PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  Interestingly enough, Beth had no more blackouts, though the lack of proper sleep due to the nightmares was turning her otherwise lovely face gaunt and weary. Noting this with concern, Dwight was startled to realise that Beth was now forty years old and that they had been married for seventeen of those years, with Nichola already turning sixteen. He and Beth, then, while clambering over that always-difficult bridge into middle age, were gradually being aged even more by the trials they were forced to endure at the hands of a malign, unseen enemy. Dwight wanted to give it up, turn his back and run away, but Beth, even in her own dire condition, refused to let him.

  ‘To do that,’ she said, ‘would probably add feelings of failure to your already chronic mixture of anger, fear and frustration. In short, it would do you no good, Dwight, and might even do you a lot of damage. So never mind what’s happening to us; just hang in there and fight this thing.’

  ‘I can’t help worrying about you,’ Dwight replied. ‘You’re suffering even more than I am – they’re getting at me through you – and I can’t help worrying about that. Why don’t you go away for a while? Take a vacation. Visit your parents. Help them fix up their new place. They’d probably like that.’

  Beth’s father, Joe McGinnis, had recently sold his car-sales business and retired with his wife Glenda to Westerville, a pleasant small town located in rolling countryside about twelve miles north of Columbus, about a hundred miles from Dayton. They had only moved out a week ago and phoned the day before to say they loved the new house but needed some visitors to give it that lived-in look.

  ‘Why not come down?’ Joe had asked Beth. ‘I know Nichola is still at school, but it’s not a long way to travel, so you could come on your own. Besides, there are times when it’s good to be alone. Might take years off you, gal.’

  ‘I think Joe’s right,’ Dwight now told her. ‘A change of scenery, away from it all, could do you good.’

  ‘Do you think I could manage a vacation without...’ Beth could hardly utter the words, because the thought of a negative reply was too painful to contemplate. She wanted to know if she could go away for a short break and not be followed by... them. Was there anywhere she and Dwight could be private, out of sight, out of mind? If not, then their life together was truly a nightmare from which there was no escape. ‘I just thought...’

  ‘It’s worth trying,’ Dwight assured her. ‘What can you lose?’

  ‘Okay, then, I’ll try it for a week. When should I go?’

  ‘It’s only a two-hour drive, so why not go this afternoon? Leave now and you'll be there in time for dinner – and all mothers love to cook for their daughters, so that’ll be a good start.’

  ‘Mom’s cooking and a bottle of Dad’s beer. Sounds good to me.’

  ‘Can’t harm you at all.’

  ‘Right, Dwight, I’ll call them and check that it’s okay, then I’ll pack my valise.’

  ‘You do that,’ Dwight said.

  After checking with her folks and receiving their approval, Beth packed a valise, had a quick shower, then let Dwight walk her to the car, an old but trustworthy Ford saloon. They kissed and embraced on the sidewalk, not caring who saw them.

  ‘You take care,’ Beth said.

  ‘You have a good time for a change.’

  ‘And don’t let Nichola get up to any mischief.’

  ‘I’m a pretty stern dad.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll see you next week.’

  ‘Can I wait that long?’

  Beth wrinkled her nose and smiled. ‘What a sweet-talking man I’ve got,’ she said. ‘Here, give me a big one.’

  They kissed again, then Beth slipped into the car and drove off. Dwight looked on until the vehicle had turned the corner at the end of the road, then he glanced left and right, behind him, at the sky, hardly aware of what he had just done, instinctively, with foreboding, as he returned to the house.

  Beth had told Dwight she would ring him when she reached her parents’ place. When she hadn’t called him by that evening, Dwight called his father-in-law and asked if Beth had turned up yet. Sounding anxious, Joe said she had not.

  ‘But the journey should only take two hours,’ Dwight said, ‘and she’s been gone for four.’

  ‘Might have stopped for a meal,’ Joe suggested hopefully.

  ‘No. She was planning to have dinner with you. Six on the dot, remember? Besides, if she knew she was going to be late, she’d have called, sure as hell.’

