“Yeah, I know,” Marty said. ‘“There’s the signpost up ahead…You’ve just crossed over—”
“If you get back, maybe you could make a movie out of this,” Doc Brown smiled.
“Good idea. But what do you mean, if?”
“Things happen. I might mess up the time machine so that the lightning doesn’t work. You might not be able to get your parents together before the end of the week. By that time, maybe your head will be missing from the family portrait…”
“Oh, God…” Marty moaned.
He sat down heavily on the lumpy old sofa Doc kept in his garage. It was half-filled now with old magazines, mail, and circulars. On the top of the pile was a newspaper, dated November 7, 1955. An article on the back page leaped out at Marty. It read: LOCAL FARMER CLAIMS ‘SPACE ZOMBIE’ WRECKED HIS BARN, and below that, in smaller type: “Otis Peabody Under Observation at County Asylum.”
“Eureka!” Marty suddenly shouted, snapping his fingers.
Doc Brown’s head popped out of the DeLorean.
“You thought of something?”
“You said it! I know how to get my old man to ask Mom to that dance.”
“How?”
“I’m gonna scare the shit out of him.”
? Chapter Ten ?
George McFly went to bed early, yielding to an overall mood of depression generated by events in school and his father’s lack of enthusiasm for a college career. Although the phrase “positive thinking” was not popular as such in 1955, he had read books that promoted a variation of the same philosophy. A year earlier, he had pinned his hopes on the prewar best-seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People, had memorized whole sections of it and tried to carve out a new life based on this sunny-side-up attitude. The first time he encountered Biff Tannen had negated all his efforts. According to Dale Carnegie, the book’s author, a man cannot remain hostile to you if you show him you’re sincerely interested in him. Biff Tannen had not only remained hostile, he had rubbed a hero sandwich in George’s face after George spent nearly a quarter hour testing his new philosophy on him.
Girls proved no more malleable. Approaching them with a new positive attitude caused them to regard George McFly not only as a creep, but also as an insincere creep. Even his parents avoided George during the time he was under the sway of Mr. Carnegie, instinctively distrusting his strangely outgoing disposition.
And so George had retreated into himself again. “The hell with it,” he said. “Let those who like me like me for what I am.” It sounded good to say this, except that he couldn’t say for sure who it was that liked him.
Retiring to his room at nine o’clock, he had written several more pages of his earth invasion story, fooled with his homework for an hour or so and then turned out the light. He did not fall asleep easily, but by one o’clock had drifted into a semiconscious state that led, a half hour later, to deep slumber.
He did not see the large form move to the side of his bed, nor did he feel the featherweight headphones being placed on his ears by the gloved hands. The same hands inserted a cassette tape into the Walkman tape player, a cassette labeled VAN HALEN. The dial of the Walkman was moved to “10” and the “play” button pushed.
George passed from peaceful sleep to a state of pulse-pounding agitation in less than a second. What was that sound? It was the worst noise he had ever heard—the torturing of humans, perhaps, mixed with background sounds from hell. Yet it had a terrifying throb that elevated it from the realm of noise to semi-intelligent creation. But it was the creation of mad people, the synchronized babble of idiots screaming, lemming-like, at the top of their lungs. What was going on? Had he died and was now approaching the gates of hell?
Then, suddenly, the sound was gone.
“Silence, earthling!” a voice intoned.
George, who was sufficiently frightened to be incapable of any sound, could only stare at the creature near the foot of his bed. It was yellow, featureless, with only a square mouth through which it spoke to him in an eerie filtered voice.
He had no doubt it was a creature from another planet.
“Who…” George managed to squeak.
“My name is Darth Vader,” the being intoned. “I am an extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan.”
George shook his head. “I must…be…dreaming…” he stammered.
“This is no dream!” the alien shot back. “You are having a close encounter of the third kind. You have taken one step beyond into the outer limits of the twilight zone.”
“No…”
“Silence! I have instructions for you.”
“I…don’t want…instructions…” George moaned. “Mom…Dad…”