by Zoe Drake
“Well… I don’t know.” Littlewood was suddenly abashed. “Probably this was the last event in the sequence, and you won’t be troubled any more. But if you’re a Repeater… there may be more to come.”
“Like what? Tell me, for God’s sake!”
“Another Night Visitor. Maybe this time you’ll actually see the aliens. Perhaps another abduction – they might come back and take you aboard their ship again.”
“What for?”
“Some kind of experiment, I guess. Then there are the Men In Black… but let’s not talk about them.”
“But why me?” Gareth pushed back his chair and walked to the window. He stared out at the back garden, as if searching for clues that Littlewood had overlooked. “Why me? Why is this happening to me?”
“Why does it happen to anyone? Nobody knows.”
Littlewood looked at Gareth in increasing embarrassment, and continued, “It might be that they came here last night, that they knew how to find you, because of… an implant.”
Memories of light flashing upon scalpels, a disembodied rushing away from sucking, tearing pain, flickered behind Gareth’s eyes. “I don’t want to know,” he snapped.
“But I thought you said–”
“I’ve changed my mind. Look, can we get out of here for a while? I’ve got to clear my head. Let’s go somewhere… normal.”
Normality turned out to the Italian bistro in the Grafton Center, poised at a convenient angle between the chain store boutiques and the cinema multiplex. The families desperate to kill time on a Sunday eddied around the bistro, peering through the windows and then flowing away, the parents sullenly tugged by their toddlers. Inside the restaurant, waiters made vaguely obscene gestures as they applied their outsize peppermills to the customers’ dishes.
At the table Gareth poked listlessly at his salad, and leafed through the UFO-related magazines that Littlewood had bought for him from the branch of W. H. Smiths downstairs. Colorful, earnest, packed with information, bewildering in the way the editors took it all for granted.
For example, it was stated as plain fact that the ‘Blue Room’ existed, and alien technology had been reverse-engineered in Area 51 to create what was now known as the Information Highway. That there were alien bases on the Moon, and there were connections between the village of Avebury in West England, the Sphinx in Egypt, and mysterious structures on Mars. There were unknown submarine objects, autopsy reports, Government cover-ups, and a countdown to Armageddon.
“This is bullshit,” Gareth said at length, slapping the magazines down on the table.
“Of course it is.” Littlewood didn’t even look up, but kept shoveling pasta from the plate into his mouth. “Most of it is just a smokescreen,” he said through the spaghetti, “designed to keep sincere investigators distracted, and to stop us finding out what’s really going on.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gareth said wearily.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Monday April 8th
The hypnotherapy sessions continued. Gareth informed Dr. Bhaskar of his “Night Visitor”, but the doctor thought it unwise to regress him to that night. Gareth hurriedly agreed.
Despite Gareth’s fears, the abduction scenario was gradually becoming more convincing. The taped sessions of Gareth’s memories, recalled under hypnosis, stated that shortly after the accident occurred, Gareth had been lifted out of his car by unknown means; some force or mechanism had severed his seat belt and moved him through the crushed frame of the car. Next followed a sensation of being carried over the roads and fields near the crash site, supported by someone or something – only carrying didn’t do justice to it. Every time Gareth returned to the incident under hypnosis, it felt strongly like floating.
His next memory was of waking up in a closed chamber. Lying on a cool, smooth surface – naked. Soft, ambient lighting allowed him to see, showing him that he was indoors somewhere, but the room had no distinctive features he could name.
He wasn’t alone.
There were others present. He couldn’t see them, but he could sense them. They were concentrating upon his body – probing it, testing it, examining it. He had confused images of hushed but intense activity, gleaming metal, rustling fabric, fibers weaving in and out of his blurred visions. There were faces that weren’t really faces, and voices that sounded like tape recorders being played backwards at high speed. Despite the violation of his body, Gareth was at peace, with an overwhelming feeling of calm. He knew somehow that he had nothing to fear from these interlopers, no matter what strange surgery they were performing.
And then there was the girl…
“It’s still very unclear,” Dr. Bhaskar declared, as he and Gareth sat slumped in opposing armchairs. “This is the first time that I’ve been involved in an abduction case – and I’m still not completely convinced this is an abduction case.”
“Eh? The evidence is mounting up, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t point toward only one solution. I am still very much taken with the NDE hypothesis. After all, it has a lot of archetypal connotations; floating away, leaving the body, the memory of what feels like an operating table, the lights, the feeling of comfort… and love.”
Bhaskar hesitated for a moment, frowning, and then resumed. “There are other possibilities that we haven’t fully explored yet. Gareth, would you consider going for an MRI scan?”
“What for? Looking for implants?”
The doctor looked blank, then threw back his head and laughed. “Oh dear me, no! You see, there is a condition called temporal lobe epilepsy. It produces what’s known as an aura, followed by a time-lapse period during which the sufferer has no conscious memory of his actions.”
“I’m not epileptic,” Gareth said hastily.
“I didn’t say that you are… anyway, let’s not go down that particular avenue now, but I shall make a note of it. Hmmm…” Bhaskar looked at his papers, fidgeting with a pencil for a moment, before speaking again.
