehow, inexplicably, breached an unbreachable dimension. He was no longer disturbed nor apprehensive. He had a purpose now and a resolve. He wanted to put in a claim to the past. He went toward the front steps and his foot hit something soft. It was a baseball glove. He picked it up, slipped it on his hand, pounded the pocket as he had years ago. Then he discovered a bicycle propped up in the middle of the yard. He rang the bell on the handlebar and felt a hand enclose his and muffle the ring. He looked up to see Robert Sloan beside him.

“Back again, huh?” his father said.

“I had to come back, Pop. This is my house.” He held up the glove in his hand. “This is mine, too. You bought it for me on my eleventh birthday.”

His father’s eyes narrowed.

“You gave me a baseball, too,” Martin continued. “It had Lou Gehrig’s autograph on it.”

His father stared at him for a long, reflective moment. “Who are you?” he asked softly. “What do you want here?” He struck a match, lit his pipe, then held the match out while he studied Martin’s face in the brief flame.

“I just want to rest,” Martin said. “I just want to stop running for a while. I belong here. Don’t you understand, Pop? I belong here.”

Robert Sloan’s face softened. He was a kind man and a sensitive one. And wasn’t there something about this stranger which gave him an odd feeling? Something about him that—that looked familiar?

“Look, son,” he said. “You’re probably sick. You’ve got delusions or something, maybe. I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want you to get in any trouble either. But you’d better get out of here or there
will
be trouble.”

There was the sound of the screen door behind him opening and Mrs. Sloan came out.

“Who are you talking to, Rob—” she began to call. She stopped abruptly when she saw Martin.

He ran over to the porch and up the steps to grab her. “Mom,” he shouted at her. “Look at me! Look into my face. You can tell, can’t you?”

Mrs. Sloan looked frightened and tried to back away.

“Mom!
Look at me
. Please! Who am I? Tell me who I am.”

“You’re a stranger,” Mrs. Sloan said. “I’ve never seen you before. Robert, tell him to go away.”

Martin grabbed her again and turned her around to face him.

“You’ve got a son named Martin, haven’t you? He goes to Emerson Public School. The month of August he spends at his aunt’s farm near Buffalo, and a couple of summers you’ve gone up to Saratoga Lake and rented a cottage there. And once I had a sister and she died when she was a year old.”

Mrs. Sloan stared at him wide-eyed. “Where’s Martin now? she said to her husband.

Again Martin tightened his grip on her shoulders. “
I’m Martin,
” he shouted. “I’m your son! You’ve got to believe me. I’m your son Martin.” He released her and reached into his coat pocket to pull out his wallet. He began to tear out cards. “See? See? All my cards are in here. All my identification. Read them. Go ahead, read them.”

He tried to force the wallet on her and his mother, desperate and frightened, lashed out and slapped him across the face. It was an instinctive action, done with all her strength. Martin stood stock still, the wallet slipping out of his fingers to fall to the ground, his head shaking from side to side as if a terrible mistake had been made and he was amazed that the woman couldn’t perceive it. From the distance came the sound of the calliope. Martin turned to listen. He walked down the steps past his father to the front walk. He stood there for a moment listening to the calliope again. Then he began to run down the middle of the street toward the sound of the music.