Lynn Venable was author of the story in The Twilight Zone episode, "Time Enough At Last". Certain similarities between this and that make one wonder if Venable read WE. Du Boise, "The Comet", and was inspired?
He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world-"nothing!" as he said bitterly. Bits of the words of the walkers came to him. "The comet?" "The comet-" Everybody was talking of it. Even the president, as he entered, smiled patronizingly at him, and asked: "Well, Jim, are you scared?" "No," said the messenger shortly. "I thought we'd journeyed through the comet's tail once," broke in the junior clerk affably. "Oh, that was Halley's," said the president; "this is a new comet, quite a stranger, they say-wonderful, wonderful! I saw it last night. Oh, by the way, Jim," he said, turning again to the messenger, "I want you to go down into the lower vaults today." The messenger followed the president silently. Of course, they wanted him to go down to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for more valuable men. He smiled grimly and listened. "Everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep in," said the president; "but we miss two volumes of old records. Suppose you nose around down there,-it isn't very pleasant, I suppose." "Not very," said the messenger, as he walked out. "Well, Jim, the tail of the new comet hits us at noon this time," said the vault clerk, as he passed over the keys; but the messenger passed silently down the stairs. Down he went beneath Broadway, where the dim light filtered through 54 the feet of hurrying men; down to the dark basement beneath; down into the blackness and silence beneath that lowest cavern. Here with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels of the earth, under the world. He drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and stepped into the fetid slime within. Here at last was peace, and he groped moodily forward. A great rat leaped past him and cobwebs crept across his face. He felt carefully around the room, shelf by shelf, on the muddied floor, and in crevice and corner. Nothing. Then he went back to the far end, where somehow the wall felt different. He sounded and pushed and pried. Nothing. He started away. Then something brought him back. He was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black wall swung as on mighty hinges, and blackness yawned beyond. He peered in; it was evidently a secret vault-some hiding place of the old bank unknown in newer times. He entered hesitatingly. It was a long, narrow room with shelves, and at the far end, an old iron chest. On a high shelf lay the two missing volumes of records, and others. He put them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty. He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan laid bare its treasure--and he saw the dull sheen of gold! "Boom!" A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear. He started up and looked about.
All was black and still. He groped for his light and swung it about him. Then he knew! The great stone door had swung to. He forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face. Then with a sigh he went methodically to work. The cold sweat stood on his forehead; but he searched, pounded, pushed, and worked until after what seemed endless hours his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again harshly on its hinges, and then, striking against something soft and heavy, stopped. He had just room to squeeze through. There lay the body of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. He stared at it, and then felt sick and nauseated. The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong, peculiar odor. He stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell fainting across the corpse. He awoke with a sense of horror, leaped from the body, and groped up the stairs, calling to the guard. The watchman sat as if asleep, with the gate swinging free. With one glance at him the messenger hurried up to the sub-vault. In vain he called to the guards. His voice echoed and re-echoed weirdly. Up into the great basement he rushed. Here another guard lay prostrate on his face, cold and still. A fear arose in the messenger's heart. He dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank. The stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent, and stretched the silent forms of men. The messenger paused and glanced about. He was not a man easily moved; but the sight was appalling! "Robbery and murder," he whispered slowly to himself as he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of the president where he lay half-buried on his desk. Then a new thought seized him: If they found him here alone-with all this money and all these dead men-what would his life be worth? He glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to a side door, and again looked behind. Quietly he turned the latch and stepped out into Wall Street. How silent the street was! Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was high noon-Wall Street? Broadway? He glanced almost wildly up and down, then across the street, and as he looked, 55 a sickening horror froze in his limbs. With a choking cry of utter fright he lunged, leaned giddily against the cold building, and stared helplessly at the sight. In the great stone doorway a hundred men and women and children lay crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great, gaping doorway like refuse in a can-as if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they had rushed and ground themselves to death. Slowly the messenger crept along the walls, wetting his parched mouth and trying to comprehend, stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising terror in his heart. He met a businessman, silkhatted and frock-coated, who had crept, too, along that smooth wall and stood now stone dead with wonder written on his lips. The messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought the curb. A woman leaned wearily against the signpost, her head bowed motionless