"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.
"I love her so much. You know, I can't believe I'm seeing this. One two three four five six. I look up from my book and there are six figures standing at the end of the bed looking right at both of us. She's turned over and she's asleep. I say, 'Anne, Anne, look at this.'
"They're menacing-looking. Strange. I don't understand where they even could have come from. They made no sound. They came out of the living room. The door is so dark. Nelson's sleeping under the bed." (Nelson was the family dog.) "'Nelson! Nelson!' Nelson's just sleeping under the bed. I feel like I've just gotten some kind of weight on me. I want to get tip. I'm thinking about my son. I want badly to get up. I'm thinking about my son. I do not know what's going on here. Is it because we're so high? Why did I ever get this apartment?
"Why didn't I get an apartment downstairs? I feel like crying. because I can't get tip and the door is so dark. They're just standing there. They don't say anything, they don't even look like they're alive. Five. six. tar babies. Six tar babies standing there. Am I seeing things? 'Anne, Anne!' No one sees this. It must be that I'm seeing thins. I close my eves. I open my eyes. And it's changed. Now they're around both sides of the bed. about halfway tip. like when you stop looking at them they start moving.
"I've lost my mind. I have lost my mind. This cannot be real. 'Anne.'- Anne!' I shake Anne. I don't stop looking at them but I shake Anne. They're wearing uniforms. This just is incredible. It can't be real. It cannot be true, it just can't be. 'Anne?' Why in the world won't she wake up, she's never been this damned asleep. 'Anne, will you wake up! Anne, Anne! Oh, Christ.' It's like I'm in another world. I can't make her wake up, and every time I glance at her they get a little closer to the front of the bed. This is really a bad nightmare, boy. This is a real foul nightmare, man! Oh, God, I wish I could wake her up!"
"Voice 1 [Basso profundo]: 'You're not trying to wake her up.'
"'I'm not trying to wake her up.' I feel calmer. better.
"Voice 2 [Light]: 'They're all right.'
"'They're all right.'
"Voice 2: 'They have to do that.'
"'They have to do that. Who's that standing out there?' I get the feeling this place is full of people. Someone keeps telling me it's all right, it's all right, all right. 'I know it's all right, but I still want to get up and uh — ah —'
"They moved again. When I tried to get out of bed they moved again. And they're standing one two three four five." (Total eight.) "Three up right beside my bed, four five at the foot of the bed. One two three on the other side of the bed. And goddamn Nelson is snoring away under the bed. Why doesn't the dog wake up, at least? What's the use of buying a dog? They aren't people, therefore it's a dream.
"Our boy says, 'Oh!' He says, 'Oh!' And he screams out loud, real loud l Screams again! Ah! They pull — all — right down to the foot of the bed and I get up and I'm running like hell and he's screaming like hell, and that praying mantis is standing right in the middle of the living room. Right near the windows. And I run on in to my boy and he's put his arms out and he's got his face all screwed up and he's screaming. Screaming. I never saw that little boy scream like that before. Something happened — something happened to Anne. 'Anne? What the hell was that?' I pick him up. She comes in. He's like he's hard and cold. He's very cold. He's got his diaper pulled down around his knees. It falls off. We're holding him, both of us are holding him. He finally calms down. 'What happened, Anne?'
"'I don't know.'
"'My God, something blew up in the kitchen.'
"'You keep him, hold on now. I'll go. It's a bottle.'
"He's falling asleep in my arms. 'What kind of a horde, honey?'
"'A bottle of seltzer blew up.'
"'You're kidding.' I've still got my son, I walk out there.
" 'Don't get in the glass. There's glass all over the floor.'
"I take him and I rock him. She's out there working on the glass and I'm rocking him. We've got all the lights on. I'm rocking him.'
(Don then suggested that I was back in my bed, and that I would be able to see the ones around it very clearly.)
"They look like they're staring at me with their mouths opened. Only their faces do not move. I don't know exactly what they are."
"They're like the other one?"
"No, no, the other one is thin and bigger. They're stocky and little."
"What color are they?"
"Color? They're wearing blue uniforms. Dark blue uniforms. They're sort of gray. They look like they haven't been out in the sun in ten years. Sort of mushroomy-gray. Smell funny, too. Like a burned match head. Just totally expressionless faces. Two big round eyes and a round mouth — and I don't think they even have noses. I really didn't look at them too hard. I don't know if they had noses. I was scared pretty bad there. This has to be a dream, because the dog is sleeping like the dead. Why do you feed a dog?"
Don then brought me out of the trance.
I was shocked by the unqualified reality of what I had seen. I just could not believe, in that moment, that the forms persisting in my mind were anything but real. And vet they had to be something else, surely they did.
There was a certain way of checking the reality of at least one of these memories, because there was one other person involved whom I knew welclass="underline" my sister. I had been thinking about calling her. I did so the next afternoon, and asked her our now-familiar question: "What is the strangest thing you remember ever happening?"
"The time we were sleeping out in the back lot and the fireball came across the lot."
I sat there holding the phone and feeling as if I were falling down a deep well, and at the bottom of the well was somebody with huge, shining eyes.
"Can you describe it?"
"It was a big, green fireball. It came catty-corner across the lot. We all got scared and went inside. We slept on the porch instead."
"Did we tell Mother and Dad?"
"Mother said it was nothing to worry about, it was just a fireball."
I still do not remember seeing the fireball. All my life I have had a free-floating memory of a skeleton riding a motorcycle, a frightful effigy. Now I know the source of that image.
Were my sister's words confirmation? Yes — of the fact that something disturbing happened in that vacant lot so long ago. But the issue of what it was remains open.
What is most interesting here is really a pattern. It involves two types of interaction with the visitors. One type seems to involve the approach of a single individual or small group, as happened on the night of the fireball, at my grandmother's, in the apartment on East Seventy-fifth Street, and in the country on October 4. The other type of incident is the long visitation, as the ones that occurred when we were on the train in 1957, in Austin the August before the incident at my grandmother's, and on December 26, 1985. These experiences usually include more interaction and often take place on the visitor's own turf.