I have become increasingly aware of the briefness of
life. Sitting here in this improvised workroom in my little
home in Pacoima, late at night after the family has gone to bed, touching
this battered portable, I remember only yesterday when the typewriter was
new and I wanted so desperately to be a published writer of short stories
like my friend Charles Beaumont. It was like a crazy need.Writing is a
lonely business.
Writing is a lonely business. It tends to make you reclusive.
Because it is difficult to concentrate, to get lost in the work while others
are around, more and more you seek a place to be alone. When I used to
hang around with the Group, learning to be a writer, little did I know
that I would spend so many solitary hours at night dreaming.
God knows, I'd rather be down the hall in the bedroom cuddled up with Lola
than here in the workroom trying to build a story so that Lola and I can
earn the money necessary to keep the bills paid, to feed us and allow us
to be together. George Clayton Johnson's new book "Twilight Zone Scripts
& Stories" is a collection of George's favorite episodes from the television
series "The Twilight Zone." Written by George Clayton Johnson, these dark,
twisted, and horrific tales are landmarks from the Silver Age of Television
Drama .
"Twilight Zone Scripts & Stories" presents seven episodes
in their original short story/story treatment format plus four in teleplay
format. Dedicated followers of "The Twilight Zone" and students of television
will be able to read these stories as they were originally written for
Rod Serling, and the teleplays as adapted by George Clayton Johnson and
Rod Serling. Order
Online
Adventures
in the Twilight Zone Carol Serling $4.49 Journeys
to the Twilight Zone Vol 900 Carol Serling $4.49 Journeys
to the Twilight Zone Carol Serling Hardcover $8.08 New
Twilight Zone 21 Tales by the Greatest Sci-Fi and Dark Fantasy Writers
of Our Time M. H. Greenberg Hardcover $6.28 Return
to the Twilight Zone Carol Serling $4.49 Return
to the Twilight Zone Nineteen New Nerve-Shattering Stories Carol Serling
Hardcover $8.08
Sci
Fi TV : From the Twilight Zone to Deep Space Nine James Van Hise $4.49
available. Twilight Zone Vol.1 VHS Tape $11.69 Twilight
Zone Vol.10 VHS Tape $11.69 Twilight
Zone Vol.11 VHS Tape $11.69 Twilight
Zone Vol.12 VHS Tape $11.69 Twilight
Zone Vol.2 VHS Tape $11.69 Twilight
Zone Vol.3 VHS Tape $11.69 Twilight
Zone Vol.4 VHS Tape $11.69 Twilight
Zone Vol.5 Young, Truex VHS Tape $11.69
Twilight
Zone Vol.6 Meredith, Montgomery VHS Tape $11.69 Twilight
Zone Vol.7 Klugman, Townes VHS Tape $11.69 Twilight
Zone Vol.8 Mumy, Cartwright VHS Tape $11.69 Twilight
Zone Volume 15 Twilight Zone VHS Tape Writing
for the Twilight Zone George C. Johnson Paperback $10.85 En
Los Limites De LA Realidad/Twilight Zone Robert Bloch Hardcover TV
Video Card VHS Tape $8.99 The
Twilight Zone Companion Marc Scott Zicree Paperback $14.35
Twilight
Zone Vol. 9 VHS Tape $11.69 Rod
Serling : The Dreams and Nightmares of Life in the Twilight Zone Joel
Engel Paperback Stories
from the Twilight Zone Rod Serling Paperback Stories
from the Twilight Zone Rod Serling Paperback Tales
from the New Twilight Zone J. Michael Straczynski Paperback The
Twilight Zone : Graphic Novel Harlan Ellison, Neal Adams Paperback
Twilight
Zone : The Original Stories Martin Harry Greenberg, et al Paperback
The
Twilight Zone Companion Paperback Visions
from the Twilight Zone Hardcover Visions
from the Twilight Zone Arlen Schumer Hardcover Walking
Distance/Audio Cassette (The Twilight Zone, No. 2) Rod Serling Hardcover
Rod Serling's the Twilight Zone Rod Serling Hardcover $18.95Rod
Serling's Twilight Zone: 26 Unforgettable Explorations Into the Realm of
the Supernatural Walter Brown Gibson Hardcover $10.99 Telecom
Network Twilight Zone Diana Dougan, Johnson Craig Paperback $35.00
The
Twilight Zone Rod Serling Paperback Twilight
Zone : The Movie Robert Bloch Paperback Twilight
Zone the Movie/Laser Various Laser Disc $34.99Twilight
Zone/Best of Soundtrack Audio CD $17.98 Women
in Uniform/Twilight Zone Iron Maiden Audio CD $20.98 Treasures
of the Twilight Zone #2 VHS Tape $26.99
Twilight Zone Martin Greenberg Hardcover $8.98 Twilight
Zone Christmas Too Cool
Midnight
Sun (No 4/Audio Cassette/Unabridged) Rod Serling Hardcover The
Mighty Casey/Audio Cassette (The Twilight Zone, No. 1) Rod Serling
Hardcover The
Monsters Are Due on Maple Street/Cassette (Twilight Zone, No 5) Rod
Serling Hardcover More
Stories from the Twilight Zone Rod Serling Paperback New
Stories from the Twilight Zone Martin H. Greenberg, Alan Brennert Paperback
New
Stories from Twilight Zone Rod Sterling Paperback The
Odyssey of Flight 33/Cassette (Twilight Zone, No 3) Rod Serling Hardcover
Outrageous
Conduct : Art, Ego, and the Twilight Zone Case Stephen Farber, Marc
Green Hardcover Outrageous
Conduct : Art, Ego, the Twilight Zone Case Stephen Farber, Marc Green
Paperback Sci
Fi TV from Twilight Zone to Deep Space Nine James Van Hise Paperback
Special
Effects : Disaster at Twilight Zone : The Tragedy and the Trial Ron
Labrecque Hardcover Twilight
Zone Volume 16 Twilight Zone VHS Tape $11.69
Twilight
Zone:The Movie Various VHS Tape $13.49 Undeclared
War : Twilight Zone of Constitutional Power Edward Keynes Paperback
$14.95 Criticism
in the Twilight Zone : Postmodern Perspectives on Literature & Politics.
