Status: Single, never married, no children
Number of encounters: Exact number unknown in previous period (estimated at least twenty); in current period, one
Type of encounter: Home invasion and possible study
First encounter: Unknown, possibly 1959 or 1960? to 1971; current period 1989
In the living room, I stared at the words on the wall. They looked just as strange in daylight, though less frightening. I loaded a fresh roll of film into my camera.
Points of entry: Two doors (front, back), numerous windows
Time of encounters: Night (all)
Communication from entities: Whispered words “Wake up”
Physical encounters with entities: Assault
Missing time: None
Injuries from encounters: None
Other manifestations: Lights, vision effects, smell, writing on wall
Notes: Visitations seem to be connected to one house and have changed in nature between 1971 and 1989. Current visitations include physical assault (grab to the neck) and whispering. Visitation has left the bedroom and migrated to the downstairs living room. Visitors left writing on living room wall, using crayons left on the kitchen table. Visitation only seen by one resident of the home and not the others, thoughthe others were nearby. Visitors left by unseen means after the subject hit one with a vase, which broke.
I set up the tripod next to the coffee table and mounted the camera, lining up a perfect shot of the writing on the wall. I took several pictures of it. A crayon lay on the floor beneath the writing. I took a picture of that, too. And a picture of the shards of vase where Violet had swept them into a corner.
I stepped back from the camera and looked around, giving the room a critical eye. Nothing else looked moved or disturbed. How had the thing gotten in, and where had it gone after I hit it? There was no window in the living room, so where had the light come from? There was a window in the kitchen, but not in here. Violet and Dodie had been in the kitchen, but they hadn’t seen the light.
I strode into the kitchen and to the window, studying the dust on the windowsill, then running my fingers along where the window met the pane. Nothing moved or wiggled. The window was locked shut, and the dust was undisturbed.
I circled back to the living room, took the camera from the tripod, and walked out the back door, making a circuit of the house. I saw no footprints in any of the soft earth below the windows. I checked each window, one by one, and found them all firmly locked, undisturbed.
I went back into the house and upstairs. I opened every door, walked into every room, checked every window. I even checked the window in our parents’ bedroom, ignoring its airless emptiness. I checked my own bedroom last, giving it an investigator’s eye for the first time.
The window in this room was, most likely, how they had come in when I was a child. Aliens didn’t need to physically open windows and climb in, but they needed something. A sight line. It was why I hated skylights.
The window in here was undisturbed, too. Locked shut. I had never kept my window open at night as a kid, even when it was hot out. I had been trained too early not to make it easy for them to get in uninvited.
I sat on the bed, dangling the camera between my knees. The silence of the house pounded in my ears. I stared out the window, which was at the front of the house, looking across the street to where the empty house was shrouded in trees. I didn’t see anything move, didn’t get a rush of inspiration. I was thinking too hard.
“Damn it,” I said aloud to no one after a few long minutes. Because even though I wanted to, I couldn’t escape the truth. After years of studying this one subject, I knew the truth too well.
It didn’t add up.
The change of location, the physical touch, the writing on the wall, the rancid smell, the lack of window. It was too inconsistent.
The aliens had finished with me twenty years ago when they took Ben. They weren’t back for me now.
Which meant that what had happened last night wasn’t aliens at all. It was something else.
What was it?
I put the camera down on the bed next to me and dropped my head into my hands, racking my brain. I was out of my depth here, but I knew someone who wouldn’t be. I’d have to call her.
“Damn it,” I said again, and then, because there was no one to stop me, “Fuck it.”
Then I stood up and went downstairs to the kitchen phone.
