Nicola was concerned for Frank but she was also prepared to be angry, depending on what he had to say for himself. He was a no show for their date. He didn’t call, didn’t answer his phone, didn’t return her calls. He was probably with someone else. She was also prepared to be heart broken. And now this. He finally called and he was all weird and evasive on the phone. He asked to meet at the Gardens, by the lake, and he would explain all. They used to walk around the Hamilton Gardens when they first got together, around their favourite themed gardens, the Tropical Garden, the Italian Renaissance Garden, the Surrealist Garden and so on and end up at the café. Maybe this was where he was going to dump her.
It was a fine spring day, full of fresh green growth and bright sunlight flashing off the lake. There was Frank, sitting on the bench overlooking the lake. Nicola sat next to him. There was no kiss, no embrace. Yep, it was probably a break-up. Neither spoke for a moment. She braced herself and said, “Well?”
Frank met her gaze and said, “I was abducted by aliens.”
So that was how he was going to play it. “Very funny,” she said tersely.
“Seriously,” he said, “and definitely not funny.”
“What? Oh my God! You really are serious. What did you take? What were you on?” She held his gaze and peered into his eyes, which were strangely vacant. They were not bloodshot. His pupils were not dilated. She grabbed his arm and examined the pin prick on the vein and the bruising around it. “You been shooting up?” she accused.
“No. I told you I’d never go back to that.”
There were other bruises she didn’t see.
“Go on then,” Nicola said. “Tell me what happened.” She felt a dragging weight in her gut. She would listen. And do what? Humour him? Diagnose him? She tried to think of who could help. Who should he see?
“I was lying awake in bed,” Frank began. “Basil was barking and then another dog started up, keeping me awake. The room filled with a whitish grey mist or fog and I sensed someone or something in the room. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t speak. I was paralysed. Then I levitated off the bed and I passed out. When I came to I was in some kind of craft, lying on a table, like an operating table, and surrounded by grey alien creatures with big slanty eyes.”
It was a familiar sci fi scenario. Nicola would have laughed it off but now she felt more like crying. “You sure this wasn’t just a nightmare or a flashback hallucination?”
“I was wide awake and straight and lucid.” Frank assured her. “This was totally different from any drug-induced hallucination.”
“Go on,” she said.
Frank paused and closed his eyes, as if recalling or reliving the experience. A few ducks waddled up from the lake hoping for picnic scraps. A drake on the lake pursued another duck, in a flurry of flapping, splashing and quacking, mounted it and clutched the back of its head with its bill.
“The aliens communicated with me telepathically,” Frank continued. “They said they were here to help us, to rescue humanity, because we’re a war faring species and we’re destroying our own planet. We’re entering end times, they said, and their mission is to save us from extinction. They had been observing us for many years and were experimenting with human hybridising. I saw some strange looking creatures in that craft.”
“They examined me and took a blood sample and probed me here and there. It was really painful. They smeared me with some kind of lotion and a human-like female had sex with me, for breeding purposes, they said. I passed out again after that and came to back in my bed. It was morning. About six hours had passed.”
After Frank came to the end of his tale, Nicola broke her stunned silence. “I feel sick,” she said, and then, “You need help. You need to see a specialist, a psychiatrist, an exorcist or something.”
Frank became quite suddenly agitated. “Let’s go to the café,” he said. He stood up and lost his balance. “I get dizzy spells.”
Nicola held his arm and as they walked to the café. They sat at an outside table and ordered coffee. “I know a psychiatrist at the hospital,” Nicola said. “I’ll make an appointment for you.
“Okay,” Frank said, “I’m willing to go to a psychiatrist,” I feel pretty messed up, like I’ve got PTSD or something. But I also want to see people from an abductee support group. It was a real experience and it’s happened to other people too.”
“Just the psychiatrist, please,” Nicola insisted, “and take some sick leave from work. And don’t tell anyone else about this for now.”
“Right, we don’t want it to get around that I’ve gone crazy,” Frank said sardonically. “I’ll start with the shrink,” he agreed.
Nicola was a nurse and knew the right contacts through the hospital. Frank obviously needed help and not the sort of help he’d get from UFO nuts and so-called abductees.
“And by the way,” Frank said, “my cell phone stopped working.”
“I left messages on your phone.”
“It just stopped working every time I touched it.”
*
Dr Wagner was not the bearded, bespectacled psychiatrist Frank was expecting. He looked more like a football coach, wearing a track suit. He shook Frank’s hand and asked him to take a seat, not a couch.
“Nicola has told me something of your experience,” he said. “Now I’d like you to tell me in your words what happened. And if you don’t mind, I’ll record our conversation,” he said, indicating his voice recorder.
“Okay, I’m fine with that, but I retain copyright if this is made into a movie.” Frank wanted to show he was sane enough and objective enough to have a sense of humour.
The doctor didn’t even crack a smile. Maybe the flippant caveat was a mistake. Frank proceeded to recount the whole ordeal unemotionally without interruption from Dr Wagner, who listened impassively, occasionally nodding knowingly. When he judged Frank had no more to add, he said, “Now I’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
“I’ve got one for you first,” said Frank. “Do you think I was actually abducted by aliens?”
