The 13th Mage (16 page)

A couple of hours later she had a pretty clear idea of what might have happened. Armed with her notes she went to find her mother.

Esther was pottering around the garden, it was large and mostly unattended, perfect for her, thought Jennifer, gardening was her mother’s favorite pastime.

“Sometimes the mind has a way of convincing itself of the most incredible things, if these mean that they make a wish come true.
I don’t think there are any aliens my love. Sinead was always making things up.
I don’t think Sean was taken by aliens, I think he moved on to greener pastures,” Esther said after listening to her daughter’s enthusiastic account of her new theory.

“What about the radioactivity in Sinead’s body?”

“The Sellafield nuclear plant is only a stone throw away fro
m Skerries across the
Irish Sea
. M
aybe she took a dip in the sea on the wrong
day.
I bet if they were to test other people in Skerries they would find a lot of them a bit radioactive.”

“It’s too early to swim in the sea mom, too cold.
Anyway, there are no reports of spills in Sellafield.”

“Like I said, the mind has great ways of convincing itself when it wants to believe.”

“My heart tells me I have to look into this mom. My heart tells me Sean is still alive, being held somewhere against his will, somewhere not of this earth. Here it says this UFO activity started around the time of Sean’s disappearance, it explains everything.”

“Please, Jennifer,
listen to what you are saying.
This is completely irrational my love, this doesn’t make any sense at all.
You have a keen mind, you were the top of your class Jennifer, please listen to what you’re saying.
Besides, I never heard of aliens paying the rent and taking luggage with them when they abduct people.”

“My heart tells me differently.”

“To hell with your heart girl! You have a baby to bring up now, you can’t be thinking with your heart anymore.
Look at what it’s got you into so far, if you are not careful you’ll end up in an asylum, or worse, being brainwashed by all those loonies who write that sort of rubbish.
It is time for you to grow up Jennifer and stop thinking fairytales will make everything right.
He left because he doesn’t love you. He is gone and he is not coming back. There is nothing alien about that.”

Jennifer took her notes, Owen’s notebook and went to her room.

She was deeply hurt by her mother’s words, knew they made perfect sense, which made it all the more painful.

Her mother was right, but she couldn’t ignore this. Her mind kept tell
ing her to follow her instincts. T
here was nothing to lose after all.

Esther sat against a tree and cleaned a tear that had escaped her eyes, if only she could have believed aliens had abducted her husband when he left, but there was nothing alien about Mary Rye.
She didn’t blame Mary now, not after finding out he had left her after five years for a younger woman. Poor Mary, she thought.
Esther decided she would file for a divorce, it was legal now after all, and wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.

First she would visit the newspaper, and then she would go and see Sinead herself.
This felt right, Jennifer thought, this was the right thing to do.

The newspaper was published from a refurbished
Victorian house in
East London
.
Jennifer had made an appointment to see the reporter in charge of the case, David Andrews.

“According to what you are telling me the time of disappearance would be about four weeks after the first sighting.
Was he a local boy?”

“No, in fact I met him four weeks before he vanished.
That would make the time of his arrival around the same time as the UFOs arrivals.
Coincidence do you think?”

“Yes, probably.
We have very few cases recorded where people have disappeared for more than a few days and have returned.
What exactly makes you think this is a case of abduction and not simply of him moving away?”

Jennifer explained the strange dreams she had had and also the lack of records with regard Sean, she fell short of telling him of her daughter’s strange abilities and her own telepathy.
She didn’t want anyone to know about those things, especially not a reporter.

“There seems to be a telepathic connection, sharing of dreams.
Possibly lucid dreaming together.
I don’t discount it, really, but we need more than that to be certain.”

She showed him the notes she had taken about abduction from Owen’s note book and explained who he was.

“This is good data, good theory too, a bit fantastic maybe.
And he has vanished as well?”

“No, he left for
Brazil
.”

“I really don’t know how I can help you
with regard the boy in
Ireland
. T
he local police won’t do anything if it wasn
’t a local person to begin with. M
y reasoning is that he used a false name, a false identity
, and
that is why there are no records.
As to his similarity to Owen, well, if you are absolutely sure they are not the same person then all I can say is that this is a case of coincidence.”

