The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy

by David Bischoff

  Scarborough shrugged off the paranoia worming into his mind and went upstairs to change clothes.

  Chapter 24

  “Now, Diane,” said the psychologist, “Relax a little more.” The soft, soothing tones waved over her like warm Mediterranean waves in the shallow waters of a beach. “Re ... lax. Re ... lax.”

  Diane Scarborough was sitting in a reclining chair in a darkened office that smelled of pipe tobacco and old books. Her lids seemed very heavy now, as she stared at the top of a small potted palm by the shuttered window, while Doctor Raphael Mistone patiently lulled her into a hypnotic state. Nearby, she could hear the faint whirring machinery of a cassette tape, recording the session.

  Tim sat quietly on the other side of the room, on a couch. The condition for him being here at all was that he not say a word while Dr. Mistone put Diane into the trance. He had been given a pad and a pencil to record any jarred memories that might come to him as Diane remembered what had happened to them that night. He would be next to go under.

  “Excellent, Diane,” said the small, dark-haired man in the sleeveless sweater after she had obediently counted backwards from one hundred to eighty. “You are now in a deep, restful place. It is very peaceful and calm. Tell me, Diane, do you feel peaceful and calm?”

  The muscles in Diane Scarborough’s arms and legs felt liquid, almost nonexistent. But she felt aware and alert, not at all in any kind of trance. “Yes,” she found herself saying, not elaborating.

  “I want you to go back in your mind, Diane. Go back deep into your memory. There’s a blank spot there now, but when you go back, deeply, very deeply, it will come back to you. I want you to tell me what you see and hear and feel as you relive the experience. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Diane said.

  “You are back at the night when you and Tim saw the lights in the sky while you were parked by that field. Do you remember that night, Diane?”

  “Yes, I remember,” she said.

  “Do you see the lights?”

  “Yes—yes, I see them,” she said, and she saw the object again through the windshield of the car, cruising over the Kansas field, shutting out the stars and the moon.

  “You’re following it now, walking across the field. You’re in the trees. You see a bright, enveloping light.”

  “Oh yes, yes. I see it.”

  “Tell me what happens next, Diane. Describe it as it happens again.”

  The floor of Diane Scarborough’s mind seemed to open up beneath her, and the memory flooded back, moment by moment ...

  The light ebbed away, and she found herself standing in the woods, clutching Tim for dear life, frightened and yet filled with awe and wonder.

  Ahead, there was a break in the forest, and through that break she could see a field; in it there was a large disk-shaped object about the size of a bungalow, sitting in the field like a new-grown mushroom after a rain shower. A string of multicolored lights pulsed along it, muting and brightening subtly, like luminous breaths across its mottled metallic skin.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Tim, regaining his tongue. “Would you take a look at that, Diane? Incredible!”

  Diane stood transfixed, staring at the thing. Oddly, she felt no fear, no impulse to run. She merely felt a deep curiosity. “Come on, Tim. We need to get closer to see it properly.”

  Tim agreed, and they walked slowly through the prickly underbrush, eventually emerging out from the trees and into the clearing.

  “A flying saucer. A real fucking flying saucer,” said Tim, absolutely beside himself with glee. “Look at this thing, Diane! This is no practical joke! This is no movie special effect! This is real!”

  The reality of the thing could not be questioned. It had the heft and feel of reality, the texture. Up closer, Diane could see the hull through the parade of lights, and the scuff marks and the seared spots from ablation. Nonetheless, the skin had a definite alien look, with no sign of the seams and bolts terrestrial aircraft showed.

  “I knew it!” she said, expressing a long-held suspicion. “I knew they would choose me!” She was brimming with excitement.

  “Hey, you,” said Tim. “How do you know they didn’t choose me, and you just happened be along for the ride!” Timothy Reilly could joke with her at the most incredible times.

  At that moment, there was the shush of machinery, the whir of gears, a cracked-seal sound, the susurration of depressurization. The outline of a door became visible at the base of the large craft, and a door opened, settling onto the grass with the wheeze and shush of hydraulics. There came from within the sound of footsteps, headed their way.

