Horror tales; News agencies -- Fiction; Short stories
It must have been twenty minutes after he spoke that I noticed he had
opened up the other wire and was using both typewriters. I thought it
was a little unusual, as there was nothing very “hot” coming in. On my
next trip I picked up the copy from both machines and took it back to
my desk to sort out the duplicates.
The first wire was running out the usual sort of stuff and I just
looked over it hurriedly. Then I turned to the second pile of copy. I
remember it particularly because the story was from a town I had never
heard of: “Xebico.” Here is the dispatch. I saved a duplicate of it
from our files:
“Xebico Sept. 16 CP BULLETIN
“The heaviest mist in the history of the city settled over the
town at 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon. All traffic has stopped and
the mist hangs like a pall over everything. Lights of ordinary
intensity fail to pierce the fog, which is constantly growing
heavier.
“Scientists here are unable to agree as to the cause, and the
local weather bureau states that the like has never occurred
before in the history of the city.
“At 7 p. m. last night municipal authorities--(more)”
That was all there was. Nothing out of the ordinary at a bureau
headquarters, but, as I say, I noticed the story because of the name
of the town.
It must have been fifteen minutes later that I went over for another
batch of copy. Morgan was slumped down in his chair and had switched
his green electric light shade so that the gleam missed his eyes and
hit only the top of the two typewriters.
Only the usual stuff was in the right hand pile, but the left hand
batch carried another story from “Xebico.” All press dispatches come
in “takes,” meaning that parts of many different stories are strung
along together, perhaps with but a few paragraphs of each coming
through at a time. This second story was marked “add fog.” Here is the
copy;
“At 7 p. m. the fog had increased noticeably. All lights were now
invisible and the town was shrouded in pitch darkness.
“As a peculiarity of the phenomenon, the fog is accompanied by a
sickly odor, comparable to nothing yet experienced here.”
Below that in customary press fashion was the hour, 3:27, and the
initials of the operator, JM.
There was only one other story in the pile from the second wire. Here
it is:
“2nd add Xebico Fog
“Accounts as to the origin of the mist differ greatly. Among the
most unusual is that of the sexton of the local church, who groped
his way to headquarters in a hysterical condition and declared
that the fog originated in the village churchyard.
“‘It was first visible in the shape of a soft gray blanket
clinging to the earth above the graves,’ he stated. ‘Then it began
to rise, higher and higher. A subterranean breeze seemed to blow
it in billows, which split up and then joined together again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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