The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (41 page)

Hatch, who was standing up between his seat and the two pilots’ chairs, suddenly pointed out of the window, his eyes wide.

“Captain,” he said, pointing a shaking finger toward the left window “Circle again, will you?” He wet his lips. “And then look!”

Farver winged the plane over gently, circled in as short an arc as he could and then came back, following the trembling finger of Hatch. And then they all saw it. The scene whisked past their eyes in less than a second, but it registered. It was an indelible shock that made itself known optically, but then entered the mind of every one of the crew members to infiltrate their brains and corrode the lines to sanity.

Yes, they had all seen it. And when Farver turned the aircraft to retrace the flight path, they saw it again. A trylon and perisphere were set in the middle of what appeared from the air to be a giant fair or carnival. And they all knew what it was.

Craig’s hands dropped from the controls and he had to press them into his sides to keep them from shaking. “Skipper,” he said, “do you know what that is down there? Do you know what—”

Farver, hunched forward in his seat, kept shaking his head from side to side.

Wyatt said in a small, strained voice, “It’s the New York World’s Fair. That’s what it is. The New York World’s Fair. But that means we’re in—”

“1939,”Hatch interrupted him. “We came back...we came back...but dear God...
we didn’t come back far enough!
”

They all turned toward Farver. What was happening was more than they could handle. Far more than even their better-than-average minds could assimilate. And they did what any human being would do. They looked up and away, abdicated all decisions, and threw the massive dead weight of responsibility on the number one man in the cabin.

Farver felt it press down on him. The prerogative of command...but worse, the responsibility. They all wanted to know what to do and he was the one man who would have to tell them.

And what do you tell them? What is the procedure? What is the command that is right and proper to cover a situation that has no precedent, no logic, and no reason. For one panicky moment Farver’s mind went blank and he felt like turning on them and screaming, “Goddamn it, don’t look at me. Don’t wait to hear what I say. Don’t hang on the next command that’s supposed to come from
this
airplane pilot!”

Holy Mother—it was too much to expect that any human being could rise up in the middle of this nightmare and point the way to an awakening or anything even resembling it. But after a moment, whatever was the invisible challenge that was thrown at him by the frightened faces, he responded. He was the captain of this aircraft. And though reality and logic were cracking up and falling to pieces all around him—
by God he would command!

“We can’t land,” Farver said finally, his voice soft. He shook his head. “We can’t land in LaGuardia...and we can’t land back in 1939. We’ve got to try again. That’s all that’s left. Try again.”

Craig nodded toward the flight-deck door. “What about the passengers?”

“I think we had better let them in on it now.” Farver flicked on the PA. system and reached for the mike. “Ladies and gentlemen,’’ he said, his voice firm, full of resolve, no condescension, no fake optimism. “What I’m going to tell you is something I can’t explain. The crew is as much in the dark as you are. Because if you look out on the left-hand side of the aircraft...you’ll see directly below us an area called Lake Success. And those buildings down there aren’t the United Nations. They happen to be...” his voice faltered for a moment then came back on. “They happen to be the World’s Fair.”

Down the length of the plane the loudspeaker carried Captain William Farver’s voice and the passengers listened as a nightmare began to close in on them.

“What I’m trying to tell you,” Farver’s voice told them, “is that somehow, someway...this aircraft has gone back into time and it’s 1939. What we’re going to do now is increase our speed, get into the same jet-stream and attempt to go through the sound barrier we’ve already broken twice before. I don’t know if we can do it. All I ask of you is that you remain calm...
and pray
.”

In the cockpit, Farver pulled the yoke forward and the 707 once again pointed toward the sky.

The giant aircraft disappeared through the heavy overcast. Its roaring engines grew indistinct and faded out, leaving a silence in its wake and a long jet trail that was picked up by the wind and carried away.

Thirty thousand feet below, it was 1939 and people gaped at the wondrous exhibits. There was the waterfall in front of the Italian building; the beautiful marble statuary that fronted the Polish pavilion; the exquisite detail of the tapestry and wood carvings shown by the smiling Japanese. And the people walked happily through a warm June afternoon, seeing only the sunlight and not knowing that darkness was falling over the world.

