"How the hell is it, then?"
"Look at it very hard, see if you see any changes. Look at it very hard."
"She's staring right back at me. She looks like a big bug. Just sitting there, staring at me."
"Are you staring back?"
"I don't know what exactly I'm doing. I'm feeling very sad "
"Sad?
"Sad. Yeah, I'm looking at her. She's looking at me."
"Do you know why?"
"No idea. I just don't understand it. It's very hard to understand."
"You say she looks like a bug?"
"Yeah. Great big black eyes. She's sort of brown She has a little, tiny mouth. She's chin."
"She have antennae".
"No."
"She have hair?"
"No, she's bald."
"She have ears?"
"I don't see any."
"Eyebrows?"
"No."
"Does she have a nose?"
"A little bitty tiny sort of two-holed nose."
"A nose, . or just t he holes?"
"I guess it's there."
"What's the mouth like?"
"It's straight and sort of — it's straight and — for some reason it's a little hard to look at."
"Try to make it out. Horizontal lips?"
"Yeah. It's very slight. Just an opening. Very slight lips. Sitting there like that." (I drew my hands around my knees to demonstrate the position. Then I paused, remembering a confusion of images.) "Something happened to me just then. She sat there for a long time, then put a hand out, put it under my shirt and under my sweater and under me and put it right up against my chest, on the side of my chest. And it felt sort of soft, and it's-it doesn't feel bad to be touched like that by that thing. And she takes her hand away.
"Where the hell am I? I'm way out in the country. I thought I was, uh — you know, I'm just scared to death. I'm totally coming out of it. I'm not out of it, either. I'm wrong."
"Try to relax."
"I'm just scared to death, Don."
"Just relax. Sit back, relax. The fear is real but it can't hurt you. Just relax. When did the fear start?"
"When I realized I was driving down this road and I didn't have any idea where I was. I was in the woods on a dirt road — where — what — how'd I get here? So sick of — I was driving down the highway, then I see this weird white pickup. Then I'm all jumbled up and confused. Then I'm sitting in my car on this road scared to death."
"Do you have any recollection of two people to uniforms being there?"
"I'm just sitting in my car alone."
"Anybody tell you to go back?"
"Yeah. He says to me, 'Get out of here.' Then this lady on the other side says, 'We don't want you here.' I say, 'Who are you?' She looks at me with a real mean look on her face. She's a — real mean"
"What are they wearing?"
"I mostly looked at the one over on this side." (Passenger side.) "I thought that was a woman. You know, I just can't tell what's going on here. I don't know what the hell happened. 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.