on her lace and silken bosom. Before her stood a streetcar, silent, and within-but the messenger but glanced and hurried on. A grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the "last edition" in his uplifted hand: "Danger!" screamed its black headlines. "Warnings wired around the world. The Comet's tail sweeps past us at noon. Deadly gases expected. Close doors and windows. Seek the cellar." The messenger read and staggered on. Far out from a window above, a girl lay with gasping face and sleevelets on her arms. On a store step sat a little, sweet-faced girl looking upward toward the skies, and in the carriage by her lay-but the messenger looked no longer. The cords gave way-the terror burst in his veins, and with one great, gasping cry he sprang desperately forward and ran,-ran as only the frightened run, shrieking and fighting the air until with one last wail of pain he sank on the grass of Madison Square and lay prone and still. When he rose, he gave no glance at the still and silent forms on the benches, but, going to a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and thought the
thing through: The comet had swept the earth and this was the end. Was everybody dead? He must search and see. He knew that he must steady himself and keep calm, or he would go insane. First he must go to a restaurant. He walked up Fifth Avenue to a famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous, ghost-haunted halls. He beat back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights. "Yesterday, they would not have served me," he whispered, as he forced the food down. Then he started up the street,-looking, peering, telephoning, ringing alarms; silent, silent all. Was nobody-nobody-he dared not think the thought and hurried on. Suddenly he stopped still. He had forgotten. My God! How could he have forgotten? He must rush to the subway-then he almost laughed. No--a car; if he could find a Ford. He saw one. Gently he lifted off its burden, and took his place on the seat. He tested the throttle. There was gas. He glided off, shivering, and drove up the street. Everywhere stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence. On he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck lips; on past crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at Forty-Second Street he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the dead congestion. He came back on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-Seventh and flew past the Plaza and by the park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing past SeventySecond Street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a living form leaning wildly out an upper window. He gasped. The human voice sounded in his ears like the voice of God. "Hello-hello--help, in God's name!" wailed the woman. "There's a dead girl in here and a man and-and see yonder dead men lying in the street and dead horses-for the love of God go and bring the officers. . .. " And the words trailed off into hysterical tears. 56 He wheeled the car in a sudden circle, running over the still body of a child and leaping on the curb. Then he rushed up the steps and tried the door and rang violently. There was a long pause, but at last the heavy door swung back. They stared a moment in silence. She had not noticed before that he was a Negro. He had not thought of her as white. She was a woman of perhaps twenty-five-rarely beautiful and richly gowned, with darkly golden hair, and jewels. Yesterday, he thought with bitterness, she would scarcely have looked at him twice. He would have been dirt beneath her silken feet. She stared at him. Of all the sorts of men she had pictured as coming to her rescue she had not dreamed of one like him. Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought. Yet as she looked at him curiously he seemed quite commonplace and usual. He was a tall, dark workingman of the better class, with a sensitive face trained to stolidity and a poor man's clothes and hands. His face was soft and slow and his manner at once cold and nervous, like fires long banked, but not out. So a moment each paused and gauged the other; then the thought of the dead world without rushed in and they started toward each other. "What has happened?" she cried. "Tell me! Nothing stirs. All is silence! I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of God,-and see ... " She dragged him through great, silken hangings to where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little French maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay prone in his livery. The tears streamed down the woman's cheeks and she clung to his arm until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the tremors racing through her body. "I had been shut up in my darkroom developing pictures of the comet which I took last night; when I came out-I saw the dead!
"What has happened?" she cried again. He answered slowly: "Something-comet or devil-swept across the earth this morning and-many are dead!" "Many? Very many?" "I have searched and I have seen no other living soul but you." She gasped and they stared at each other. "My-father!" she whispered. "Where is he?" "He started for the office." "Where is it?" "In the Metropolitan Tower." "Leave a note for him here and come." Then he stopped. "No," he said firmly-"first, we must go-- to Harlem." "Harlem!" she cried. Then she understood. She tapped her foot at first impatiently. She looked back and shuddered. Then she came resolutely down the steps. "There's a swifter car in the garage in the court," she said. "I don't know how to drive it," he said. "I do," she answered. In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind. The Stutz rose and raced like an airplane. They took the turn at llOth Street on two wheels and slipped with a shriek into l35th. He was gone but a moment. Then he returned, and his face was gray. She did not look, but said: "You have lost-somebody?" "I have lost--everybody," he said, simply- " unless ... " He ran back and was gone several minuteshours