TWILIGHT
ZONE
TWILIGHT
ZONE
19 ORIGINAL STORIES ON
THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY
EDITED BY Carol Serling
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK • New York
The stories in this anthology are works of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
TWILIGHT ZONE: 19 ORIGINAL STORIES ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY
Copyright © 2009 by Carol Serling and Tekno Books
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Twilight zone anthology / edited by Carol Serling.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-2434-4 —ISBN 978-0-7653-2433-7 (trade pbk.) 1. Fantasy fiction, American. 2. Psychological fiction, American. 3. Twilight zone (Television program : 1959–1964)—Influence. 4. Short stories. I. Serling, Carol. II. Serling, Rod, 1924–1975.
PS648.F3T78 2009
813'.07660806—dc22
2009018661
First Edition: September 2009
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Introduction copyright © 2009 by Carol Serling
“Genesis” copyright © 2009 by David Hagberg
“A Haunted House of Her Own” copyright © 2009 by KLA Fricke, Inc.
“On the Road” copyright © 2009 by William F. Wu
“The Art of the Miniature” copyright © 2009 by Earl Hamner
“Benchwarmer” copyright © 2009 by Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn
“Truth or Consequences” copyright © 2009 by Carole Nelson Douglas
“Puowaina” copyright © 2009 by Alan Brennert
“Torn Away” copyright © 2009 by Joe R. Lansdale
“Vampin’ Down the Avenue” copyright © 2009 by Timothy Zahn
“A Chance of a Ghost” copyright © 2009 by Lucia St. Clair Robson
“The Street that Forgot Time” copyright © 2009 by Deborah Chester
“The Wrong Room” copyright © 2009 by R. L. Stine
“Ghost Writer” copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Serling
“The Soldier He Needed to Be” copyright © 2009 by Jim DeFelice
“Ants” copyright © 2009 by Tad Williams
“Your Last Breath, Inc.” copyright © 2009 by John Miller
“Family Man” copyright © 2009 by Laura Lippman
“The Good Neighbor” copyright © 2009 by Walker & Collier, Inc.
“El Moe” copyright © 2009 by the Rod Serling Trust
CONTENTS
Introduction • CAROL SERLING
Genesis • DAVID HAGBERG
A Haunted House of Her Own • KELLEY ARMSTRONG
On the Road • WILLIAM F. WU
The Art of the Miniature • EARL HAMNER
Benchwarmer • MIKE RESNICK AND LEZLI ROBYN
Truth or Consequences • CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS
Puowaina • ALAN BRENNERT
Torn Away • JOE R. LANSDALE
Vampin’ Down the Avenue • TIMOTHY ZAHN
A Chance of a Ghost • LUCIA ST. CLAIR ROBSON
The Street that Forgot Time • DEBORAH CHESTER
The Wrong Room • R. L. STINE
Ghost Writer • ROBERT J. SERLING
The Soldier He Needed to Be • JIM DEFELICE
Ants • TAD WILLIAMS
Your Last Breath, Inc. • JOHN MILLER
Family Man • LAURA LIPPMAN
The Good Neighbor • WHITLEY STRIEBER
El Moe • ROD SERLING
About the Authors
About the Editor
INTRODUCTION
The highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality; you’re on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable. . . . Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of the mind itself. You’re entering the wondrous dimensions of the imagination. Next stop . . . the Twilight Zone.
—ROD SERLING
It was fifty years ago that CBS announced that The Twilight Zone, an unusual new series of dramas dealing with tales stranger than fiction scripted by Rod Serling, would make its debut on CBS, Friday, October 2, at 10 P.M. “Where Is Everybody” was aired that night and proved to be the beginning of a groundbreaking television series.
Actually, the series had its origins in a teleplay that Rod had written in 1957 called “The Time Element.” It was a fascinating story of time travel, in which our modern man travels back to Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) right before the Japanese attack. Rod had planned it as a pilot for a TV series, but CBS shelved the script and it remained unproduced until Bert Granet found it in the archives and filmed it for the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. “Element” was first shown on November 24, 1958, and received overwhelming viewer acclaim, with thousands of letters pouring into Granet’s office. Encouraged by this success, CBS entered into serious talks with Rod about producing The Twilight Zone as a series, and, as we all know, the rest is history.
Although Rod had firmly established himself in the television world of the 1950s, he was frustrated by the strict limitations placed on the TV medium by the networks and sponsors. So . . . speaking in the phraseology of fantasy and within the perimeters of his own show, Rod found that he could comment allegorically on universal themes . . . the social evils and issues of the day . . . prejudice, politics, nuclear fears, bigotry, the holocaust, conformity, war, racism . . . and the TV censors left him alone because either they didn’t understand what he was saying or they truly believed he was in outer space.
