Chapter Twenty-two: Sleepy Memories
As the Super Chief rolled across the Kansas countryside and on into the night, I settled into my seat and tried to get some sleep. The steady, methodical clickety-clack of the rails was restful and comforting, and I soon found myself in the twilight space between sleep and wakefulness. I found myself remembering another sleepy time of warmth and comfort.
I’m about six-years-old, and I can't sleep. It is late at night, and I sneak across the hall into my brother's room. He has gone to visit his grandfather. For the evening, I will have the room to myself. It is snowing, and shadows of snowflakes drift down on the walls of his bedroom as the streetlight outside his window casts a warm glow.
Crawling under the blankets, I lie on my side and watch the shadows of flakes weaving between the patterns of the wallpaper. Looking all around I notice that shadows are drifting down on every wall of the room.
With just a little pretending, I can stop the falling flakes, and as they become stationary, it is I who is rising toward the heavens. The illusion shifts back and forth between falling shadows and me floating and flying through the snowy night.
Not all visits to my brother's room are so peaceful and tranquil.
Another time when I went sneaking into his room, I found myself living the worst nightmare of my life.
It was well past my bedtime on the Sunday evening of May 8, 1955, when I joined my brother to listen to the radio show X Minus One. I’m seven years old.
Tonight's show is a live broadcast of Ray Bradbury's science fiction short story, "Mars Is Heaven!" My parents have forbidden me to listen to the show. Naturally, I take their ban as an endorsement.
As I sneak into my brother's room, he is fiddling with his transistor radio. Wilfred is checking the battery. Satisfied that it has enough power to last for the entire broadcast he slips it into the radio and with a click of the switch, we hear the welcome sound of static.
For the next few minutes, Wilfred searches the airwaves for our station until at last; we hear the show's theme song playing loud and clear. We make the final adjustments to our blanket shelter we've constructed to keep our activities from the prying eyes of our mother.
Wilfred has a battery-powered flashlight. The battery is so weak that it barely has enough juice to make the filament in the tiny bulb glow. The street lamp outside his window illuminates the room in a soft yellowish-orange light.
Radio Theater is a remarkable art form. Using nothing more than the voices of actors and the skill of sound effect men the producers can transport listeners to any point in time from an English Man 'o War in a pitched battle to a spaceship landing on a distant planet.
As I listened to the show, I found myself living the story of the first humans ever to visit Mars. It is the late 1960s, and we are landing on the surface of Mars. Instead of a rusty red desert, our travelers find themselves amid lushly green rolling hills. It looks like a picture postcard of Vermont. The rocket ship has landed just outside a village, which looks like something painted by Norman Rockwell.
The inhabitants of the settlement greet the earthmen with open arms. As crewmembers explore the town, they find old friends and deceased relatives who embrace the travelers with love and tears of joy.
The Earthmen speculate that Mars is the heaven promised by every religion. They have landed in paradise.
The village plans a grand festival of reunion for the evening. Each member of the expedition is invited. Even the members of the team ordered to stay behind and guard the rocket abandon their posts to join the festivities.
The party goes long into the night, and finally, it is time for sleep. Lost friends and relatives invite crewmember to spend the night with them in their homes in the village.
The expedition leader, Captain John Black is skeptical. In his mind, everything that is happening is too good to be true.
As John Black is settling into bed in the home of his dead brother the only theory that can explain all that is happening is that the Earthmen have landed among a race of telepathic beings that can read minds and project a reality based on the traveler's memories.
Captain Black is convinced that the Martians plan on killing every member of the crew as they sleep in their beds.
Black realizes that his only weapon, a powerful blaster, is downstairs in the kitchen. John Black races down to the kitchen and is about to pick up his weapon when his dead brother suddenly appears and asks what he is doing. Black lies and says he came down to the kitchen for a drink of water because he is thirsty.
His brother says, "You are not telling me the truth." As the brother speaks, the illusion vanishes and the last thing Captain Black sees is a Martian monster as the creature strangles the life out of him.
As Captain Black dies, we hear distant screams as the Martians murder the entire crew in their beds. Thus ends man's first visit to a new world.
Completely immersed in the drama, the terrifying ending caught me by surprise.
The next few days were a living horror. I was convinced that everyone around me was a Martian trying to kill me. I could have given lessons in creative paranoia.
There is no way to un-remember terror. However, over time the fear within me abated to a lingering shadow.