Communion: A True Story (19 page)

Because the next thing I know, I'm on the road again. I'm going back home."

"I want you to relax. Relax. Let your body go limp. Relax. Deeply asleep again. Deeply asleep. Stay calm. I want you to report. Be a reporter. Tell me what happens. I want you to go back to that long room. You are looking into the eyes of this person. You said this was a woman. Why do you think it's a woman?"

"Because it is."

"Did you hear her talking?"

"No. She told me a long time ago."

"This is somebody you know."

"I don't know."

"Remind you of anybody?"

"I don't know. Don't ask me."

"Try to stay with it."

"Yes — reminds — somebody — I — [Gasping. Evident severe distress.]"

"Try to go on."

"I can't, because I can't make any sense out of it. It's like there are huge, swirling . . . she's got something, she points it at me, it makes tremendous, swirling pictures in my mind, of — I don't know what it's of. It's not of anything. It's like, uh — it's sickening. It's very — they're pictures of abstractions. Things fitted together. [Pause.] I feel much calmer, much better."

"Why do you feel that?"

"I don't know. Just do."

"What did she do?"

"Because of these pictures."

"'They made you feel better?"

"Better. They're abstractions, like triangles and circles and things. And they're fitted together in order. The triangle with the circle in it and the square comes around it and it moves all very smoothly, and it makes me feel better." (Note: When people are asked at random to draw the first figure that enters their minds, 30 percent will draw a triangle.

Nobody knows why this is the case.)

"Did she want you to feel better?"

"I don't know. Nobody said anything about it to me."

"This person — you saw somebody when you were twelve years old. Was that the same sort of person?"

"Yeah."

"Exactly?"

"I don't know. Looks about the same."

"You said she was very tall and thin."

"She's always sitting down. She's got a lotta legs and arms."

" A lot?"

"I mean four." (Two legs and two arms.) "But she's so thin, and her arms are especially thin. She has sort of hands that look like they might have gloves on. You know, I've seen her before."

"Go back to when you saw her before. Try to go back to another time."

"When?"

"Whenever you saw her before."

"I've seen her lots of times."

"Lots of times?"

"Sure. I've seen her lots of times. I hate to think about that. Christ. I really do. Really do.

It's very hard to think about that. It's like I'm being horsewhipped. I'm just not going to think about that. I don't want to think about it."

At this point Dr. Klein no longer wished to continue the hypnosis because of my evident distress and awakened me. My first words on waking up were, "It was like my head was in a vise right at the end. Like I was being beaten, whipped. Horrible Why would it be that intense?"

"It seems like there's a lot of bad feeling here."

"It was like a stone. A stone blocking me."

The night after that hypnosis session I became aware of an almost palpable presence before me. It was the image of her. After my careful scrutiny it had lingered past hypnosis into my conscious life. As I walked home that night I could see it before me just as it had been in the long room, staring at me with its great, dark eyes.

I had the impression during hypnosis that I had been going somewhere that afternoon, someplace I wasn't supposed to go, almost as if, having been drawn to buy a house in that particular area in the first place, I was overreacting to the impetus and was on my way right into their laps. Can it be that there is some sort of lodgement or projection into physical reality where these manifestations congregate? Or is it simply that visitors have established a base in the general neighborhood . . . or, perhaps, have been there since time immemorial.

After this hypnosis session I suffered the same sort of debilitation I had felt for so long following the December 26 experience-lowered body temperature, weakness, an unpleasant sense of being somehow separated from the world around me. And the next afternoon I felt terribly tired.

Either I was overloaded by a demand for more material than I could comprehend at one time, or there was a limit to the amount of information I would be able to remember.

Or perhaps I could not comply because my unconscious mind had not anticipated the question, and had not yet had time to construct more stories.

I wonder.

Hypnosis

FISHING IN THE PAST, PART TWO: THE DEEPS

SESSION DATE:
March 14, 1986

SUBJECT:
Whitley Strieber

PSYCHIATRIST:
Donald Fein, MD

[This time we tried for a very, very deep trance. I was concerned about complying not so much with Don's wishes, since he remains neutral, but rather with a hidden desire of mine that my memories would somehow confirm their own reality. I was hoping that a more profound trance would direct me totally toward Don and thus all my compliance would be concentrated on him, and I knew I could trust his neutrality.

