Free Half Magic by Edward Eager Page B

still there—lost her head completely. Uttering a low wail, she struggled to her feet, scrambled out through the row of seats, and ran up the aisle.
    It is not often that one is watching a movie, and suddenly a wailing ghostly figure rises from the floor and scrambles past one.
    Most of the ladies Martha scrambled past merely fainted.
    The woman who had not grasped it all, before, now gave a shriek, and grasped her husband.
    "Oh!" cried Jane, in a rage, catching up her handbag. "I wish I'd never even
heard
of that charm!"
    And immediately she had only
half
heard of it. It was like a story she had read somewhere and half forgotten. And so naturally she didn't think of using the charm to bring Martha back to normal again. Instead, she ran up the aisle after her. Mark and Katharine ran after Jane.
    An usher, running down the aisle to see what the coinmotion was, ran into them. He saw the handbag, heard the woman screaming, and decided Jane had stolen the bag. This slowed the children up a little, though no one was seriously hurt. The scratch the usher received was a mere scratch.
    Meanwhile the ghostly Martha had run on up the aisle. In the darkness of the theater, not many people noticed her, but in the brightly lit lobby it was another story. The ticket-taker squealed, and threw her tickets in the air. The manager came running out of his office. He saw Martha, and turned pale.
    "Oh, what next?" he cried, tearing his hair. "As if business weren't bad enough already, now the theater is
haunted
!" He aimed a blow at her with his cashbox. "Get along with you, you pesky thing!" he cried. "Why don't you go back where you came from?"
    The hapless Martha moaned, and flitted on through the lobby, and into the street.
    The appearance of her ghostly form upon the sidewalk caused quite a stir among the city's crowd of shoppers.
    "It's an advertising stunt!" said a stout woman. "What they won't think of to sell these here moom pitchers next!"
    "It's a sign!" said a thin woman. "It's the end of the world, and me in this old dress!"
    "Tell it to go away!" groaned a well-dressed gentleman. "And I'll give back every cent I stole!"
    "It's an outrage!" muttered an elderly person. "I shall complain to my Congressman!"
    "It's a little girl, only she's only half there," said a child, but of course nobody paid any attention to
her!
    Some people who were afraid of ghosts started running, to get away from the horrible sight.
    Martha started running in the opposite direction, to get away from the people.

 
    Other people saw them running, and began to run, too, without knowing why. In no time at all a panic began to spread, as it will when people start behaving in this way, without thinking.
    "What's the matter?" said a man to another man who was running by him. "You look as if you'd seen a ghost!"
    "I just did!" cried the man. "Look!" And he pointed at the fleeing Martha.
    "Don't be silly. There's no such thing," said the first man, who happened to be a learned professor. He glanced at the misty Martha. "Marsh gas," he said. "Very interesting."
    "Martians? Did you say Martians?" said a third man, who happened to be passing. "The Martians are invading us!" he cried, without waiting for an answer. He began to run and everyone who heard him began running, too.
    By the time Jane and Mark and Katharine had dealt with the usher and emerged from the movie theater, pandemonium reigned in the street. Someone had called the fire department and turned in a general alarm. Someone else had telephoned the police and asked them to send the riot squad. The wails of approaching fire sirens and the screeches of police whistles added confusion to the scene.
    A crowd of people rushed past the theater.
    "The Martians have landed!" they cried, pointing back in the opposite direction. "We saw one of them, all transparent and horrible!"
    Jane and Mark and Katharine looked up the street in the direction the people were pointing in. Far in the distance they could just make