Alien Accounts (11 page)

The great majority of our letters, however, came from sane, sincere, reasonably intelligent people. Typically such a person has had some puzzling, even inexplicable experience: a true dream, a premonition, or meeting a friend by chance in a foreign city. He knows the contents of a telegram before opening it. He finds himself thinking of someone he hasn’t seen for years, and they ring him on the telephone. Ghostly visitations, déjà vu experiences … rarely easy to confirm, but all of it providing a background of evidence that something is going on.

One letter, however, told a story both uncanny and evidential. I read it through twice, then ran down the hall and hammered on the door of Dr Smith’s little office.

‘Oh it’s you, is it? What’s up?’

‘Read this,’ I said. ‘Our experiment is nothing compared to this!’

He looked at me and laughed. ‘You should see your face! You look as though you’d just had a psychic experience yourself, Latham.’

‘I almost feel I’ve had one, reading this. A letter from a Mr Durkell. He’s seen a village vanish – a complete Tudor town, with smoking chimneys, just fade out of sight!’

‘Really?’

‘I know it sounds insane, but there’s a second witness. What’s more, it seems to be connected with the disappearance of a third person. Wait till Beddoes tries blunting Ockham’s Razor on this!’

While Smith read the letter through, I watched him: Dr Efraim Smith, a gaunt, ascetic-looking man of sixty-odd, with a mop of white hair and black, staring eyes. In Hollywood, he could have been cast in the role of an Old Testament prophet.

His appearance, combined with the fact that he preferred writing his books by hand, seated at an old roll-top desk, made him a kind of local eccentric –it was that kind of locality. He had already attracted a few half-joking rumours:

Was he a vegetarian? Was it true that he slept only four hours per night?

In reality there was nothing fanatical or eccentric about him. He was a hard-headed practical research chemist, author of a well-known textbook on polymers. Ten years earlier, his brother had died. Dr Smith had consulted mediums, meeting with the usual mixture of disappointing vagueness and uncanny truth. He’d decided to turn his scientific scrutiny upon the entire field of psychic research – in his spare time. Passing interests have a way of becoming vocations, however: he now headed our Paranormal Experience Research Group. He handed the letter back. ‘Chilling detail,’ he said. ‘Will you be following it up?’

‘Of course. If even half of it can be corroborated, it’s just what we need. Imagine: A village that doesn’t exist, except –’

‘Except on Tuesdays!’ He shook his head. ‘Obviously not an hallucination, and too detailed for a mirage.’

‘Perhaps there’s a sort of, well, rupture in the space-time fabric. Could he be looking at a village that exists in some other time or place? Or even some other universe running parallel to ours?’

‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘After all, our concept of the space-time framework is very hazy indeed. There are a lot of unanswered questions, aren’t there? Black holes, for example. Some scientists suspect they are just such “ruptures” as you describe. If so, it may go some way towards explaining many really puzzling phenomena: a-causal events, such as Koestler’s coincidences, begin to make sense if we can discard the notion that causes come before effects in time. Of course it might also explain ESP. Why do we find “Two minds with but a single thought?” Simply this: Minds are not fettered to local time and place.’

We talked for some time. The general theory sounded difficult, but I felt I could grasp it intuitively:
Mind
is not my mind or your mind or Smith’s mind,
but a kind of energy ocean in which we, all thinking beings, are immersed.

‘I’d better start checking out the facts in this letter,’ I said, taking my leave. ‘By the way, until I’ve proved it, not a word to Beddoes?’

We hadn’t meant to tell Beddoes much about our animal experiment,
either, until the second series was completed. But one day, while we were only half-finished with the series, Beddoes’s smugness broke through even Smith’s usual reserves of calm.

The conversation began innocently enough, when Corcoran mentioned Uri Geller.

‘Uri Geller?’ Beddoes asked. ‘Ah, you mean the Israeli paratrooper.’

