THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Book 1: Shades of Night, Falling Read online

  new york

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  DISTRIBUTED BY SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.

  With love and thanks for

  Bob and Dorothy Gerstner

  for their support over the years, and

  also for their collaborative effort on who became

  the single most important part of my life.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  EPILOGUE

  About the e-Book

  An Original Publication of ibooks, inc.

  The Twilight Zone

  TM and © 2003 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  An ibooks, inc. Book

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book

  or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  ISBN 0-7434-5858-3

  First ibooks, inc. printing May 2003

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Edited by Karen Haber

  Special thanks to John Van Citters

  Cover design by Mike Rivilis

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  There is a fifth dimension

  beyond that which is known to man.

  It is a dimension as vast as space,

  and as timeless as infinity.

  It is the middle ground between

  light and shadow, between

  science and superstition, and

  it lies between the pit of man’s fears

  and the summit of his knowledge.

  This is the dimension of imagination.

  It is an area which we call ...

  “Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some bewitching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to ... [be] subject to trances and visions; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with ... haunted spots, and twilight superstitions ... and the nightmare ... seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

  —Washington Irving

  The Sketch Book

  PROLOGUE

  June 21, 1821, dawned like many of the other first days of summer that had come to Geiststadt, a small village nestled between hillridge and marsh in Kings County, New York, on the west end of Long Island. It was bright and sunny, pleasantly warm with the mildness of spring surrendering to the promise of sultry summer in the air. But before day’s end cold wind and snow would lash the village, terrifying its inhabitants and setting in motion a chain of events that would take more than three hundred years to resolve.

  Captain Benjamin Noir paced restlessly all afternoon outside the birthing chamber occupied by his wife Gretchen, the midwife, and Callie, the housekeeper who’d been with Noir for decades. Noir was sixty-four and a retired seafarer, but he was still handsome, dark-haired, and strong as a man of half his years.

  He’d met, wooed, and married his young wife in the eleven months he’d lived in Geiststadt. She carried two infants in her womb. The Captain prayed fervently that at least one would be a boy. The odds seemed to favor that possibility. Benjamin Noir had fathered seventeen children—nine were still alive—on three previous wives. None on paramours, mistresses, whores, or passing fancies. He had been very careful about that. Of the seventeen children, twelve had been boys. It seemed likely that at least one of the two Gretchen now carried would be a boy. One had better be. Benjamin Noir was impatient [2] for another son. He wasn’t getting any younger and he needed a thirteenth son. This was also an auspicious day, one of the ancient calendar’s most auspicious. It was the first day of the New Year. It was a good day for children to be born.

  Only the infants would not come from his wife’s womb.

  Gretchen Noir had gone into labor at noon. Her water had broken almost immediately. The nearest doctor was in Brooklyn, a day’s journey to the west. Geiststadt’s midwife had presided over most of the births in the village for over two decades. She could undoubtedly bring wife and child safely through the birthing process as long as there were no complications.

  But afternoon turned to evening with only strangled groans and occasional shrieks coming from behind the closed door of the birthing room, as well as murmurs of encouragement from the midwife, and constant mumbled prayers from Callie in a language that only Noir and Callie, in all of Geiststadt, knew was not Spanish.

  As the moon rose the night air suddenly turned cold.

  The temperature plummeted fifty degrees in less than ten minutes. The summer wind turned to an arctic blast. Rain froze to hail and then to snow as thunder crashed and lightning split the sky.

  The Geiststadt simple farmers and small merchants looked up at the sky, dumbfounded. The inexplicable temperature drop was bad enough, but the hail threw the livestock into frenzied panic as chunks of ice larger than any anyone had ever seen thudded to the ground. Some hailstones crashed through barn and manor roofs, [3] braining half a score of unfortunate animals as well as old Victor Derlicht as he tried to drag himself on his stroke-crippled leg to the safe haven of The Hanged Hessian.

  The snow that followed on the heels of the hail was even worse, skirling down the lightning-stricken sky in ragged sheets, promising disaster at harvest time if it enshrouded the tender crop for too long.

  Benjamin Noir felt the sudden spear of cold air strike inside the three-story house he’d built upon coming to Geiststadt and halted his metronomic pacing. He smiled. It must be time.

  A scream burst out of the birthing chamber. Noir wondered if he should go in, but ultimately restrained himself. It was not his place. The midwife was in attendance, as was Callie, who had presided over the birth of all his children. None had died before, during, or soon after their birth. None yet, anyway.

  Inside the chamber Gretchen Noir screamed again, and gritted her teeth in pain. She hadn’t thought that it was going to be like this. Like most of the villagers she was of German stock. Unlike most of them she was lean, almost ethereal in build, not a stolid, wide-hipped baby machine. It was her beauty and grace that had first interested Captain Noir. And she’d certainly been attracted to him, despite forty years difference in age. She’d been fascinated by the air of strangeness about the sea captain who had traveled the world. And there was also his gold, of course.