they seemed to her. "Everybody," he said, and he walked slowly back with something filmlike in his hand which he stuffed into his pocket. ''I'm afraid I was selfish," he said. But already the car was moving toward the park among the dark and lined dead of Harlem-the brown, still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the silence--the wild and haunting 57 silence. Out of the park, and down Fifth Avenue they whirled. In and out among the dead they slipped and quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great, square Metropolitan Tower hove in sight. Gently he laid the dead elevator boy aside; the car shot upward. The door of the office stood open. On the threshold lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the dead clerk. The inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and addressed but unsent: Dear Daughter: I've gone for a hundred-mile spin in Fred's new Mercedes. Shall not be back before dinner. I'll bring Fred with me. J.B.H. "Come," she cried nervously. "We must search the city." Up and down, over and across, back again-on went that ghostly search. Everywhere was silence and death-death and silence! They hunted from Madison Square to Spuyten Duyvil; they rushed across the Williamsburg Bridge; they swept over Brooklyn; from the Battery and Morningside Heights they scanned the river. Silence, silence everywhere, and no human sign. Haggard and bedraggled they puffed a third time slowly down Broadway, under the broiling sun, and at last stopped. He sniffed the air. An odor-a smell-and with the shifting breeze a sickening stench filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning. The girl settled back helplessly in her seat. "What can we do?" she cried. It was his turn now to take the lead, and he did it quickly. "The long-distance telephone--the telegraph and the cable--night rockets and thenflight!" She looked at him now with strength and confidence. He did not look like men, as she had always pictured men; but he acted like one and she was content. In fifteen minutes
they were at the central telephone exchange. As they came to the door he stepped quickly before her and pressed her gently back as he closed it. She heard him moving to and fro, and knew his burdens-the poor, little burdens he bore. When she entered, he was alone in the room. The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinxlike immobility. She seated herself on a stool and donned the bright earpiece. She looked at the mouthpiece. She had never looked at one so closely before. It was wide and black, pimpled with usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves. It looked-she beat back the thought-but it looked,-it persisted in looking like-she turned her head and found herself alone. One moment she was terrified; then she thanked him silently for his delicacy and turned resolutely, with a quick intaking of breath. "Hello!" she called in low tones. She was calling to the world. The world must answer. Would the world answer? Was the world ... Silence! She had spoken too low. "Hello!" she cried, full-voiced. She listened. Silence! Her heart beat quickly. She cried in clear, distinct, loud tones: "Hellohello-hello!" What was that whirring? Surely-no-was it the click of a receiver? She bent close, she moved the pegs in the holes, and called and called, until her voice rose almost to a shriek, and her heart hammered. It was as if she had heard the last flicker of creation, and the evil was silence. Her voice dropped to a sob. She sat stupidly staring into the black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the thought came again. Hope lay dead within her. Yes, the cable and the rockets remained; but the world-she could not frame the thought or say the word. It was too mighty-too terrible! She turned toward the door with a new fear in her heart. For the first time she seemed to realize that she was alone in the world with a stranger, with something more than a stranger,-with a man alien in blood and culture--unknown, 58 perhaps unknowable. It was awful! She must escape--she must fly; he must not see her again. Who knew what awful thoughtsShe gathered her silken skirts deftly about her young, smooth limbs-listened, and glided into a side hall. A moment she shrank back: the hall lay filled with dead women; then she leaped to the door and tore at it, with bleeding fingers, until it swung wide. She looked out. He was standing at the top of the alley,- silhouetted, tall and black, motionless. Was he looking at her or away? She did not know-she did not care. She simply leaped and ran-ran until she found herself alone amid the dead and the tall ramparts of towering buildings. She stopped. She was alone. Alone! Alone on the streets-alone in the city-perhaps alone in the world! There crept in upon her the sense of deception-of creeping hands behind her back-of silent, moving things she could not see,-of voices hushed in fearsome conspiracy. She looked behind and sideways, started at strange sounds and heard still stranger, until every nerve within her stood sharp and quivering, stretched to scream at the barest touch. She whirled and flew back, whimpering like a child, until she found that narrow alley again and the dark, silent figure silhouetted at the top. She stopped and rested; then she walked silently toward him, looked at him timidly; but he said nothing as he handed her into the car. Her voice caught as she whispered: "Not-that." And he answered slowly: "No-not that!" They climbed into the car. She bent forward on the wheel and sobbed, with great, dry, quivering sobs, as they flew toward the cable office on the east side, leaving the world of wealth and prosperity for the world of poverty and work. In the world behind them were death and silence, grave and grim, almost cynical, but always decent; here it was hideous. It clothed itself in every ghastly form of terror, struggle, hate, and suffering. It lay wreathed in crime and squalor, greed and lust. Only in its dread and awful silence was it like to death everywhere.
