Night Gallery 2

by Rod Serling

  "Then can I see Grandpa?"

  "We'll see how he is," Levine said.

  Mikey left the room. Levine lit a cigarette and looked across at Buckman. He was about to say something when he heard a sound from inside the bedroom. The doctor turned and hurried inside.

  Goldman lay on the bed, his face a pale oyster color, his eyes just barely open, glazed with pain and weakness. It took him a moment to recognize Levine. "What brings you?" he asked.

  "An act of God, I think," Levine answered. "I came in about an hour ago to look in on you. You were unconscious and barely breathing."

  Goldman nodded, as if recollecting; then he looked toward the door. "And where is my Mikey?"

  "Getting ready for bed," Levine answered.

  The old man inched his way up to his elbows, painfully and laboriously, and saw Buckman standing in the living room. He was silent for a moment, then looked archly toward the doctor. "And in my living room, Doctor—that's a hallucination? Or somebody from a funeral home?"

  "That," Levine said, "is the Messiah, according to your grandson Mikey."

  Goldman smiled and let his head rest back onto the pillow. He closed his eyes. "The Messiah yet. Such a Mikey!" Then the eyes came suddenly open. "Listen—he didn't do so bad. He could have brought back an evangelist, and I'd have been up all night arguing with him."

  Levine laughed—his first laugh of a raunchy, miserable, back-breaking night. "Mikey's getting ready for bed, Mr. Goldman. I'll send him in." He felt the old man's hand touch his arm.

  "No," Goldmad said. "Tell him . . . tell him I'm asleep."

  "He wants to see you, Mr. Goldman . . ."

  "Alive he wants to see me." Goldman turned to look at the clock on the bed stand. It was ten minutes to twelve. Goldman closed his eyes again. "Alive is how I want him to remember me." Then he looked straight into Levine's face. "The Angel of Death was here," he said in soft, muted tones.

  "Mr. Goldman," Levine began in the placating, patient tone that the young use on the old, and the well use on the sick.

  Goldman held up a hand, interrupting him. "He was here, Doctor. He was here earlier—and then he came again. He left a message."

  Why not? Dr. Levine thought. First the Angel of Death—then the Messiah—pretty soon it would be the Three Wise Men, followed by Moishe Dayan in a Hathaway shirt. Dr. Levine closed his eyes. "So tell me, Mr. Goldman."

  The old man's voice was intense. "He told me he'd be back at midnight." Then he shrugged. "So what's to do?" He smiled toward the door. "Tell the Messiah out there he has his work cut out for him."

  This was too much. Levine pointed an unwavering finger at the old man. "Now, look here, Mr. Goldman," he said.

  Again Goldman interrupted him. "Please! My best friend's son, the doctor I don't tell you about house calls or heart transplants. So don't

  you tell me about who beckons to me in shrouds. I'm seventy-seven years on this earth. Seventy-seven years. And that's how long it takes to get wise enough to understand a little bit about life. Then one day you turn around, and what do you need the wisdom for? All that's left is the laying out, the casket, the minyan, a condensed eulogy from an assistant rabbi I never met . . . and you get buried with all that wisdom." His eyes halfclosed. "You know something, Dr. Levine?" His Voice was softer. "I only wanted three more years . . . four more years . . . for Mikey's sake. But death, Doctor . . . so impatient. It can't wait. Hurry with the spade. Hurry with the shovel. Hurry with the ice-cold fingers."

  Levine studied the still, bearded, tired old face. The eyes were now completely closed; the features seemed composed. Levine walked quietly, half on tiptoe, over to the door and closed it softly behind him. The big black man, he noted, still stood near the door of the apartment.

  "You're the Messiah, huh?" Levine asked. "And does the Messiah have a name?"

  The big black man nodded. "They call me Buckman."

  "Buckman. All right, Mr. Buckman. If you've got any special messianic powers, I wish you'd trot them out. I sure as hell could use a miracle."

  Buckman pointed toward the closed bedroom door. "Bad off?" he asked.

  Dr. Levine shrugged. "He says the Angel of Death is due at midnight." He moved over to a chair, sinking down into it, feeling fatigue wash over him, heavy and debilitating. "And who am I to argue?"

