Human By Day, Zeta By Night

by Judy Carroll

  This idea of us actually being souls temporarily housed in a physical body really fascinated me and made so much sense. The way the nuns at school taught about the soul made it sound like it was an organ of the body, like a liver or a kidney. They spoke about keeping our heart and soul pure, and of how the soul could become stained with sin and of how we must cleanse it, as if it were a separate part of us that needed to be removed every so often and given a good scrub, like a set of false teeth! But if we are souls, how incredible! And how much easier to grasp the concept of immortality! And, if that is truly the case, then at the end of each life, of course, we would be able to step out of our old, tired and worn-out physical body and into another new one.

  Then another thought occurred to me — surely the same would apply if our physical body was damaged beyond repair. In that case you would be able to get a new one too!

  This then led me on to further speculation. I wondered if by any chance these new revelations held the key to the strange dreams I’d been experiencing on a regular basis. This was certainly worth thinking deeply about. Pleading tiredness, I thanked Aunt Malila warmly for her fascinating teachings, kissed everyone good night and headed for bed. I really did need some time to myself to consider all of this.

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  Chapter 6 An Alien in School

  These dreams had been regularly disturbing my sleep for as long as I could remember, and after Aunt Malila’s teaching on reincarnation, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were actual events from past lives that had really happened to me. I’d come to think of them as my “alien” dreams, and they always left me with a sense of disquiet. While in them, they didn’t seem at all like dreams, but rather real happenings. In them, I found myself on board a strange craft that travelled at incredibly high speed, and in the company of weird-looking beings who, in the course of the dream, I looked upon quite comfortably as “family.” I was aware of being very much one of them, sharing the same physical characteristics of small, spindly body, large head, long, thin triangular-shaped face, huge, black enamel-like eyes slanting upwards at the outer corners, grayish-colored skin, and hands with only three or four long fingers. When I was in the company of these others, we often seemed to be carrying out some type of extremely important work, but what it was exactly I could never recall on waking.

  Sometimes these dreams had a more frightening twist. They would begin as usual on the fast-moving craft, but then suddenly they would become a nightmare when we would find ourselves hurtling forward, spinning and flipping over, going faster and faster. The more effort we put into trying to right ourselves, the more we seemed to lose control. If luck was on my side, I would wake at this point, heart racing and body trembling, but more often, worse was to follow — a jarring, shattering impact, confusion, darkness, and then — horror of horrors — strange, clutching alien hands would drag me from tangled wreckage, seemingly oblivious to my distress. I would be woken by my own screams, and one of my parents would rush in to comfort me in their arms until the overwhelming emotions subsided and I calmed down enough to sleep again.

  There were other dreams too which were, in their own way, even more unsettling, reaching as they did into my conscious day-to-day life. One involved a school friend named Jenny, who arrived for class one Monday morning in tears, because her older brother Tom had been diagnosed with a serious illness. Jenny and I were good friends, so I felt very upset at the news, because I also knew Tom fairly well. The whole class joined together after school to say a rosary for his recovery.

  The next morning I awoke with a clear memory of having experienced one of my “alien” dreams. It began just like the other ones, travelling in the craft with my weird-looking companions, but the next moment found three of us in a strange bedroom. A young man who seemed quite familiar to me at the time lay on the bed, and I was aware of us doing something to him, but on waking I could not recall who this person was. The harder I tried to think, the farther his image receded from my conscious mind.

  Jenny was very quiet and withdrawn for the rest of the week. She didn’t seem to want to talk any more about her brother, so we let her be, but each day the nuns led us in prayer for his recovery.

  It was during lunch hour on the following Friday that Jenny approached me. “Ali, can you come over to the church for a few minutes? I need to talk in private.” So saying, she headed off towards the small, covered walkway that led directly into the church from the school veranda. Stepping into the quiet interior, our senses were immediately soothed by the sweet perfume of the red carnations and pure white arum lilies that were arranged in vases upon the main altar, as well as on the two smaller side altars, which held statues of the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph. The whole atmosphere of the church was also permeated with the distinctive and ever-present aroma of incense, which was burned regularly at every Mass.

  Dipping our fingers in the holy water font at the door, hastily crossing ourselves and dropping in quick genuflection in front of the main altar, we headed for the small Chapel of Our Lady, a partly enclosed area set aside in the front right-hand corner of the church. We made ourselves comfortable in a back pew, and then Jenny hesitated a few seconds before turning to me with a strange look in her eyes.

  “Ali, something really weird happened to Tom the other night, and I’ve just got to talk to somebody about it. I don’t know why, but it’s you I feel I need to tell — maybe because I trust you and know you won’t go blabbing to the others.”

  “Course I wouldn’t, Jen.” I assured her. “Whatever you want to say is safe with me, I promise.”

  Jenny looked carefully around the church to make absolutely certain we were alone before going on: “Ali, Tom was visited by aliens last Monday night!”

  Just for a moment I thought she was joking, but I knew immediately by her face that she wasn’t. Besides, she would not make such a joke with her brother so ill; and then the dream, which by then I’d forgotten, flashed back into my mind and with it the clear memory of a very distinctive piece of furniture against the opposite wall to where the young man lay on the bed. Suddenly I knew exactly who he was.