Yet as the two, flying and alone, looked upon the horror of the world, slowly, gradually, the sense of all-enveloping death deserted them. They seemed to move in a world silent and asleep,-not dead. They moved in quiet reverence, lest somehow they wake these sleeping forms who had, at last, found peace. They moved in some solemn, worldwide Friedhof, above which some mighty arm had waved its magic wand. All nature slept until-until, and quick with the same startling thought, they looked into each other's eyes-he, ashen, and she, crimson, with unspoken thought. To both, the vision of a mighty beauty-of vast, unspoken things, swelled in their souls; but they put it away. Great, dark coils of wire came up from the earth and down from the sun and entered this low lair of witchery. The gathered lightnings of the world centered here, binding with beams of light the ends of the earth. The doors gaped on the gloom within. He paused on the threshold. "Do you know the code?" she asked. "I know the call for help-we used it formerly at the bank." She hardly heard. She heard the lapping of the waters far below,-the dark and restless waters-the cold and luring waters, as they called. He stepped within. Slowly she walked to the wall, where the water called below, and stood and waited. Long she waited, and he did not come. Then with a start she saw him, too, standing beside the black waters. Slowly he removed his coat and stood there silently. She walked quickly to him and laid her hand on his arm. He did not start or look. The waters lapped on in luring, deadly rhythm. He pointed down to the waters, and said quietly: "The world lies beneath the waters nowmay I go?" She looked into his stricken, tired face, and a great pity surged within her heart. She answered in a voice clear and calm, "No." Upward they turned toward life again, and he seized the wheel. The world was darkening to twilight, and a great, gray pall was falling 59 mercifully and gently on the sleeping dead. The ghastly glare of reality seemed replaced with the dream of some vast romance. The girl lay silently back, as the motor whizzed along, and looked half-consciously for the elf-queen to wave life into this dead world again. She forgot to wonder at the quickness with which he had learned to drive her car. It seemed natural. And then as they whirled and swung into Madison Square and at the door of the Metropolitan Tower she gave a low cry, and her eyes were great! Perhaps she had seen the elf-queen? The man led her to the elevator of the tower and deftly they ascended. In her father's office they gathered rugs and chairs, and he wrote a note and laid it on the desk; then they ascended to the roof and he made her comfortable. For a while she rested and sank to dreamy somnolence, watching the worlds above and wondering. Below lay the dark shadows of the city and afar was the shining of the sea. She glanced at him timidly as he set food before her and took a shawl and wound her in it, touching her reverently, yet tenderly. She looked up at him with thankfulness in her eyes, eating what he served. He watched the city. She watched him. He seemed very human,-very near now. "Have you had to work hard?" she asked softly. '~lways," he said. "I have always been idle," she said. "I was rich." "I was poor," he almost echoed. "The rich and the poor are met together," she began, and he finished: "The Lord is the Maker of them all." "Yes," she said slowly; "and how foolish our human distinctions seem-now," looking down to the great dead city stretched below, swimming in unlightened shadows. "Yes-I was not-human, yesterday," he said. She looked at him. '~nd your people were not my people," she said; "but today ... " She paused. He was a man,-no more; but he was in some larger sense a gentleman,-sensitive,
There’s obviously wrong with me because I think this story is terrible. Not much of a plot, pathetic dialogue and inappropriate emotions. Sorry.if I offend anyone
Lynn Venable was author of the story in The Twilight Zone episode, "Time Enough At Last". Certain similarities between this and that make one wonder if Venable read WE. Du Boise, "The Comet", and was inspired?
THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO NOT ONLY SHARE, BUT BE THE DIFFERENCE WE NEED.
Now that’s what I call good Black Speculative Art... thank you for narrating. Cheers!
Thank you for the compliments and feedback! Cheers to you too, and have a Happy New Year!
One of my favorite short stories. I would love to write a screenplay based off it but I'm afraid of not doing Dubois justice
Thank you for posting this!
Oh man what timing!! We were jus recently assigned to this story and this video came out 2 weeks ago
Awesome, glad to be of help. Nice avatar btw, that's a classic.
Excellent! Thank you!
Appreciate the video keep up the good work! 🙂
He stood a moment on the steps of the bank,
watching the human river that swirled down
Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed
him save in a way that stung. He was outside
the world-"nothing!" as he said bitterly. Bits
of the words of the walkers came to him.
"The comet?"
"The comet-"
Everybody was talking of it. Even the president, as he entered, smiled patronizingly at
him, and asked:
"Well, Jim, are you scared?"
"No," said the messenger shortly.
"I thought we'd journeyed through the comet's tail once," broke in the junior clerk affably.
"Oh, that was Halley's," said the president;
"this is a new comet, quite a stranger, they
say-wonderful, wonderful! I saw it last night.