  She clenched her teeth, choking back another scream while the midwife, stationed between her spread legs, [4] urged her on and the old housekeeper murmured incessant prayers over her in a strange language. Spanish, her wandering mind said, trying to fasten on something other than the excruciating pain wracking her abdomen and spreading in waves throughout her body. Callie was from Cuba, Benjamin had told her, the daughter of a noble Spanish family fallen on hard times. Benjamin. I’ll never let him near me again, Gretchen promised herself, as her empty birth canal contracted, and the pain cut through her.

  “Push, girl, push,” the midwife told her. “Send them on their way.”

  “I’m. Trying,” Gretchen Noir clenched her teeth as Callie wiped the sweat from her forehead, murmuring over her.

  She spoke softly,
she spoke quickly, words that were not Spanish but were heard and dimly understood, almost by instinct, by those in the womb who didn’t know their meaning, but somehow did understand the promise in them.

  The bigger, younger one moved, positioning himself in the warm darkness, feeling with tiny, clumsy hands, for what he could not see. He found his brother’s body and pushed against it, heading instinctively where the murmured words told him to go. His tiny fist closed around something and his muscles stretched and swelled, shaking under the unaccustomed strain, as he wrapped the cord around his brother who was also straining foreward. He slipped ahead. He pushed off him, adding impetus to his descent, as powerful muscle caught and pulled him from his sanctuary.

  [5] He was born screaming into the bright, cold world. No one had to slap him to get his lungs working. He hated this awful new place. He had been tricked by the murmuring words that had come into his gently sleeping, nearly quiescent brain. He had no concepts to define this place except fright and hate as the words in his brain turned from a cajoling whisper to a triumphant shout.

  “A male child!” Callie screamed in English.

  She snatched the baby from the midwife’s hands as soon as she’d cut the umbilical cord, and raced with it toward the door of the birthing room.

  “A male child!” she shouted again.

  Captain Noir flung the door wide, a look of profound joy and anticipation on his face.

  “My son,” he said, enraptured, reaching out for the red, wriggling, blood- and fluid-smeared infant.

  The midwife looked at them as if they were slightly mad.

  “The other child—” she began, and fell silent when Captain Noir turned cold eyes upon her.

  “What of it?”

  “There is trouble—”

  “Do what you have to,” he said brusquely.

  Callie wrapped the squalling newborn in a length of cotton swaddling, wiping the birth-remnant off his tiny face. She handed the bundle to the Captain and they both made to leave the room.

  “You don’t understand,” the midwife said desperately. “Your wife’s in great danger. The other child—”

  The Captain turned to her and fixed her with a gaze that had served him well during many a crisis at sea.

  [6] “It’s your job,” he said. “Take care of it.”

  The midwife turned back helplessly to the groaning Gretchen Noir as Callie followed Captain Noir from the room.

  “My son,” the midwife heard the Captain murmur. “My thirteenth son.”

  Twenty years,

  eleven months,

  three weeks,

  and two days later ...

  1.

  Thursday, June 16th: The First Intercalary Day

  Unlike the rest of his family, Jonathan Noir was an early riser.

  He woke as the sun broke the horizon and shone warmly into his east-facing bedroom window. He was eager to get up and into the day. There were always many things to be done about the manor and on those rare occasions when the work load was light, there was always someplace interesting to explore around Geiststadt or the surrounding fields and hills.

  He dressed quickly in brown trousers, almost white linen shirt, and rough leather boots well suited for farm work or hiking, whichever would occupy his day. After chores Jon hoped to steal a few hours in the afternoon to explore the meadows of HangedMan’s Hill, which was more a long, rough, rocky ridge way than a gently sloping hillside. Summer would arrive in five days-along with his twenty-first birthday. The upland meadows were in their first bloom with a wealth of colorful and interesting wildflowers and butterflies. As far as Jon Noir knew, no one had yet done a systematic study of the lepidoptera of Kings County. It would be an interesting subject to occupy his idle hours for the next few months.

  He went down the steps quietly, making little noise. Jon had ten siblings. All, even his twin brother, Thomas, were older than him. Only he, Seth, and James still lived with their father, Benjamin Noir, at Noir Manor where [9] Jon now enjoyed the privacy of his own bedroom. He could rise as early as he wanted without disturbing a roommate, and clutter the chamber with books, papers, and specimens of insects, plant life, and the local fauna without anyone complaining. But he did miss the hubbub and hustle of his younger years when the house had been full of his brothers and sisters. They were a varied group, fathered by Benjamin Noir on a succession of four wives. As the baby of the family Jon had garnered a lot of attention from them, particularly from his four sisters.

  But his sisters were now all married. Sarah and Emily still lived in Geiststadt. Jane was in Brooklyn, a short day’s journey to the West, and Catherine in faraway Massachusetts. His brothers Thomas—who boarded in Manhattan while attending Columbia University—Daniel, Alijah, Matthew, and Reuben also lived away from Geiststadt. Thomas spent his summers at Noir Manor. In fact, he was due any day, as Columbia’s spring term had recently ended.

