- [closing narration]
- Narrator: A sickness known as hate; not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ - but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don't look for it in the Twilight Zone - look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether.
- Deputy Pierce: You seen the light, Reverend. You really seen the light.
- Reverend Anderson: Have you?
- Reverend Anderson: [turns to crowd] Have any of you?
- Reverend Anderson: In all this darkness, is there anybody who can make out the truth? He hated, and he killed, and now he dies. And you hated, you killed, and now there's not one of you... Not one of you who isn't doomed. Do you know why it's dark? Do you know why it is night all around us? Do you know what the blackness is? It's the hate he felt, the hate you felt, the hate all of us feel, and there's too much of it. There's just too much. And so we had to vomit it out. And now it's coming up all around us and choking us. So much hate, so much miserable hate.
- [opening narration]
- Narrator: Sheriff Charlie Koch on the morning of an execution. As a matter of fact, it's seven-thirty in the morning. Logic and natural laws dictate that at this hour there should be daylight. It is a simple rule of physical science that the sun should rise at a certain moment and supersede the darkness. But at this given moment, Sheriff Charlie Koch, a deputy named Pierce, a condemned man named Jagger, and a small, inconsequential village will shortly find out that there are causes and effects that have no precedent. Such is usually the case - in the Twilight Zone.
- Reverend Anderson: Don't return their hate. Don't dishonor yourself.
- Jagger: Why don't you go home and get out of here? I got too much hate in me to keep plugged up anymore!
- Reverend Anderson: When he came at you, Jagger... did it feel good to you then?
- Jagger: What difference?
- Reverend Anderson: When you aimed that gun at his head... that wasn't such a bad moment, was it?
- Jagger: Good, bad, who cares?
- Reverend Anderson: When you killed him, Jagger... when you blew his head off... there were no regrets then, were there? You enjoyed that, didn't you?
- Jagger: You know it!
- Reverend Anderson: Yes. Yes, I... I know it now. Now I know it too well. You're guilty.
- [turns to the crowd]
- Reverend Anderson: This man is guilty.
- Jagger: It's important to get with the majority, isn't it? That's... oh, that's a big thing nowadays, isn't it, Reverend?
- Reverend Anderson: That's all there is, is the majority. The minority must have died on the cross, two thousand years ago.
- Radio Announcer: ...and still the phenomenon remains unexplained, except for the reports that now come in of similar occurrences here in the United States and elsewhere. At two o'clock this afternoon, a dark cloud suddenly appeared over a street in Dallas, Texas. The mayor of West Berlin verified the fact that a rectangular area over the Berlin Wall has suddenly gone dark. In Budapest, European newspapermen passed over censorship an article about several square blocks, including a political prison, which were suddenly thrown into darkness early this morning. In Birmingham, Alabama... an area in Shanghai... the entire northern section of Vietnam... a section of Chicago, Illinois... the darkness continues to make itself known.
- Newspaper Editor Colbey: Jagger, the man you killed was no saint. But we don't dispense life or death just because somebody offends us. That's the distinction between men and animals.
- Jagger: Oh, well, that's very well said, that's very well said, Mr. Colbey. You tell that to the man who's going to fix my rope. You tell it to the sheriff out there and his deputy. You tell it to townspeople who are going to stand around and watch my eyes bulge out and enjoy my agony. You tell them, you tell them about the difference between men and animals. But you'd better be ready to draw pictures, because this language, they don't just dig!