Good Neighbors

A Substack Zone Dark Fiction Homage

The Twilight Zone redefined storytelling, drawing audiences into the unimaginable. Now, 66 years later, top writers, artists, and musicians are stepping into its eerie glow with a fresh twist. Ready to see where they’ll take you?

Liz Zimmers | Edith Bow | Sean Archer | Bryan Pirolli | Andy Futuro | CB Mason | John Ward | NJ | Hanna Delaney | William Pauley III | Jason Thompson | Nolan Green | Shaina Read | J. Curtis | Honeygloom | Stephen Duffy | K.C. Knouse | Michele Bardsley | Bob Graham | Annie Hendrix | Clancy Steadwell | Jon T | Sean Thomas McDonnell | Miguel S. | A.P Murphy | Lisa Kuznak | Bridget Riley | EJ Trask | Shane Bzdok | Adam Rockwell | Will Boucher

Ethan Crouch drove past the ivy-girt stone entrance of the old housing development, his customary sneer twisting his lip. JOYWOOD, it read in tall iron letters. What a vapid and ridiculous name for the place, especially when one considered its humble nature, its potholed streets, its rough-hewn picnic pavilion and wild, shrubby park. Sure, there were trees, but hardly a forest. And while he had no dire complaints about the quiet clutch of identical houses, he would not say they made him joyful.

Ethan worked as a marketing copywriter. He understood the subtle brainwash of the name, but god, these places were ubiquitous and dull. Young, struggling parents and a few elderly has-beens constituted the neighborhood. There was no Homeowners’ Association, for Joywood was an abandoned endeavor. Ethan gave his sneer another twist. At least it was cheap; an affordable stepping-stone on his upward path. He had his sights set on a promotion to senior level with his firm, and then he would sell his little house in the boonies and forget he had ever dwelled among such a lackluster population.

He drifted along his tranquil street, passing six other white bungalows with attached garages, and prepared to turn into his own drive. The nameless woman across the street exited her house with two large dogs on leashes. She gave him a brief wave but dropped her hand at his disapproving scowl. Her shaggy beasts tugged her away along the sidewalk; barking horrors, shit machines that were no doubt as smelly as they were vocal. Ethan had no pets, preferring to keep his living space tidy and free of fleas.

Further up the street, an old man and a tall, weedy youth stapled flyers to telephone poles and handed more to anyone unfortunate enough to be outdoors. They were heading his way, and Ethan scooted into his driveway, stabbing at the sticky button of the garage door opener, and muttering a salty prayer that he could be off the street before they reached him.

He sat for a moment, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, as his garage door rose. Glancing at his next-door neighbor, he saw the man at the open entrance to his own garage, tinkering with a lawn mower. Greasy machine parts and kids’ bicycles littered the driveway. The man paused to pick up a bottle of beer and glanced at Ethan. With a sheepish grin, he raised the bottle in salute and made a move as if to approach the idling car. Ethan looked away.

He drove into his garage and pushed the button to close the door. John, Jim, Ed, Bob - he could not remember his neighbor’s name – was erased from view. If Ethan spared him any thought, it was that the man should have made use of Joywood’s “lawn care service” – two sweaty, red-faced locals who savaged the dandelion-infested lawns during the late mornings. No doubt JohnJim would soon ruin the peaceful after-dinner hour with his roaring mower.

Ethan congratulated himself on escaping both the flyer duo and his neighbor’s beery small talk. He carried his tote of groceries into his immaculate kitchen and began to unpack it, stopping to pull the cork on a bottle of Pinot Noir. There was a gentle rap at his door, but he ignored it with a smirk as he poured the wine. He heard the opening and soft closing of his mailbox. In the morning, he would find the unwelcome flyer stuffed there.

As he carried his glass to his home office, he heard the roar and gasp of his neighbor’s lawnmower. He shuddered, grateful that he would never be Bob, shackled to a pale wife and three squalling children in this forgotten hole, lost like a crumb among sofa cushions.

Joywood. A quiet place to raise a family or to spend one’s golden years. A nice place with friendly neighbors. It doesn’t put on airs; it has, perhaps, been bypassed or left behind by a fast-moving, upwardly-mobile society. Ethan Crouch thinks so and scorns its subtle charms in his rush to prestige and material success. Yet, something old-fashioned and sweet can be found in Joywood. Home, haven, and fellowship offered freely and with a smile, an unassuming gift for those who welcome it.

Freshly showered and dressed in office casual attire, Ethan opened his front door for a moment of silent contemplation before the neighborhood erupted in the day’s usual summertime mayhem of shouting children and barking dogs. There was a cat on his porch, again. Ethan stared through the glass storm-door at the fluffy, black mound curled on his doormat.

For the last several weeks, the animal had chosen to take the morning sun there. You’d better not be pissing around my door, Ethan thought. The sour expression on his face curdled further. Or using my mulch as a litterbox. He eased the door open, pushing the cat from its comfortable position, and tugged at the pink corner of the flyer sticking out from his mailbox. He flapped the sheet of paper at the cat and made a hissing noise.