“Now then, Gareth, I’m going to ask you something, and please don’t take this the wrong way. Have you ever used LSD?”
Gareth bristled. “I don’t touch any of that stuff.”
“I’m sorry, but I am not trying to cause offence, or make inferences, but LSD and other drugs around these days are mind-altering substances. If you entered an altered state of consciousness on that night in February – and I believe you did – then I have to eliminate all of the alternative possibilities. The usual suspects, so to speak.”
There was a pause while the moment of embarrassment melted away in silence.
“Gareth… I do believe that you had a valid experience. I don’t know its nature yet, but I am sure it can be assessed.”
“Thank you,” Gareth said, with a warm flush of sincerity.
“So… how far do you wish to go with this?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are certain opportunities available to you. I could write up your case, anonymously of course, in the journals I contribute to. You could become widely known. I will be there for you, if you wish, supporting your case.”
The clock chimed, and a band of sunlight brightened upon the psychologist’s carpet.
“I’ll sleep on it,” Gareth said. “Thanks for your offer, Dr. Bhaskar. This means a lot.”
They both stood up and shook hands, Gareth breaking into a smile as he saw the warmth in the other man’s eyes.
*
Two days later, on April 10th, Gareth took another step in an uncertain direction. At Littlewood’s prompting, and with the assurances of Dr. Bhaskar in the back of the mind, he made an appointment with an old friend at the Cambridge Evening News.
Gareth hadn’t realized before that the offices of the evening newspaper were quite inconveniently located. They were an uncomfortable walking distance from the city center, and to get to that part of the Newmarket Road he had to go through an underpass that wouldn’t have looked out o
f place in Cold War era East Berlin. A spring sleet gave the cracked concrete a further air of bleakness.
Inside the newspaper offices, Gareth was also surprised to find it dingier than he remembered. The reporters and feature-writers hunched in semi-darkness, their faces reflecting the greenish glow from the computer screens. Reception waved him through, and he walked past the desks to where Nigel Kirkby stood waiting for him, smiling, in what appeared to be his new desk.
“Gareth, boy! How are you doing?”
“Oh, middling, mate. Not so bad.”
“We miss you in the old team, lad. Where are we going to find another decent prop half these days, eh?”
“I’ll soon be back, mate. Then I’ll kick your arse from one end of the field to the other, don’t you worry.”
Kirkby ushered his guest to a seat in the visitor’s room, and then asked, “Well, to what do we own the honor? You were quite mysterious over the phone.”
“Well… I’ve got a story for you. In fact, I am the story. I’d like you to interview me.”
“Gareth boy, what have you been up to?” Kirkby’s eyes narrowed. “Is it anything to do with that bunch of anoraks you were working with in the Fens?”
Gareth winced. “Well… you could say that. Go and get your tape recorder, I’ve got something to tell you.”
Gareth told him.
Gareth told him that he’d witnessed something outside of his experience. Before, he had never even thought about the possibility of life on other planets, except as a joke or a movie or an amusing marketing scam, but now he’d witnessed something that had challenged his ignorance.
More than that, Gareth told him that his life had been saved by something beyond his understanding. He’d been given a second chance; shown a brief glimpse of death, and then brought back to his loved ones.
And Gareth told him something that had been growing in the back of his mind for a while; the idea that all of this had happened for a reason. There was a reason why his life had been spared, why those lights were appearing and disappearing in the fens. Whoever had plucked him from the ditch and warmed his freezing body had done it for a reason, and Gareth had been shown mysteries; from flying saucers, to geological light phenomenon, back to flying saucers, to living beings that intruded upon his reality, and then to… to what?
Gareth told him all of this, and it used up two microcassettes.
“Do you fancy a drink after all that chin-wagging?” was Kirkby’s first comment, after pressing the ‘stop’ button on the recorder.
“Oh Christ, what do you think?”
It was the lunchtime rush hour over at the Green Dragon on Coldham’s Lane. Gareth was quite excited as he and Kirkby crossed the road, dodging the traffic, to join the others for a self-service pub lunch. It was something comforting, a routine as familiar as putting on a pair of old trainers. Of course, there had been plenty of boring lunches and evenings at the pub; but it was still close to home, and familiar.
“Have we got a story for you!” said Kirkby, in the line for the baked potatoes.
“Gareth’s transferring to the All-Blacks?” asked a junior reporter.
“No, nothing as shocking as that,” Kirkby said, with a wink to Gareth.
“We can’t tell you,” the photographer said hastily. “It’s a kind of exclusive. You’ll find out soon enough.”
Gareth sat next to Valerie from Advertising, with her Bowie-style cheekbones and chirpy Essex accent, and Mitch Angerson, the venerable head of the darkroom who’d been Gareth’s mentor, all those years ago. On many occasions, Angerson could have been poached for gigs in London, but opted to stay with the Green Dragon and IPA crowd.
Gareth didn’t know when it happened – at what point in the conversation he realized it. Perhaps it had been from the moment he sat down. However, he found himself, with a pint of IPA in his hand and a smile on his face, suddenly struck with a feeling like waking from a dream, blinking, and trying to remember what day it was.