  “So what do you think, Diane?” said Tim. “Almond-slanted eyes. Skinny limbs. Telepathic languages.”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I thought you’re supposed to be scared out of your mind at times like this. I’ m not scared ... I’ m thrilled!”

  That was the truth, and it surprised her. She felt an absolute inner glow of warmth, anticipation and well-being. She knew that somehow the vessel before her was radiating the feeling to her, but she didn’t care. It just felt too good, too real, to care about where it came from.

  They watched patiently as feet appeared at the door of the saucer. The feet stepped down, revealing legs clothed in jumpsuits, and the jumpsuits continued on up the bodies.

  Diane stared at the two creatures, astonished.

  They didn’t seem alien at all.

  They looked just like two ordinary men, in well-pressed tan overalls.

  One of the men seemed to be in his fifties, his hair nearly silver, and very human wrinkles around his eyes. The other looked to be in his twenties, with pure black hair, a handsome face, and a dimpled chin. They both wore professional smiles of relaxed corporate executives.

  “Hello,” said the older one. “I hope you’re not experiencing fear presently.”

  “No,” answered Diane.

  The younger man’s smile turned a little brighter and the older one nodded at him, as though acknowledging some job well-done. “Excellent,” said the older. “This kind of experience could potentially be quite unsettling. Strange craft dropping from skies, a pair of odd people disgorging from a flying saucer...”

  “But you’re ... you’re humans!” said Tim, aghast.

  “Well, possibly. Aren’t you relieved?”

  “I don’t know. We hardly expected people like ourselves from another planet.” said Tim. “It seems so ... prosaic!”

  The senior of the two chuckled. “Oh, hardly, believe me, Mr. Reilly.”

  “You know my name.”

  “Yes, and your companion is Diane Scarborough.”

  The younger turned and spoke to his companion. “It’s best not to linger. We hardly need other witnesses at this point.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” The grey-haired man turned back to Diane and Tim. “Come on aboard awhile, won’t you? We won’t keep you long. And there are matters of grave importance to discuss.”

  Diane did not hesitate. She started walking forward, but was held back by Tim. “Wait,” he said. “This could be some kind of trick to lure us aboard.”

  “Tim,” she said. “Don’t you think that if they wanted us there, they could just take us?” She had a peculiar but thrilling feeling of well-being. Intuitively, she knew she could trust these creatures, human or not.

  Tim nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  Diane took his hand. “C’mon,” she said reassuringly, “Everything is going to be all right.”

  His hand was cool and his grip was firm. They walked under the overhang of the great vessel, toward the ramp that led into the heart of mystery ...

  Then, suddenly, there was a void, a nothingness ...

  And Diane woke up, with a gasp, from her trance. “Are you all right, Diane?” asked Dr. Mistone.

  Diane blinked. “Yes ... yes, I’m fine. And I remembered it, didn’t I? That incredible ship...”

  “Yes, you did. Now, I’m going to
put you back under, and I want you to try to remember the rest.”

  But it was as though her memory was striking a brick wall.

  She could remember nothing more. The psychologist gave a significant look to Tim, but Tim drew a blank on everything; he remembered no saucer, no men in jumpsuits, and certainly no entering of a spacecraft.

  Dr. Mistone put Diane back under. “You have entered the ship, Diane,” he said, after the preliminaries. “What do you see?”

  Not only could Diane see nothing, but she popped out of the hypnotic trance like an unleashed jack-in-the-box.

  “Remarkable,” said Mistone, stroking his mustache. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it! As you know, I have dealt with abduction cases before. That’s why Mr. Hopkins’s group put you in touch with me. But never have I encountered a situation like this. Why, it doesn’t even seem like an abduction, if it really happened. It seems more like an invitation.”

  “Do you want to try again, Doctor?” asked Diane, impatient to know the truth, straining with all her faculties to remember, but coming up blank.

  “No, if you don’t mind, I’d like to try with Mr. Reilly. Please linger, though, Diane. And I want you to take the tablet of paper and jot down notes.”

