“Wilson slept without dreams.”

Richard Matheson’s dark existential tale “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” first appeared in Alone by Night in 1961, and it bears some notable differences from the Twilight Zone episode of the same name. It is a nightmarish exercise in gaslighting and hallucination for a mentally ill person aboard an airplane. Arthur Jeffrey Wilson is terrified of flying –he gets sweaty, nauseous, motion sick, and “his eyes took the glaze of a suffering man, his hands drew in like tensing claws.” After the plane takes off, he steps into the bathroom where he contemplates suicide (he has snuck a pistol onto the airplane despite clearly wrestling with his own inner demons). He is seated next to an emergency exit, but when he stares out the window, he spots a strange shadowy “man” crawling on the wing. Wilson panics and calls for the stewardess, but when she arrives the man disappears. This happens several more times and Wilson compares the man to Caliban, a Gremlin, and a fairy tale troll as he watches in horror as the creature starts tampering with the plane engines.

“It was a hideously malignant face, a face not human. Its skin was grimy, of a wide-pored coarseness; its nose a squat, discolored lump; its lips misshapen, cracked, forced apart by teeth of a grotesque size and crookedness; its eyes recessed and small –unblinking. All framed by shaggy, tangled hair which sprouted, too in furry tufts from the man’s ears and nose, in birdlike down across his cheeks” (207).

In terror of the plane being damaged, Wilson continues to harangue the stewardess, until she grows concerned about him and he can no longer handle the tension. He grabs his pistol and fires it out the window at the creature in a dramatic scene of confrontation. Wilson later awakens as he is being rolled out on a stretcher while staff complain Wilson’s act was the “nuttiest way of tryin’ to commit suicide.” However, Wilson believes they will all soon realize that he actually saved their lives. Was it all a hallucination? Or was Wilson telling the truth? Matheson leaves the conclusion somewhat ambiguous though I am led to believe Wilson is clearly a mentally ill individual who experienced a hallucinatory episode exacerbated by his fear of flying and the taking of some Dramamine pills.

Unlike in the classic Twilight Zone episode of the same name, which features an unforgettable performance by William Shatner, the protagonists name in the story is Arthur Wilson rather than Robert Wilson, and in the story he is not seated next to his wife (in the story his wife’s name is Jacqueline and they have at least two sons together). Also, whereas in the Twilight Zone episode Wilson was given an elaborate background as a mental patient who experienced a breakdown, the story is somewhat nebulous on this point. Regardless, both the episode and the short story are top tier. Matheson later revealed he was inspired to write the story when he was flying on an airplane and imagined himself seeing a man skiing on the airplane wing. He later changed it to a gremlin.     

Matheson, Richard. The Best of Richard Matheson. Edited with an introduction by Victoria LaValle. Penguin Classics. New York, NY (2017).

Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.

“Just before the telephone rang, storm winds toppled the tree outside her window…” (253).

Miss Elva Keene is an elderly widow has been receiving phone calls in the middle of the night but when she answers, there is no voice on the other hand. During the day, she receives care from Nurse Phillips but in the evenings, she continues to receive disturbing phone calls with odd muffled rustling sounds. Miss Keene becomes convinced there is a man on the other end but Nurse Phillips lifts the receiver so no phone calls will come in the evening.

However, the sound of the dial tone keeps her awake so she puts the phone back just in time for the phone to ring and a voice can be heard on the other end: “Where are you?” he asked. “I want to talk to you.” After an investigation, the calls are traced to a fallen wire sitting on the far edge of town where nobody lives –in the cemetery. And in the end, she receives a truly horrifying call. A man’s voice on the other end says, “Hello, Miss Elva. I’ll be right over.”  

This short story was the basis for the classic Twilight Zone episode entitled “Night Call” (there was already an episode called “Long Distance Call”). Whereas this short story is a haunting ghost story combined with the use of modern technology, the Twilight Zone episode is more of a bittersweet tale. The voice on the other end of the phone is portrayed as her late husband who tragically stops calling her in the end. Both are brilliant in my view.    

Matheson, Richard. The Best of Richard Matheson. Edited with an introduction by Victoria LaValle. Penguin Classics. New York, NY (2017).

Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.

Charles Beaumont’s fascinating short story “In His Image” is a wonderful bit of American science fiction with a shocking twist ending (a perfect addition to The Twilight Zone). Peter “Pete” Nolan is experiencing strange situations. We begin with him pushing a woman in front of a subway train as she rambles on about reading the Bible. Later, it is revealed that Pete is in love with a woman named Jess, and they are to be married. They depart together from the city and arrive at his house, but now something has changed. The whole area seems different, and no one seems to recognize Pete. Mrs. Cook, for example, has apparently been dead for three years even though Pete remembers seeing her only a week and a half ago. Somehow his whole hometown of Coeurville, New York seems to have aged twenty years. Pete also possesses the inexplicable urge to kill Jess. Why? He accidentally injures himself while picking up a rock and gazes down at his arm:

“He carefully pulled a flap of skin down three inches below the wrist, and focused his eyes. Beneath the flap of skin, where veins ought to have been, and cartilage, and bone, were hundreds of tiny flexible rods, jointed and gleaming, and infinitesimal springs, turning, and bright yellow coils” (152).

Pete’s story is about a “perfect artificial man” who suddenly becomes aware of his own artificiality. When he meets his creator, Walter, Pete learns that he was somewhat accidentally created albeit with flaws, especially with the impetus to start killing humans. Pete demands that Walter create a new version, one that can be happily married to Jess, blissfully unaware of the problems associated with the original Pete… In a brief coda, Pete and Jess are now happily married as they toast to their new life together. Outside, a newspaperman shouts: “Subway killer still at large!”  

Beaumont, Charles. Perchance to Dream and other Short Stories. Penguin Classics. New York, NY (2015).  

Note: In the Foreword to this essay collection, Ray Bradbury offers some lovely reflections on the life of Charles “Chuck” Beaumont, from initially meeting a sixteen-year-old Beaumont at a bookstore in Los Angeles (talking about Terry and the Pirates comic collection, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant), to helping Beaumont publish his first short story and embark upon a successful literary career –“His life revolved around a special desk which he had designed and had built by one of the finest cabinetmakers in the West. His files were beautifully stashed, labeled, and stuffed with a half-million notions, idle fancies, half-grown or full-grown dreams…” (xiii). His was a life that was cut short too soon –a great tragedy for American science fiction.

Ray Bradbury offers the following reflections on Charles Beaumont’s funeral:

“The friends of Charles Beaumont, at gravesite, felt… above all that a time was over, and things would never be the same. Our old group would meet less often, and then fall away. What was central to it, the binding force, the conversational fire, the great runner, jumper, and yeller, was gone” (xiv).  

Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.

Click here for my review of “In His Image” Twilight Zone episode