  ‘Maybe she simply had a breakdown. Let’s give her another hour.’

  ‘Okay,’ Dwight said.

  An hour later, at nine in the evening, when Beth still hadn’t called either house, Dwight and Joe simultaneously checked with their local police stations regarding breakdowns or accidents. Neither station was holding a report on anything regarding Beth or her vehicle; they would, however, ask their patrol cars to try tracking her down and call back whenever they found her.

  By midnight they still hadn’t found her.

  Distraught, Dwight did his best to look normal in front of Nichola, who, at sixteen, was a tall, slim young lady with long blonde hair and radiant green eyes, dangerously attractive in figure-hugging denims and sweater, already drawing adolescent boys to the front porch, asking her out. Lying that Beth was with her parents and would be calling the next day, Dwight bid Nichola goodnight and watched her disappearing into her bedroom. Blessing God for his daughter’s presence, he cracked a can of beer and drank it while sitting in a chair placed strategically between the table containing the phone and a window overlooking the front yard. He sat there throughout the night, until dawn, but Beth didn’t arrive home, and neither the police in Dayton nor those in Columbus had found a trace of her.

  Now almost out of his mind with anxiety, Dwight tried to hide it when he drove Nichola to school, dropped her off, and then, without realising he was doing it, glanced left and right, behind him, up at the sky. Seeing nothing unusual, though scarcely aware that he was looking, he quickly drove home again.

  Beth’s old Ford was parked in the driveway.

  Parking his own car too quickly, practically banging into the Ford, he hurried into the house and found Beth sitting on the sofa, sipping from a cup of black coffee. When he entered, she glanced at him, repeatedly blinking her bloodshot eyes, then put her coffee cup down and jumped up to embrace him. Clearly exhausted, she was shivering and seemed on the verge of tears. Seeing the state of her, Dwight made her sit down again, then he put his arms around her and said, ‘God, Beth, what happened? We’ve been anxious as hell.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure. Another one of those blackouts.’ She shook her head from side to side, rubbed her eyes, blinked repeatedly and licked her lips. ‘I can only remember the journey as far as the other side of Springfield. Somewhere along the road I must have lost consciousness.’ She burst into tears, was consoled by Dwight, then tried recollecting the rest of it. ‘All I remember is driving out of Springfield, heading for Columbus. It was about five in the evening. I remember this empty stretch of road beyond Springfield, then...’ She lit a Camel cigarette, inhaled like someone drowning, trying to gulp in air, then blew a cloud of smoke and relaxed a little. ‘Nothing!’ She shrugged. ‘Next thing I remember, I was still in the car, still behind the steering wheel, but the car was at the other side of Springfield – this side of Springfield – and parked facing back where I had come from: in the direction of Dayton.’

  ‘Lord almighty!’ Dwight said. ‘What time was this?’

  Beth checked her wristwatch, looked perplexed, then glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Judging by the time now, I must have awakened between eight and nine this morning. I couldn’t tell the time because my wristwatch had stopped at five after five. That was either the time yesterday evening or this morning – I can’t really say – though I’m pretty damned sure it was five after five last night.’ She squeezed Dwight’s waist and laid her head on his shoulder. ‘Oh, God, I’m really scared, Dwight. This is worse than before. I feel lik
e I’ve been to hell and back - and I can’t explain why. I’m shattered. I feel bruised inside and out... God, yes, I’m scared!’

  She burst into tears again, so Dwight hugged her, stroked her hair, kissed the top of her head, then gently rocked her on the sofa until she had calmed down. Then he cupped her tearful face in his hands and kissed her on the lips.

  ‘Lie down and have a sleep,’ he advised her. ‘Take some Valium. I don’t want to encourage you to take sedatives, but I think sleep’s more important right now. I’ll be here. I won’t be sleeping. I’ll be looking after you. You’ve nothing to fear.’

  ‘You won’t leave the house?’

  ‘I promise. Not until Nichola has to be picked up – and you’ll be awake by then. Until then, I’m staying right here. So come on, let’s get you into bed.’