It was an alarmingly large beast with a tail like a duster, and far from being frightened it seemed to regard the partially open door as an invitation. It darted inside and disappeared into the house.

“Goddammit!” Ethan thundered.

A boy on a bike stopped at the end of his driveway and looked up at him in surprise. Ethan recognized him as Robbie, the young son of the woman across the street - a nice enough kid who carried Ethan’s newspaper to his porch each morning from where the lazy delivery boy tossed it into the hedge. Robbie had a basket strapped to his handlebars, and he carefully lowered his kickstand before approaching with the newspaper.

“Is something wrong, Mr. Crouch?”

Ethan stepped out onto the porch to accept the newspaper, feeling flustered and put upon. His coffee awaited him in the kitchen. It was a work-from-home day, and he wanted to be seated in front of his computer, sipping his morning brew, not dilly-dallying with stray animals and small boys.

“A cat just ran into my house. Maybe you know who it belongs to? A big black, fluffy thing?”

Would he have to waste more of his morning making calls to have the cat removed? What if it had rabies or some other cat disease? Robbie was grinning.

“That sounds like Barnacle. He belongs to Mrs. Flanders.”

The boy pointed to the pink flyer in Ethan’s hand, and Ethan uncrumpled it and gazed down at the grey, grainy picture of an old woman with a walker. The woman smiled and waved at the camera. Mrs. Hazel Flanders returning home, the caption read. In large bold letters, the flyer announced a fundraising picnic to be held at the Joywood Community Park on Saturday.

Robbie was chattering on. “Mrs. Flanders broke her hip, but she’s back home now. We’re going to raise money for ramps for her house and some other stuff so she can stay there. She’s pretty old, you know. Are you coming to the picnic? It’ll be lots of fun. There’s gonna be a band and everything.”

Ethan dismissed the picnic with a wave of the flyer and redirected the conversation to his immediate problem. “Why is, er, Barnacle roaming the neighborhood? What kind of name is that, anyway?”

The boy laughed. “Mrs. Flanders calls him that ‘cause he’s always sticking to people. He’s real friendly.” The freckled face scrunched in thought. “I’m taking Mrs. Flanders some food my mom made. I can take Barney with me, too, if you want.”

Ethan did want. He looked at his wristwatch.

“Can you get him out of here quickly? I’ll be late for work.”

“Sure! Barney likes me.” Robbie gave Ethan a considering look. “Guess he likes you, too, Mr. Crouch.”

Ethan held the door open for the boy and pointed toward the living room where the cat had made its hairy self cozy on the white sofa. He went to the kitchen and poured his coffee, dropping the flyer in the trash. He was uninterested in the hick-fest fundraiser and the travails of the elderly. Why didn’t Hazel Flanders just accept the inevitable and check herself into a seniors’ facility?

As he took his first sip, something wound tightly about his ankles, plucking with its teeth at his pant leg, and he stumbled back from the counter, sloshing hot coffee on his hand and on the floor. The cat, Barnacle, looked up at him with enormous yellow eyes.

“Sorry,” Robbie said as he sauntered in and scooped up the cat. “He got away from me. He sure does like you. Don’t forget about the picnic!”

When the boy and the cat were gone, Ethan vacuumed the black fur from his sofa with savage indignation. The clinging creature had probably been the cause of Hazel Flanders’ broken hip in the first place. As he stowed the vacuum cleaner in the closet, footsteps on his porch and the squeak and flap of his mailbox sent him angrily to the door again. The pink flyer once more poked from the box like a taunting tongue – You’re Invited! - but the street was empty.

---

When Friday arrived, Ethan had morning meetings at his office in the city to attend. The garage door opener did not even pretend to work, the sticky button as frozen as though superglued. With a huff, he rolled from his car and pressed the big button beside the door. Ed, or Bob, was outside, walking away from a heap of old furniture and broken toys he’d stacked at the curb.

“Hey, Crouch,” Bob shouted with hearty bonhomie, waving a hand clad in a work glove. “Don’t forget to put out your bulk trash if you got any. They’ll be around with the trucks tomorrow afternoon.”

The man stopped at the edge of Ethan’s lawn, uncertain about approaching nearer. He pointed a thumb at the pile of detritus he’d created. “Hope you don’t mind looking at that for today. We all decided we’d put our stuff out early because of the picnic tomorrow. Everyone will be there, and we didn’t want to miss the pickup.”

Looking up and down the street, Ethan saw mounds of bulk trash all along the curb. He’d forgotten about the special pickup day. The notification had been yet another flyer, this one stapled to an addressed envelope in which he was urged to mail his donation toward the cost of the removal. It had joined the pink picnic flyer in his trash.

“Uh, thanks,” he said.

