The Twilight Zone by Rod Serling

Author:Rod Serling [Serling, Rod]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Supernatural, Short Stories (Single Author), Occult Fiction, Film & Video, Performing Arts, History & Criticism, Television, Fantasy Fiction; American, Fantastic Fiction; American, Twilight Zone (Television Program : 1959-1964)
ISBN: 9781575001111
Publisher: TV Books
Published: 1970-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

A narrow, irregular line of water drops led from the pool to the ambulance where the body of Bartlett Finchley lay on a stretcher. A policeman with a notebook scratched his head and looked from the pool over to an intern who walked around the ambulance, past the fascinated faces of neighbors and then closed the two rear doors.

“Heart attack, Doc?” the policeman asked him. “Is that what you think?”

The intern looked up from his examination papers and nodded. “That’s what it appears.”

The policeman looked over toward the pool again, then up past the crushed garden and overturned patio chairs, to the big, gaping hole in the rear end of the garage where an automobile sat, mute and unrevealing.

“Neighbors said they heard him shouting about something during the night,” the policeman said. “Sounded scared.” He scratched his head again. “Whole Goddamn thing doesn’t make much sense. The busted garage wall, those tire tracks leading to the pool.” He shook his head. “The whole Goddamned thing doesn’t make any sense at all.”

The intern leaned against the ambulance doors, then looked down at the water drops that led to the pool’s edge. “Funny thing,” the intern said softly.

“What is?” asked the policeman.

“A body will float for a while after a drowning.”

“So?” the policeman inquired.

The intern jerked a thumb in the direction of the ambulance. “This one wasn’t floating. It was down at the bottom of the pool just as if it had been weighted or something. But that’s the thing. It hadn’t been weighted. It was just lying there down at the bottom. That’ll happen, you know, after a couple of weeks when the body gets bloated and water logged.” The intern pointed toward the pool. “He hadn’t been there but a few hours.”

“It was his face,” the policeman said with a shudder in his voice. “Did you look closely at his face, Doc? He looked so scared. He looked so God-awful scared. What do you suppose scared him!”

The intern shook his head. “Whatever it was,” he said, “it’s a little item that he’s taken with him!”

He folded the examination papers, went around to the passenger’s seat of the ambulance and opened the door, motioning the driver to move out. The policeman folded up his notebook. He was suddenly conscious of all the neighbors.

“All right, everybody,” he said, putting firmness and authority into his voice, “the show’s over. Come on now...everybody get out of here and go home!”

The crowd slowly dispersed in soft, whispering groups, voices muted by the fascination of death that all men carry with them in small pockets deep inside them. The policeman followed them toward the front yard, running over in his mind the nature of the report he’d have to write and wondering how in God’s name he could submit such an oddball story to the powers that be and have it make any sense. A press photographer was the last man on the scene. He took pictures of the pool, the departing ambulance, a few of the neighbors.

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