Max Collins - The War of the Worlds Murder

But the Chapmans (with the notable exception of young Leroy) were legitimately terrified.

Carl Phillips’s excited voice crackled out of the console:

“… do you still think it’s a meteor, Professor?”

“I don’t know what to think. The, uh, metal casing is definitely extraterrestrial…uh, not found on this earth. Friction with the earth’s atmosphere usually tears holes in a meteorite. This thing is…smooth and, as you can see, of cylindrical shape…”

Leroy said nothing.

But in his mind, hearing Professor Pierson’s voice, the boy heard himself scream: “That…is…the… Shadow! ”

His little sister was hugging Les, shivering with fear, and Les looked pretty scared, himself.

Normally, Leroy would’ve been sympathetic. He loved his siblings, though the three had the usual kid squabbles. But right now, he relished their discomfort.

“Just a minute!” the announcer yelled. “Something’s happening! Ladies and gentlemen, this is terrific! This…end of the thing is beginning to…flake off. The top is beginning to rotate like a screw, and the thing must be hollow…”

And Leroy laughed out loud-a deep laugh, in imitation of his favorite radio avenger.

Grandfather stood, went over and lifted the boy up by the arm and swatted his blue-jeaned bottom.

But Leroy only smiled.

Like the Shadow, Leroy knew.

Rusty, at his desk at State Troopers’ HQ in upstate New York, sat in gaping astonishment as the words tumbled out of his radio. Upstairs, against his better judgment, Rusty’s no-nonsense duty corporal, Richard Stevens, had switched his radio on, too, and was listening.

And now Corporal Stevens was sitting at his desk with the same wide-eyed, open-mouthed astonishment as that dope Rusty.

Both troopers, seated before their respective radios, watched the little talking boxes as if they could see the images reporter Carl Phillips was describing, and indeed on the movie screens of their minds, they could.

And then a succession of overlapping, agitated voices jumped out:

“She’s movin’!”

“…darn thing’s unscrewing!”

“Stand back, there! Keep those men back, I tell you!”

“It’s red hot, they’ll burn to a cinder!”

“Keep back there. Keep those idiots back!”

Then-a hollow metallic clunk.

“She’s off! The top’s loose!”

“Look out there! Stand back!”

That was all Rusty needed to hear.

He ran up the two floors, corncob pipe tight in his teeth, and leaned in the doorway, from which he saw the normally cool-calm-collected duty corporal standing at his desk, staring at the radio, looking like a wild man.

And then the announcer was back: “Someone’s crawling out of the hollow top, someone or…some thing. I can see…peering out of that black hole two luminous disks…Are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be almost anything…”

The corporal looked toward Rusty and the expressions of the two men mirrored fear and astonishment, matching the outburst of awe from the crowd at the scene.

Phillips was saying, “Something wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it’s another one, and an…another one, and another one…. They look like tentacles to me. I, I can see the thing’s body now, it’s large, it’s large as a bear-glistens like wet leather, but that, that face, it, it…. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable.”

Rusty crossed himself.

“I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. Its eyes are black and gleam like a serpent, the mouth is a kind of V-shape with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to, oh, quiver and pulsate, and the monster or whatever it is can hardly move, it seems weighed down by…possibly gravity or something, the thing’s…rising up now, and the crowd falls back now, they’ve seen plenty. Oh, uh, this is the most extraordinary experience, ladies and gentlemen. I can’t find words…. Well, I’ll pull this microphone with me as I talk. I’ll have to stop the description until I can take a new position. Hold on, will you please, I’ll be right back in a minute….”

Brief dead silence was followed by a gentle waterfall of tinkling piano.

“So,” Rusty managed, “was I lyin’?”

“I better call ol’ Flannel Mouth,” the corporal said.

That nickname-whispered in select company only-referred to their much unloved lieutenant, who lived close-by.

“You better call Flannel Mouth is right, Corporal Stevens-you better right away!”

The corporal frowned and gestured dismissively. “Get back to your post! See what’s coming over the teletype about this thing!”

By the time a real Princeton professor-Arthur Barrington, Geology Department head, behind the wheel of his dark blue Chevrolet sedan-rolled into Grovers Mill, one might think police cars and other emergency vehicles, plus emissaries of the press (including rival radio stations), would be wall-to-wall in the tiny town.

But as student Press Club member Sheldon Judcroft, leaning out the front seat rider’s side window, reported, nothing much seemed to be cooking.

Even for a bump in the road, Grovers Mill was quiet. An old clapboard mill and a feedstore-no gas station or lunchroom or even bar-made up the entire “downtown.” A scattering of houses nearby represented the village itself. There wasn’t even a street lamp.

Professor Barrington, sitting up and peering out into a slightly foggy night, said, “See what the nearest town is, Sheldon.”

As assigned navigator, the student had charge of the map and was using a flashlight from the glove compartment.

“Cranbury, sir,” Sheldon said. “Just five miles.”

The boy pointed toward a road sign.

The professor-the real professor-nodded and drove.

Back at the Columbia Broadcasting Building, Walter Gibson remained unaware of the invasion’s impact on some of its listeners. He had a murder to try to solve, and an hour to do it in.

The speaker in the twentieth-floor lobby was sharing the latest fake broadcast: “We are bringing you an eyewitness account of what’s happening on the Wilmuth farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey.”

As the program returned to gentle fingering of piano keys, Gibson pressed the button for the elevator.

“We now return you to Carl Phillips at Grovers Mill.”

The elevator car arrived and the writer rode down to the seventeenth floor, where yet another security guard-Fred-had seen neither Virginia Welles nor George Balanchine, nor the alley-thug trio. And if Fred had seen Dolores Donovan around, boy, he’d’ve remembered it, a dish like that.

Gibson did not bother speaking to any of the newspeople on seventeen, because they were either on the air or bustling around reading teletypes and making phone calls and typing up stories, much like a newspaper office.

Anyway, he had the immediate sense that in this building, the world of news and that of entertainment, several floors up, were twains that never met.

On the elevator he asked the same questions of the elevator operator, Leo, that featherweight “boy” pushing sixty who seemed to worship Welles.

As they spoke, the elevator car stayed on the seventeenth floor. Leo didn’t mind if Gibson had a Camel; in fact, Leo took the occasion to smoke a Chesterfield. Hey, it was Sunday night. Traffic was light.

Leo knew who Mrs. Welles was, didn’t think he’d seen her today; but then there was another elevator (self-service, for the ambitious), and a service one, too. So that meant next to nothing.

Floundering, Gibson said, “What did you mean, by you don’t think you saw Mrs. Welles?…”