Rod cast far and wide for stories, writing many himself (92 out of 156), but he also bought scripts or adapted classic stories by authors such as Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Earl Hamner, George Clayton Johnson, Ray Bradbury, Jerome Bixby, Damon Knight, and many others. The series also featured incredible actors from the forties and fifties, a Who’s Who of actors both well known and soon to become well known, including Ida Lupino, Robert Cummings, Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Jack Klugman, Burgess Meredith, Cliff Robertson, Lee Marvin, William Shatner, Peter Falk, Leonard Nimoy, Carol Burnett, Dennis Hopper, Charles Bronson, Mickey Rooney, and many more.
Today, the show has inspired two television revivals as well as a feature film, many TZ books including graphic novels, a published series of the TV scripts, a magazine, and even a pinball game, a slot machine, and a theme-park ride. Just as important, it sparked the imaginations of countless writers, filmmakers, and fans around the world, and is considered a seminal show for broadening the horizons of both television and fiction.
It is this last intersection from which this anthology sprang. In conjunction with the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the first broadcast episode of The Twilight Zone in 2009, this original collection of stories celebrating the unique vision and power of Rod’s landmark series was commissioned, and the range and diversity of the resulting stories surprised even me. Within these pages are brand-new stories by authors that span the last half century, from original series writer Earl Hamner’s twisted tale of a bonsai enthusiast who wreaks his subtle revenge on a careless groundskeeper, to William F. Wu’s story of two chance acquaintances on the road again decades later, each heading toward a meeting with destiny—or not. There are also new
stories by acclaimed bestselling authors such as Carole Nelson Douglas, whose spinster retiree takes a Southwestern road trip into terror, and the master of suspense Whitley Strieber, whose tale of suburban neighbors versus the monsters moving in next door rivals anything that The Twilight Zone would have produced.
I was hoping for stories that would celebrate the best of what The Twilight Zone offered its viewers every week, and I’m pleased to say that this anthology has succeeded in bringing together an incredible roster of talented authors, each with his or her unique take on Rod’s legendary creation. I hope you will enjoy these stories as much as I have.
CAROL SERLING
TWILIGHT
ZONE
This is The Corporal, age twenty-one, a paratrooper, who is secure in his own mortality, held together only by the thin thread of his memories. But in a few moments a Japanese sniper’s bullet will hit him in the wrist and knee, bringing him into a reality that he’s been trying to escape from since leaving Cayuga Lake. He’ll be brought back to face an enemy he’s never met, nor ever wanted to. His small-town upbringing and loving family will work against him. He can recall in detail a simpler, easier existence, which his wounds will erase from his life as if it never existed. The Corporal, demolitions expert, who in the next seconds will move into the Twilight Zone—in a desperate search for survival.
I
t was fast approaching night when the oppressive heat of the day would be replaced by the oppressive humidity. The only good thing about the darkness was that the tracer rounds could be seen walking toward their positions. And the Japanese were proving to be an even tougher, more accurate, and certainly more tenacious foe than MacArthur had warned they would be.
This was Leyte Island, in the Philippines, a place that The Corporal and the others in the 11th Airborne Division’s 5llth Parachute Regiment had come to hate and fear after only the first few days of the fierce battle that would never end—except for the ones who bought it, and there were a lot of those. Too many of them.
A heavy mortar round struck about twenty feet from where The Corporal and a half-dozen other paratroopers were hunkered down behind a jumble of boulders that looked as if they’d been dropped into the middle of the jungle. After the initial concussion, a rain of black dirt, chewed-up vegetation, and something else that smelled strongly of copper and something sweet and horribly sour at the same time fell down on them, peppering their helmets.
A young man, even younger than The Corporal, and slighter and shorter than The Corporal’s slender five-four, suddenly leaped up and tried to run. His helmet, face, and shoulders were covered in blood, and a long, twisted rope of intestine that had fallen from the sky was plastered down one arm from his shoulder to his elbow. He was screaming, his words not recognizable in the almost constant din of battle because the noises coming from his throat were not human. Only the desperate sounds of a frantically frightened man.
“Down!” The Corporal shouted. “Get down!”
But the private didn’t or couldn’t hear; it was as if he had turned to run for home and nothing in the world could make him look back, nothing would stop him, until a Japanese Type 92 7.7-mm machine-gun round slammed into the back of his head, exiting out the front of his helmet, and he was thrown forward onto his face, dead before he hit the ground.
The Corporal, his mouth slightly open, knew that he shouldn’t be affected by this—just the latest death in the dozens, probably hundreds, that he had personally witnessed since New Guinea in June—but he had a vivid imagination.
Ernie Pyle or someone like that, he thought, had written something to the effect that a moron died only once but a bright guy died a thousand deaths because he could think out ahead and figure the odds, figure his chances. Probably had something to do with cowardice versus heroism, but right at this moment The Corporal wanted to be anywhere but here, because he’d been figuring the odds for a long time.