Corcoran asked if that was supposed to be a joke.

‘Not at all. I understand he was a paratrooper. Amazing. Don’t see how he did it.’

Smith showed his teeth in a smile. ‘Very funny. The implication being that you do see how he managed, during one television performance, to make stopped watches start ticking all over Britain.’

‘I have an idea, yes. According to a New Zealand study, if you play about with any stopped watch, chances are it will start ticking. In fact, you have about a forty percent chance that it will keep going for a few days. No, it’s the parachute jumps that really astound me.’

Corcoran winked at me. ‘Perhaps Dr Beddoes has psychic insights into how Uri does what he does with spoons. Perhaps we ought to study Dr Beddoes?’

Beddoes tried imitating Uri Geller’s voice. ‘You want me for a subject?
Me?
But I tell you, I don’t know from where I get zis power. From God, maybe. Or my agent.’

No one but Beddoes laughed. I said, ‘Why don’t you tell us, once, what you do believe in? If anything.’

‘Thought-communication,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a distinct possibility. Of course it’s tricky. One makes the right facial expressions, speech sounds and gestures, but it doesn’t always get across.’

Smith said, ‘Get your laughs while you can, Beddoes.’ And he told him about our first series of experiments.

‘Ariadne?’ Beddoes asked. ‘Oh, I see. Leading them through the maze. Very good.’

Smith grimaced. ‘I think you’ll have to concede that our results look good, as well. I’ve done a bit of statistical work on them, and I believe that we can rule out chance. The odds are over four hundred thousand to one against the notion that this happened by accident.’

Beddoes sowed more ash on the carpet. ‘I agree. Chance doesn’t come into it.’

Corcoran looked angry. ‘Spell that out for me, will you?’

‘Gladly. If I hear of a rat that ought to take fourteen seconds to run a maze, but who does it in bnly eight seconds, I immediately suppose that the rat has some experience of the maze. Has that possibility been ruled out?’

‘Completely,’ said Smith.

Corcoran stood up, knocking over his drink. ‘You two can sit here listening to veiled accusations of fraud if you like,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough. Let me out of here.’

Fraud? I thought at the time that Corcoran was merely over-reacting
to Beddoes’s stupid question. Later I learned that poor ‘Gorky’ was going mad.

We finished the second series, again with success. Corcoran was oddly silent, depressed. He spent much of his time at the drawing board, laying out plans for many more mazes – far more than we could ever use. He might work furiously for days, then suddenly fling down his pen and slam out the door, saying something about a walk. He’d be gone for hours.

Neither Smith I could account for it.

‘I think Beddoes has depressed him,’ I said. ‘Belittling our work. Corcoran worked hard on this.’

Smith looked up from his calculations. ‘Eh? No, I don’t think that’s the answer. My guess is, it’s the experiment itself that’s got to him. You see, he worked so hard, hoped so deeply – and then it all worked out right. It’s like being a long-term prisoner, and finally having the cell door bang open. The fear of freedom. Let’s hope he’s over it soon.’

But he seemed to grow worse. There was said to have been an incident in the canteen, when Corcoran caught sight of his own face reflected in a spoon and began to scream. I happened to see him on one of his long walks –going round and round the same building.

I remained convinced that Beddoes was at the bottom of it, somehow. I gradually began to see that it I could once crush Beddoes, crack through his hard shell with a harder piece of evidence, Corcoran might begin to see him for what he was. It might help.

Beddoes could not be drawn to comment upon our experiment. The only answer seemed to be to show him the Durkell letter. A story that strange and compelling could not be ignored. I now reread it: Mr Durkell had seen an article about our group in a Sunday paper. He was sales manager of an electronics firm, and had recently moved to Blenford New Town, whence he daily commuted to work in Casterwich, some ten miles away.

Mornings I usually take the secondary road, to avoid traffic. One Tuesday I left Blenford as usual, but driving slowly. It was a fine day, I had plenty of time, and the colours of the autumn leaves were too lovely to miss. Then I had the vision.