“To be frank, no I don’t. But I have no doubt you have had a traumatic experience of some kind and I don’t wish to minimise it.”
“So do you think I’m crazy?”
“That’s not a word I use in my profession. Now, if I may,” he said, with pen and pad poised.
“Fire away.”
“Are you presently on any medication?”
“No.”
“Do you, or have you at any time in the past taken any hallucinogenic drugs?
“Yes, but that was some time ago, and as I said to Nicola, this was nothing like the experience you get from any drug. I was perfectly sober and lucid.”
“What drugs have you taken?”
“Various ones.”
“Can you be specific?”
“Cannabis, LSD, psilocybin, heroin, P.”
“Have you at any time been involved in any occult activities?”
“Define occult.”
“Seances, Ouija boards, tarot cards, transcendental meditation, reading occult literature, out of body experiences, astral travelling.”
“The abduction is the only astral travelling I’ve done, if that’s what it was. No out of body experiences. I’ve dabbled in some of the other things.”
“Do you read a lot of science fiction?”
“No.”
“Do you normally sleep well?”
“I did until this episode.”
“Do you sometimes have nightmares?”
“I didn’t use do but I do now.”
“Is there any history of mental illness in your family?”
“No. So you do think it’s a mental illness.”
“I think it’s a psychological condition,” Dr Wagner said. “I’m trying to determine any contributing factors. I think the psychoactive drugs may be a factor. They can have long-term and delayed consequences. And I think you experienced hypnogogic sleep paralysis and hallucinatory images formed in your mind.”
Frank considered this diagnosis. As plausible as it may have sounded, objectively, it just didn’t accord with what he had experienced.
“What’s your occupation?” Dr Wagner asked.
“I’m a teacher. Secondary school. I’m taking sick leave at the moment.”
“Do you find teaching stressful?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you feel able to return to work?”
“I think I need a bit more time off. If you could provide a medical certificate.”
So he had a psychological condition. Frank wasn’t convinced with the diagnosis. But he took the medication Dr Wagner prescribed. The sedative and the lithium. He wanted to feel normal again. And Nicola would be appeased. But he wanted more answers.
*
It wasn’t hard to find ufologists and someone in the CE 4 support group – Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. Frank went first to the New Age shop in town, that specialised in books on occult topics, mysticism, ufology and all things paranormal. He’d often passed the shop with all the crystals displayed in the window, but never been inside. There he met Margaret Starborn, a fellow abductee. She was a prodigiously buxom woman with long, grey hair, and hands adorned with many rings. She wore a long drapey black dress, as overweight women often do, Frank noted, and the black cat at her feet seemed to complete the witchy persona. The cat rubbed itself against Frank’s leg and flopped sluttishly at his feet.
The Abductee Support Group would not be meeting for a couple of months but Margaret would be happy to share her knowledge if he would tell her what his interest was. Frank shared some of his abduction experience with Margaret Starborn and she, in turn, was very forthcoming in sharing her experience and wisdom. She peered into his eyes, one at a time, saccading from one to the other, and ran her bejewelled hands over his aura. She claimed to be one of a number of humans from a gene pool established from extra-terrestrial visits. She was more than an abductee. She was a contactee. CE 5. Frank had struck gold.
Margaret Starborn said she also had an Indigo child – a human-alien hybrid child with special abilities. They all had an indigo aura. It turns out Frank knew this child as a student at the school where he worked, a boy by the name of Jade Goodhue – Goodhue being the surname of Margaret’s ex-husband. Jade was considered to have learning disabilities and suffered from ADHD. It seems the school had not discovered his special abilities.
Frank also mentioned his visit to Dr Wagner.
“Don’t listen to all that psychobabble,” Margaret counselled him, “and don’t let them tell you what you experienced isn’t real. Of course it’s real. Why wouldn’t it be? When you consider the vastness of the universe and the millions of galaxies, why should we be the only planet with intelligent life? We are not alone in the universe. Beings from other planets and other galaxies have been visiting planet Earth for millennia. Millions of people have seen them: UFOs, aliens, beings more highly evolved than us, obviously, since they’re able to travel thousands, even millions, of light years through space to reach us. Contacts are increasing because our need is increasing. They don’t want to see our planet and our species destroyed and they’re on a mission to help us survive.”
“That’s pretty much what they told me,” Frank confirmed.
*
Frank came away more confused. He had no wish to be a contactee or to contribute to any hybrid species and he was fearful of receiving another visit from aliens or experiencing another episode of whatever it was that had afflicted him. Nicola, naturally, was worried about Frank and phoned him every day now that his phone was working reliably, and she visited him at his flat. She asked about his visit to Dr Wagner and he assured her he was taking the medication he’d prescribed. He was feeling less jittery but the pills seemed to be inducing their own brain fog. He thought it best not to mention his visit with Margaret Starborn.