  Buckman took a step over to him. "You believe in the Angel of Death?"

  Levine looked up sharply, then smiled. "Levine the doctor dabbles only in the sciences. But Levine son of Jacob Levine, that well-known student of all Levitical folklore . . ." He nodded. "Yes, he believes in the Angel of Death. And the Messiah. And miracles."

  Mikey came in from his bedroom, looked briefly at Levine, then toward the bedroom door. It was a questioning look.

  Levine held a fingertip to his lips. "Very quietly, Mikey. He's asleep. Just tiptoe in and kiss him good night." He tried to grin at the boy—mask number nine—the one worn in the presence of the loved ones, particularly the very young loved ones, who would soon be mourners.

  It was the little boy whose look in response was reassuring. "You don't have to be worried, Doctor," Mikey said. He motioned toward Buckman. "The Messiah will handle everything." Then he opened the bedroom door and went inside.

  Behind him a sudden wind rattled the windows, and moth-eaten curtains billowed out like ancient sails.

  "Damned drafty tenements," Levine muttered, looking at Buckman.

  "Was that just the wind?" Buckman asked.

  Levine rose from the chair. "What the hell else could it be?"

  Buckman made a little gesture. "The old man is expecting someone."

  "Yeah," Levine said, gnawing on his lip, "the old man is expecting someone."

  Mikey came out of the bedroom, closed the door behind him. "He's asleep," he said to Levine, "but Doctor . . . he looks so . . . so sick and so pale." He turned to Buckman. "Mr. Messiah—"

  Levine interrupted him. It was pointless—worse than pointless—it was Goddamned cruel for this little nine-year-old to clutch so at a wraith; to believe in what simply couldn't be. "Come here to me, Mikey."

  Mikey moved over to him. Levine knelt down and put gentle hands on the boy's shoulders. "I'm going to talk to you, Mikey, just as if you were grown up—understand?"

  The boy nodded.

  "Grandpa . . . Grandpa is very sick. And there's not much anyone can do."

  Mikey looked toward Buckman, his face both grim and expectant.

  Levine saw the look, reached up, and turned Mikey's face toward him. "Mikey—your friend Mr. Buckman is a very nice guy. But he's not the Messiah."

  Mikey waited for a moment. Buckman was silent. "He's the Messiah," the little boy whispered. "You can just ask him. He's the Messiah."

  Levine shook his head. His voice was just slightly louder. "No, Mikey . . ."

  The little boy pulled away from Levine, took a running step toward Buckman. His voice was high, shrill, and unsteady. "Tell him! Tell him you're the Messiah!" He grabbed Buckman's jacket. "You've got to tell him . . ."

  The wind came again—a howling, invisible funnel of noise that seemed to materialize in the center of the room, banging from wall to wall like a ricocheting unseen monster. Both the front door and bedroom door flew open on shrieking hinges, to bang against walls.

  Mikey screamed and ran toward the bedroom, Levine after him.

  "Mikey!" the doctor shouted. He grabbed the boy's arm, but it was shaken loose as he moved into the bedroom and over to the old man.

  Covering Goldman's face was a gigantic black shadow. Goldman's head twisted from side to side, as if trying to elude it, but his movements were like spasmodic death jerks.

  Levine felt himself pulled away by an almost iron hand of the black man who appeared behind him. He whirled around to shout something, but it was as if sound had been throttled in his throat.

  "Leave the boy be, Doctor," Buckman said. "Leave him be. There's nothing you can do." And even as he said this, the wind seemed to die down; the
curtains, with little sighs, returned to their normal position; and very slowly the front door closed all by itself with a click. Then there was total silence except for the jagged, tiny sobs that came from inside the bedroom from behind the now closed door.