  Tim handed her the tablet. All it held were doodles. But one of the doodles immediately caught her attention—it looked like a simple Vendanta mandala, a circle with cloverleaf-like figures enclosed. It struck something in Diane, but she wasn’t sure what.

  Tim was a more difficult subject for Dr. Mistone. It took a while to get him into something resembling a hypnotic state. And when Tim did go under, there was absolutely no recollection past the blinding light in the forest.

  The psychologist brought his subject back to normalcy, and sighed, running his fingers through his thinning black mane. “Well, that’s it for now, then. We not only have a block here, the whole experience seems blotted out. Perhaps we can try another session next week, eh?”

  “Dr. Mistone—you do believe us, don’t you?”

  The man went back to his desk and fiddled with a pen. “You must realize, Diane—there is the possibility here, that this is a shared illusion. My experience with abductions has convinced me that there is something going on. Whether it has any empirical basis in consensus reality—Hopkins of course thinks it does, but sometimes I’m not so sure.”

  “I see, Doctor,” said Diane. She got up, and started away, and then turned back toward the man. “Just because they didn’t look like something out of a Steven Spielberg film doesn’t mean they don’t exist! And it doesn’t mean that we didn’t experience what we experienced!”

  “You’re quite right, Diane. I’m sorry for my seeming doubt and callousness.” He opened up his appointment book. “Now then, how about another appointment for the same time next Thursday?”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Diane, a bit huffily. She turned and marched from the office.

  “Count on it, Doctor,” said Tim. “We’ll be back.”

  “Thank you for coming,” said Mistone. “A most peculiar case!” he called after Diane. “I look forward to exploring it further!”

  Diane, feeling confused and upset, was already out in the waiting room, where the receptionist, doing dictation memos, studiously ignored her. A man stood up from the couch and stepped forward expectantly toward her. It was Camden, looking if anything more disheveled and bedraggled than before. His eyes were bloodshot, and it looked as though he’d been up all night.

  “Well, how’d it go?” he asked eagerly.

  Diane hesitated. She didn’t want to tell him anything. Camden noticed this hesitancy and took pains to reassure her. “Diane, don’t worry! Your father and I—we’ve got a truce. I was just up in Iowa, working with him on that investigation. And look, I talked to him. He’s not so upset anymore.”

  “Mr. Camden, I’m sorry. I just don’t know if I can trust you.”

  “For God’s sake, call him if you want to! I smoothed everything over, I’m telling you. I came all the way back last night, just so I could get the scoop—I mean, get the news on how your hypnosis session went!” He looked hopeful, threadbare and not a little pathetic, somehow vulnerable in his weariness, as though he’d just driven miles and miles to ask about a sick aunt.

  Tim was out by then, and he said, “Jake! Hello!”

  Tim’s greeting seemed to hearten the man. “Timothy Reilly, me boy. Your brain all shrunk now?”

  Tim glanced at the receptionist. “Maybe we better go back to my apartment to talk.”

  “Yeah, sure kid! Great! I’ll see you two there!” he rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Right! We’re going to get to the bottom of this business, I can tell.” And he left.

  “I think Jake Camden is pretty accustomed to the bottom of every business,” Diane said acidly.

  “Come on, Diane, it’s not his fault I brought him in while you were talking to your old man. We’ve been through all this. The thing we’ve got to talk about is this hypnotic session.” He escorted her out of the office and to the elevator, where he hit the Down button. “I just don’t remember what you remember, Diane, and it bothers me.”

  Diane realized that she was still hanging onto the tablet of paper that Dr. Mistone had given her. She held it up to Tim and tapped the doodle that had attracted her attention. “Tim—why did you draw this?”

  Tim looked at the mandala—like rendering. “You got me, Diane. I was just fooling around.”

  Diane looked at it, at the curlicues and the squiggles, swirling round and round and round, and suddenly she felt dizzy. “It reminds me of something, Tim,” she said, the elevator going out of focus, all fuzzily. “Something—”

  She lost her footing, and Tim grabbed her. “Diane! What—”

  Whispers and echoes. Voices and not—voices.

