by Simon Clark
‘Me? Why the Hell should I do that?’
‘You thought you saw the Greys.’
‘I DID see the Greys.’
‘Here,’ Ben said. ‘It’s brandy. Take a good drink.’
I pulled on the bottle. It felt like molten lava gushing down my throat. I coughed as the burn hit me.
‘I’ll start at the beginning.’
‘Good place as any,’ I said, still bewildered. ‘So, what’s happening? Only no geology lectures this time, please.’
Ben pulled up a dining table chair, sitting on it back to front, his legs either side of the seat, his crossed forearms resting on the chair back.
Kate leaned back against the table.
‘Right,’ Ben spoke in a businesslike way. ‘Give me your definition of a hallucination.’
‘Hallucination?’ My forehead throbbed. ‘I guess it’s when we see something that isn’t there. Right?’
‘But we believe it really is there?’
‘Yes.’
Ben nodded. ‘A hallucination may be defined as a vivid but false perception of something that is not really there. You may believe you see something that isn’t there, or hear voices—the classic delusion of the schizophrenic.’
I groaned. ‘My head hurts pretty badly, Ben. I take it you are going somewhere with this? If you’re not I’m going to lie down there on the carpet and moan a little.’
‘Sorry to be tough on you, Rick. Here. More brandy. But the truth of the matter is, you must take on board what I’m going to say. Then, my friend, you’re going to have to catch up with Stephen and the rest of your people and tell them, too.’
‘They’ve already set off to meet the ship.’
‘But they’re not going to make it.’
‘How can you know that?’
‘They’re going to try and walk through that, aren’t they?’ He jerked his thumb to where the black desert lay in darkness.
‘It’s the only way.’
‘To walk east would avoid the hot-spots,’ Kate said, ‘but there’re are still millions of survivors out there. They’d kill us for the food we carried.’
‘Then probably stew us up for supper,’ I added.
‘Right,’ Ben said crisply. ‘So they’re going to trek on foot for three days across a hell of a lot of hot rock?’
‘Yeah, there are bad hot-spots, I’ve even seen stones glowing red hot, but they can walk round those. We’ve done it before.’
‘But the biggest threat to their survival is what they will see,’ Ben said clenching his fists, desperate to make me understand. ‘What they will think they see.’
I was still bewildered; the drumming in my head helped zip-all, too. ‘Ben, you’re telling me these Grey Men aren’t really there?’
‘I am.’
‘And they are hallucinations?’
‘Yes.’
‘But how is it we have all seen—’
‘You’ve all seen them?’
‘Well…not all, but some.’
Ben glanced at the wall clock. ‘I’m going to tell you this as quickly as possible. It’s vital that you do reach your brother and warn him what he and the others will encounter.’ His eyes above the silk scarf were the most intense I’d seen them. ‘It really is a matter of life and death, believe me. If they go into the Badlands unprepared for what will happen to them it will wipe out the whole of your group.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘shoot.’
Ben took a deep breath. ‘You remember a few years ago, there were claims that people were being abducted by grey humanoid creatures with big dark eyes?’ Ben held his hands over his own eyes to emphasize the large almond-shaped eyes.
‘Yeah, the Greys. But weren’t they supposed to be extraterrestrials?’
‘So some people alleged. Of course there was no hard evidence. No photographs that could be authenticated.’
Kate added. ‘Weren’t the victims usually abducted, then their memories were wiped and they only recalled what had happened either in flashbacks or hypnotic regression?’
Ben nodded. ‘The other characteristic elements of abductions by these grey creatures were that people spoke of experiencing indescribable fear, that they were temporarily paralysed, that they’d be aware they’d lost hours of time from their lives. That is to say, they suffered a temporary amnesia and they couldn’t adequately describe what had happened to them during that missing time.’
