For some reason I had never thought twice about the strange image of the speeding train.
Why would I have seen it from such a position? Can it be that I really was outside of it at some point?
I remembered absolutely nothing about being taken off the train. There was a sort of confused recollection of my father crouched at the back of an upper berth in our drawing room, his eyes bulging, his lips twisted back from his teeth. But I've always assumed that was a nightmare brought on by the fact that I was so sick on the trip. My illness was violent. I vomited until I thought I would die, and for no apparent reason. Nothing came up but bile, but the spasms simply would not stop.
Now I have added to this recollection a vivid memory of the being pushing a bladder down my throat. This is not the only recollection I have of being made to eat things by the visitors. In 1968 I ended up with four to six weeks of "missing time" after a desperate and inexplicable chase across Europe. This is associated with a perfectly terrible memory of eating what I have always thought was a rotten pomegranate, which was so bitter that it almost split my head apart. A nurse put drops on my tongue to help me keep it down. But what nurse? Where? I was never in a hospital.
Something might have been stuffed in my mouth on the night of December 26. I certainly remember them trying to -get it opened. And afterward I brushed my teeth.
This is about the most disturbing thing that I have yet come across in this whole, vast experience. It is not the eating that disturbs me, because I seem to have lived, but rather the structural coherence of the thing. First I am fed and it comes back up. Then I am fed again and this time drops are used to prevent the material from returning. Years later, the feeding is such a minor part of the experience that the memory of it is covered by other things.
In short, my hallucinatory friends seem to have learned something about how to get me to digest whatever it is they are trying to feed me.
I have not thought of those hours of sickness on that train for a long, long time. I remember, though, how my father labored to help me, and after he grew tired the sleeping-car porter came in and held me over the toilet. A doctor appeared in his bathrobe and tried to get me to drink some water. The illness had begun suddenly in the middle of the night and continued until morning. I was sleeping like the dead when the train finally pulled into the old MoPac station in San Antonio. My father carried me to a cab, and we went home.
By the time I got there I was feeling much better and was eager to see my friends. We had, after all. been away for nearly two weeks in the middle of the summer, and during the last summers of childhood I sensed the increasing rarity of the days. I was fill of excitement as we drove down Elizabeth Road. No sooner had I gone through the motions of helping with the luggage than I was off, my sickness forgotten.
I remember it was then that I told a story, which has remained in the back of my mind for years, of hearing a wolf howling and seeing one on the roadside. Even as I told that story I remember being a little confused. Since then it has lingered, the image of the wolf in the clearing and the sound of its voice echoing through the night. From that image there has flowed an intense lifelong interest in wolves, which has grown into love for this wonderful species.
The image was central to The Wolfen and Wolf of Shadows, and appears again in The Wild, a novel I have written but have not yet published.
I knew even as I spoke that we hadn't really seen a wolf, or heard one howl. Why then was I saying it? Where had it come from? Was it one of the screen memories which were so common to experiences with the visitors? My memory of the December 26 incident was at first blocked by the recollection of the owl. I saw an owl once before, too, during the events of 1968.
I note in passing that if my wise and determined friend from afar is a woman, it could be said that her personal symbol is an owl. Athene's symbol was the owl. The Latin word for owl is strix, which also menus witch. It was thought in earliest times to embody the wisdom of Ishtar, the ancient Mesopotamian "Eve-Goddess" with the huge, staring eyes. The owl was also the totem of the Celtic Blodeuwedd, the Triple Goddess of the Moon, and is associated with the notion of the Trinity, which will emerge later in this book as the most common symbolic structure of the visitors, mentioned by many people who have been taken — people who have no idea at all of its ancient importance, which has now declined to the dusty precincts of antiquarians and mythologists.
Perhaps visitors would naturally seek to the center of the soul and enter its reality, being too experienced to be interested in any but the deepest essence of our beings. Then they might well seem to be part of our mythology, part of the basis of being human.
My life is full of peculiar stories like the one about the wolf and the ones about owls.
Oddly enough, my sister also has a strange story about an owl. Sometime in the early sixties she was driving between Kerrville and Comfort, Texas, well after midnight. She was terrified to see a huge light sail down and cross the road ahead of her. A few minutes later an owl flew in front of the car. I have to wonder if that is not a screen memory, but my sister has no sense that it is.
Many of my screen memories concern animals, but not all. I remember being terrified as a little by an appearance of Mr. Peanut, and vet I .know that I never saw Mr. Peanut except on a Planter's can. I said that I was menaced by him at a Battle of Flowers Parade in San Antonio, but I now understand perfectly well that it never happened. For years I have told of being present at the University, of Texas when Charles Whitman went on his shooting spree from the tower in 1966. But I wasn't there.
Then where was I? And what is behind all the other screen memories?
Perhaps on some level I do know. Maybe that's why I spent so much time peeking into closets and under beds. If I really face the truth about this behavior, I must admit that it has been going on for a long time, although in 1985 it became much more intense. Now that I have uncovered these memories, though, it has ended completely.
As a matter of fact, I cannot remember a time in my life when I have felt as well and as happy as I do now. Whatever has happened, one thing is certain: A great pressure has been relieved, and that pressure had been with me always. Was it the pressure involved in keeping my memories of them hidden? I just don't know.
This brief review at least suggests that I ought to continue my exploration of the past.
Before going on, though, it might be wise to examine those last few minutes of the hypnosis session in some detail. It began when. without warning, I found myself in 1957.
Spontaneous regression can happen in hypnosis. the reason it usually takes place is that the subject encounters a memory of something that has also been seen long ago. and drops back to the previous experience.
For, me the trigger seems to have been the "You are our chosen one" speech. After that, I mentioned "others." At that instant there was a flashing image of the lady in the flowered dress being given some sort of elaborate speech, and shouting "Praise the Lord" when she heard it. Then Dr. Klein asked what others, and I found myself in vet another place but with the same being still before me, or somebody who looked very much like her.
I was excited, sitting tip in bed, looking around at the other beds, all of which contained American soldiers lying down asleep. These beds were really more like tables with solid bases and a slight inward cant from bottom to top. I remembered them as being gray in color.