by Rod Serling
Still there was no movement from the kitchen and no answering voice.
“I saw a sign that there was a town up ahead. What’s the name of it?”
Coffee bubbled in the big enameled pot, the steam rising into the air. A light wind moved the screen door in a creaking four-inch arc back and forth, and the juke box continued to play quietly The young man was getting hungry now and felt a little nudge of irritation.
“Hey,” he called out, “I asked you a question in there. What’s the name of the town up ahead?”
He waited for a moment and when there was no answer he got up from the stool, vaulted the counter, pushed the swinging door open and went into the kitchen. It was empty. He walked through to the screen door, pulled it open and went outside. There was a big gravel back yard, unpunctuated by anything but a row of garbage cans, one of which had tipped over, littering the ground with a collection of tin cans, coffee grounds, egg shells and some empty cereal boxes; some orange crates; a broken, partially spokeless wheel; three or four piles of old newspapers. He was about to go back inside when something made him stop dead. He looked again at the garbage cans. There was something missing. An element not there that should have been there. He didn’t know what it was. It was just a minute tilt to the dial inside his head that registered balance and reason. Something was wrong and he didn’t know what it was. It left him with a tiny feeling of disquiet which he pushed into the back of his mind.
He returned to the kitchen, went over to the coffeepot, smelled it again, carried it over to the chopping table. He found a mug and poured himself a cup of hot coffee. He leaned against the back of the chopping table and sipped the coffee, enjoying it, liking its familiarity.
Then he went into the other room and took a large doughnut from a glass jar. He carried it back to the kitchen, and leaned against the jamb of the swinging door so that he could survey both rooms. He munched slowly on the doughnut, sipped at the coffee, and reflected. Whoever ran this place, he thought, is either in the basement or maybe his wife’s having a baby. Or maybe the guy’s sick. Maybe he’s had a coronary or something. Maybe he should look around and find a basement door. He looked over at the cash register behind the counter. What an easy set up for a heist. Or for a free meal. Or for anything, for that matter.
The young man reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins and a dollar bill.
“American money,” he said aloud. “That settles that. No question about it. I am an American. Two half-dollars. A quarter. A dime. Four pennies and a dollar bill. That’s American money”
He went into the kitchen again, looking up at the cereal boxes with the familiar names. The Campbell soup cans. Was that the one with the fifty-seven varieties? Again he reflected on who he was and where he was. On the disjointed non sequiturs that passed through his consciousness: his knowledge of music, the colloquialisms he spoke, the menu that he read and understood perfectly. Ham and eggs and hash browns—things he could relate to appearance and taste and smell. And then a phalanx of questions marched by. Exactly who was he? What the hell was he doing there? And where was “there”? And why? That was the big question. Why did he suddenly wake up on a road and not know who he was? And why wasn’t anyone in the diner? Where was the owner or the cook or the counterman? Why weren’t they there? And again the little germ of disquiet that he’d felt outside stirred inside him.
He chewed the last piece of doughnut, swigged it down with what remained of the coffee, and went back into the other room. Once again he vaulted over the counter; tossed a quarter on top of it. At the front door, he turned and surveyed the room again. Damnit, but it was normal, it was real, it was natural looking. The words, the place, the smell, the look. He put his hand on the knob of the door and pulled it open. He was about to step outside when a thought hit him. Suddenly he knew what had disturbed him about the garbage cans. He carried this disquiet with him as he walked out into the hot morning. He knew what was the missing element and the knowledge gave him a cold apprehension that he hadn’t felt before. It did little jarring things to his nerve endings because suddenly something formed and entered into his thoughts. Something that couldn’t be understood. Something beyond the norm. Beyond the word symbols, past the realm of logic that had been supporting him and answering his questions and giving him a link to reality.
There were no flies.
He walked around the corner of the building to stare again at the back yard with its row of garbage cans. There were no flies. There was a silence and nothing stirred and there were no flies.
He walked slowly back toward the highway, suddenly conscious of what was wrong. The trees were real and the highway and the diner with everything in it. The smell of the coffee was real and the taste of the doughnut and the cereals had the right names and Coca-Cola came in a bottle and cost a nickel. It was all right and proper and everything was in its right place. But there was no life to it! This was the missing element—activity! This was the thought he carried down the highway past a sign which said, “Carsville, 1 mile.”
He entered the town and it spread out in front of him, neat and attractive. A small main street circled a village park that lay in the center of everything. Set back in the middle of this park area was a large school. On the circular main street were a row of stores, a movie theater, more stores and a police station. Further down was a church, a residential street that lay beyond and finally a drugstore on the comer. There was a bookstore, a confectionery, a grocery store and out in front of it, a small sign which read “Bus Stop.” It lay there quietly and prettily in the mid-morning sun and it was quiet. There was no sound at all.
He walked down the sidewalk peering into the windows All of the stores were open. The bakery had fresh cake and cookies. The bookstore was running a special sale. The movie theater advertised a picture out front having to do with war in the air. There was a three-story office building that told of lawyers inside, public notary and a real estate firm. Further down there was a glass-enclosed public telephone and then a department store with a delivery entrance blocked off from the street by a wire mesh fence.