  Jenny was looking at me with a worried expression. “Ali Cat,” she said, leaning forward. “Are you okay? You’ve gone as white as a ghost! I’m sorry — I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “No, no Jen, it’s all right, I — I’m fine. Come on, tell me about Tom. Who visited him? Is he okay?”

  “Oh, God, Ali, it was really weird! It happened last Monday night, after I told all of you about Tom being so sick. The next morning he woke up remembering a ‘dream’ from the night before in which three strange little alien-looking beings came into his room. He was really scared, and he tried to fight them off, but they told him not to be frightened, that they were there to help him, and then two of them held him down hard on the bed while the third one gave him some sort of injection, telling him it was to make him better.

  “Mom wouldn’t believe him at first and kept insisting it was only a silly dream, but then he rolled up the sleeve of his pajama top and showed us the mark of an injection on his arm! Poor mom nearly fainted. She’s a nurse, so she knows what an injection mark looks like. What do you think of it? Do you reckon we’re all crazy?”

  I hastily assured her that I didn’t think any such thing, and that maybe it was possible. After all, there were sometimes reports in the news of UFOs, and strangely enough a number of them had been seen recently in our area. One of these local reports had even involved an alien abduction a couple of months back.

  “Anyway Jen,” I pointed out, “they didn’t hurt Tom, and they did tell him that the injection was to make him better, so if it works I guess that’s the main thing.”

  “Yes, I suppose,” she agreed. “Let’s hope so anyway. Ali, are you sure you’re okay? You still look a bit strange.”

  “Honestly Jen, I’m fine, but I hope no weird little aliens decide to visit me! Come on, we’d better go or we’ll be late for class and Sister Mary Angela will
murder us! Oh, God, that’s right! It’s History — yuk!”

  For the rest of the day I kept getting into trouble for not paying attention to my lessons, but I could not get out of my mind the memory of Tom lying on the bed. And did he really have that unusual chest of drawers against the wall opposite his bed? I could still see it so clearly.

  A week or so later, Jenny came to school bursting with excitement and relief — Tom was going to be okay. His full recovery would probably take a while, but he was going to be fine. Their doctor was totally amazed, and the nuns declared it a miracle brought about by prayer, but I wondered if maybe something else was involved as well.

  It was Jenny’s birthday at the end of the month, and along with some of her other school friends, I was invited to her party. It was to be a double celebration, for Tom’s recovery as well as for his sister’s eleventh birthday.

  “Aha!” I thought to myself. “At last I’ll be able to find out if it really was Tom’s room I visited that night.”

  It was all I could do to contain my curiosity the afternoon of the party. I had a plan worked out, and just hoped that the family were not in the habit of closing their bedroom doors during the day. At the first possible opportunity, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. As luck would have it, it was situated at the end of the hallway, so the journey involved walking past all three bedrooms. All that was needed was a quick peek in each.

  The parents’ room was easy to find, being the largest of the three and containing a double bed. Jenny’s too was obvious, from the pretty little rosebuds on the wallpaper, the pink tubular frame bed, and the family of dolls arranged neatly on the matching dressing table. Looking around to make sure no one was following me, I peeked through the open doorway of Tom’s room — and nearly passed out on the spot. All the anticipation in the world could not have prepared me for the sight of the distinctive chest of drawers, standing in exactly the same position as I remembered from my dream. It was obviously antique, with deeply carved woodwork and heavy brass knobs on each of the three drawers — not the sort of furniture you would see in every home. And the pattern on the bedspread was familiar to me as well; in fact the sight of it brought a clearer memory of the “dream” to the conscious level of my mind. I even knew exactly where I’d been standing, and the thoughts that had passed through my head at the time.

  Not sure whether to laugh or cry, I suddenly felt totally overwhelmed by the whole thing. I did not want to know — it was all too strange. Turning from the doorway I went back to the party in a vain attempt to lose myself in the celebrations until my father arrived at 5:00 to take me home.

  Unfortunately for my peace of mind, this was not going to be the one and only weird experience for that year. About a month or so later I again awoke with a clear dream memory of one of the girls at school. Patricia was a bit of a “case,” coming as she did from a very dysfunctional family — an unhappy situation which expressed itself in teasing and trouble-making behavior on her part. We all felt sorry for her, but because of the way she acted she was not popular. If ever there was trouble in class, Patricia was never far away.

  All I could recall of the dream was that I had turned around and found myself standing at the foot of Patricia’s bed, and she had woken up and screamed in fright. It was the sound of her scream that woke me, back safe and sound in my own bed.

  The next day she came up behind me in the school playground, calling out: “Hey Ali! Do you know what? You’re weird! Where’s your flying saucer parked? Hey everyone, did you know Ali Cat’s an alien!”

  There was a small group of girls who tagged along with Patricia, at least at those times when they weren’t fighting with each other, and now they joined her in ganging up on me. “Come on Pat,” they all giggled, “tell us something we don’t know! Course she’s weird! She’s a Gypo, isn’t she? Watch out, she’ll pick your pockets!”