Oh, by the way, Jim," he said, turning again to
the messenger, "I want you to go down into the
lower vaults today."
The messenger followed the president
silently. Of course, they wanted him to go down
to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for
more valuable men. He smiled grimly and listened.
"Everything of value has been moved out
since the water began to seep in," said the president; "but we miss two volumes of old records.
Suppose you nose around down there,-it isn't
very pleasant, I suppose."
"Not very," said the messenger, as he walked
out.
"Well, Jim, the tail of the new comet hits
us at noon this time," said the vault clerk, as he
passed over the keys; but the messenger passed
silently down the stairs. Down he went beneath
Broadway, where the dim light filtered through
54
the feet of hurrying men; down to the dark
basement beneath; down into the blackness
and silence beneath that lowest cavern. Here
with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels
of the earth, under the world.
He drew a long breath as he threw back the
last great iron door and stepped into the fetid
slime within. Here at last was peace, and he
groped moodily forward. A great rat leaped past
him and cobwebs crept across his face. He felt
carefully around the room, shelf by shelf, on the
muddied floor, and in crevice and corner. Nothing. Then he went back to the far end, where
somehow the wall felt different. He sounded
and pushed and pried. Nothing. He started
away. Then something brought him back. He
was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black wall swung as on mighty
hinges, and blackness yawned beyond. He
peered in; it was evidently a secret vault-some
hiding place of the old bank unknown in newer
times. He entered hesitatingly. It was a long,
narrow room with shelves, and at the far end,
an old iron chest. On a high shelf lay the two
missing volumes of records, and others. He put
them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It
was old, strong, and rusty. He looked at the vast
and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on
the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with
rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and
began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred
years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily,
the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan laid
bare its treasure--and he saw the dull sheen of
gold!
"Boom!"
A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck
upon his ear. He started up and looked about.
All was black and still. He groped for his light
and swung it about him. Then he knew! The
great stone door had swung to. He forgot the
gold and looked death squarely in the face.
Then with a sigh he went methodically to work.
The cold sweat stood on his forehead; but he
searched, pounded, pushed, and worked until
after what seemed endless hours his hand struck
a cold bit of metal and the great door swung
again harshly on its hinges, and then, striking
against something soft and heavy, stopped. He
had just room to squeeze through. There lay the
body of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. He stared
at it, and then felt sick and nauseated. The
air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong,
peculiar odor. He stepped forward, clutched at
the air, and fell fainting across the corpse.
He awoke with a sense of horror, leaped
from the body, and groped up the stairs, calling to the guard. The watchman sat as if asleep,
with the gate swinging free. With one glance at
him the messenger hurried up to the sub-vault.
In vain he called to the guards. His voice echoed
and re-echoed weirdly. Up into the great basement he rushed. Here another guard lay prostrate on his face, cold and still. A fear arose in
the messenger's heart. He dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank. The stillness of death
lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent,
and stretched the silent forms of men. The messenger paused and glanced about. He was not a
man easily moved; but the sight was appalling!
"Robbery and murder," he whispered slowly to
himself as he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of
the president where he lay half-buried on his
desk. Then a new thought seized him: If they
found him here alone-with all this money and
all these dead men-what would his life be
worth? He glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to
a side door, and again looked behind. Quietly
he turned the latch and stepped out into Wall
Street.
How silent the street was! Not a soul was
stirring, and yet it was high noon-Wall Street?
Broadway? He glanced almost wildly up and
down, then across the street, and as he looked,
55
a sickening horror froze in his limbs. With a
choking cry of utter fright he lunged, leaned
giddily against the cold building, and stared
helplessly at the sight.
In the great stone doorway a hundred men
and women and children lay crushed and
twisted and jammed, forced into that great,
gaping doorway like refuse in a can-as if
in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they had
rushed and ground themselves to death. Slowly
the messenger crept along the walls, wetting
his parched mouth and trying to comprehend,
stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising
terror in his heart. He met a businessman, silkhatted and frock-coated, who had crept, too,
along that smooth wall and stood now stone
dead with wonder written on his lips. The messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought
the curb. A woman leaned wearily against the
signpost, her head bowed motionless on her
lace and silken bosom. Before her stood a streetcar, silent, and within-but the messenger
but glanced and hurried on. A grimy newsboy
sat in the gutter with the "last edition" in his
uplifted hand: "Danger!" screamed its black
headlines. "Warnings wired around the world.