  She didn’t lose consciousness, but merely touched on the hypnagogic dream-state for the barest breath of a moment. She saw those men again—the young one, the older one—and they spoke to her, clearly and plainly.

  Behind them, on a wall, she could see the thing that Tim had drawn. An emblem that looked like a Hindu mandala: circles and loops.

  “Diane, you will forget this now,” said the older man. “But it will float back into your mind within a week. We will meet again, Diane. And this is where we will meet.” And he told her.

  “Diane!” Tim said, shaking her a little. “Diane, what’s wrong?”

  The lines and shadows of the reality of the elevator car filled in around her. She looked at Tim Reilly and she smiled. “I’m going to meet them again, Tim,” she said, taking his hand in hers and clutching it warmly. “And now I remember exactly where and exactly when!”

  Dr. Raphael Mistone pored over his notes again, line by line. He didn’t have to replay the tapes of his last patients—their words were frozen in his mind. Unique was the word that kept popping up in his head. Unique. Mistone had been doing this work with alien abductees for five years now, and nothing remotely like the Scarborough—Reilly case had ever cropped up before.

  Human beings, in a saucer?

  The couple seemed sincere enough, certainly. In the business of the human psyche, reality and illusion mixed in every warped fashion imaginable and unimaginable. Sincerity was no measure of truth. Nonetheless, Diane and Tim’s story had a peculiar ring to it, and merited further exploration.

  Mistone sipped at his lukewarm coffee, and brooded. It also could be the kind of case worth reporting. God knew, he cashed those people’s checks fast enough when they came, regular as clockwork. “Just a regular report on your abduction cases, Doctor, that’s all. Quarterly. Written. Specifics, and psychological effects. We’re most concerned about this phenomenon, and despite our public poo-poohing and skepticism of such cases, we must constantly be kept abreast of the situation in the interests of both national security and the psychological health of our citizens. However, if you find anything remarkable or unusual, please report immediately. Such cases will merit inc
reased compensation.”

  It all seemed to make enough sense, Mistone thought, leaning back in his chair and studying the display of his diplomas behind his desk. If they copped to actual concern about what seemed a small phenomenon, then what was merely a limited hysteria could well become a mass hysteria. Phantom aliens would be popping up all over the United States.

  Besides, he rationalized. His divorce settlement on his wife and kids was costing far more than he thought. He could use a little spare change underneath the table. Un-taxable spare change.

  Mistone reached out and pulled in his personal rolodex. He spun through the cards, selected the appropriate one, and dialed the number on his phone.

  A secretary answered at the other end, and Dr. Raphael Mistone said, “Hello. I’d like to speak to Mr. Brian Richards please. It’s urgent.”

  Chapter 25

  “Cute,” said Scarborough.

  “What, you don’t have one of these?” said Lieutenant Marsha Manning, looking up from her tinkerings with the portable computer on the table.

  Scarborough shrugged. “I suppose I should. I travel enough. On the other hand, I need to really concentrate when I write, and I can’t seem to do that on planes or in hotel rooms.”

  “You get used to it,” said Manning, switching the thing on and watching as digits danced across the backlit orange LD display. Her fingers tapped the keys for a while, calling up her communications program. “Okay, Doctor. You wished information from government computers? We now have access.”

  A bluff voice called from the kitchen. “Hey, beautiful. How ‘bout a brew!”

  “No thank you, Captain MacKenzie. No drinking, I’m afraid; not while I’m working.” She sat stiffly at the dining room table, near the keyboard. Scarborough thought she looked like she wanted a cigarette, but he didn’t know her well enough to pry. Besides, their trip back to her motel to get her Hewlett-Packard had not exactly been a gabfest. Indeed, what few words they spoke seemed to be slightly abrasive. For whatever reason, he and the Air Force lieutenant were not getting along particularly well. In fact, he rather wished she weren’t around, access or no access.