The War of the Worlds Murder (21 page)

“...I guess that’s the thing, directly in front of me, half buried in a vast pit. Must have struck with
terrific
force. The ground is...covered with splinters of a tree it must have struck on its
way down. What I can see of the object itself doesn’t look very much like a meteor...at least not the meteors I’ve seen. It looks more like a huge cylinder. It has a diameter of...of...what would you say, Professor Pierson?”

All of that had been heard by Grandfather Chapman and his three grandchildren in the living room of the Chapman farmhouse, just outside Grovers Mill, the airplane dial having been turned to avoid a boring song by Nelson Eddy.

Even Grandfather, who wasn’t keen on much that was current, knew after weeks and weeks of Charlie McCarthy just how long the family could get away with cruising rival stations, looking for something more interesting to pass a few minutes than a sissy tenor.

“Grandpa,” the younger boy, Leroy, said, “
we’re
Grovers Mill!”

Grandfather, sitting forward on his armchair, said, “We sure are, Leroy. Did he say Wilson farm?”

Les said, “I think he said Wil
muth
.”

“City reporter musta got it wrong,” Grandfather said. “They must be at the Wilson farm.... Turn that up, a shade.”

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.

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.