He hunkered down a little lower into the jungle mud and gore, into his own sweat and the foul body odors of the other grunts packed around him like untidy sardines in a can, and allowed his mind to drift into a fantasy world.
Like the war and Leyte, the errant thought intruded in The Corporal’s head, the intense noises of the heavy machine-gun fire and mortar rounds they were taking from the Japanese who were steadily sending in reinforcements from Luzon, inescapable.
He could see a man aboard a train hurtling down a track somewhere back in the States. He was an ordinary man, maybe in some business that he’d grown tired of; a job and very likely a place from which he wanted to escape.
The man was looking up at the conductor who’d come around to collect tickets, and it was clear from the expression on his face that he wasn’t happy. That he might have wanted to take off into a dream world. That he would be hurtling down some other track, for someplace else, for a place where he could be happy, could be at peace with himself.
Maybe it would happen in his dreams.
The Corporal opened his eyes, and he could see pretty much the entire scene. The man was wishing for a better life, not in terms of money but in terms of no stress, and he would fall asleep during his daily commute and dream of such a place. Small-town USA.
Only on this day, he gets up in the middle of his dream and sleepwalks to the end of the passenger car, opens the door to the connecting platform, and then without hesitation, with a smile on his face, opens the outer door and, still sleepwalking, steps off the speeding train to his death.
• • •
Maybe it’s wishful thinking nestled in the hidden part of a man’s mind, or maybe it’s the last stop in the vast design of things, or perhaps for this man it’s a place around the bend where he could jump off.
• • •
Someone was calling his name, but for a moment it didn’t register. When his time came, he wouldn’t jump up and try to run away, nor would he sleepwalk off a speeding train. It would be different for him. He knew it, could feel it in his gut. There was more for him, more life, more dreams, more everything.
“Corporal, for Christ’s sake, get your head out!”
The Corporal looked to the left, into the eyes of Tom Hafner, his squad sergeant, not two feet away. “What?” he said. But then he had to shout to be heard over the din. “What?”
“That Jap pillbox is chewing us up. I’ll try to find some defilade around the mound at two eighty, come in from his blind side. I need covering fire.”
The Corporal looked out and saw the low mound of a hillock to the left. If the Sarge could reach that far, he’d be blocked from view by the Japanese gunners from their heavily fortified position.
The others had looked up and were listening to the sergeant, and nodding uncertainly. Fear was on their faces, but determination, too. The only way this war was ever going to end was for them to take orders and to fight as hard as humanly possible. But the fog seemed to be everywhere. Surrounding a man. Making any future less than certain, even improbable.
Their platoon of two squads, eight guys and one sergeant in each, plus Lieutenant Henderson from Minnesota, was down to one undermanned squad, one sergeant, and no officer, with no replacements expected anytime soon.
“Let’s do it.” The Sarge motioned toward the hillock about twenty-five yards out. He hesitated a moment, then shouted: “Now!”
The Corporal popped up and began firing his M3 Grease Gun on full automatic, short bursts as they’d been taught. The other four grunts did the same, laying down a heavy screen of fire out ahead, walking the line up toward the machine-gun slits in the Japanese position of palm logs and sandbags.
The Sarge, a heavyset man ten years older than everyone else in the combined squad, had a potbelly, a fact everyone marveled at because all they’d been eating for the past two weeks were C-rats, and looking at him no one would ever guess he could get to his feet from behind a boulder, let alone do a broken field run, in full kit, faster than any of the kids.
But then incoming rounds, which had the right-
of-way, were definite motivators.
The Sarge, hunched behind the end of the mound of boulders, suddenly leaped forward, making a diagonal path toward the hill. He moved very fast, bent over at the waist, zigzagging through the sometimes thick jungle growth.
Almost immediately the Japs spotted him and moved their fire to the left, trying to cut him off. They knew what he was trying to do.
The Corporal increased his rate of fire, almost immediately running dry, but it took him only a couple of seconds to reload with a fresh thirty-round box magazine of .45 ammo, slam the bolt back, then pop up again to fire.
It was the same thing that everyone else was doing.
Larry Pechstein pulled out a grenade, yanked the pin, and tossed it overhand to hit the ground within ten or fifteen yards of the pillbox, and it went off with an impressive bang. It hadn’t caused any damage, yet the pop must have impressed the Japs, because their fire diminished, just as the Sarge flopped down behind the hummock, putting it between him and the pillbox.
He gave the squad a thumbs-up, and The Corporal and the others hunkered back down behind the boulders, and the Japanese machine guns opened up again on their position.
From somewhere off to the right were a mortar launcher and crew, and they began to lob round after round over the trees again, bracketing the squad’s position.
The Corporal looked over at Pechstein, who was from somewhere near Jacksonville, he thought, and at the others, Yablonski from Hackensack, Lamb from Waterloo, and Horvak from Cleveland, who’d claimed at one time or another to have owned just about every model Detroit had ever made before the war, and himself, of course from Syracuse.
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