  Levine looked at Buckman and felt anger. Not at the black man. Not at anyone in particular. The enemy was the whole damned ghetto and the world surrounding it. "Anybody ever tell you," Levine said in a strained voice, "that you make a lousy Messiah?" He reached for his cigarettes, found the pack empty, crumpled it up, and threw it onto a table; then he looked up and smiled faintly. "My apologies, Mr. Buckman. That's the problem with all ghetto dwellers—past and present." He looked toward the closed bed-room door. "We're mystics and believers and children to our dying days. And that applies to ancient doomed men, ineffectual doctors, and nine-year-old boys. A convocation of desperate losers who have this illusion that God favors the tenements."

  In the silence there came the sound of a doorknob turning. The bedroom door opened. Mikey stood there, Smiling. Behind him Levine could see Goldman sitting up in the bed, propped up by an extra pillow, his face showing a color that Levine had not seen in years; and in the eyes was vitality and an absence of pain that was nothing short of miraculous. He had his glasses on and was peering over them.

  "Doctor," Goldman said in a strong voice. "I had a nightmare like you can't believe. I was just telling Mikey. The grandfather of nightmares. The dean. A nightmare from nightmare land. And with a cast of characters—Shakespeare couldn't create them!" The old man counted the apparitions off on his fingers. "The Angel of Death . . . the Messiah . . . it was you and Mikey . . . and somebody in the living room." He stopped abruptly, as a thoughtful, reflective look crossed his face. He looked across the room toward the bedroom door, then turned to Levine, frowning. "There . . . there wasn't anyone in the living room, was there?"

  Levine looked at him blankly and suddenly felt somehow disoriented. No, he recalled, there was no one else in the apartment. There never had been—and yet . . . he felt a strange, persistent, and altogether unexplainable nudge to his memory, as if a portion of it had been lifted and removed from the premises. He looked at Mikey. "Was there, Mikey? Was there someone in the living room?"

  Mikey shook his head, turned, and looked through the open door into the empty room. "I remember going out to find the Messiah," he said thoughtfully; then he shook his head. "But I guess I didn't find him. At least . . . I don't remember finding him."

  Levine closed his eyes. "I guess we're all over-tired." Then he shook his head. "Funny, damned thing, though," he smiled. "I could have sworn . . ." He left the rest of it unsaid then looked toward Goldman, smiling. "The important thing is, Mr. Goldman—we seem to have licked the crisis." He moved over to the bed, reached for the old man's pulse, and felt it beat back at him, strong and even. "Pulse regular," he said happily. "Strong—and the respiration sounds good. I'm either one helluva doctor, or you're one miraculous patient!"

  Goldman laughed and started to swing his ancient legs around over the side of the bed.

  Levine held out his hand, stopping him. "Where do you think you're going?"

  "To make us some hot tea."

  Levine shook his head. "In the first place, you're not to get out of bed. In the second place, it's time for Mikey to go to bed. And in the third place . . ." He closed his eyes, swallowed, and then exhaled. "I need something a little stronger than tea." He turned and started toward the door. "Call me tomorrow if you need me, Mr. Goldman." As he spoke, there was the sound of distant church chimes that rolled over the night, or what was left of it.

  Mikey looked toward the window. "It's today," he said. "It's Christmas."

  There was silence in the room. Levine nodded. "Kind of the season for miracles, I guess" He moved into the living room, picked up his coat from a chair, shrugged his arms into it, then looked at the framed figure of the old man sitting up in the bed.

  "Doctor," Goldman said, "I must owe you a lot of money."

  Levine grinned "Don't sweat it, Mr Goldman, You're a walking, breathing, altogether healthy testimonial to my professional know-how. Or at least that's the way I'll tout you I ought to pay you."

  The old man reached for the letter from the table and unfolded it, "From my brother Sam," he exclaimed "Or maybe I read it to you already. Owes me considerable money. But any moment now, I expect a sizable check from him He's selling off land in the Imperial Valley in California."

  "Mr. Goldman," the doctor said softly, "I don't mind waiting."

  Goldman looked down at the letter again. His smile was more a sad resignation than anything else. "It's a game I play, really," he admitted. "Squeezing celery tonic out of a boulder is easier than getting money from my brother Sam." He winked at Mikey. "It would take the Messiah himself."

  The little boy tried to smile back. But there was something elusive . . . something unexplainable that hung over the room. It was like a vast jigsaw puzzle with just one tiny piece missing; neither urgent nor integral—but still vaguely, hauntingly remembered.