***

She was a Trans-Ocean jet airliner on her way from London to New York, on an uneventful June afternoon in the year 1961.She was last heard from six hundred miles south of Newfoundland, then somehow she was swallowed up into the vast design of things, to be searched for on land, on sea, and in the air by anguished human beings, fearful of what they’d find.

You and I, however, know where she is. You and I know what happened. So if some moment...any moment...you hear the sound of jet engines flying atop the overcast...engines that sound searching and lost...engines that sound desperate...shoot up a flare. Or do something. That would be Trans-Ocean 33 trying to get home...from The Twilight Zone.

There was a village built of crumbling clay and rotting wood. It squatted, ugly, under a broiling sun, like a sick, mangy animal waiting to die. It had a name, but the name was of little consequence. It had an age, but few people cared how old it was. It lay somewhere in the Southwest on the fringe of a desert—a two-block-long main street, limed with squalid frame stores and a few adobe huts. They shook and wheezed and groaned like fired old men whenever a wagon went by (which was seldom), raising the dust and leaving it to hang like a fog.

On this day, even the few stores that were not boarded up had closed their doors. Scrawled signs announced that each was “Closed For The Funeral” or “Will Be Open After Funeral.” And also, on this day, the street was empty, save for a swaybacked horse pushing an aged snout into a water trough and flicking off the glossy green flies that descended on its flanks by the hundreds. Its switching tail was the only movement on the main street. Sounds came loudly and intermittently from around the corner; hammering, the creak of boards, then the sound as of some heavy object being dropped through the air only to be caught up short.

They were building a gallows.

Incongruously, here was activity. Here was fresh lumber. Here were men at work. The gallows stood sixteen feet high. Four giant pillars supported a platform with a trapdoor. Over it was a heavy cross beam from which dangled a thick rope, a noose expertly tied at its end.

This village and its people shared an infection. It was the germ of misery, of hopelessness, of loss of faith. And for the faithless...the hopeless...the misery-laden...there is time—ample time—to engage in one of the other pursuits of men.

They begin to destroy themselves.

Peter Sykes walked down the main meet pulling an overladen pack mule. The animal was sick and overworked. It stumbled along, head down, eyes half-closed. At intervals Sykes yanked viciously on the rope. The animal would start, then seem to push itself forward, eyes glazed with pain and fatigue, bony body white with sweat. Pots and pans, bottles, magazines, coiled rope, and nondescript boxes protruded from the saddle bags by which the mule was weighted down.

Peter Sykes had small eyes that darted this way and that way from a fat and filthy face. As he moved his massive bulk though the dust, from time to time he produced a bottle from his hip pocket and took a long, luxurious drink. The liquor dribbled from the corners of his mouth and traveled in little rivulets through his beard stubble. “Awright, ladies and gents,” he suddenly shrieked when he got halfway down the main street. “It’s Peter Sykes back from St. Louis and stocked up with everything that’s needed for kitchen, barn and”—he held up the pint bottle—“the dried throat and the swollen tongue!”

He boomed out his fat man’s laughter and shoved the bottle back into his hip pocket. He stopped the mule in front of a wooden building that was the town jail. He dropped the rope in the dust, and climbed laboriously to the wooden plank sidewalk. A barred window faced the street. Sykes peered through the bars into the dark cell. A thin Mexican boy sat on a bench at the far end, his hands resting quietly on his lap, his head bent forward.

“Mr. Gallegos, I believe,” Sykes said, bowing from his vast waist. He chuckled. The obese body shook and the folds in his face seemed to come alive like wiggling snakes. “Mr. Gallegos,” he repeated. He scratched his jaw in an exaggerated pretense of thought. “Today’s a special day, isn’t it? Now let’s see...what’s the special day?” He grinned and snapped his fingers. “I remember now! It’s just this moment come back to me.”

Sykes pointed through the bars. “Today you’re gonna get hanged!” Obscene laughter poured out of him. “Today young Mr. Gallegos, killer of children, dangles at the gallows!”

He limped away from the window, tears of laughter rolling from his eyes. Two men were walking down the wooden sidewalk toward him. His laughter died out, his eyes narrowed and took on a different expression. These were customers and Peter Sykes’s entire life was built upon commerce. He waddled over to the nearer man, grabbed him in a perspiring fist.