The Comet's tail sweeps past us at noon. Deadly
gases expected. Close doors and windows. Seek
the cellar." The messenger read and staggered
on. Far out from a window above, a girl lay with
gasping face and sleevelets on her arms. On a
store step sat a little, sweet-faced girl looking
upward toward the skies, and in the carriage
by her lay-but the messenger looked no longer. The cords gave way-the terror burst in
his veins, and with one great, gasping cry he
sprang desperately forward and ran,-ran as
only the frightened run, shrieking and fighting
the air until with one last wail of pain he sank
on the grass of Madison Square and lay prone
and still.
When he rose, he gave no glance at the still
and silent forms on the benches, but, going to
a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself in a corner away from the drama of death,
he quietly gripped himself and thought the
thing through: The comet had swept the earth
and this was the end. Was everybody dead? He
must search and see.
He knew that he must steady himself and
keep calm, or he would go insane. First he must
go to a restaurant. He walked up Fifth Avenue
to a famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous,
ghost-haunted halls. He beat back the nausea,
and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried
into the street and ate ravenously, hiding to
keep out the sights.
"Yesterday, they would not have served
me," he whispered, as he forced the food down.
Then he started up the street,-looking,
peering, telephoning, ringing alarms; silent,
silent all. Was nobody-nobody-he dared not
think the thought and hurried on.
Suddenly he stopped still. He had forgotten.
My God! How could he have forgotten? He must
rush to the subway-then he almost laughed.
No--a car; if he could find a Ford. He saw one.
Gently he lifted off its burden, and took his
place on the seat. He tested the throttle. There
was gas. He glided off, shivering, and drove up
the street. Everywhere stood, leaned, lounged,
and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence. On
he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled with a gay party
whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck
lips; on past crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at Forty-Second Street
he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the
dead congestion. He came back on Fifth Avenue
at Fifty-Seventh and flew past the Plaza and
by the park with its hushed babies and silent
throng, until as he was rushing past SeventySecond Street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a
living form leaning wildly out an upper window. He gasped. The human voice sounded in
his ears like the voice of God.
"Hello-hello--help, in God's name!"
wailed the woman. "There's a dead girl in here
and a man and-and see yonder dead men lying
in the street and dead horses-for the love of
God go and bring the officers. . .. " And the
words trailed off into hysterical tears.
56
He wheeled the car in a sudden circle, running over the still body of a child and leaping
on the curb. Then he rushed up the steps and
tried the door and rang violently. There was a
long pause, but at last the heavy door swung
back. They stared a moment in silence. She had
not noticed before that he was a Negro. He had
not thought of her as white. She was a woman
of perhaps twenty-five-rarely beautiful and
richly gowned, with darkly golden hair, and
jewels. Yesterday, he thought with bitterness,
she would scarcely have looked at him twice.
He would have been dirt beneath her silken
feet. She stared at him. Of all the sorts of men
she had pictured as coming to her rescue she
had not dreamed of one like him. Not that he
was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far
from hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even
entered her thought. Yet as she looked at him
curiously he seemed quite commonplace and
usual. He was a tall, dark workingman of the
better class, with a sensitive face trained to stolidity and a poor man's clothes and hands. His
face was soft and slow and his manner at once
cold and nervous, like fires long banked, but
not out.
So a moment each paused and gauged the
other; then the thought of the dead world
without rushed in and they started toward each
other.
"What has happened?" she cried. "Tell
me! Nothing stirs. All is silence! I see the dead
strewn before my window as winnowed by
the breath of God,-and see ... " She dragged
him through great, silken hangings to where,
beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a
little French maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay prone in
his livery.
The tears streamed down the woman's
cheeks and she clung to his arm until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the
tremors racing through her body.
"I had been shut up in my darkroom developing pictures of the comet which I took last
night; when I came out-I saw the dead!
"What has happened?" she cried again.
He answered slowly:
"Something-comet or devil-swept across
the earth this morning and-many are dead!"
"Many? Very many?"
"I have searched and I have seen no other
living soul but you."
She gasped and they stared at each other.
"My-father!" she whispered.
"Where is he?"
"He started for the office."
"Where is it?"
"In the Metropolitan Tower."
"Leave a note for him here and come."
Then he stopped.
"No," he said firmly-"first, we must go--
to Harlem."
"Harlem!" she cried. Then she understood.
She tapped her foot at first impatiently. She
looked back and shuddered. Then she came
resolutely down the steps.
"There's a swifter car in the garage in the
court," she said.
"I don't know how to drive it," he said.
"I do," she answered.