“But Sean told me he had a twin brother called Owen, who died when still a baby, then it turns out Owen exists and they are identical.”

“Maybe a cover up.
Maybe they are the same person, he invented his Sean identity to travel around free of all responsibilities and mentions his true identity as a lost twin brother.
Or it could be a case of multiple personalities.”

“No, they were different, when you looked closely.
Owen looked older, also thinner, his hands were refined, like artists hands, Sean’s hands were muscular and strong, working hands.
There were other things as well. T
he way they walked was different for example.”

“Well, I don’t really know what we can do about it, how we can trace him, how we could prove any of this.”

“Would it be possible to talk to people who were abducted and can remember what happened to them?
Maybe they saw other people
at
the place they are taken, or they might give us an idea of how to contact these beings.”

The reporter searched in his computer for a while and printed out a list with several names.

“This is just a small sample,
Ireland
and
Britain
.
The ones marked with green are the ones who have done regression therapy and can remember what happened.
I’ll call them and see if we can visit them.”

The next day Jennifer traveled north with David Andrews to visit one of the abductees, she didn’t know what to expect.
This was new to her and not something she was completely open to, but something inside her told her she was on the right track.

K
atrina was in her late thirties. S
he greeted them warmly and let them into the back garden where she had cake and lemonade ready for them.

“Nothing like lemonade after a long trip in the sun,” she said.

Jennifer looked around
the gard
en, it reminded her of a fairy tale. I
t was perfect.

“Perfection is in the eye of the beholder,” the woman answered her thought.

“You can…”

“Only with their kind, your kind, it’s an honor to have you here with me.”

David looked at the two women, “have I missed something?” He asked.

“This girl, David, is one of them, or part at least.
She is one of the Fairy Folk,”

“I beg your pardon?”

“They are not aliens Jennifer. T
hey are Fairies, the Little People, Elves, Leprechauns, Willow-the-Wisps
, and
they have been with us for millennia.”

Yes, thought Jennifer, it made sense, she had only assumed they were aliens because of the vocabulary used, but fairies were always known to have abducted babies and people.

“At first I saw them as aliens, just as everyone else, but after doing the regression therapy I realized that it was all a matter of semantics, my brain was interpreting my experience by my upbringing, television, films, even by yourself David.”

“Yes, I’ve heard this before, but usually the other way round, that aliens were interpreted in the past as fairies and elves, for lack of knowledge about other planets and space travel. This doesn’t explain why you are calling Jennifer one of them.”

The older woman put on her sunglasses, “It’s lovely weather we are having, don’t you think?”

Jennifer looked at her cake and lemonade, something was nagging at her.

“Jennifer is part Fairy Folk, or an alien hybrid to use modern words.”

“Me?”

“Jennifer?”

“Yes, she is your best find so far David, with her you will be able to contact them.
She has a direct line.”

The two stared at each other then back to Katrina, the woman was obviously losing her mind.

“Have you told him about your telepathic abilities Jennifer?”

“I really don’t know what you are talking about.
I came here for some information, hoping you could tell me about the place they took you to, I wanted to ask you if you had seen other people there.”

“Telepathic abilities?”

“Yes, the place they take me to.
I will tell you who they are. T
hey came to eart
h because their world is barren. T
hey were very much like us at the beginning, divided and greedy.
They destroyed their
world and most of their kind.
They evolved as a race and became united, a collective, this is when they found our planet.
At first they moved in, living in their crafts and special cities as they cannot survive long in the open air, they taught us their technology and their medicine, but living here was devastating to their culture.
Many of them fell in love with the human race and our planet, they mixed with us, making a new race, people who were powerful and had access to enormous amounts of knowledge, they called themselves Mages.
The effect on their own race was devastating, it divided them again, and they fought each other, losing strength and numbers.
The ones that were left returned to their world but they left doors open between the two worlds.
They still need our resources and us, our genetic material is precious to them, soon they will come back to save us from ourselves.
If we humans destroy our planet we would destroy them as well, they will come back to bring peace and order to our world.”