D., Editor Zadworna-Fjellestad Paperback $34.00 Horror
2 : Los Mejores Relatos De 'Twilight Zone'/Horror 2 : Anthology of Stories
from 'the Twilight Zone Magazine' Stephen King Paperback $10.80 Horror
2, Los Relatos De Twilight Zone Stephen King Paperback In
the Zone : The Twilight World of Rod Serling Peter Wolfe Paperback
In
the Zone : The Twilight World of Rod Serling Peter Wolfe Hardcover
Into
the Twilight Zone
Even after all these years we are still best friends who can't be in the
same room without plunging into earnest conversation, with both of us talking
as fast as we can. Only a closed door stops the avalanche of eager words
that continually pass between us. I've taken to working late at night, after
she has gone to bed and the world has quieted down, alone in what was once
a spare bedroom, trying to fit together just those words on paper that might
excite an editor and eventually bring in the money we need. The only way
to survive is to write stories that sell.
Which is why I was in my workroom at three in the morning, lost in language,
when the telephone rang.
I grabbed it to keep it from waking Lola, aware of the lateness of the hour
and apprehensive because calls this late often portend trouble.
"Hello?" I said.
A woman with a telephone company voice said, "This is the Special Operator.
I have a person-to-person call for George Clayton Johnson."
I wondered what kind of trouble it was. "This is George."
Click-buzz and I heard her saying from farther away, "I have your party
on the line, sir. One moment..."
Another click and the woman was gone. Then I heard a voice saying:
"Hello, George. I thought I might catch you now. I know you like to
work at night."
The voice was warm and familiar.
It was the voice of Charles Beaumont.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything important. I thought if you weren't
too busy we could talk for a few minutes."
I felt the hair go up on my spine.
Charles Beaumont has been dead more than twenty years.
"Who is this?" I said, suspicious. I could feel myself suddenly
becoming angry.
"It is I," the familiar voice intoned solemnly. "It is only
and merely I, but let's not waste time. I have a lot of questions to ask-firstly,
how's the Group? Have you seen them lately?"
My God. Whoever was doing him had all Chuck's inflections down pat. Abruptly
I felt cold, aware of the night. I heard the faint tinkle of ice in a glass.
A thought crossed my mind: Do they serve alcohol in Heaven?
"This isn't funny," I said. "Not at all."
"George," said Beaumont's voice with a note of disappointment,
"I had expected you to be quicker."
I found myself wanting to prove how quick I could be. Beaumont always had
that effect on me.
"Okay, Chuck," I said tightly. "I'll go along with the gag.
So here we are in the Twilight Zone. How are things at your end? Is it the
standard Heaven?
"Not exactly," he said. "That's why I called."
Now, I thought, here's where we find out what this is all about. "Tell
me more."
"The Greater Truth is that one man's Heaven is another man's Hell."
Knowing how much English he could put on things, I said, "Give it to
me with the bark off."
"It's exactly the way I imagined it would be. Everything is perfect.
There is not a discordant note. There is never any waiting and no one disputes
any thing I say. Do you see the implications?" he asked sharply.
"I read that a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven
for?" I said, trying to understand.
"Exactly," said Beaumont's voice somberly, and then, brightening,
added, "but it's my turn. What about Burt Shonberg? What is his latest
stuff like?"
"He died, Chuck," I said, reminded of the brilliant artist whose
luminous paintings had enlightened us all.
"Oh. I didn't know."
The sound of the words chilled my blood. "Chuck, I said. "Burt
was one of the good guys. Haven't you seen him around?"
"No," he said.
I sat stunned, thinking, "My Father's house has many mansions!"
"And the Group? Are they still living?"
"Yes."
I could hear relief in his voice. "And do you still take each other
to the beach?"
I remembered those night-long sessions of naked encounter and mutual psychiatry
with the four of us jammed into Chuck's new Volkswagen. We would drive along
the seacoast or hunch together over steamy coffee cups in an all-night diner
to thresh out the problems of the world while pointing out each other's
flaws, stripping away the falseness.