  Levine took a worn scarf out of his pocket and wrapped it around his neck. "Well, Mr. Goldman . . . remember . . . you call me if you need me. Happy Hanukkah . . . Merry Christmas . . . and don't overdo."

  He turned, moved over to the apartment door, and was about to open it when there was a knock from the other side.

  Mikey moved past him. "I'll get it," the little boy said. He opened the front door.

  Levine heard a voice ask, "Does a Mr. Abraham Goldman live here?" The voice, Levine thought, was familiar. And yet not really familiar. At least, he couldn't attach it to a person or a name or some remembered face.

  "That's right," he heard Mikey answer.

  "Special-delivery letter," the voice said. "Sign here, little son."

  Mikey scratched his signature on a pad, then handed it back. "Thank you," Mikey said, "and a Merry Christmas."

  "And a Merry Christmas to you, little son."

  Mikey closed the door and carried a letter across the room into the bedroom. "It's from California, Grandpa," he announced.

  Goldman reached for his glasses. "So let me read it!" He took the letter from Mikey, opened it, and in doing so saw the corner of a green piece of paper. It was a check. Very carefully, as if removing some item of fragile china, the old man lifted it from the envelope, looked at it briefly, then opened up a folded note that accompanied it. He adjusted his glasses and read aloud. "My dear brother Abe: People thought I was crazy. But I did have land, and I just sold it. I'm enclosing a certified check in the amount of ten thousand dollars, which is what I owed you."

  Goldman stopped, sniffed, then looked up over his glasses. "I think I'll run over to the stone quarry," he announced, "and get me some celery tonic!" Then, holding tight to the little boy's hand, he said, "Mikey? What did I tell you about the Messiah?"

  The little boy sat on the edge of the bed and smiled happily, holding tightly to his grandfather's hand.

  Levine felt dazed. He was witness to something that defied any kind of explanation. This simply wasn't the way it happened. Not in his experience. Nobody cheated death. Or, at least, no one did it so overtly, so directly. No one spit in its eye and simply shrugged it off as did this once dying and doomed old man. And those frail and forlorn hopes, especially when they were built of so tenuous a substance—senile rocking-chair occupants in Santa Monica homes for the aged—these hopes couldn't be cashed. And yet there was the letter, and there was the certified check, and there was Abraham Goldman alive, well, and sitting up in his deathbed, a long country mile from a funeral home or a cemetery.

  Dr. Levine opened the door and moved out into the hall, then down the steps, and ultimately out into the street.

  A touch of early dawn had brushed the night, and a Christmas morning sky already showed hints of orange and blue—streaks of color that came with the clear coldness of the early day.

  Standing on the corner, a tall postman was collecting from a mailbox. He
turned to look at Levine. He was a big, muscular black man with even white teeth and an infectious smile, He wore a name tag which read "Buckman."

  "Cold, huh?" the postman with the name tag said.

  Levine nodded, deep in thought, but still studying the face, wondering why there was that look of familiarity aided and abetted by the voice. "You just delivered one helluva holiday gift," the doctor said.

  The postman smiled. "It pleased, huh?"

  Levine nodded and looked up toward the fourth-story window. "It pleased, all right," he said, his voice soft. "Dear God, how it pleased!"

  Mr. Buckman, the postman, closed and locked the mailbox. "Every now and then," he said, "God remembers the tenements."

  Levine studied him for a moment. "How right you are," he whispered. Then he tried to shake off whatever it was that clung to him, whatever was that mystifying little itch that laid out clues and then defied him when it came to that oh-so-simple and oh-so-elusive solution. Finally he shrugged, smiled again, lifted the collar of his overcoat, and started down the sidewalk. "Happy Holidays," he said to the big black man in the postman's uniform.

  "And to you and yours," the postman answered, "and to the whole earth."

  To the whole earth, Dr. Levine thought as he walked through the cold early morning. To the whole earth. And the distant bells of Christmas rang loud and long and clear sufficiently loud and sufficiently clear—so that the whole earth might hear them.

  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.