The trance, which was deepened by the added suggestion that I descend two flights of stairs of twenty steps each, was profound. When I awakened it was as if I had come up out of a well. I was reasonably satisfied that I had been too directed toward the hypnotist to interfere with myself, but it is not possible to be certain of this. I noticed afterward that he seemed to have kept his questions to an absolute minimum perhaps in an effort to further reduce suggestion.

We went first to the incident at my grandmother's house in 1967. The images were startlingly real, almost as vivid as if I were there again, twenty years ago.]

"Granny's in the other room. She's reading too. I see her light is still on. Gigi's sleeping beside her bed. The rest of the house is dark. I turn the page There's an ad for a car. Just scaring at that ad. Goddamn. Something buzzing around in here. I'm fighting it. All of a sudden it puts something on my head like a railroad spike. A silver nail. A big, flat-Beaded silver nail and it hits me right in the side of the head with it. And I turn into something —else. I have — I'm heavy and big. I get up out of the bed, I feel totally different. I feel like I'm moving like I'm walking through the house, like I'm a ghost in the house. I'm in the basement.

"No I'm not. I — I'm still in bed. It's so peculiar. Because t never moved at alt. The ad's still there. I never went anywhere, I staved right there. I get up and I get a glass of water. I'm scared to death. I don't know why this happened to me."

"You said something about something happening right at the beginning of the thing?"

"Yeah. There's like this very fierce face up beside the bed. A very fierce strange face like a giant fly. It hits me with like a bright silver nail. This huge change comes over me. It's terrifying. Like I turn into another kind of a person. I'm big, I'm heavy, I'm dark. I'm bony.

And I start walking out of the room. And it just — it's terrible. And the next thing I know I'm back in bed again, my stomach's all knotted up, I'm scared to death, and the magazine's still on my lap. And then —"

"Could it have been a dream?"

"I don't know. I don't know what to think of it. Yeah, of course it's a dream: It's gotta be a dream. Yet — I don't want to look up there where that thing was. So scared I feel like I'm just totally — it's just totally unaccountable. I don't know what came over me. It's like it came out of nowhere. And there's this face — real mean, fierce face."

"A person?"

"Nah. It's like a big bug. Only it looks at you and you just want to look away. And it has a silver nail in its hand and it hit me with the flat end of the nail and the next thing I knew I was moving. Only I was — there I was back in the bed reading the magazine, still on the same page. An ad for a Mustang very much like my Mustang, only it's blue."

"You had the experience before with that object?" (He probably referred to the October 4

incident, but that was not one that came into my mind.)

"Yeah, it happened to me before. We were out in the lot. Someone came across the lot.

My sister thought it was a fireball. I thought it was a motorcycle. We had — they put up the tent, I came out late. I was just gonna go in the tent. It had been raining. All of a sudden this thing came catty-corner across the lot. And they're all stopped. It had a skeleton on it. Scared the hell out of me. I turned around to run in the house, I didn't go anywhere. That skeleton's in the bushes. It knocked down the tent and they didn't do anything, they just stayed inside it.

Patricia and Roxy and Angie and that was all. And it had a silver thing, and it had real long arms. I was yelling for Daddy, and I couldn't-there was just nothing happening. I was yelling for Daddy and it comes — I can feel its hand on my shoulder. I don't want it to have its hand on my shoulder, it's really terrible. [Making running movements.] I can't run away. I can't run away. And it has its hand on my shoulder and I can't run away from it. It just — it's stuck to me kind of. Horrible! It pulls itself around me so I can see it and God, whoo! Jesus!

[Gasping.] Just looks at me. And then there — she's trying to get this thing on me.

" Oh. I feel much better. It feels — I know it's there but I'm not scared. I'm not trying to run away anymore. This is really something. Boy. I'm lying down on the grass. On the lot.