All of a sudden my own memories started shunting back. ‘Listen, Ben, that night of your last party. Stenno had been attacked, remember? A few of us hunted for whoever had attacked him in the wood. I’d gone off alone at one point to search for them. I’d returned to your garden thinking I’d been gone only a few minutes. In fact, it turned out I’d been gone more than an hour.’
‘You saw something?’
‘I saw worms coming out of the ground. That was an early effect of the hot-spots breaking through. The sheer heat drove the worms from the soil.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah, something else.’
‘Tell us, Rick.’
‘I saw a face. I’m sure of it now.’
‘A grey face?’
‘Yep. It was a Grey.’ I sighed. ‘But I just didn’t remember at the time. It was only later that flashes came back. And another thing. I had a sensation of being…manhandled, I guess you’d describe it. I was pushed to the ground. Held there.’
‘You never told anyone?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Embarrassment.’
‘Did you begin to wonder if you’d been raped?’
I flushed hotly. ‘Raped?’
‘Yes,’ Ben said gently. ‘Raped. Male rape. It does happen, you know.’
‘I know.’ I sighed again. ‘I did wonder about that for a while. I thought perhaps there was a chance my mind had suppressed it. But there were no other…signs that I’d been attacked.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Rick. You weren’t attacked. At least, not physically. Listen, what you’ve described is very similar to the old stories of alien abductions—the memory loss, the fear, the flashbacks when you think you see grey alien faces, big eyes; the sensation that you’ve been physically manhandled, perhaps even carried off. Believe it or not, there’s an explanation.’
‘I take it it doesn’t involve flying saucers and alien experiments?’
‘No.’ Ben shook his head. ‘Basically this stems from a form of epilepsy known as temporal lobe epilepsy. For thousands of years individuals suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy have experienced enormously powerful hallucinations. Often these were believed to be mystical visions of angels, spirits or gods. The hallucinations were maybe accompanied by intense emotions—sometimes fear, or pleasure, or even joy. In 1654, Blaise Pascal, the French physicist and theologian—he also invented the first calculating machine, by the way—experienced such an astonishing vision that he wrote it down and sewed it into the lining of his coat, so that it would always be close to him. Today psychologists studying details of Pascal’s…mystical state, it could be described as, have diagnosed him as suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. He also suffered from a range of secondary epileptic symptoms such as trembling, hot and cold flushes, aphasia—which is the loss of the ability to express ideas in words.’
Kate frowned. ‘Surely, Ben, you’re not claiming that we’re all suddenly suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy?’
‘Not exactly, Kate. But I’m getting to that. Listen, scientists found they could trigger these hallucinations, or visions, call them what you will, easily enough in the laboratory. Volunteers would have an electric current run through their brains, directed specifically at the occipital cortex. The voltage wasn’t great enough to harm them, but it was high enough to stimulate that part of the brain, which is just about here.’ Ben touched his head just above and behind his left ear. The electric current triggered hallucinations that were uncannily similar to those experienced by alien abductees.’
‘And this is ha
ppening now? But what’s triggering the hallucinations?’
‘Remember, I told you the Earth isn’t an inert ball of rock. You’ve all seen the effects of the subterranean heat leaking up to the surface. What hasn’t been immediately apparent is that as well as generating a heck of a lot of heat, the ground beneath our feet also generates electricity.’
‘And that electricity is affecting our brains?’ asked Kate.
‘Spot on,’ Ben said, pleased that what he was telling us was sinking in. ‘That night of the party, Rick here stumbled upon one of the first hot-spots. One effect was to drive the worms to the surface. What he couldn’t have realized was those hot rocks a couple of metres beneath his feet were also belting out a great fat dose of electrical interference—enough interference to mess up his own brain’s electrical activity.’
‘And hey presto, I created my own movie show in my head?’
‘Right, you experienced visual hallucinations. The electrical interference was also strong enough to scramble up your memory, hence the amnesia, and it caused muscle spasms that gave you the illusion of being physically manhandled; then you—’
‘But wait a minute, Ben,’ Kate said. ‘Why do we all see the same hallucination? Why do we see Grey Men?’