In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem
on the wind. The Stutz rose and raced like an
airplane. They took the turn at llOth Street
on two wheels and slipped with a shriek into
l35th.
He was gone but a moment. Then he
returned, and his face was gray. She did not
look, but said:
"You have lost-somebody?"
"I have lost--everybody," he said, simply-
" unless ... "
He ran back and was gone several minuteshours they seemed to her.
"Everybody," he said, and he walked slowly
back with something filmlike in his hand which
he stuffed into his pocket.
''I'm afraid I was selfish," he said. But already
the car was moving toward the park among the
dark and lined dead of Harlem-the brown,
still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the silence--the wild and haunting
57
silence. Out of the park, and down Fifth Avenue
they whirled. In and out among the dead they
slipped and quivered, needing no sound of bell
or horn, until the great, square Metropolitan
Tower hove in sight. Gently he laid the dead
elevator boy aside; the car shot upward. The
door of the office stood open. On the threshold
lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the
dead clerk. The inner office was empty, but a
note lay on the desk, folded and addressed but
unsent:
Dear Daughter:
I've gone for a hundred-mile spin in Fred's
new Mercedes. Shall not be back before
dinner. I'll bring Fred with me.
J.B.H.
"Come," she cried nervously. "We must
search the city."
Up and down, over and across, back
again-on went that ghostly search. Everywhere was silence and death-death and
silence! They hunted from Madison Square to
Spuyten Duyvil; they rushed across the Williamsburg Bridge; they swept over Brooklyn;
from the Battery and Morningside Heights they
scanned the river. Silence, silence everywhere,
and no human sign. Haggard and bedraggled
they puffed a third time slowly down Broadway,
under the broiling sun, and at last stopped. He
sniffed the air. An odor-a smell-and with the
shifting breeze a sickening stench filled their
nostrils and brought its awful warning. The girl
settled back helplessly in her seat.
"What can we do?" she cried.
It was his turn now to take the lead, and he
did it quickly.
"The long-distance telephone--the telegraph and the cable--night rockets and thenflight!"
She looked at him now with strength and
confidence. He did not look like men, as she
had always pictured men; but he acted like
one and she was content. In fifteen minutes
they were at the central telephone exchange.
As they came to the door he stepped quickly
before her and pressed her gently back as he
closed it. She heard him moving to and fro, and
knew his burdens-the poor, little burdens he
bore. When she entered, he was alone in the
room. The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinxlike immobility. She
seated herself on a stool and donned the bright
earpiece. She looked at the mouthpiece. She
had never looked at one so closely before. It
was wide and black, pimpled with usage; inert;
dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves.
It looked-she beat back the thought-but
it looked,-it persisted in looking like-she
turned her head and found herself alone. One
moment she was terrified; then she thanked him
silently for his delicacy and turned resolutely,
with a quick intaking of breath.
"Hello!" she called in low tones. She was
calling to the world. The world must answer.
Would the world answer? Was the world ...
Silence!
She had spoken too low.
"Hello!" she cried, full-voiced.
She listened. Silence! Her heart beat quickly.
She cried in clear, distinct, loud tones: "Hellohello-hello!"
What was that whirring? Surely-no-was
it the click of a receiver?
She bent close, she moved the pegs in the
holes, and called and called, until her voice
rose almost to a shriek, and her heart hammered. It was as if she had heard the last flicker
of creation, and the evil was silence. Her voice
dropped to a sob. She sat stupidly staring into
the black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the
thought came again. Hope lay dead within her.
Yes, the cable and the rockets remained; but the
world-she could not frame the thought or say
the word. It was too mighty-too terrible! She
turned toward the door with a new fear in her
heart. For the first time she seemed to realize
that she was alone in the world with a stranger,
with something more than a stranger,-with
a man alien in blood and culture--unknown,
58
perhaps unknowable. It was awful! She must
escape--she must fly; he must not see her again.
Who knew what awful thoughtsShe gathered her silken skirts deftly about
her young, smooth limbs-listened, and glided
into a side hall. A moment she shrank back:
the hall lay filled with dead women; then she
leaped to the door and tore at it, with bleeding fingers, until it swung wide. She looked
out. He was standing at the top of the alley,-
silhouetted, tall and black, motionless. Was he
looking at her or away? She did not know-she
did not care. She simply leaped and ran-ran
until she found herself alone amid the dead and
the tall ramparts of towering buildings.
She stopped. She was alone. Alone! Alone
on the streets-alone in the city-perhaps
alone in the world! There crept in upon her the
sense of deception-of creeping hands behind
her back-of silent, moving things she could
not see,-of voices hushed in fearsome conspiracy. She looked behind and sideways, started
at strange sounds and heard still stranger, until
every nerve within her stood sharp and quivering, stretched to scream at the barest touch.
