The Sixth Occurrence

            Directly after what I have related to you in the last post had come to pass, I fell into a kind of mechanistic stupor.  I realized that I was dripping water all over the staircase, and this seemed to snap me out of my fog, my legs moving of their own accord into the dining room.  Once there, I drank some whiskey to calm myself, then, recognizing my sopping state, found cause to change my clothes.  Afterward, I was provoked to go upstairs to my study, though I did not, and still do not, know my reasoning behind this decision.  My window allows me to observe the railway and the woods, and through this, I saw an awful vision.  It appeared to me as if the whole country, and indeed the whole world, was on fire in that direction.  Flames were leaping briefly, then dying down, like fingers clutching an object.  As I gazed upon this scene, it came to my attention that this little town, which I had felt so secure in, had just been brought down by the coming of the Martians.  I glanced down, amazed and terrified all at once.  Just then, I caught sight of a soldier wandering around the garden, and called him up quietly with a short, “Hist!”.  He rushed into the house, and proceeded to tell me the horrific story of what had happened during those fateful hours I was away.  Apparently, he had only begun fighting about seven o’clock, when the firing had already started.  His horse tripped as he was riding into action, and as he went down, a gun blew up, and he found himself among dead horses and men.  He lay there, suffering from the pain of a back injury, and watched as the next events transpired.  Some more of the soldiers had tried to rush the Martians, and one climbed out of the pit in which it lay and simply burnt them all down with the Heat-Ray.  As the Martian turned and departed, the artilleryman ran for the village, and had been wandering since.  With that, he ended his tale, and we slept fitfully all night.  The next morning, I was inclined to return immediately to Leatherhead to find my wife, but the artilleryman persuaded me otherwise – for the third cylinder lay between my wife and us, and as he said, “It’s no kindness to the right sort of wife to make her a widow.”  As such, we planned to travel to Street Cobham together, from whence I would make a detour by way of Epsom, and eventually reach Leatherhead.  I would have begun our journey at once, but my companion thought it wiser to prepare instead of blindly striking out.  As we rode on, we encountered various persons in different states of array.  Finally, we stopped at Weybridge, and as we rested, the firing began.  Across the Thames, we heard guns booming, and presently observed a haze rising among the trees.  Shortly after, four of the armor-clad cylinders rose above the treetops and advanced towards Weybridge.  It struck me that the smartest thing to do was to get under water, so I shouted to those around me.  As we jumped, the Martians took no more notice of us then of pesky insects buzzing around, but instead focused on the batteries behind the trees.  One of the monsters was taken down by a shell, but where its Heat-Ray hit the water, it turned into steam, obscuring the Martians and turning all to chaos.  The Martians were shooting the Heat-Ray’s beam every which way, and the water was boiled into a frenzy, scalding those in it, including me.  I blundered toward the shore, and I have only vague recollections from there on.

The Fifth Occurrence

Oh, the horrors that have come to pass since my last post!  Since the beginning of that fateful day where the Martians fought back, I have had a kind of passion, the same kind one gets when they wish to start a brawl in a barroom.  My wife, on the other hand, had become unutterably monosyllabic.  If I had not promised to return the cart to the landlord that very night, I’m sure she would have kept me in Leatherhead until the Martian attack was over.  As it was, she could not seem to bear to watch me leave, and instead rushed inside after watching me climb into the cart.  I bid my cousins goodbye, and began the long journey to the Spotted Dog.  As I passed through Ockham, I saw a mass of black and red smoke, which I presumed to be an aftereffect of the fire.  As I gazed upon the scene, a green glow illuminated the sky.  When I turned my head to look, I realized it was the third Martian cylinder!  Startled by this falling object and the glow it brought with it, the horse bolted.  He took me on a rambling ride down Maybury Hill, and stopped only when we got to the bottom.  My attention soon became taken up by the sight of something moving down the hill, which I first mistook for the roof of a house, but shortly became known to me.  It was horrible!  Among the lightning and thunder and rain, a Thing rose from among the rooftops!  It was a lurid cylinder on three legs, moving along more swiftly than could ever be imagined, its clattering train blending with the crashes of thunder.  The horse galloped on, and soon we were almost face to face with a second Martian creation!  Without thinking, I wrenched the horse’s head so hard to the right that the dog-cart bowled over and the horse’s neck was broken.  I picked myself up from where I had been flung and hid behind a bush.  The first Martian ran to meet the second, and I used that distraction to make my way to a ditch, in which I crawled to Maybury.  As I wished to go on to my own house, I set off in that direction.  As I finally made my way out into the street coming from the College Arms, I stumbled upon something soft.  Enlisting the next flash of lightning, I stared down at a dead body.  As I turned it over, the face jumped out at me.  It was the landlord of the Spotted Dog, the man whose cart I had come to return.  I rushed away to my house, and spent the night there, thinking of the Martians’ conveyances and of the dead landlord.