  When he led her into the bedroom, she just stared silently at the bed, clearly reluctant to lie down.

  ‘You don’t have to take your clothes off,’ Dwight told her. ‘Just have some Valium and lie down and you’ll go to sleep instantly.’

  But Beth shook her head in protest. ‘No, I can’t sleep in these clothes. I can’t wear them ever again. I feel dirty in these clothes... contaminated... God, I can’t stand these clothes!’

  Distraught, she proceeded to frantically tear the clothes off her, like someone covered in stinging ants, until Dwight managed to soothe her again and sit her down on the edge of the bed. After making her swallow some Valium, he told her to stretch out on the bed and try to relax.

  Even with the sedative, however, she insisted that she couldn’t relax until she took off all her clothes and had a hot shower. This she did, becoming raw-red in water so hot that Dwight was compelled to reach in and turn the tap to mix more cold with the hot, lowering the temperature. Beth, naked and pink from the steaming water, still took a long time to thoroughly, compulsively, clean herself, but finally stepped out of the shower and, like a docile child, let Dwight dry her with a towel. Still naked and shaking her head from side to side, silently gesturing 'No!’ when Dwight held out her night-dress, she crawled between the sheets and fell asleep almost instantly.

  Boiling himself another coffee, sensing that he would not yet be able to digest food, Dwight sat at the table between the telephone and the front window, gazing out on the street, to where his car was parked practically nose-to-tail with Beth’s Ford. He dwelt repeatedly on Beth’s tale of driving out of Springfield at five in the evening and awakening the next morning on the Dayton side of town, as if somehow her car had been picked up, transported back the way it had come, and deposited again on the road leading to Dayton and home. Eventually, on an impulse, and after checking that Beth was still soundly asleep, which she was, he left the house and went to check her car.

  At first he found nothing... then, upon closer inspection, he found four absolutely similar indentations, two on each side of the car, placed equidistant between the wheels, just below the front and rear doors.

  In a trance of disbelief and gradual acceptance, Dwight examined those indentations repeatedly and finally came to the conclusion that his senses were not betraying him... The indentations indicated clearly that four clamps of some kind had been tightened on the bodywork, under the four doors, between the wheels, to raise the car off the ground.

  Whatever it was that had raised the car, it was at least physical.

  For weeks after Beth’s baffling, frightening experience, she suffered from blinding headaches and a repeat of the former nightmares. She also became more convinced that her fears about being followed by men in black had been justified... and she was seeing those men in her nightmares.

  Finally, when she showed no signs of improvement, Dwight insisted that she visit a psychiatrist, if only to confirm that she was sane and had not imagined the whole business. He felt guilty doing this, as he was already convinced, by the indentations on the car as well as by Beth’s undeniable sincerity, that the vehicle had indeed been picked up by a physical object and transported back to the other side of town while she was unconscious.

  Nevertheless, he also felt that the psychiatric evaluation was necessary for Beth’s peace of mind and would be a validation for what he had proposed should follow it: a visit to a professional hypnotist for the purpose of ascertaining exactly what had happened along that lonely stretch of road between Springfield and Columbus over a period of eighteen hours.

  After a number of consultations with Beth, the psychiatrist, Dr Phillip Dewhurst, an old friend who had served as a medical officer at Wright-Patterson AFB, confirmed that she was not hallucinating and was, instead, suffering from genuine amnesia regarding the ‘lost’ period in question. It was the opinion of Dr Dewhurst that the amnesia was caused by Beth’s deep-seated need to obliterate either a real experience or an exceptionally frightening, possibly repellent, fantasy. Dr Dewhurst therefore recommended, as Dwight had hoped, that instead of a course of sodium amytal or Pentothal to break through Beth’s resistance to her buried memory, she undergo regressive hypnotism with his friend, Dr Irma Sagan, B.A., M.A., M.D., formerly of the Society of Medical Hypnotists, London, England, and a highly respected psychiatrist in her own right.