It wasn’t a vision then, only a surprise. On my right, through a small copse, I glimpsed a village. I knew there shouldn’t be any village there, so I kept my eye on the spot. After the copse came a large hill, and after that, no village! Nothing but empty fields, as always.

I kept watching for it. A week later – Tuesday again – I was bringing my wife along with me (she had shopping to do in Casterwich), when I saw it again. I hit the brakes, backed up and we both took a better look. There was no mistake about it. We could see bits of several half-timbered houses and a smoking chimney. My wife flipped open the road map and found what she
thought must be the place, with the strange name of Mons. ‘Mons? In England?’ I said. ‘Let me see that.’ But she’d already put the map away again. We didn’t look again until we got to Casterwich. Would you believe it, neither one of us could find it! I know my wife is no great mapreader, but we searched the entire area (lower left-hand corner of the map) and found nothing remotely like the name Mons.

I couldn’t stop wondering about it. Finally I went to the Blenford police. They said they’d never heard of a village called Mons in Britain, and that there was no village on that spot, and never had been. I think they thought I was drunk or drugged or crazy!

I investigated a bit on my own. I learned that the place was a pasture belonging to a farmer named Letworthy. I called in to see him. Not only couldn’t he help me, he was extremely suspicious. Finally he came out with it: His wife had disappeared! He’d gone to market –on a Tuesday! – and returned to find her gone. When I asked him if he had any explanation, he muttered something about her being carried off by a glacier!

At this point it was all too much for me; I decided
I
never should know the truth. A vanishing village, a vanishing woman, glaciers and the map business – I just gave up. Shortly after, we moved to Casterwich, so I more or less tried to forget about it. But now and then I still wonder. Especially on Tuesdays!

Yours sincerely,

‘F. H. Durkell’

‘Is that your evidence?’ Beddoes asked, handing the letter back. ‘And if so, evidence of what?’

I found it hard to put into words. ‘Evidence that – that the Durkells have seen something that ought not to be seen, by your laws of science. It’s an event that transcends normal explanation. I believe that the Durkells are psychic sensitives, or else that this place is, at times, a psychically sensitive place. There’s just no other explanation.’

‘There are a great many other possible explanations,’ he said. ‘Not all correct, of course. Still I believe that it’s possible to settle the matter very quickly – if you really want it settled. Shall I look into it?’

‘Done,’ I said. ‘How much time do you want?’

‘That depends,’ he said. ‘How much digging have you done already?’

I told him I had written to Durkell, to the Blenford police, and to the local paper. Mrs Durkell had confirmed her husband’s story, and the police remembered his enquiry. The Blenford Gazette knew of Mrs Letworthy’s disappearance, but they were taking the police’s version of it, that she had simply run away with another man.

‘And not a floe of psychic ice?’ Beddoes asked. ‘Curious. But very useful. I think I could clear this up in – shall we say, two hours?’

‘Or not at all,’ I retorted.

‘Why not? All things are as you say, possible. But don’t expect miracles, if you take my meaning.’

I saw Corcoran outside, walking round and round the same building.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘Looking for something?’ He laughed. ‘Yes. The way out.’

I started to leave him but he caught my arm. ‘Wait a minute, Latham. I want to tell you something. I have a confession to make.’

We walked into the deserted ‘Quad’, sat down on the grass. Corcoran looked at the little half-dead tree and quoted it: the limerick I’d always expected to hear from Beddoes:

‘There once was a man who said, God

Must think it exceedingly odd,

Continues to be

To find that this tree

When there’s no one about in the quad.’

‘Is that the confession?’ I said drily. ‘Because I’ve heard it.’

‘Ah, what haven’t we all heard? and seen? Especially seen. In the mirror. Thoughts while shaving. With Ockham’s Razor? No, that cuts both ways. I’d better begin again.’