The Fourth Occurrence

As I write this, I am making hurried preparations to travel to my wife’s cousins’ house in Leatherhead, where we should be secure from the recent happenings.  The second cylinder has fallen!  A second after midnight, the throng gathered on the Chertsey Road saw a “shooting star” falling into the wood.  It caused a still brightness like none had ever seen.  Some call it beautiful, some majestic, and some terrifying.  On another note, (for I’m sure many of you would wish to hear about the Martians on Earth), the Martians had been surrounded by military last night.  When I caught wind of this, I departed my home for the woods, where I found several soldiers discussing among themselves what should happen.  I deliberated with them for a time, but soon excused myself to go down to the train station to gather as many different newspapers in hopes of filling in the gaps of the story.  They shared nothing I didn’t know, only some muddled accounts of the deaths of Henderson, Stent, and Ogilvy.  Although that afternoon passed interminably slowly, I will not bore you with meaningless details, and instead resume my account at six o’clock, when my wife and I were taking tea.  I was rambling on – ah, how often I do that! – when I heard a stifled discharge.  I raced onto the lawn, and gazed at the tips of the trees surrounding the Oriental College as they ignited.  Soon after, the entire College was taken to the ground.  As my wife and I stood, shocked, one of our chimneys burst apart and crumbled.  Racing into action, I thrust her into the road, and ran back inside to fetch the servant.  As I told her that we couldn’t continue residing here, another burst of gunfire opened as if to prove my point.  When she inquired as to where we would go, I had no answer until I probed my mind.  Thus, we are going to her cousins’ house, by way of a horse-and-dog cart belonging to the landlord of the Spotted Dog.  I must hurry!  Your ever-faithful reporter, William Russell.

The Third Occurrence

The most horrific event to date has happened!  The Martians have developed- but first, before I rush ahead like I have a constant habit of doing, I must take time to tell the story.  Where I left you last, I had just run from the scene of the Martian’s emergence.  That is where we are to pick up again.  Thus, as I was standing in the heather, I began to desire the thought of going back to the Martian pit, and as such, I found myself walking in a circle, trying to find a place where I could gaze upon the pit but still be kept safe in the forest.  While doing this, I encountered several people who obviously had the same idea as myself, and some exchanged hurried words of disgust and fear as we passed.  Eventually, my eyes fell upon a small hillock from which my vantage point unto the pits would be perfect.  As I climbed the mount, a party of people advanced on the sand-pits.  Noticing this, I gazed upon them as they, waving a white flag, approached the Martian’s hiding-spot.  Without warning, there were three rapid puffs of glowing green smoke, shot directly into the air, as if some machine were being cleaned.  Next came a distinctive shape – the Martian – out of the pit, and a ray of light accompanied it.  Instantaneously, blazes of fire leapt from man to man, as if some invisible torch had lit them.  In an instant, the flames had swallowed them as would some horrible beast, all at once.  The onlookers retreated, and that night, two women and a little boy were crushed to death in the onslaught of escapees.  Some say fear creeps upon oneself until it slowly grasps them – my fear came all at once, like a thousand knives through my heart.  At times, my moods overtake me, and I feel as if I were not a part of the world anymore, but merely an onlooker, staring from somewhere faraway and detached.  This was a time of that sort, and I could not gather myself until I had gone home and drank some wine to steady my nerves.  Then, and only then, could I account to my wife in full detail what had happened.  She instantly grew worried, and I tried to reassure her, to no avail.  Finally, I persuaded her to go to sleep.  This very morning, the streets are abuzz with news and gossip of “the men from Mars”.  I will tell more later; for now, I must rest.  Who knows what may happen in the coming days?  As always, I remain your faithful reporter, William Russell.

The Heat-Ray

I found this picture on http://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/laser-projecting-microscope.jpg?w=470&h=400

It calls it a laser-projecting microscope, but I recognize it as an old picture of the device the Martians used.

The Second Occurrence

As I write this, I am sitting at home, with very much fear in my heart, waiting for the next strike to occur.  Before I get into telling my actions as they are happening, I intend to back up, if you will, and follow the natural course of events, instead of talking in such a haphazard way that no one man could understand.  I shall begin as such – the very next day from my last post, I fancied to return to the crater made by the cylinder.  As I approached, the crowd was pressing ever closer to the hole.  I called out to one man, who at that time I did not know, but came to realize that he was the Astronomer Royale; he answered me with a complaint of how the throng was inhibiting the workers’ ability to excavate the cylinder, and requested that I speak to Lord Hilton to have a light railing be put up as to keep back the crowd.  I traversed to the manor, only to find that Lord Hilton was not in, but expected on the six o’clock train.  As it was only about 5:15, I returned to my home to wait.  When I revisited the pits, all was chaos.  As I hurried up to the crater, a boy rushed past me, gibbering about how the cylinder’s cover was “a-screwin’ out”.  Whilst I approached the sand-pit, I noticed that the crowd had grown to the size of two or three hundred, all of whom were muttering and jostling each other.  When at the lip of the pit, a movement caught my attention, and I glanced down to see a young shop assistant that had been pushed into the pit by the overeager crowd, standing upon the cylinder and attempting to hoist himself out.  In a minute, he was gone.  Out of the cylinder emerged a tentacle, then another, until a Martian pulled itself out of the cylinder and regarded us all with the vacuity one might consider an insect – briefly interested, then bored, looking as if in the next instant it might crush us.  Even in the paralysis of the moment, that vacant stare holding us as if we could not breathe, some woman found the purchase to scream, at which time we all broke from our inactivity and had the good sense to run.  The shopkeeper’s assistant did not fare so luckily and was slowly dragged down into the pit, where the Martian began to feast.  I shudder to think of it now, as I wish I could have helped the poor fellow.  However, if I had not run, I could very well no longer remain your loyal servant, William Russell.