I'm not on the grass, I'm on the lot and it's all stickery underneath. I just had my T-shirt on and it's got something that's gonna — I just know it's there, I can see it clear as day. It looks just exactly like a bug. A praying mantis is what it looks like. Only it's so big. How can it be so big? And I don't feel so bad but jeez. it's just doing that. It's got this thing and it's like working it down into my hair or something. I can't feel a thing Now it's up in the air. And it's gone. And I know that the stars was coming out and it'd been all cloudy before."

"How old are you?"

"Twelve. And now they're all yellin' at me because I collapsed the tent. My sister's real triad ant she's gonna get !Momma to spank me because I collapsed the tent. And they get scared. And we take our stuff and we go on inside. Patricia tells Momma she saw a fireball.

Mom and Dad are inside watching TV They're watching —
Ed Sullivan Show
. And Momma says we'll be able to see Senor Wences if we stay inside. And it's cool anyway, cool in the house. It was hot and muggy outside. I feel — Patricia tells Momma there was a fireball in the lot is why we came in. And I wonder why she doesn't say I collapsed the tent. And there was no fireball in the lot. Momma says not to worry about it. it was just a fireball.

"And that night we slept out on the screened-in porch. Daddy came out and sang us a song. It embarrassed Patricia but I loved it. So did Roxy and Angie."

"This vision you had of this praying mantis thing — is that the same as the others you've seen?"

"They all look like that. Yeah. I thought at first it was like a skeleton on a motorcycle or something. It was flying-no, it wasn't flying. I could just see it, and I see it almost does, really does, look like a praying mantis, only bigger. It's got great big eyes that just scare the hell out of you. Scare you real bad. Big, big eyes. Doesn't
really
look like a praying mantis. They've got white eyes. This has got dark, black eyes. I thought it was a motorcycle because at first it looked like a guy on a motorcycle wearing dark glasses. Then I saw, God, it wasn't that!

"It came right up past the tent and just up to the honeysuckle hedge. And I just wanted to get across that hedge and into the yard so bad. Oh, God."

"So you've had this experience of something being done to your head before?"

"Yeah."

"The same sort of thing?"

"No, it calmed me down. It felt . . . good. It tapped one with something in the head and it calmed me down. Felt good. And I knew that it was still there but I just laid right down in the-was I in the backyard? No, I was in the lot. But it didn't feel like a bad place to lie down.

There's lots of stickerburs in the lot. It was a little stickery but it wasn't too bad. I lay down and looked up at it and it worked something into my hair. I didn't feel anything. It had something long that it worked into my hair. It was like, working in my hair. Doing something. Then it went away. I wasn't scared while it was working that thing up in my hair.

I don't know what it was. I didn't ever see it. It was working a thing up in my hair. I didn't feel a thing."

"Try and relax, now, relax. Muscles are loose. Deeply asleep, relaxed. We talked before about another time, where you thought you saw a meteorite."

"Yeah."

"How old are you now?"

"I'm thirty-six."

"Tell me what happened."

"Well, I've started working with the young people at the Foundation." (This was the Gurdjieff Foundation, an organization devoted to the development of consciousness based on the ideas of the philosophers G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky. It is not related to groups that make public claim to be the "Gurdjieff Foundation." The real Foundation is not a public organization.) "I've been in a very intensive period. A lot of meditation and effort. I'm working very hard on my new book." (
The Hunger
.) "Jim Landis is on sabbatical, so I'm just working pretty much alone. I feel pretty good about it. We worked together a lot on it. And now he's gone on sabbatical. I think they like it a lot down at Morrow.

"I saw this thing — I had been feeling very good about my Foundation work. I thought I was really connecting with the young people. Maybe I was reaching a new state of consciousness, too. And, looking out over the city one night, the sun had just set and it was beautiful, orange glow; you could see the streetlights everywhere. I loved that den I had then.

Love the den. It's so beautiful a view. When it's clear I can see all the way up to Bear Mountain. When it's clear.

"And then I saw this meteor. Like you couldn't quite really see it. It came down out of the sky, very tiny, like a spark. And I thought,
Oh, that's not a plane. It's not anything
. And I felt awed. Like it was someone coming to see me. I told Anne about it. She said, 'Who would it be?' I said I didn't have any idea. And I went to bed.