FLINDER'S FIELD (a murder mystery and psychological thriller) (14 page)

George Lee raised a brow. ‘You know of me, then?’

‘A quick internet search. A little too bloody and insubstantial for my liking, but we all have to make a living. Well, what do you want? Time’s running out, in more ways than one. I’m not getting any younger and my wife would like me to finish painting the bedroom before I kick the bucket.’

‘Yes, quite,’ said George.
‘I expect you interviewed many people who said they’d been abducted by aliens.’

‘Many. But most were deluded individuals seeking some kind of personal publicity or elevation. Cranks and fraudsters, for sure.’

‘But, in your opinion, not all were cranks and fraudsters. What separated out the good abductees from the bad ones?’

Forde frowned deeply. ‘
We don’t call the abductees now. There was a move in the 1990s to call them experiencers, a move from studying actual abductions to research on what people had experienced. The two things being entirely different. It was a move from the actual to the imagined. In my opinion, it did ufology no favours at all. It all but dismissed the notion of an actual abduction by actual aliens so that researchers could hang on the coat-tails of psychology, a rather more established and respected profession. It has been conveniently boiled down to religious archetypes shared by the human unconsciousness, neatly packaged as a series of sociological metanarratives and New Age illusions generated to fill the void left by a dwindling belief in God.’

‘But
I detect that you are sticking to your guns,’ said George. ‘Rightly so. A man needs to stick by his principles.’

It sounded trite to George, but Forde took it favourably. ‘Yes, I am sticking to my guns. I believe there were – are – actual visitations from somewhere in this vast universe of ours. People have been physically taken, and physically examined. There are just too many cases that have been impossible to disprove. Of course, the argument is that people have always been subject to abduction throughout history, long before the coming of the flying saucer scares in the
late-forties and throughout the1950s. Early records are full of the tales of goblins or fairies who stole people away…’

George was reminded of the
medieval Flinder girl and the tales surrounding the ancient burial mound in Flinder’s Field. ‘They say the flying saucer flap in the 1950s was a direct result of nuclear proliferation, of the growing tensions in the cold war, Sputnik and all that.’ He’d done just enough research to appear at least half informed. ‘There was an earlier airship flap, before the invention of aeroplanes and dirigibles, when people claimed to have seen men flying overhead in giant airships. I remember one case where an anchor from one of these phantom airships got caught in the weather vane of a church steeple and a man clambered down the rope to free it. He was captured by locals, but escaped, I believe.’

‘Attested to by crowds, not by delusional individuals.’

‘Cases of mass hysteria?’ George was finding himself pulled into the discussion, his natural curiosity aroused by this very earnest and apparently quite sensible man.

‘It is a war that is easy to take sides in.’

‘A war?’

‘For every theory supporting the existence of UFOs, there is a counter-theory to dismantle it. It is therefore a
war with two opposing sides, with a lot of people scared to pick a side, a war no one can win until there is definitive proof one way or the other.’

‘So how does Sylvia Tredwin fit into all this? Do you believe she was abducted?’ George licked his lower lip unconsciously. ‘There was precious little about her case in your book. Nothing convincing.’

‘True, I only referred to it obliquely. She was very credible, but in the end I simply didn’t feel convinced one way or the other. I only published what, in my mind, was scientifically probable, with a body of evidence to back it up, as much as was possible. So I hung back on the Sylvia Tredwin case even though I knew there was something important going on. The signs were all there, all the cards on the table – what the psychologists might call an archetypal narrative.’

‘Meaning?’

‘You are, of course, aware of the case of Betty and Barney Hill…’

He nodded.
Thankfully, the books were all full of this case. It was back in 1966. The Hills were an interracial couple who both suffered memory loss while driving in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Concerned with the memory loss, and each of them plagued by bad dreams, they were subsequently subjected to hypnosis under which they confessed to being abducted by aliens. Their case became very famous, which seemed to be the spark that lit a whole load of other similar stories of abduction throughout the 1970s.

‘Sylvia spoke of something
comparable, I got that much from your book,’ said George.

‘Sylvia’s story had many of the element
s present in a lot of abduction tales, the similarity making it easy for many to dismiss. But why shouldn’t there be a recognisable narrative to abductions? One might say it is a process, after all, this coming to earth, taking people, examining them, bringing them back. And processes, as we know, all follow similar lines, even if they vary slightly in the detail.