For Chuck they were fun, but for me those confrontations were often
nightmares as I defended myself against self-satisfied challengers: John,
who figured out how he should feel before becoming emotional, with visions
of himself as a no-nonsense executive with a taste for the finer things
in life; Bill, who would kid his way out, the willing focus of Chuck's jokes
who never forgot or misplaced anything, determined to make a living from
writing, any kind of writing, happy when the heat wasn't on him; and Chuck
Beaumont, keeping things moving with his aggressive manner and willingness
to go first, somehow knowing that he was bulletproof, that he was the master
of verbal judo who was living a charmed life.
Among us, Chuck was the authority on writing.
He had written The Hunger and Other Stories, had already published
his first hard cover novel, was selling regularly to slick magazines like
Playboy and was being sent to the studios on interviews by his Hollywood
agent, Malcolm Stewart of the Ingo Preminger Agency on Sunset.
He was a proven success.
Bill was selling stories and articles to the men's magazines.
John had been taken on by the Harold Matson Agency in New York and there
was talk of a book contract.
I didn't have an agent. All I had sold was an original movie script for
peanuts and after several years it looked as though it would never be produced.
All of my attempts to write short stories had come back again till I was
blind to their faults. Baffled by the problem, I had taken to procrastinating
while I figured out the secret, studying Chuck and the others for clues
on how the magic act was done. Was it the neatly typed pages, typed and
re-typed to perfection? Was it the charm, the personality, the telephone
manner? Was it connections? Was it luck?
Chuck insisted it was work, and that was echoed by the others. He talked
a lot about forcing himself to sit in the chair. He would put a piece of
paper in the typer and make himself stay there even if the words wouldn't
come. He said it was the way he got that trance state where he forgot himself
and became the work. He had adopted a schedule and stuck to it, which wasn't
my way. That's what I'd quit my job to avoid.
So all too often I'd find myself backed into an uncomfortable corner by
all three of them at once; forced to admit that, measured by my progress,
I could be wrong.
I was there to learn, wasn't I?
Somehow it was different when it was Chuck who was outflanked. He would
smile warmly at us and thank us for straightening him out while praising
us for our insights into his self-delusions.
Yes, I remembered those enlightening torture sessions we called "being
taken to the beach."
"No," I said. "We haven't been to the beach in years."
"Why not?" Chuck's voice sounded dismayed. "lt appeared to
me that you liked and admired each other."
"Sure," I said, "but you were the center. You must have known
that the Group would pull apart without you. Oh, not at once. Bill and I
wrote a fairly successful book together but it turned out that the big attraction
between us was you. We spent our time together, waiting.
"You'd lock yourself away, working on something while we'd wait for
you to come out and play. We'd see each other from time to time, but the
day would come when you'd finish the script or the story and you'd be back
again. Then the Group would come alive. That was when you, tired of solitude,
would want excitement. The minute you'd come out of the office of yours
with the manuscript under your arm you'd call one of us on the phone and
he'd come running, maybe picking up somebody on the way. You knew how to
orchestrate these things so we'd all end up at your place to talk and listen
to the hi-fi or pile into a car and go for a drive...
"It was your group, Chuck. Without you to center on, we simply discovered
that we all lived in different worlds. When John Donne wrote, 'No man is
an island,' he was mistaken. We may share the Earth but each man is a universe
of his own creation. His dreams. His lusts. His needs. Every man is a god
who has forgotten his divinity."
"Exactly," said the voice of Charles Beaumont. "That's why
it's so important that you call the others. Get them back together again.
It's only while you're on Earth that you get your three wishes-if you have
the will to reach for them. It's magic interacting with the throng. There
are dangers, of course. It's easy to forget yourself and get lost in all
the exciting activity, to be caught up in the world . . . but you must not
avoid it, either.
"Call them, Gorge. Get the Group together. Don't let them drift out
of your life.
"Hug them to you.
"Cling to them.
"Pray for them.
"Cherish them.
"Didn't you know that if each of us lives in his own world, he also
lives in his own Heaven?"
"It gets very lonely when the others aren't around...George, hurry.
There is only so much time. Infinity is only a heartbeat long. Eternity
is now. For God's sake, wake up. . . !"
There was suddenly a click-buzz on the phone and I heard the colorless voice
of the Special Operator.
"I'm sorry to disconnect you, sir, but your three minutes are up."
Far off, away, I thought I heard an anguished cry. Then the familiar dial
tone.
I fumbled the phone back into the cradle and sat there for a moment, thinking.
I could see what he meant about there not being enough time. I wanted to
tell him that though he was right about not letting the friendship die,
I couldn't suddenly stop working and call John and Bill.
If I could simply stop what I'm doing the first thing I'd do is go down
the hall to the bedroom where my wife, Lola, lies sleeping.
Don't you understand, Chuck, it isn't only the money to pay the bills? There
is a Greater Truth. Don't you know that when you were alone in your office
writing those stories, you were touching more people more deeply with the
quality of your mind and thoughts than you ever could in a car driving along
a beach with three guys. And don't you see why I couldn't leave the workroom
until I finished this story?
Copyright George Clayton Johnson.