Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 1

‘Sure,’ said the cabbie. ‘All the time. There’s always a crowd. You’d think it was their own mother got killed.’

‘They come running awfully fast,’ said the man in the back of the cab.

‘Same way with a fire or an explosion. Nobody around. Boom. Lotsa people around. I dunno.’

‘Ever seen an accident – at night?’

The cabbie nodded. ‘Sure. Don’t make no difference. There’s always a crowd.’

The wreck came in view. A body lay on the pavement. You knew there was a body even if you couldn’t see it. Because of the crowd. The crowd with its back toward him as he sat in the rear of the cab. With its back toward him. He opened the window and almost started to yell. But he didn’t have the nerve. If he yelled they might turn around.

And he was afraid to see their faces.

‘I seem to have a penchant for accidents,’ he said, in his office. It was late afternoon. His friend sat across the desk from him, listening. ‘I got out of the hospital this morning and first thing on the way home, we detoured around a wreck.’

‘Things run in cycles,’ said Morgan.

‘Let me tell you about my accident.’

‘I’ve heard it. Heard it all.’

‘But it was funny, you must admit.’

‘I must admit. Now how about a drink?’

They talked on for half an hour or more. All the while they talked, at the back of Spallner’s brain a small watch ticked, a watch that never needed winding. It was the memory of a few little things. Wheels and faces.

At about five-thirty there was a hard metal noise in the street. Morgan nodded and looked out and down. ‘What’d I tell you? Cycles. A truck and a cream-colored Cadillac. Yes, yes.’

Spallner walked to the window. He was very cold and as he stood there, he looked at his watch, at the small minute hand. One two three four five seconds – people running – eight nine ten eleven twelve – from all over, people came running – fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen seconds – more people, more cars, more horns blowing. Curiously distant, Spallner looked upon the scene as an explosion in reverse, the fragments of the detonation sucked back to the point of impulsion. Nineteen, twenty, twentyone seconds and the crowd was there. Spallner made a gesture down at them, wordless.

The crowd had gathered so fast.

He saw a woman’s body a moment before the crowd swallowed it up.

Morgan said, ‘You look lousy. Here. Finish your drink.’

‘I’m all right, I’m all right. Let me alone. I’m all right. Can you see those people? Can you see any of them? I wish we could see them closer.’

Morgan cried out. ‘Where in hell are you going?’

Spallner was out the door, Morgan after him, and down the stairs, as rapidly as possible. ‘Come along, and hurry.’

‘Take it easy, you’re not a well man!’

They walked out on to the street. Spallner pushed his way forward. He thought he saw a red-haired woman with too much red color on her cheeks and lips.

‘There!’ He turned wildly to Morgan. ‘Did you see her?’

‘See who?’

‘Damn it; she’s gone. The crowd closed in!’

The crowd was all around, breathing and looking and shuffling and mixing and mumbling and getting in the way when he tried to shove through. Evidently the red-haired woman had seen him coming and run off.

He saw another familiar face! A little freckled boy. But there are many freckled boys in the world. And, anyway, it was no use; before Spallner reached him, this little boy ran away and vanished among the people.

‘Is she dead?’ a voice asked. ‘Is she dead?’

‘She’s dying,’ someone else replied. ‘She’ll be dead before the ambulance arrives. They shouldn’t have moved her. They shouldn’t have moved her.’

All the crowd faces – familiar, yet unfamiliar, bending over, looking down, looking down.

‘Hey, mister, stop pushing.’

‘Who you shovin’, buddy?’

Spallner came back out, and Morgan caught hold of him before he fell. ‘You damned fool. You’re still sick. Why in hell’d you have to come down here?’ Morgan demanded.

‘I don’t know, I really don’t. They moved her, Morgan, someone moved her. You should never move a traffic victim. It kills them. It kills them.’

‘Yeah. That’s the way with people. The idiots.’

Spallner arranged the newspaper clippings carefully.

Morgan looked at them. ‘What’s the idea? Ever since your accident you think every traffic scramble is part of you. What are these?’

‘Clippings of motor-car crackups, and photos. Look at them. Not at the cars,’ said Spallner, ‘but at the crowds around the cars.’ He pointed. ‘Here. Compare this photo of a wreck in the Wilshire District with one in Westwood. No resemblance. But now take this Westwood picture and align it with one taken in the Westwood District ten years ago.’ Again he motioned. ‘This woman is in both pictures.’

‘Coincidence. The woman happened to be there once in 1936, again in 1946.’

‘A coincidence once, maybe. But twelve times over a period of ten years, when the accidents occurred as much as three miles from one another, no. Here.’ He dealt out a dozen photographs. ‘She’s in all of these!’

‘Maybe she’s perverted.’

‘She’s more than that. How does she happen to be there so quickly after each accident? And why does she wear the same clothes in pictures taken over a period of a decade?’

‘I’ll be damned, so she does.’

‘And, last of all, why was she standing over me the night of my accident, two weeks ago?’

They had a drink. Morgan went over the files. ‘What’d you do, hire a clipping service while you were in the hospital to go back through the newspapers for you?’ Spallner nodded. Morgan sipped his drink. It was getting late. The street lights were coming on in the streets below the office. ‘What does all this add up to?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Spallner, ‘except that there’s a universal law about accidents. Crowds gather. They always gather. And like you and me, people have wondered year after year, why they gathered so quickly, and how? I know the answer. Here it is!’

He flung the clippings down. ‘It frightens me.’

‘These people – mightn’t they be thrill-hunters, perverted sensationalists with a carnal lust for blood and morbidity?’