‘When I met her
in 1979 she was in a pretty bad state. She’d lived with the experience for five years, never willingly broadcasting it, in fact trying her best to submerge it. But she suffered from recurrent nightmares that ensured she hardly slept at all, and she could hardly bear to be with her four-year-old son, whom she was convinced was the result of artificial insemination of the alien kind. She was a very tired, emotionally frail young woman, shunned by the locals of Petheram, whose beauty had been bleached by an unknown experience, to whom, without a shadow of a doubt, something very traumatic had indeed happened. I told her I could help her by listening to her talk about her experience, by not making judgements as the local newspapers had done. I genuinely wanted to help this sad woman. Gradually, over a period of time, she came to trust me and allowed me to interview her. I had three sessions, each lasting about three hours…’

The room was quiet and small and perhaps a tad too dark for Daniel Baker Forde. He didn’t like it to be too gloomy for these kinds of interviews. Didn’t like anything to influence the replies. He would have preferred a plain, bright room of his choice, but obviously this woman was in no fit state to even leave the house without panicking, he thought.

In front of him, on a small wooden table, stood a cup of steaming coffee
going cold and a plate with two custard creams on it, provided by Sylvia’s husband, Bruce Tredwin. A nice guy, thought Forde. Honest, down-to-earth man. Someone who didn’t strike you as being the publicity-seeking type. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was partly down to him that this interview was taking place at all. Sylvia Tredwin had refused his advances point blank. But on hearing of her case he knew he just had to try and see her. When she refused him over the phone and by letter, he did what he never did, and that was visit her in person. That’s because he knew there was something to be had here.

She was a beautiful woman, he thought, staring at her as she sat hunched in the armchair opposite him, every now and again casting nervous glances at the window over which the curtains were all but fully drawn. But it was a faded beauty, as if someone had set about defacing it, rubbing it away with an eraser. Dark lines sat under her wide eyes, and the
re was the appearance of premature wrinkles at their corners, spiking outwards like hairline fissures in her pale skin, acting as signposts towards the tiny streaks of grey hair appearing at her dark-haired temples.

‘Are you afraid of something, Sylvia?’ he asked gently.

‘Hmm?’ She turned to him.

‘You keep looking at the window.’

‘It’s nothing,’ she said. Her body was crumpled, almost screwed up like paper, as if attempting to shrink herself smaller than she was, her hands locked together clam-like on her lap. ‘Will this take long?’

‘As long as you want. When you’ve had enough just tell me and we’ll pick it up another time.’

‘That’s good,’ she said, nodding quickly. A darting of the head towards the window, then a slow, self-conscious turning of her face so that she stared at him apologetically.

‘Let’s start with that night, shall we?’

‘Yes, if we must.’

‘Can you remember that ni
ght? The night you went missing in November?’

She nodded slowly. ‘Some of
it. I left the house about 5.15 in the evening. It was just about dark already.’

‘Where were you going
in the dark?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Were you taking a walk? Or were you going somewhere for a reason?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I think I was going to meet someone.’

‘You think?’

She thought about it. ‘I was going to meet someone.
You know, at first, I couldn’t remember any of this. But over the years some of it has come back to me…’

‘Who
were you meeting?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’ She appeared t
o get agitated with her lack of memory. ‘I said some of it had come back, but I’m afraid it’s only tiny bits – I’m sorry.’

Forde held up a calming hand. ‘It’s OK, Sylvia. Take it easy. So you can’t remember, that’s fine.
Where were you headed?’

‘The other side of Langland’s Wood.’

‘The one that borders Flinder’s Field?’ He’d done his research, asked around, studied the newspaper reports of five years ago, talked to the local historian Brendan Mollett. He knew all about Flinder’s Field and he’d even visited the place with Mollett long before meeting with Sylvia Tredwin. But he knew he mustn’t be swayed by what information already existed. Her story had already been adulterated, sensationalised, despoiled. He needed to approach this afresh, with a fresh and rational scientific mind.

‘Yes, t
he wood borders Flinder’s Field,’ she replied.

The wood in which Brendan Mollett’s
father had been discovered dead, thought Forde.

‘Why were you going to meet this person on the other side of Langland’s Wood?’

She struggled with it. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘What were you wearing?’

‘A T-shirt and long skirt, I think.’

‘You didn’t have anything else with you?’

‘Like what?’