Once again he reflected on the phenomena. There were the stores, the park, the bus stop, the whole works, but there were no people. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. He leaned against the side of the bank building and scanned the street left to right, as if somehow he could find something stirring if he looked hard enough.
It was when his eyes reached the fence fronting the department store delivery entrance directly across the street, that he saw the girl. She was sitting in a truck parked inside the yard, plain as day—the very first person he’d seen. He felt his heart jump as he nervously stepped off the curb and started walking toward her. Halfway across the street he stopped, feeling his palms wet. He had an impulse to run like hell over to the truck or to stand there and shout questions at the girl. He forced a matter-of-factness into his tone, made himself smile.
“Hey, Miss! Miss, over here.” He felt his voice rising higher and again he made an effort to keep it low and conversational. “Miss, I wonder if you could help me. I was wondering if you knew where everyone was. Doesn’t seem to be anyone around. Literally...not a soul.”
Now he took what he hoped was a sauntering walk across the street toward her, noticing that she continued to look straight at him from inside the cab of the truck. He reached the other side of the street, stopped a few feet from the wire mesh gate and smiled at her again.
“It’s a crazy thing,” he said. “Crazy, oddball thing. When I woke up this morning—” He stopped and he thought this over. “Well, I didn’t exactly wake up; he said. “I just sort of—just sort of found myself walking down the road.”
He reached the sidewalk, went through the half-open gate to the passenger side of the truck. The girl inside wasn’t looking at him any longer. She was staring straight out through the front windshield and he saw her profile. Beautiful woman. Long blonde hair. But pale. He tried to think where he’d seen features like that—so immobile, so w
ithout expression. Bland, yes, but more than bland. Spiritless.
“Look, Miss,” he said. “I don’t want to frighten you, but there must be somebody around here who could tell me—”
His hand had opened the truck door when his voice was cut off by the girl’s body as she slumped over, past the wide, amazed eyes of the young man, and down, hitting the sidewalk with a loud, almost metallic clank. He stared down at the upturned face, then became aware of words on the panel of the truck, “Resnick’s Store Mannequins.” He looked back at her face—the wooden, lifeless face with the painted cheeks and the painted mouth and the formed half-smile, with the eyes that were wide open and showed nothing, told nothing. Eyes that looked exactly like what they were—holes in a dummy’s face. Something of the humor of it struck him now. He grinned, scratched his jaw, then slowly slid down, his back against the side of the truck till he was sitting next to the mannequin who lay there staring up at the blue sky and the hot sun.
The young man nudged her hard wooden arm, winked, clucked his tongue and said, “You’ll forgive me, babe, but at no time did I mean to be so upsetting. As a matter of fact”—he nudged her again— “I’ve always had kind of a secret yen for the quiet type.” Now he reached over to pinch the unyielding cheek and laughed again. “Get what I mean, babe?”
He picked up the dummy and carefully deposited her back in the cab of the truck, pulling her dress down to a modest point over the knees. He closed the cab door, then turned and took a few aimless steps away from the truck. On the other side of the mesh gate was the circular main street with the small park in the middle. He went to the fence and let his eyes move left to right once more, taking in every one of the stores, as if by some unique concentration he might find a sign of life. But the street lay empty, the stores were unoccupied, the silence was persistent.
He went toward the service entrance of the department store beyond the truck and stuck his head into a dark hall loaded with mannequins piled nude on top of one another. The thought hit him that it was like World War II pictures of the gas ovens at the concentration camps, the way they were piled on top of one another. He was disturbed by the similarity and hurriedly backed out into the delivery yard. Then he shouted toward the open door.
“Hey! Anybody here? Anybody hear me?”
He went to the truck again and looked inside. There was no key in the ignition. He grinned at the lifeless face of the mannequin.
“How about it, babe? You wouldn’t know where the ignition keys would be, would you?”
The mannequin stared straight ahead at the windshield.
It was then he heard the sound. The first he’d heard outside the diner. At first it made no sense to him. It was unrelated to anything he knew or could associate with the stillness. Then he realized what the sound was. It was a phone ringing. He ran toward the fence, slamming himself against it, his fingers gripping the wire strands, his eyes darting around until he found what he was looking for. It was the glass-enclosed public phone booth just across the street, a few yards into the park. The phone was still ringing.
The young man flung himself through the gate and raced across the street. He reached the booth at a dead run, flung open the glass door and almost pulled the phone out by the wire as he grabbed the receiver off the hook. He kicked the door shut behind him.
“Hello. Hello!” He jangled the receiver furiously. “Hello! Operator? Operator?
The phone was dead. He waited a moment, then slammed the receiver back on the cradle. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a dime. He shoved it in the slot and waited. Presently he heard his first voice, the colorless, astringently courteous tone of a telephone operator.
“The number you have reached,” the voice said, “is not a working number—”
The young man was angry now. He shouted into the phone. “Are you out of your minds down there? I didn’t dial a number—”
“Please be sure you have the right number and are dialing it correctly.”