He found himself realizing that he didn’t have a clue what people were talking about.
At first he thought it was because he didn’t work at the News anymore, things had moved on, the people and events they talked about were unfamiliar; but with a dreadful creeping feeling, he realized it was more than that. He watched Val flirting as she leaned, head down, to laugh about something with the man next to her. Kirkby, delivering a stream of filthy humor. The men and women of the press, their mouths constantly moving, eating, drinking, chewing, jaws snapping open and shut, open and shut.
It was like watching a foreign movie, without the subtitles.
He wanted to stop them.
He wanted to break into their conversations and say, “Don’t you realize what’s happened? Don’t you realize that there’s something out there and if it’s real, then what we’re doing here means fuck all? Why won’t you talk about the things that really matter? Why don’t you ask me something – at least one question?”
He didn’t say anything.
He excused himself and left, before the others went back to work.
*
The interview was published two days later, on the Friday.
“Typical,” was Gareth’s reaction. “They’ve got most of it wrong.”
On that Friday Caroline had a day off, and Gareth was between assignments for Lynval Price. They spent most of the day in Gareth’s garden, carrying on work on the landscaping. Gareth and Dave had already made a start on it the Sunday before, and it was a way of working up a sweat, working off his excess nervous energy, taking his mind off things. It was a cold day with a frosty start to it, but bright and dry. The hole that would house the pool was getting larger, and Gareth was busy finishing the walls that would hold back the different levels of soil, ready to put the coping stones on top of them.
As the afternoon drew to a close, Caroline began cooking one of her specialty curries. As Gareth put the tools away, he salivated at the thought of the Bombay potatoes.
Walking around the corner to the back door, he noticed activity in the usually quiet street in front of the house. Peering over the hedge that separated one driveway from the next, he saw a very old, very unusual make of car.
What on Earth is that? he thought. A Bentley? An Austin?
Recognition clicked in as he stared at the boxlike, old-fashioned bodywork. No – it’s a black Triumph Herald. Uncle Billy used to have one in Buxham. Why would anyone–
Three men were standing next to the car, all wearing dark coats and old-fashioned bowler hats. They looked huddled together in discussion, but Gareth couldn’t hear any sounds of speech carried on the cold air. The men appeared to be looking down at something on the front of the car. Maps? Photographs? One of the men suddenly lifted up his head and glanced at the houses opposite, as if comparing the street to what they were studying.
Gareth moved away from the hedge and went back into the house, before they could turn and look in his direction. He closed the door quietly, feeling nervous, without knowing why.
“Caroline, have you been a naughty girl again?” he called.
“What?”
“Looks like you’ve got the cops outside.”
Caroline shouted something indistinguishable from the kitchen. Gareth walked through to the front room and peered through the closed venetian blinds. The men were getting back into the car. Before the last man climbed inside, he lifted his head and looked straight in Gareth’s direction.
Immediately, Gareth let go of the blind and jerked his head back. Seconds later, following the percussion of the slammed car doors, there came the throaty roar as the engine picked up power and speed to pull the car and its passengers away.
Gareth stood next to the window, listening to the fading sound of the engine, thoughts jumping through his head, his pulse quickening through his whole body.
My nerves are shot to hell. There was no way he could have seen me… not through the blinds, and not when the r
oom’s in semi-darkness…
But who was he? What was wrong with his face? No eyebrows, no eyelashes… hardly any lips… his skin…
But anyway, why should I care? They’re nothing to do with me… forget it.
The door to the front room swung open slowly, and Gareth turned, then lowered his head to meet Jenny’s gaze.
“What’s wrong, Gareth?”
“Nothing,” he said hastily.
She folded her arms and looked at him with a look older than her years. “Mummy says dinner’s ready,” she finally announced.
In the kitchen, Caroline was preparing a concoction of curry and mashed potatoes, with a few veg on the side, which was to be Jenny’s meal. Recently, Jenny had been going through a phase of demanding that she be served one main plate and two smaller dishes of the same meal.
“Those are not for me,” she would say gravely. “They’re for my friends.”
Jenny would then arrange the food into some sort of shape – a train, a boat, a smiling face – chatting to the two empty chairs all the while.
Caroline handed the plate to Gareth. “Well,” she said, “how do you feel about making the mashed potato into a shape for Jenny and her invisible guests? What do you think’s best – alien face, flying saucer or mountain landing site?”
He stared at her, and then burst out laughing.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Saturday April 13th
On the morning of the convention, Gareth noticed his hair was standing on end.
This time, it wasn’t through fear. Several times over the last few days his hair had felt stiff, and it crackled when he pushed his fingers through it. There was a tingling in his legs when he walked. It could have been the lingering effects of his injuries.
It could also have been stress.
Gareth had tried to imagine what the SIAP Convention would be like. A big draughty hall in London, full of Brian Littlewoods? Possibly.
He’d arranged for Littlewood to pick him up from Dave and Trish’s place, not Caroline’s. He wanted to keep her away from the UFO hunter if he possibly could.