  Though initially reluctant to let herself be hypnotised, Beth, after a few more ‘hauntings’ and nightmares, agreed to let Dwight set up the appointment. Subsequently, a few days later, they were shown into Dr Sagan’s office in downtown Dayton and asked to take the two chairs on the other side of her desk, facing her. Dr Sagan was a slim, attractive brunette with a bright, relaxing smile – certainly not what the nervous Beth had imagined a psychiatrist and hypnotist would be. When Beth released her nervous tension by blurting out what she thought, Dr Sagan just chuckled.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘It’s the curse of my life. Everyone expects me to be old, distinguished, grey-haired and, of course, male. They also expect me to be terribly solemn, maybe even intense or half-mad – Rasputin... Svengali. Luckily for you, I don’t have to be either. This is a job like any other and I do it well. Are you feeling more relaxed now?'

  ‘More relaxed for having met you,’ Beth said, smiling, ‘and seeing that you’re not Rasputin or Svengali.’

  Dr Sagan smiled in return. ‘Fine. Now do you have any doubts about hypnotism? By which I mean, do you believe it can be effective in psychological terms?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Beth said.

  ‘In other words, coming here wasn’t your own idea.’

  ‘No.’ Beth glanced at Dwight. ‘It was my husband’s idea, initially. Then your friend, Dr Dewhurst, recommended it.’

  ‘Do you trust your husband?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Good. Now this is very important... Do you believe you can be hypnotised?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I think it’s self-suggestion. I think that if you want to be hypnotised, you can be. Maybe simple-minded or easily led people can be. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in hypnotism, or don’t want to be hypnotised, then it’s not going to work for you.’

  ‘And you neither believe in it nor want it.’

  ‘I’m willing to try it on the chance that it might help me, but I don’t hold out too much hope.’

  ‘Those are very precise answers,’ Dr Sagan told her. ‘You have a strong personality.’ She stood up, walked around to the front of the desk, sat on its edge, directly in front of Beth, and stared down at her. ‘Let me assure you, Beth, that any intelligent adult and most children over the age of seven can be hypnotised, that only the mentally retarded and the psychotic can resist being hypnotised, and that hypnotisabilty is in no way a sign of weak will. Indeed, the more intelligent and imaginative the subject, the better a subject he or she will be. You therefore needn’t feel ashamed if I hypnotise you. There’s nothing wrong in being hypnotised. Just think of it as another branch of medicine and try to accept it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Beth said.

  Dr Sagan smiled and nodded. �
��So how do you imagine I’m going to hypnotise you?’

  ‘You’ll make me lie down and use something visual and repetitive – a swinging key chain, a metronome – to focus my attention. Then you’ll talk to me as my eyes follow the movement of the swinging object.’

  Dr Sagan smiled again. ‘You’ve obviously been reading up on the subject.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s the time, Beth?’

  Beth checked her wristwatch. ‘Thirty after eleven.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Dr Sagan placed the palm of her hand against Beth’s forehead. ‘What if I told you to raise your right hand?’

  ‘I’d ask why you wanted me to do that.’

  ‘What if I just replied by telling you to raise your right hand?’

  Beth raised her right hand. ‘I’d ask you why you wanted me to do that.’

  ‘And if I refused to answer, would you refuse to raise your right hand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Beth said, still holding up her right hand, but clearly not aware that she was doing so.

  ‘Does this kind of conversation exhaust you?’

  ‘It does a bit,’ Beth replied, still holding her right hand up in the air.

  ‘Your eyes are heavy, aren’t they? Drowsy and heavy. Very heavy. So heavy you feel you want to close them, but you can’t close them just yet.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Beth said.

  ‘Would you like to lie down and close your heavy eyes and rest them for a moment?’

  ‘Yes,’ Beth said.

  ‘Would you like to lower your right hand and walk to the sofa and lie down and close your heavy eyes for a moment?’

  ‘I would,’ Beth said.

  ‘Lower your right hand, Beth, and walk to the sofa and lie down and close your heavy eyes for a moment.’

  Fully conscious and feeling that this was the correct thing to do, Beth lowered her right hand, walked across to the sofa, stretched out on it and closed her weary eyes.