  Jon envied Thomas’s education. It was only one of a long list of grievances between them, dating back to Jon’s earliest memories. Thomas had always had the finest of everything. Jon had to be satisfied with leftovers. He’d had only the scant local schooling, supplemented by occasional tutors somewhat grudgingly provided by his father. But Jon had learned a lot from books, as well as from simply observing his surroundings. Ultimately, though, he knew college wasn’t for him. He could never go away to school. He loved Geiststadt far too much to leave it for long.

  He took the back stairway down to the ground floor, [10] stopping in the kitchen where Callie sat in her rocking chair before the roaring fire in the open fireplace. As usual, she wore flowing skirts, apron, and cloth bonnet. Though it was nearly summer, she rocked before the blazing fire soaking up the warmth like an old beetle worshiping the morning sun.

  No matter how early Jon rose, Callie was always already in the kitchen. A small, bird-like woman with a deeply lined and darkly tanned face, she’d been with Benjamin Noir for nearly forty years before he’d moved to Geiststadt, and the twenty years since. Captain Noir had never again married after Gretchen, his fourth wife, had died giving birth to Thomas and Jonathan. Callie was the woman of the house. Officially she was the Noir housekeeper, but basically she bossed the other servants and performed what few domestic tasks she felt like doing. Most often she sat in the kitchen warming her gaunt frame before the roaring fire. She could never get enough heat. She was from the Caribbean—Cuba, the story went—and though Geiststadt had a relatively mild climate, it couldn’t compare to the tropical balminess of the islands of her long-gone youth.

  She shot Jon a glance from her dark, hard eyes, sunken deep in a thin face wrinkled by years spent in that tropical sun. She wore a calico kerchief that hid her thin white hair. Her tiny, frail body was enveloped in her thick, voluminous skirts.

  “Up already, boy?” she asked. She stood, and slapped some bacon in a pan and put some day-old bread to toast on the edge of the hearth. “You gone get some work done today, or waste your time crawling round the marsh?”

  [11] Jon smiled to himself. The marsh that lay west and south of Geiststadt was also one of his favorite hiking grounds.

  “Not today,” he said. “Thought I might poke around HangedMan’s Hill some.”

  She turned and fixed him with her brilliant stare.

  “Stay away from that place, boy. Stay away. Bad things happened there, long before we come to Geiststadt, when the Dutch was here.”

  “I know.”

  Callie was a fountain of tales, whether of strange happenings in the Carribean, or Key West, the island off the Florida coast where Benjamin Noir had last plied his seaman’s trade before moving north. Or even the history of the Dutch village called Dunkelstad, which had once stood on the very land where Geiststadt was now.

  There were even stories concerning strange happenings in Geiststadt itself—tales of ghostly sightings and mysteriously disappearing farm animals. Even people. Strange mists sometimes arose from the marshes, or crept down from the heights of HangedMa
n’s Hill whose crest and higher slopes were still covered by virgin forest. There was even an odd tale connected with Jon’s birthday. Callie solemnly swore that it had snowed on the night Jonathan and Thomas had been born, though they had come into the world on the first day of summer. Fortunately, that frigid episode had been brief. Normal temperatures had returned before the crops were ruined. Otherwise, Jon’s and Thomas’s reputations in the village might have forever been tarnished, though clearly the strange [12] weather couldn’t have been the fault of the newborn babes.

  Callie liked nothing more than spooking a roomful of servants and children on a cold winter night with her tall tales. Sadly, though, Jon thought, there were no more children in the house. Seth and James had no interest in Callie’s yarns. He was the only Noir left who did.

  He sat at the wooden kitchen table. Callie brought him a platter of food and a mug of strong gunpowder tea that had come all the way from China. It was his father’s favorite. Jon liked it as much as his father did, though they had little else in common.

  Jon had inherited the features of Gretchen Noir, the mother he’d never seen. He was only of moderate height, and lean. Clean-shaven, with thick, unruly blond hair, blue eyes, and delicate cheekbones, nose, and mouth. He wondered if Callie—and his father—saw his mother’s face in his. They never spoke of her. They never would say what she’d been like, and Jon had stopped asking a long time ago. Callie wasn’t a tender woman, but, besides his older sisters, now all gone away, she was the closest thing to a parent Jon had ever had. His mother had died giving him birth and his father, at best, simply ignored him. When he and Thomas were growing up his father had given Thomas all his attention. But even Thomas, Jon realized, hadn’t gotten their father’s affection, for Benjamin Noir didn’t have much affection to give.

  Jon sopped a hunk of toasted bread in bacon grease and chewed it thoughtfully. His father was a big, strong, distant man. Still fit and vital though now in his eighties, he was educated, too. Not only about the sea, but about [13] history and languages and astronomy and botany and many strange, odd things. He’d let Jon borrow his books and watched as Jon taught himself Greek and Latin with minimal help from occasional tutors, but he’d had no interest in educating the boy himself.