Now that he thought about it, he did have a few things cluttering his basement that he would like to be rid of. Some mostly empty cans of paint and a roll of smelly old carpet he’d torn from the kitchen floor when he moved in. Nobody needed to know he hadn’t contributed.

Ed had encroached a few feet onto the lawn. “Hey, you’re coming to the picnic, aren’t you? Gonna be a good time, lots of great food. The ladies have been cooking up a storm, and Charlie Houser and his grandson are both firing up their grills. We figure we can make more than enough for ramps for Hazel’s house and have some left over for anything else she needs. Gonna be bingo and pull tickets, and a cake raffle.”

Bingo? Cake raffle? The man must be mad to look so excited, as though he were issuing an invitation to a champagne cruise.

“Very nice,” Ethan mumbled, stepping backward into the shadow of his garage. “Well, I’d better get to work.”

He retreated to his car and reversed into the driveway. EdBob watched with an awkward smile as Ethan hopped out and reached into the garage to slam the button, then scrambled back behind the wheel. The man raised his hand in wistful farewell as Ethan rolled down the drive and sped away along the street between the teetering junk piles.

---

By eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, it seemed that all the residents of Joywood had moved to the park, apart from a few young boys on bicycles who had been pressed into service as gofers. Ethan could hear occasional garbled speech from the park’s PA system, the honks and thumps of the band tuning up, and shrieks of laughter. The air held an unmistakable feeling of festivity. It was redolent of the savory smokiness of the grills and the sharp, gunpowdery reek of bang snaps, bottle rockets, and sparklers.

Ethan stood at the foot of his drive and surveyed the empty neighboring houses. If he was going to put out his bulk trash without detection, now was the time. Robbie, hunched over his handlebars and pedaling furiously, winged into his own driveway and leaped from his bike.

“Hi, Mr. Crouch,” the boy called, waving a skinny arm. “Gotta get some stuff for my mom and the ladies at the craft booth.”

Without waiting for an answering greeting, the boy pelted into his house. Ethan shook his head. All the to-do and noise seemed to please these simple folk inordinately. If they would put even half as much effort and verve into building their careers, they would all be wealthy. The old Flanders’ party wouldn’t need a fundraiser to be able to continue hobbling around her little bungalow.

He turned and went inside to gather the cans of paint he’d earlier brought up from his basement, propping open his storm door on his way in. The cans made a tidy pyramid at the curb, and he checked the time as he prepared to go back in to haul the filthy carpet up the basement stairs. Pick-up would be at noon. Across the street, Robbie’s bike still lay on the driveway.

Ethan disliked his basement. It was a black pit of cold concrete and cobwebbed nooks. When he had first moved in, he had thought of turning it into a sort of lounge with a bar and some good stereo equipment. But the lack of even a small window and the steep wooden Matterhorn of the stairs had dissuaded him. The room was depressingly tomb-like, dank and difficult to climb in and out of, fit for nothing but the storage of moving bins and junk. It could only be improved by the removal of the musty rolled carpet that stood banded with duct tape at the foot of the stairs.

Sighing at the thought of heaving the weighty roll up the precipitous flight, Ethan approached the basement door he’d left ajar. He glanced back at the open front door, hearing the mush-mouthed PA system at the park again and a snatch of birdsong. It was a beautiful day, and he gave a brief thought to the invitations to attend the picnic with which he’d been inundated. He paused, considering, but shook his head. He was amused at the quaint image of himself seated shoulder to shoulder with beefy men in baseball caps, eating potato salad from a Styrofoam plate.

He reached a foot down to the top step as he flapped a hand at the wall for the light switch. Having little business in the hole beneath his house, he could never remember which side it was on. The switch eluded him.

His foot came down on something. A yowl filled the stairwell, and the darkness seethed to life. It climbed his leg with fiery hooks, pulling him forward, and the light from the open door transformed it into a hairy devil. Barnacle! The cat shot past his tilting body and out the front door.

Ethan slapped the door frame with slithering fingers, and then he was falling in a twisting knot of limbs. He fell as if he had been hurled from the top step, smacking each bare stair tread with excruciating weight and velocity, until he slammed to the concrete floor below, his purpling skin a sack of broken glass.

---

Robbie carried his mom’s big gym bag to his bike and tied it onto his handlebars. It was full of crocheted kittens, and he knew they would sell like hotcakes at the craft booth. He had helped her decorate them with bows around their necks.

As he wheeled his bike to the street, he saw Barney dart from Mr. Crouch’s porch. Mr. Crouch had left his door open, and Robbie was pretty sure Barney would sneak in again if he had a chance. He walked his bike across the street, climbed the short hill to the porch, and closed both of Mr. Crouch’s doors.

Nothing will get in there now, he thought as he pedaled toward the park.

Life in Joywood follows a time-honored template. Neighbors value community and look after one another. A fundraiser here, a reminder there – the caring eyes that keep one another’s homes secure against intruders. In the end, it is these simple things that make life sweet. In the end, as Ethan Crouch has found, good neighbors can make all the difference.