‘That’s just one of the characteristics of the phenomenon. Electrical activity in the ground is particularly prevalent in earthquake zones and volcanoes. If you were to plot on a map where encounters with angels, demons, extraterrestrials had taken place you’d probably find, not all, but a great number corresponded pretty closely to geological fault-lines, earthquake zones, volcanic hot-spots.’
‘But why Grey Men hallucinations? Why doesn’t Rick see green gorillas? And someone else see pink dragons?’
‘It would take the next couple of weeks to explain it in detail but the psychologist Jung travelled the world looking for evidence of the collective unconscious, which would—’
‘Uh? Collective what?’ I shook my head. ‘You’ll have to spoonfeed this to me, Ben. I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’
His blue eyes twinkled. ‘The collective unconscious. OK…you know when you could go down to your local Tandy store and buy a computer? Well, it used to come, likely as not, pre-loaded with software. That, crudely, is on a par with the collective unconscious. We are born complete with mental software that is buried in the unconscious part of our mind.’
‘OK, cut to the chase. Why do we all see the Grey Men?’
‘Because, as Jung discovered, the unconscious mind contains genetically transmitted images that are identical the world over. In a nutshell, if you dream about monsters that seem unique to you, there is a chance people in Africa, India, Greenland, wherever have dreamed monsters that are identical—exactly identical to your dream monsters.’
Kate’s face lit up. ‘That’s why legendary creatures such as dragons spontaneously appear in different mythologies all over the world?’
Ben raised a finger in approval. ‘Got it in one. If you like, we’re all born with the neurological equivalent of a carousel of picture slides in our heads. All identical. No matter where we come from.’
I said, ‘And somewhere in that carousel is the image of the Grey Man, complete with pimply skin and blood-red eyes.’
He nodded.
‘Look, Ben, this does sound plausible,’ I said. ‘But go on, explain these bruises on Kate’s face.’
‘Projection.’
‘Projection?’
‘When the electrical interference is particularly strong the mind will project the hallucination out onto another human being. In short, your best friend might walk towards you. But what you believe you see is one of the Greys. Because the electrical interference becomes so powerful it confuses what the eye sees with the hallucination the mind generates.’
‘So you might pick up your gun and shoot the monster only to find it’s another human being.’ Kate’s eyes were round.
Ben said, ‘Rick. Remember the incident in Fullwood’s Garage at the start of all this?’
‘Do I. Stenno attacked me with an iron bar!’
‘Can you describe what he was like?’
‘Christ…he went wild. I’d never seen him like it before. He could hardly speak, he was so angry with me. His face turned white, but his ears flushed so red they looked as if they’d catch fire. And his eyes—they were the weirdest. The iris and pupil shrank until all you could see in the middle of the whites was a black dot. But the strange thing was he was as much terrified of me as he was angry.’
Kate said, ‘So you think that when Stenno attacked Rick, Stenno actually thought he was attacking a Grey Man?’
‘Absolutely. The genuine visual information coming in through Stenno’s eyes was being scrambled up with the hallucination. He saw Rick, here, as the monstrous Grey Man. Remember, he’d been attacked by one before—or at least he was under the illusion he’d been attacked. So, in his mind, he was confronted with one of these monsters again…so he fought for his life.’
‘But his injuries at the party?’
‘Self-inflicted when he was in the grip of the hallucination.’
Kate looked at her scratched hands and arms. ‘You mean…’
‘Yes; the monster you were fighting this morning in the church was none other than you, my dear.’
‘Shit,’ I said, understanding suddenly clunking home. ‘If Stephen and the rest of the group don’t realize this, then they might start projecting these hallucinations onto each other?’
Ben nodded grimly. ‘Believe me, they will. As soon as they reach the more intense hot-spots they’ll see each other as Greys. Then they’ll wipe each other out.’
‘We’ve got to reach them,’ I said, standing up.
‘You must,’ Ben agreed. ‘But you can’t go anywhere tonight.’
