Great story, Brent...but that is what I'd expect from Ray Bradbury....I'm
surprised this is the first time I've seen this one...
Brent Wodehouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:T h e C r o w d
by Ray Bradbury
MR. SPALLNER put his hands over his face.
There was the feeling of movement in space,
the beautifully tortured scream, the impact and tumbling
of the car with wall, through wall, over and down like a
toy, and him hurled out of it. Then - silence.
The crowd came running. Faintly, where he lay, he heard
them running. He could tell their ages and their sizes by the
sound of their numerous feet over the summer grass and on
the lined pavement, and over the asphalt street; and picking
through the cluttered bricks to where his car hung half into
the night sky, still spinning its wheels with a senseless
centrifuge.
Where the crowd came from he didn't know. He
struggled to remain aware and then the crowd faces
hemmed in upon him, hung over like the large glowing leaves
of down-bent trees. They were a ring of shifting, compressing,
changing faces over him, looking down, looking down, reading
the time of his life or death by his face, making his face into
a moon dial, where the moon cast a shadow from his nose out
upon his cheek to tell the time of breathing or not breathing
any more ever.
How swiftly a crowd comes, he thought, like the iris
of an eye compressing in out of nowhere.
A siren. A police voice. Movement. Blood trickled
from his lips, and he was being moved into an ambulance.
Someone said, "Is he dead?" And someone else said, "No, he's
not dead." And a third person said, "He won't die, he's not going
to die." And he saw the faces of the crowd beyond him in the
night, and he knew by their expressions that he wouldn't die.
And that was strange. He saw a man's face, thin, bright, pale;
the man swallowed and bit his lips, very sick. There was a
small woman, too, with red hair and too much red on her cheeks
and lips. And a little boy with a freckled face. Others' faces.
An old man with a wrinkled upper lip, an old woman, with a
mole upon her chin. They had all come from - where? Houses,
cars, alleys, from the immediate and the accident-shocked
world. Out of alleys and out of hotels and out of streetcars
and seemingly out of nothing they came.
The crowd looked at him, and he looked back at
them and did not like them at all. There was a vast wrongness
to them. He couldn't put his finger on it. They were far worse
than this machine-made thing that happened to him now.
The ambulance doors slammed. Through the windows
he saw the crowd looking in, looking in. That crowd that always
came so fast, so strangely fast, to form a circle, to peer down,
to probe, to gawk, to question, to point, to disturb, to spoil
the privacy of a man's agony by their frank curiosity.
The ambulance drove off. He sank back and their faces
still stared into his face, even with his eyes shut.
The car wheels spun in his mind for days. One wheel,
four wheels, spinning, spinning, and whirring, around and around.
He knew it was wrong. Something wrong with the
wheels and the whole accident and the running of feet and the
curiosity. The crowd faces mixed and spun into the wild rotation
of the wheels.
He awoke.
Sunlight, a hospital room, a hand taking his pulse.
"How do you feel?" asked the doctor.
The wheels faded away. Mr. Spallner looked around.
"Fine - I guess."
He tried to find words. About the accident. "Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"That crowd - was it last night?"
"Two days ago. You've been here since Thursday. You're
all right, though. You're doing fine. Don't try and get up."
"That crowd. Something about wheels, too. Do accidents
make people well, a - little off?"
"Temporarily, sometimes."
He lay staring up at the doctor. "Does it hurt your time
sense?"
"Panic sometimes does."
"Makes a minute seem like an hour, or maybe an hour
seem like a minute?"
"Yes."
"Let me tell you then." He felt the bed under him, the
sunlight on his face. "You'll think I'm crazy. I was driving
too fast, I know. I'm sorry now. I jumped the curb and hit that
wall. I was hurt and numb, I know, but I still rememember things.
Mostly - the crowd." He waited a moment and then decided to go
on, for he suddenly knew what it was that bothered him. "The
crowd got there too quickly. Thirty seconds after the smash they
were all standing over me and staring at me.... It's not right they
should run that fast, so late at night...."
"You only think it was thirty seconds," said the doctor.
"It was probably three or four minutes. Your senses - "
"Yeah, I know - my senses, the accident. But I was
conscious! I remember one thing that puts it all together and
makes it funny, God, so damned funny. The wheels of my car,
upside down. The wheels were still spinning when the crowd got
there!"
The doctor smiled.
The man in bed went on. "I'm positive! The wheels were
spinning and spinning fast - the front wheels! Wheels don't spin
very long, friction cuts them down. And these were really
spinning!"
"You're confused," said the doctor.
"I'm not confused. The street was empty. Not a soul in
sight. And then the accident and the wheels still spinning and
all those faces over me, quick, in no time. And the way they
looked down at me, I knew I wouldn't die...."
"Simple shock," said the doctor, walking away into the
sunlight.
They released him from the hospital two weeks later. He
rode home in a taxi. People had come to visit him during his
two weeks on his back, and to all of them he had told his story
- the accident, the spinning wheels, the crowd. They had all
laughed with him concerning it, and passed it off.
He leaned forward and tapped on the taxi window.
"What's wrong?"
The cabbie looked back. "Sorry, boss. This is one helluva
town to drive in. Got an accident up ahead. Want me to detour?"
"Yes, No. No! Wait. Go ahead. Let's - let's take a look."
The cab moved forward, honking.
"Funny damn thing," said the cabbie. "Hey, *you!* Get that
fleatrap out of the way!" Quieter, "Funny thing - more damn
people."
Mr. Spallner looked down and watched his fingers tremble
on his knee. "You notice that, too?"