Jennifer was silent, Owen had mentioned mages to her, said they were either witches or elders.
If mages were part alien, or Fairy, then Owen and Sean were so also, and seeing as Katrina had mentioned Jennifer to be one too that explained why she had felt so attracted to Sean and why their baby had the powers she had.

She listen to David’s questions with regard the information Katrina had given them, he knew how to handle this type of thing, Jennifer thought.
He didn’t discount anything the woman said, instead taking notes and digging deeper.

“Did you see other humans there?”

“Humans yes, other like myself, taken from here.
I
didn’t see any of our children.
I didn’t see anyone like Jennifer.”

Tall, black curly hair, deep blue eyes, in his twenties, thought Jennifer projecting a mental image of Sean.

“No, I didn’t see anyone like that.”

“Like whom?” asked the reporter.

“Like me,” said Jennifer, “I think we have everything we need, let’s go,” she added getting up and thanking their host.

“What’s this about you being telepathic Jennifer,” asked David as they drove back to
London
.

“I have no idea, must be my Irish looks, Fairies and Elves, you know.”

“No, she wouldn’t make such an assumption, she’s an intelligent woman, and she was quite sure.”

“If I had a direct line to these beings I wouldn’t have come to you.”

“You have a point there my girl,” he said.

Jennifer didn’t know if he had believed her, but the last thing she wanted was an article on his paper headed “Telepathic Girl Speaks with Aliens” or the like.

“Good headline, catchy, I like it,” David said pulling off the motorway toward a service station.

“Pardon?”

“Your headline, Telepathic Girl Speaks with Aliens.”

“How did you…?”

He parked the car in front of the cafeteria, “let’s go in for a coffee, shall we? We need to have a little chat.”

Jennifer looked around, the place was packed, plenty of people, she was frightened, but she reckoned that everyone in the newspaper knew they were together, and her mother as well, he wouldn’t try anything in a public place.

“No, not in a public place, come on,” he said getting out of the car and leading the way to the cafeteria.

“Okay, tell me who you really are and who you are working for,” David said as they sat.

“Me?” she asked, “you know all about me, what about you?
How come you can read people’s minds?”

“Well, it’s hereditary and it’s the reason why I got into this business.
Does it run in your family?”

“Not really, well maybe, I don’t know, not so strong I guess.”

“What more can you do?”

“I don’t know.
I haven’t tried anything else.
You know you are not supposed to poke around people’s minds like that, it’s unethical.”

“Yes, well, I have to make sure you are not one of them.”

“One of whom?”

“The Shadow Ones, they are people with great power who use that power for personal gain without a thought to the rest of humanity.
They have come for me once already, tried to stop my investigations into secret cults in government agencies. Nasty lot. ”

A thou
ght was nagging Jennifer’s mind. I
t felt like
something she couldn’t remember.
Something on the t
ip of her tongue. Something important.
Something that could save her life.

“Has your daughter inherited any of your gifts Jennifer?”

“Daughter?
I don’t have any children, I’m not married,” she answered leaving the memories of her baby somewhere in the future, something dreamed for the future when she would marry and have children.

“I thought you said you had a daughter.”

“Me, no.
I never said that. What other things can you do David?” She asked, concentrating very hard on him, wondering about his life and his story.

“A bit of telekinesis, projection of thought, that kind of thing.”

“How come Katrina didn’t spot it on you?”

“I guess I am better at hiding it, experience has shown me that our gifts are not something to advertise.
She’s very sensitive, can spot one of us a mile away, I don’t know how she does it.”

He seemed sincere, he seemed truthful and good, a good person, he could be trusted.
Jennifer became frightened, “don’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“That…” she was going to say the hypnosis thing, but she knew it wasn’t him, there was something else, something hiding behind his mind, another presence.

He wasn’t doing anything. H
e was completely innocent,
and
n
ot at all as gifted as Jennifer was. I
t only took a little poking into his mind to see that.
He was harmless.

“Forget it, it’s nothing, I have to get back home, my mom is waiting for me.”

“I can drop you off on the way to the office if you like, it will give us a chance to talk about this, don’t worry, I won’t publish anything about you, our kind has to stick together.”