‘We can’t waste any more time.’
‘No, Rick. If you rush off now you’ll help no one. The pair of you are exhausted.’
‘We’ll make it,’ I said, determined.
‘No, Rick. You need time to rest here. At least for tonight. Also, I need to tell you more about this phenomenon and how to combat it. That’s going to take more than ten minutes. For example, some individuals are more susceptible to the influence of these electrical discharges. Stenno is certainly very sensitive. You, too, Rick. Some of us less so. Before the rest of the community broke up here, people were seeing these Grey creatures, too. They began firing on them.’
‘And you?’
‘And me? I couldn’t understand why men and women I’ve known for the last fifteen years were killing each other. I only realized later they were projecting these monstrous hallucinations on to each other.’ Ben shook his head sadly. ‘So I witnessed the death of our community.’
Kate asked, ‘There is a way to stop these hallucinations?’
‘No. But there are some techniques to lessen the effects and so, perhaps, with luck, prevent the delusions swamping you. You’ve got to learn how to use those techniques; if you don’t you might as well shoot each other now and get it over and done with.’
Ben continued speaking in that soft voice I’d known for years, the enunciation only altered by his lack of lips. Outside the grit still rained down against the window pane with a steady sizzling sound. Where the gardens once were, where we’d enjoyed many a party, there, hidden by the dark, would be only a carpet of black ash that stretched bleakly, seemingly everlastingly, into the distance.
If I saw any Grey Men now I knew they’d be nothing more substantial than ghosts created by that stream of electrons flowing from the ground colliding with those in my brain. There they’d produce those vivid hallucinations. I thought about my brother Stephen and the rest of our community camped out somewhere in the hills as they walked west to where we planned to rendezvous with the ship on the coast.
And I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d reach them in time. Before they began to see each other as those grey monsters and started to kill each other.
&
nbsp; The wind blew. It produced a mournful droning note across the chimney pots. More ash, black as mourning clothes, sizzled against the glass.
Chapter 113
‘Rick, are you sure you want to do this?’ Kate looked at me, her green eyes concerned.
‘I don’t want to.’ I gave a grim smile. ‘But I think I have to. For my own peace of mind.’
We walked back through the blackened forest from Ben’s house to my old home at Fairburn. Kate wore walking boots, jeans and a heavy sweater in pale blue wool. She wore her hair beneath a red head scarf in an attempt to stop it becoming clotted with the fine dust stirred up by our feet. Not that it’d help much. When it came to taking off our boots we’d still tip half a cup full of the black muck from them; come to that, we’d even find the dust where it had crept into our underwear.
After ten hours straight sleep we’d woken to find the dust storm had died.
Now the sun shone red through strips of cloud. Even though it was almost midday it looked like the bloodiest red sunset you’d ever seen. All the clouds were rilled with that red as if they carried blood, a fresh red glistening blood, not rain.
The air was cold on our faces, but near our feet it was warm from the heat leaking up through the carpet of ashes.
When we’d struggled through the dust storm yesterday I hadn’t been able to see hardly anything of the village. Now it was clear enough. I found myself taking Kate’s hand. She gave mine a reassuring squeeze as I paused at what should have been the start of Trueman Way.
To my right lay King Elmet’s Mile. Once a pleasant few acres of meadow, it was now blanketed with ash. In its centre car-size craters phut-phutted as inflammable gas burned. It ignited in puffs of orange flame that rose in glowing spheres into the blood-red sky.
The flames seemed muted. It looked as though the worst of the explosions had already taken place, leaving what remained of the methane to putter itself out.
To my left ran the line of houses. Some had roofs missing where the creeping heat had ignited timbers. Some were intact but half-buried by black ash where it had drifted against the walls. I recognized Roger Hardy’s Porsche still parked on the driveway. Of course the paint had burnt off it. It sat forlorn, rusting, and partly buried by ash, looking like some kind of car-shaped boat sailing a dry black sea.