“Good whiskey from St. Louis, Jonesy,” he said importantly. He patted his hip pocket. “Eighty-five cents a fifth.”

The man looked embarrassed and shook off Sykes’s hand. Immediately Sykes turned to the other passer-by, blocked him with his big bulk, shoved his face close to him and rolled his eyes. His voice, almost inaudible, was like a leer.

“Post cards, Eddie,” he whispered, wiggling his tongue. “Wonderful post cards this trip. French dancing girls in their native costumes.”

Sykes giggled, jammed his elbow in the man’s ribs, then laughed aloud as he walked away, head down. Sykes was still chuckling as he went back to the jail and into the Sheriff’s office.

It was a bare room with a makeshift desk, a gun rack, and a barred door leading to the single cell. John Koch sat behind the desk, a tarnished badge on his worn and dusty leather vest. His long, lean tanned face, the eyes deep-set and tired, showed forty-seven hard years indelibly imprinted in lines over the cheekbones and on either side of the jaw. Koch barely glanced at Sykes, then busied himself with papers on the desk. He felt the intrusion of the fat man and the sense of envelopment that Sykes carried with him.

“What’ll it be for you today, Mr. Koch?” Sykes’s shrill voice intruded upon the quiet of the room. “Don’t need any more rope, do you?” He called out toward the barred door. “Oughta see the fancy five-strand hemp I sold the town for your party, Gallegos! It could lift about five of you.”

He lumbered across the room to stand close to the cell door. The look he threw at Gallegos was as much a part of him as his rolls of fat. There was a meanness to it. A raw prejudice. A naked dislike of other men.

“Not any more at home like you, are there?” Sykes laughed loudly, then asked, “And what do you fancy today, Mr. Koch?”

“What do I fancy, Mr. Sykes?” Koch forced himself to keep his voice steady and low. “I’ll tell you what I fancy. I’d like you to take your fat carcass and your loud mouth out into the air. This is a small room and it’s the hot time of the morning.”

The grin on the fat man’s face grew tight and strained. Sykes knew what Koch was feeling. He was not insensitive to the anger he aroused. But he’d lived a life of walking over other people’s anger and disgust. It was his own peculiar strength.

“How about you, Mr. Gallegos?” Sykes jeered. “What would be your pleasure this morning? Maybe a nice hacksaw?”

Again his whole body quivered with laughter but it faded when he saw the look on the Mexican boy’s face. The black eyes that caught and pierced him held fathomless pools of hate.

“This one I wouldn’t miss!” Sykes gloated. “I just wouldn’t want to miss this one!” He took the bottle from his hip pocket, uncorked it with his teeth. “There’s gonna be a funeral procession down this street, Gallegos. You better look out and watch. They’re burying the little girl you mangled under your wagon. You’re sobered up now, aren’t you, Gallegos? You remember the little girl, don’t you? You got stinking drunk, rode a wagon down the street, and what you did to that poor little girl—”

The Mexican boy leaped from the bench, slammed against the bars and thrust an arm out through them, trying to reach the fat man. But Sykes nimbly stepped back a foot and waggled a finger. “Uh, uh, Mr. Gallegos. You’ll get your chance to move around this afternoon. You’ll be able to kick and kick and kick.”

This struck him as so funny that he threw back his head and roared.

Koch stared at Sykes. God, what an animal, he thought. What a filthy animal. Some men were built for their trade. They were designed to be cheats, hucksters, medicine men. There must be some kind of mold, the thought ran through his mind, which produced the filth that stood in front of him holding the rotgut whiskey.

“You ought to take a drink of this, Sheriff?” Sykes’s voice patronized Koch. “It’s a good tonic.” He patted the flab that hung over his belt. “Puts a little grizzle there. Sets you up great for a good hanging. Yes, sir. Makes you feel strong and firm.” He held out his vast, flabby arm and made a muscle. “You oughta feel this!”

Koch’s mouth trembled. “I don’t touch dog meat, Sykes.”

The bottle was slammed down on the desk top. “You talk big behind a badge, Mr. Koch.”

“It just sounds big to you, Sykes, because you’re a midget. You only grew up as high as a money belt and that’s a low height for a man.”