Nicola knew of another person who she thought might be able to help – a Christian counsellor who had experience with dealing with cases like Frank’s. So Frank was a case. Did that mean he was a nut case? He wouldn’t prescribe any medication, Nicola assured him. He’d just talk him through it and maybe pray for him.
“How do you know this guy?” Frank asked.
“I’ve never actually met him,” Nicola said. “A friend from church recommended him.”
“You telling people at church about this, after telling me to keep it quiet?”
“Just one trusted friend.,” Nicola assured Frank. “So, will you do it? Will you go and see him?”
“Can’t do any harm,” Frank agreed. “A different approach might help to shed some light.”
Frank duly attended the meeting with the counsellor that Nicola arranged. Alistair Twentyman met Frank with a benign gaze from beneath bushy black eyebrows, which were oddly mismatched with his thatch of thinning, white hair. Following a few pleasantries, Frank repeated the whole abduction story again, while Alistair listened intently, sitting upright in a swivelly office chair.
“You’ve certainly had an encounter,” Alistair said decisively, “not with aliens, but with demons.”
Demons! This was getting more bizarre. What next? Frank wondered. He might just as well consult a witch doctor.
“Let me explain,” Alistair said, noting Frank’s consternation. “I believe you were visited by spirit beings, malevolent, deceiving demons from the spirit realm, not from another planet, disembodied beings who can assume different physical manifestations and typically claim to be benevolent extra-terrestrial aliens, coming to our planet to save mankind. But there is only one saviour for mankind and that is Jesus Christ. I’ve dealt with several cases of supposed alien abductions and I’ve done a lot of research into these phenomena.
Alistair Twentyman asked some of the same questions that Dr Wagner had asked, but he had a different interpretation. He said, “The drugs and the occult stuff are gateways for demons to enter your psyche.”
“What about aliens and UFOs?” Frank asked. “Do you believe they exist? Do you think there’s intelligent life on other planets?”
“Not at all. I believe God created the universe and created this planet as the unique habitat for the human race. If there were more highly evolved beings somewhere in the universe, why would they come to our world to conduct primitive, perverted, so-called experiments, probing our orifices and copulating with us?”
“However, the spirit realm is very real,” Alistair Twentyman continued. “There are good and bad spirit beings: angels and demons, fallen angels who are of the devil, demons who claim they’re on a mission to help us, but the devil’s mission is to kill, steal and destroy.”
“I never heard this when I went to church,” Frank said.
“It’s not taught in many churches,” Alistair said, “but it should be. It’s in the Bible. Jesus had a healing ministry of driving out demons.”
“How did you get involved in all this?” Frank asked.
“Let me tell you about my personal experience,” Alistair said. “Some years ago, I was lying in bed late at night. I had seen some strange lights through my window and then the bedroom filled with some kind of fog and I became paralysed. I then levitated off the bed with a horrible sensation of a pole shoved up my rectum holding me up in the air. I was terrified and I tried to cry out. I tried to pray. All I could manage to utter was “Jesus help me.” Or maybe I just thought it. I felt helpless but, at the name of Jesus, whatever was tormenting me became helpless. I felt like the pole was withdrawn and I fell back onto the bed. My wife had been asleep beside me but she woke up then and asked me why I was jumping on the bed.”
“So you think it was a demonic attack,” Frank said. It sounded implausible but at the same time disturbingly familiar.
“Yes, a satanic attack.”
“Were you a Christian at that time?” Frank asked.
“I was what you might call a talk the talk Christian, not a walk the walk Christian.”
“So anyone can be a target of a satanic attack?” Frank asked.
“My research has shown that it’s often people who are involved in the occult who experience these phenomena. But Christians are not immune – nominal Christians anyway, shall we say, not born again Christians. Those who have truly encountered Jesus Christ are rarely targeted in this way.”
“So if they come back, all I have to do is say the name of Jesus,” Frank said hopefully.
“It’s not a magic talisman,” Alistair said, “but if you pray, from your heart, in the name of Jesus, I believe He intercedes on your behalf and defeats demons.”
“Good to know,” Frank said.
“Shall I pray for you?” Alistair offered.
“Uh, yeah, sure, why not?”
Alistair prayed for healing and protection for Frank and that he would come to know Jesus as his Lord and saviour. He didn’t push it beyond that but said he would send Frank a reading list of books and links to articles on the topic of aliens and demons, if he would give him his email address.
*
Aliens, demons, spiritual, physical, psychological. Frank was more confused than ever. Nicola, to Frank’s surprise, favoured the spiritual explanation. Frank kept an open mind and was interested to follow up the recommended reading. The reading list duly arrived along with a message from Alistair Twentyman: What the enemy meant for harm, the Lord has turned to good. At the top of the reading list was the Bible. Frank got his Bible off the bookshelf, blew off the dust and opened it up. He hadn’t noticed before that it was so full of angels and demons, and a person called the Holy Spirit, who had previously seemed invisible. Over the following weeks, he read some of the online articles, but it was the Bible he read day after day. He weened himself off the pills and got back to his old self, and discovered his new self.