  “Nah,” sneered Patricia, “being an alien is even worse than being a Gypo!” A vicious look came into her eyes as she turned on me. She reminded me of a cornered animal that was ready to fight. “What were you doing in my room last night?” she hissed.

  “What are you talking about?” I replied as calmly as I could, trying to keep out of my voice any hint that I remembered the dream. “You’re the one who’s weird, Patricia, not me. What would I be doing in your room anyway? I don’t even know where you live.”

  “You’re a lying bitch!” she snarled. “You were there and you know it. I woke up and you were standing at the foot of my bed, with your back to me. You turned around so I could see it was you, and then your face changed! You turned into one of those horrible, ugly aliens with gray skin and a long, thin face, and you had great, big, huge, black bug eyes. That’s it! You looked just like some kind of nasty insect! Then you went to touch my feet with your hands! YUK! They were weird and horrible too — long and thin with only four fingers. Eww! You’re disgusting! Just stay away from me! Don’t you come anywhere near me!”

  Belying her words, Patricia came at me, hands raised to attack. Taking a step back, I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of somebody approaching very fast. By the long, flowing, black garb I assumed it was a nun coming to my rescue. Patricia stopped mid-stride, leveled one last malevolent glare in my direction, then turned on her heel and stalked off, followed closely by her “cheer squad.” I turned around, fully expecting to see a nun, but there was nobody there. What was going on? Maybe Patricia was right! Maybe I was weird!

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  Chapter 7 Not All That Different

  I hoped sincerely that the whole incident would soon be forgotten, and that Patricia and her gang would have found someone else to pick on, but no such luck. The moment I stepped outside the school gate they came after me, taunting me with their chants and jeers, and throwing stones at me. By the time I reached home I was close to tears.

  “Ali,” my mother put a comforting arm around me, “what’s the matter? Have those girls at school been teasing you again? Do you want me to go and talk to Mother Bernadette about it?”

  “Oh, no, please, not that! They all think I’m weird enough without having my parents running to Mother Superior and complaining. It’s not fair! Why do we have to be Romany anyway? Why couldn’t we be an ordinary gajo family, then maybe I’d be able to fit in better, and be accepted by the others. As it is they treat me as if I’ve just arrived from some other planet, complete with four eyes and green skin! Why do we have to be so different?”

  “But Ali Cat, we’re not all that different. What makes you say that?”

  “Not different!” I cried, staring at her in disbelief. “Don’t try to tell me that all the others at school can see auras and energy, and understand the language of animals! And then there are those weird dreams I keep having! If that’s not ‘different’ then I’d like to know what is!”

  “Look, Ali, that has nothing to do with you being Romany, and I must admit that, yes, in that regard you are a little different, even for one of us. When you were younger we used to think it was just an over-active imagination, but now I know that there really is something unusual with you. But what’s the point of getting upset about it? You have these abilities, so you must just learn to accept them, and as I’ve told you before, try not to talk about it at school. You know what the others are like and how they tease you.”

  “But I didn’t! It’s not fair! All I want is to be able to fit in and to be like everyone else. It wasn’t so bad when I was younger, but now I realize myself how strange I am, even compared to my own family, and I don’t understand why! Why won’t these stupid abilities and dreams just go away so I can be like everyone else? I don’t want to be this way! I wish I’d never been born!”

  By this time I was crying my eyes out, and again my mother put her arms around me, stroking my hair to comfort me. “Ali Cat, come over here and sit down, we need to talk.” She led me over to the couch and sat beside me, still holding me tightly. “Look, Ali, there is something I really need to talk to
you about — something that may help you to come to terms with these ‘abilities’ you have, and the strange dreams as well.

  “It all goes back to when I very first became pregnant with you. I too experienced a very strange dream. Now the funny thing is that I’d forgotten it completely until you began having yours, then suddenly it all came back to me, clear as a bell. What reminded me was the one you have of being on board a fast-moving craft, because that is exactly where I was in my dream too, and while there I was handed a baby — a girl-child. I couldn’t see who gave her to me, but I felt a sense that it was the child’s ‘true mother,’ and that she was giving the little one over into my care, and the understanding was that this was a very special child. The whole event was surrounded by a feeling of great love and nurturing.

  “Something I was acutely aware of when this baby was placed in my arms was that she was different — not physically but rather more, how can I say, on an energy level. Yes, that’s it, her energy pattern was different, but at the same time it felt good and positive, and I was aware of a sense of great responsibility in being given her care.

  “Right throughout the nine months of the pregnancy I could feel this motherly ‘presence’ around me, watching over us both. Then a couple of nights after you were born, I again experienced a dream in which the Mother came to me. She seemed relieved that the birth had taken place and that you were safe and sound. It was then that I was given what I understood to be your true name. I had great difficulty in hearing it exactly, because it was conveyed in the strangest voice. In fact it didn’t sound like a human voice at all, but more like the whisper of the wind in the trees. It sounded like ‘Alar,’ but there was more to it, another syllable on the end. This is why I called you Ali, because it was close enough to the name that was given, but not exactly, so it was safe to use.