“I didn’t dial a number, operator. The phone rang and I answered it.” Again he jiggled the hook wildly. “Operator. Operator, will you listen to me, please? All I want to know is where I am. Understand? I just want to find out where I am and where the people are. Please, operator, listen—”
Again the operator’s voice, impersonal, cold, as if from another planet. “The number you have reached is not a working number. Please be sure you have the right number and are dialing it correctly.”
Then there was a long pause before the voice continued, “This is a recording!”
The young man slowly replaced the receiver and stood there conscious now of the quiet town that surrounded him through the glass, terribly aware of the silences that hung over the place, a silence punctuated by what the operator had said. “This is a recording.” The whole damn place was a recording. Sound put on wax. Pictures put on canvas. Things placed on a stage. But only for effect. But a voice—that was a lousy joke.
The inanimate things such as unattended coffeepots, mannequins, stores—these he could wonder at and walk away. But a human voice—he desperately needed to know that this was surrounded with flesh and blood. It was a cheat to have it any other way. It was a promise and then a withdrawal. It made him angry in addition to causing that tiny flutter of frightened concern. The phone book was hanging by a chain. He grabbed it, ripped it open, started to read through the pages. The names sprang up at him. Abel. Baker. Botsford. Carstairs. Cathers. Cepeda.
“Well, where are you people,” he shouted. “Where do you hang out? Where do you live? Just in this Goddamned book here?”
Again he riffled through the pages. The Dempseys. The Farvers. The Grannigans. And so on to a man named Zatelli who lived on North Front Street and whose first initial was A. The young man let the book drop from his hands. It swung back and forth on the chain. Slowly his head lifted until he stared out at the empty street.
“Look, boys,” he said softly. “Who’s watching the stores?” The glass windows looked back at him. “Who’s watching any of the stores?”
He turned slowly, put his hand on the door and pushed. The door remained stationary. He pushed again. It was stuck tight. And now he had the feeling that it was a gag. A very big, complex, terribly unfunny gag. He pushed hard, throwing his shoulder against the door and still it did not move.
“Awright,” he shouted. “Awright, it’s a very funny joke. Very funny. I love your town. I love the sense of humor. But now it’s not funny anymore. Understand? Now it stinks. Who’s the wise guy who locked me in here?” Now he kicked, shoved, pushed at the door until the sweat rolled down his face. He closed his eyes and leaned against the glass for a moment and then suddenly looked down to see the door hinge arched toward him. He gently pulled and the door swung open, bent and out of alignment, but open. He’d been pushing on it instead of pulling. It was as simple as that. He felt he should laugh or perhaps apologize to something or someone, but of course, there was no one to apologize to.
He stepped out into the sunlight and went across the park toward a building with a big glass globe in front with lettering on it which read “Police.” He smiled to himself as he went toward it. Head for law and order, he thought. But more than just law and order—head for sanity. Maybe that’s where to find it. When you’re a little boy and lost, your mother tells you to go up to the nice policeman and tell him your name. Well, now he was a little boy and he was lost and there was no one else he could report to. And as to a name—someone would have to tell him.
The police station was dark and cool, split in half by a counter which ran the length of the room. Behind it was the sergeant’s desk and chair and across the far wall a radio operator’s table with microphone and a CW sending and receiving set. To the right was a barred door into a cell block. He went through the swinging door in the middle of the counter to the microphone. He picked it up, studying it, then illogically, as if it were expected of him to go along with the gag, he put on an official radio-car voice.
>
“Calling all cars. Calling all cars. Unknown man walking around police station. Very suspicious-looking egg. Probably wants to—” His voice broke off. Across the room by the sergeant’s desk, a thin column of smoke drifted lazily up toward the ceiling. He slowly put down the microphone and went to the desk. A big, quarter-smoked cigar was lying in an ash tray, lighted and smoking. He picked it up, then put it down. He felt a tension, a fear, a sense of being watched and listened to. He whirled around as if to catch someone in the act of just that—staring and listening.
The room was empty. He opened the barred door. It creaked noisily. He went into the cell block. There were eight cells, four on each side, and they were all empty. Through the bars of the last cell on the right he could see a sink. Water was running. Hot water. He saw the steam. On a shelf was a razor, dripping wet and a shaving brush, full of lather. He closed his eyes for a moment because this was too much. This was far too much. Show me goblins, he thought, or ghosts or monsters. Show me dead people walking in a parade. Play shrill and discordant trumpet sounds on a funeral horn that jars the stillness of the morning—but stop frightening me with the grotesque normality of things. Don’t show me cigar butts in ash trays and water running in a sink and lather-covered shaving brushes. These are what shock more than apparitions.
He slowly entered the cell and went to the sink. He reached out a trembling hand and touched the lather on the brush. It was real. It felt warm. It smelled of soap. The water dripped into the sink. The razor said Gillette, and he thought of the World Series on television and the New York Giants taking four in a row from the Cleveland Indians. But God that must have been ten years ago. Or maybe it was last year. Or maybe it hadn’t happened yet. Because now he had no base, no starting point, no date or time or place of reference. He was not conscious of the sound of the creaking cell door, as it slowly closed on him, until he saw the shadow of it on the wall inching across slowly, inexorably.
