Night Gallery 2 by Rod Serling

Author:Rod Serling [Serling, Rod]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Different Ones

The slats in the venetian blinds in Victor Koch's bedroom shut out the rich, orange rays of the late-afternoon sun, but not the noise. From outside came the dissonant chant of children's voices, piping and persistent.

"Ugly, ugly, ugly . . . bird-head, bird-head . . . freak, freak, freak!"

And then he heard his father's voice from down below.

"Get outta here, you kids! Get outta here before I call the police!"

The chant was broken up; there were giggles, squeals, and some raucous laughter, along with one last, defiant little voice like the tape inside of a wind-up doll.

"Victor's an ugly, bird-head freak!"

Victor sat on the floor in the corner of the room, a stocking cap pulled down over his head so that it rested just above his eyes. It looked like a wilted dunce cap, or a wind sock in the middle of a calm. As he sat there in the cool, quiet, comfortable darkness, he heard his father's voice in a last, hopeless tirade.

"And don't come back, you crummy kids," his father yelled from below, "or you'll be sorry! I guarantee it! You'll be sorry!"

Victor heard the sound of the screen door closing and was glad that there would be no more chanting from the kids and no more remonstrative yelling from his father for that day. The summer evenings were, of course, the worst. Usually just before the supper hour. Kids played in the street then, and got hungry and bored. Victor didn't hate them or even resent them. He had only a passive regret that they disturbed the quiet of the early evening and forced his father to react like a child himself, and shout back at them, which simply guaranteed they'd be back the next evening.

Mrs. Koch, Victor's mother, heard the voices from outside, and her husband's response. She waited until the screen door had slammed closed, then walked tentatively into the living room.

Paul Koch was just sitting back down in his easy chair. He made a pretense of picking up the newspaper, but Mrs. Koch noticed how his hand shook, and over the top of the paper she saw the set, grim look on his face.

"Sometimes, Paul," she said softly, "it's best that you just ignore them."

For a moment Koch was silent; then he slammed down the paper. "Ignore them?" He jerked his thumb toward the window. "A pack of wild little animals calling our kid a freak— and we're supposed to ignore them?" He rose from the chair. "I'll tell you what the hell I wish we could do! I wish we could take a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun and fill it with buckshot—"

"Paul," Mrs. Koch interrupted him in as loud a voice as she could conjure up; then, much more softly: "It doesn't do any good to talk that way. It really doesn't," She looked up toward the ceiling. "Sometimes I think he's grown used to it."

"Oh, for God's sake, Doris," Koch said, "how in the hell could he grow used to it?

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