Max Collins - The War of the Worlds Murder

The children all looked toward their grandfather with surprise-usually he demanded just the opposite. With caution, Les raised the volume on the glowing magic box.

“ What would you say ,” the reporter was asking the professor, “what’s the diameter of this?”

“About thirty yards.”

Les and Grandfather exchanged glances. Thirty yards was a lot. Thirty yards was…big.

“The metal on the sheath is, well, I’ve never…seen…anything…like it. The color is sort of…yellowish-white. Curious spectators now are pressing close to the object in spite of the efforts of the police to keep them back, uh, getting in front of my line of vision. Would you mind standing to one side, please?”

Leroy asked, “That other man? The professor?”

Somewhat impatiently, Les said to his kid brother, “What about him?”

“I think he’s the Shadow.”

“Leroy, be quiet.”

“The old Shadow, the good Shadow.”

Sharply, the grandfather said, “Le roy !”

Sitting up on his knees, the little boy looked at the adult with earnest eyes. “Grandpa, I think this is just a story.”

“Leroy, be quiet.”

“But-”

“Shush! They’re interviewing Wilson….”

“Grandpa!”

Grandfather, irritated by the younger boy’s lack of sophistication, raised a hand, signaling him to stop. The child did-folding his arms, smirking in sullen silence.

The farmer was answering Carl Phillips’s questions. “I was listening to the radio and kinda drowsin’, that professor fellow was talkin’ about Mars, so I was half-dozin’ and half…”

“Yes, yes, Mr. Wilmuth. And then what happened?”

Les said, “He said ‘Wilmuth’ again, Grandpa.”

Grandfather said, “Cityslickers always get it wrong.”

“I was listenin’ to the radio kinda halfways….”

“Yes, Mr. Wilmuth, and then you saw something?”

“Not first off. I heard something.”

“And what did you hear?”

“A hissing sound. Like this -” The farmer hissed for the reporter. “ Kinda like a Fourth of July rocket .”

“Yes, then what?”

“I turned my head out the window, and would have swore I was to sleep and dreamin’.”

“Yes?”

“I seen that kinda greenish streak and then, zingo! Somethin’ smacked the ground. Knocked me clear out of my chair!”

Leroy was staring at the side wall, turned away from the radio, as if it had betrayed him. He said, firmly for such a little boy, “That…is…just…a… storeee !”

Grandfather had never struck any of his grandchildren (though of course their father, also an insolent pup, had met the razor strop many a time, as a boy), and he told himself tonight would be no exception. He rose and knelt by the child and put a kindly hand on Leroy’s shoulder.

“Not everything on the radio is a story, my boy. You have to learn to know the difference between the news commentators and the storytellers.”

“Look who’s talkin’.”

Grandfather felt red rise into his face. But he said nothing more, and merely returned to his armchair.

Carl Phillips was saying, “ Hundreds of cars are parked in a field in back of us, and the police are trying to rope off the roadway, leading into the farm, but it’s no use. They’re breaking right through. Cars’ headlights throw an enormous spotlight on the pit where the object’s half buried .”

With the exception of Leroy, the Chapmans sat forward. Little Susie had cuddled up next to her older brother and was holding his hand. Tight.

“…some of the more daring souls now are venturing near the edge. Their silhouettes stand out against the metal sheen. One man wants to touch the thing-he’s having an argument with a policeman. Now the policeman wins…. Ladies and gentlemen, there’s something I haven’t mentioned in all this excitement, but…it’s becoming more distinct. Perhaps you’ve caught it already on your radio. Listen, please…”

The Chapmans leaned forward-and even Leroy turned back toward the radio. A scraping sound, faint but distinct, crackled over the air waves.

The reporter was asking, “Do you hear it? Curious humming sound that seems to come from inside the object. I’ll move the microphone nearer. Here…now, we’re not more than twenty-five feet away. Can you hear it now?”

The Dorn sisters had heard all of it.

They, too, had turned up the volume (the younger sister, Miss Eleanor, doing the honors) and their knitting was dropped to their laps, unattended, as their wide eyes stared toward the radio.

Ironically, neither woman had much interest in the news, normally-they took pride in not reading much of anything in the local paper except the church news. Neither sister read current magazines; why waste their time reading trash? History, the Bible, education, religion.

Miss Jane’s hands were folded. “God is in His Heaven,” she said.

Having resumed her chair, Miss Eleanor said, “And all’s right in the world.”

But neither of them sounded terribly sure of either statement.

In the modest living room of an apartment in Brooklyn, an out-of-work housepainter named Dennis Chandler, 36, sat with his wife, Helen, listening to the radio. The childless couple had guests-Helen’s younger brother Earl and his wife Amy and their five-year-old Douglas. Dennis and Helen had neither a car nor a telephone. He and his wife went to a local Methodist church about once a month. They’d gone this morning.

Like many listeners, Dennis had switched from Charlie McCarthy only to accidentally land on the station reporting the fall of a meteor. He and his wife and their guests had heard exactly the same thing that the Chapmans had, and most of what the Dorn sisters had.

Dennis, too, was excited and concerned, though not as frightened as his wife and their guests, who were sitting forward, trembling. Douglas was on his mother’s lap, arms draped around her neck.

“You know, Earl,” Dennis said, “we could drive out in your car to where the meteor hit. Could be something to see.”

Earl, who was in his late twenties, said he wouldn’t mind. “Sounds like an adventure,” he said.

But then, when the radio announcer said that he and the Princeton professor had travelled eleven miles in ten minutes, Dennis sat forward in his armchair and said to his wife Helen, “That wasn’t any ten minutes, was it? They were just on !”

Helen said, “It’s hard to keep track of time, but…you might be right.”

“It was ten minutes,” Amy said. “Wasn’t it, Earl?”

Earl wasn’t sure.

Dennis said, “Anyway, with all these news flashes, the streets around Princeton would be packed-they couldn’t get there that fast, even if it was ten minutes!”

Helen, frowning in thought, suggested, “Why don’t you check the listings, in the paper?”

Dennis snapped his fingers. “Good idea, honey.”

The husband went to the kitchen where the Sunday Daily News lay on a counter, waiting to wrap garbage. He shuffled through to the radio listings and found that CBS was offering The Mercury Theatre on the Air’s presentation of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds at eight P.M.

Chuckling to himself, he returned to the tiny living room, settled back in his armchair and said to all assembled, “It’s just a silly play! What knuckleheads we are-shall we switch back to Charlie McCarthy?”

“No!” Helen said. “If it could fool us like that, then it’s well done. Let’s keep listening!”

Everybody agreed that was a good idea, so they indeed kept listening, and really enjoyed the show, laughing heartily at times, little Douglas smilingly shrieking with safe fear.