She whirled and flew back, whimpering like a
child, until she found that narrow alley again
and the dark, silent figure silhouetted at the
top. She stopped and rested; then she walked
silently toward him, looked at him timidly; but
he said nothing as he handed her into the car.
Her voice caught as she whispered:
"Not-that."
And he answered slowly: "No-not that!"
They climbed into the car. She bent forward
on the wheel and sobbed, with great, dry, quivering sobs, as they flew toward the cable office
on the east side, leaving the world of wealth
and prosperity for the world of poverty and
work. In the world behind them were death
and silence, grave and grim, almost cynical, but
always decent; here it was hideous. It clothed
itself in every ghastly form of terror, struggle,
hate, and suffering. It lay wreathed in crime and
squalor, greed and lust. Only in its dread and
awful silence was it like to death everywhere.
Yet as the two, flying and alone, looked
upon the horror of the world, slowly, gradually, the sense of all-enveloping death deserted
them. They seemed to move in a world silent
and asleep,-not dead. They moved in quiet
reverence, lest somehow they wake these sleeping forms who had, at last, found peace. They
moved in some solemn, worldwide Friedhof,
above which some mighty arm had waved its
magic wand. All nature slept until-until, and
quick with the same startling thought, they
looked into each other's eyes-he, ashen, and
she, crimson, with unspoken thought. To both,
the vision of a mighty beauty-of vast, unspoken things, swelled in their souls; but they put
it away.
Great, dark coils of wire came up from the
earth and down from the sun and entered this
low lair of witchery. The gathered lightnings of
the world centered here, binding with beams of
light the ends of the earth. The doors gaped on
the gloom within. He paused on the threshold.
"Do you know the code?" she asked.
"I know the call for help-we used it formerly at the bank."
She hardly heard. She heard the lapping of
the waters far below,-the dark and restless
waters-the cold and luring waters, as they
called. He stepped within. Slowly she walked
to the wall, where the water called below, and
stood and waited. Long she waited, and he did
not come. Then with a start she saw him, too,
standing beside the black waters. Slowly he
removed his coat and stood there silently. She
walked quickly to him and laid her hand on his
arm. He did not start or look. The waters lapped
on in luring, deadly rhythm. He pointed down
to the waters, and said quietly:
"The world lies beneath the waters nowmay I go?"
She looked into his stricken, tired face,
and a great pity surged within her heart. She
answered in a voice clear and calm, "No."
Upward they turned toward life again, and
he seized the wheel. The world was darkening
to twilight, and a great, gray pall was falling
59
mercifully and gently on the sleeping dead. The
ghastly glare of reality seemed replaced with
the dream of some vast romance. The girl lay
silently back, as the motor whizzed along, and
looked half-consciously for the elf-queen to
wave life into this dead world again. She forgot
to wonder at the quickness with which he had
learned to drive her car. It seemed natural. And
then as they whirled and swung into Madison
Square and at the door of the Metropolitan
Tower she gave a low cry, and her eyes were
great! Perhaps she had seen the elf-queen?
The man led her to the elevator of the tower
and deftly they ascended. In her father's office
they gathered rugs and chairs, and he wrote a
note and laid it on the desk; then they ascended
to the roof and he made her comfortable. For
a while she rested and sank to dreamy somnolence, watching the worlds above and wondering. Below lay the dark shadows of the city and
afar was the shining of the sea. She glanced at
him timidly as he set food before her and took
a shawl and wound her in it, touching her
reverently, yet tenderly. She looked up at him
with thankfulness in her eyes, eating what he
served. He watched the city. She watched him.
He seemed very human,-very near now.
"Have you had to work hard?" she asked
softly.
'~lways," he said.
"I have always been idle," she said. "I was
rich."
"I was poor," he almost echoed.
"The rich and the poor are met together,"
she began, and he finished:
"The Lord is the Maker of them all."
"Yes," she said slowly; "and how foolish our
human distinctions seem-now," looking down
to the great dead city stretched below, swimming in unlightened shadows.
"Yes-I was not-human, yesterday," he
said.
She looked at him. '~nd your people were
not my people," she said; "but today ... " She
paused. He was a man,-no more; but he was
in some larger sense a gentleman,-sensitive,
27:18
39:48
There’s obviously wrong with me because I think this story is terrible. Not much of a plot, pathetic dialogue and inappropriate emotions. Sorry.if I offend anyone
40:59