"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, twenty-one
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 onto 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 motorcar 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 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?"
Spallner shrugged. "Does that explain their being at all
the accidents? Notice, they stick to certain territories. A
Brentwood accident will bring out one group. A Huntington Park
another. But there's a norm for faces; a certain percentage appear
at each wreck."
Morgan said, "They're not *all* the same faces, are they?"
"Naturally not. Accidents draw normal people, too, in the
course of time. But these, I find, are always the *first* ones there."
"Who are they? What do they want? You keep hinting and
never telling. Good Lord, you must have some idea. You've scared
yourself, and now you've got *me* jumping."
"I've tried getting to them, but someone always trips me
up, I'm always too late. They slip into the crowd and vanish. The
crowd seems to offer protection to some of its members. They see
me coming."
"Sounds like some sort of clique."
"They have one thing in common, they always show up
together. At a fire or an explosion or on the sidelines of a war, at
any public demonstration of this thing called death. Vultures,
hyenas, or saints, I don't know which they are, I just don't know.
But I'm going to the police with it, this evening. It's gone on long
enough. One of them shifted that woman's body today. They shouldn't
have touched her. It killed her."
He placed the clippings in a briefcase. Morgan got up and
slipped into his coat. Spallner clicked the briefcase shut. "Or, I just
happened to think ..."
"What?"
"Maybe they *wanted* her dead."
"Why?"
"Who knows. Come along?"
"Sorry. It's late. See you tomorrow. Luck." They went out
together. "Give my regards to the cops. Think they'll believe you?"
"Oh, they'll believe me all right. Good night."
Spallner took it slow driving downtown.
"I want to get there," he told himself, "alive."
He was rather shocked, but not surprised, somehow, when
the truck came rolling out of an alley straight at him. He was just
congratulating himself on his keen sense of observation and talking
out what he would say to the police in his mind, when the truck
smashed into his car. It wasn't really his car, that was the
disheartening thing about it. In a preoccupied mood, he was tossed
first this way and then that way, while he thought, What a shame,
Morgan has gone and lent me his extra car for a few days until my
other car is fixed, and now here I go again. The windshield hammered
back into his face. He was forced back and forth in several lightning
jerks. Then all motion stopped and all noise stopped and only pain
filled him up.
He heard their feet running and running and running. He
fumbled with the car door. It clicked. He fell out upon the pavement
drunkenly and lay, ear to the asphalt, listening to them coming. It
was like a great rainstorm, with many drops, heavy and light and
medium, touching the earth. He waited a few seconds and listened
to their coming and their arrival. Then, weakly, expectantly, he
rolled his head up and looked.
The crowd was there.
He could smell their breaths, the mingled odors of many
people sucking and sucking on the air a man needs to live by. They
crowded and jostled and sucked and sucked all the air up from
around his gasping face until he tried to tell them to move back,
they were making him live in a vacuum. His head was bleeding very
badly. He tried to move, and he realized something was wrong with
his spine. He hadn't felt much at the impact, but his spine was hurt.
He didn't dare move.
He couldn't speak. Opening his mouth, nothing came out but
a gagging.
Someone said, "Give me a hand. We'll roll him over and
lift him into a more comfortable position."
Spallner's brain burst apart.
No! Don't move me!
"We'll move him," said the voice, casually.
You idiots, you'll kill me, don't!
But he could not say any of this out loud. He could only
think it.
Hands took hold of him. They started to lift him. He cried
out, and nausea choked him up. They straightened him out into a
ramrod of agony. Two men did it. One of them was thin, bright, pale,
alert, a young man. The other man was very old and had a wrinkled
upper lip.
He had seen their faces before.
A familiar voice said, "Is - is he dead?"
Another voice, a memorable voice, responded, "No. Not
yet. But he will be dead before the ambulance arrives."
It was all a very silly, mad plot. Like every accident. He
squealed hysterically at the solid wall of faces. They were all
around him, these judges and jurors with the faces he had seen
before. Through his pain he counted their faces.
The freckled boy. The old man with the wrinkled upper lip.
The red-haired, red-cheeked woman. An old woman with a mole on
her chin.
I know what you're here for, he thought. You're here just
as you're at *all* accidents. To make certain the right ones live
and the right ones die. That's why you lifted me. You knew it would
kill me. You knew I'd live if you left me alone.
And that's the way it's been since time began, when
crowds gather. You murder much easier, this way. Your alibi is very
simple; you didn't know it was dangerous to move a hurt man. You
didn't mean to hurt him.
He looked at them, above him, and he was curious as
a man under deep water looking up at people on a bridge. Who are
you? Where do you come from and how do you get here so soon?
You're the crowd that's always in the way, using up good air that a
dying man's lungs are in need of, using up space he should be using
to lie in, alone. Tramping on people to make sure they die, that's you.
I know *all* of you.
It was like a polite monologue. They said nothing. Faces.
The old man. The red-haired woman.
Someone picked up his briefcase. "Whose is this?"
It's mine! It's evidence against all of you!
Eyes, inverted over him. Shiny eyes under tousled hair
or under hats.
Faces.
Somewhere - a siren. The ambulance was coming.
But, looking at the faces, the construction, the cast, the
form of the faces, Spallner saw it was too late. He read it in
their faces.
They *knew.*
He tried to speak. A little bit got out:
"It - looks like I'll - be joining up with you. I - guess
I'll be a member of your - group - now."
He closed his eyes then, and waited for the coroner.
"The Crowd," by Ray Bradbuy. Copyright © 1943
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