He’d read some people speculated that she was about to run off with someone. Maybe she had a suitcase.

‘Anything at all?’

‘Nothing. I can’t remember having anything with me.’

Dressed in a skimpy T-shirt and skirt, she wasn’t planning on going far, he thought, or for very long.

‘Which
route did you take?’

She blinked. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘Can you remember going through the wood?’

‘Yes.
It was dark.’

‘Weren’t you scared?’

‘I’ve never been afraid of the dark,’ she said. ‘Not until…’ She shuddered. ‘I remember it being dark, but I don’t remember being afraid.’

‘And then what? You went through Langland’s Wood and into the neighbouring fields?’

‘That’s right. The Moon was high in the sky. Yellow because of the clouds that were drifting in front of it. Every now and again the clouds would hide it altogether and it would be almost pitch-black.’

‘And still you were not afraid?’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t remember being afraid,’ she reiterated. But she froze, her eyes staring onto a faraway scene, her lower lip trembling ever so slightly. ‘Then I remember seeing the lights…’

He waited, but she
didn’t offer more. ‘The lights. Describe the lights.’

‘Bright, dazzling…’

‘Which direction did these lights come from?’

‘Everywhere, all directions.’

‘From above?’

She hesitated. ‘From everywhere. Yes a bright light from above. They were high up, I remember that. I was glued to the spot. I couldn’t move. It was as if the lights held me there, like they were metal bands around me. Then I began to feel afraid, very afraid, and I remember wanting to turn and run, but it was impossible. I heard voices in the dark…’

‘Can you describe the voices?’

Her cheek muscle twitched. ‘Gentle.
Almost kind, but not kind.’

‘Male or female?’

‘Difficult to tell. I think they were male.’

‘How many of them were there?’

‘I couldn’t tell. It’s vague now. I seem to think there were two or three, maybe more, because the voices became muddled, rolled up into one. I tried to run. I remember that much. I tried to run, but I was drawn against my will…’

‘Drawn in what way?’

‘How do you mean?’ she asked vacantly.

‘Did you move, or were there other forces at work? Did they take you?’

‘I was taken. I don’t remember much, but I remember my head spinning and my body floating upwards. I could see the ground beneath me, as if I’d died and was going up to heaven. I saw a massive dark thing above my head – huge, terrifying, waiting to swallow me up.’

‘Describe this dark thing.’

‘I can’t. I closed my eyes against it. But by now I wasn’t afraid anymore. It was as if I was welcoming it, accepting it as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I remember feeling drowsy. So tired, so relaxed, and I closed my eyes and fell asleep.’

‘What then?’

‘I woke up.’

‘And where did you wake up?’ Forde leant closer to her.

‘I remember – though my eyes were blurred and my head foggy – I remember seeing metal walls. Bright metal walls. And hearing voices, like they were far, far away. I knew they were discussing me. I couldn’t hear what was said exactly, because it didn’t seem to make any sense, but I could almost feel they were discussing what to do with me.’

‘Did you see who these people were?’

She gave a laboured nod. ‘Tall, grey, formless. One of them bent over me. He had a kind face, had large black eyes and a beard, like you see in idealised pictures of Jesus, that kind of thing. I felt a great wave of love spread out from him.’

‘You weren’t afraid of him?’

‘No. Not at that point. I was lying on some kind of metal table. I couldn’t move my hands or legs, but that didn’t matter, because I really didn’t want to. I felt quite peaceful and relaxed. Like I’d actually gone to Heaven. Then they started to examine me.’

Examine you – in what way? Can you describe the examination?’

Sylvia Tredwin swallowed. Her mouth was dry and she looked at Forde’s cup of lukewarm coffee. Forde offered her the cup but she declined.

‘My clothes…’ she said. ‘They’d been removed. I was naked.’

‘How did that make you feel?’

‘You mean did it make me feel vulnerable, dirty?’

He shrugged. ‘How did it make you feel?’

‘I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t ashamed or anything like that. I felt them part my legs and push something inside me…’

‘Inside you?’

She looked at him, glanced down to her groin. ‘In there.’

‘In your vagina?’

‘Yes. In there.’

‘What was it they put in there?’

‘Something long and metallic, I think. I remember feeling that something had been implanted inside me.’

‘Such as?’

‘An egg. An alien’s egg.
A bad egg. Into my womb.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because it’s what I believe to be true,’ she said, getting a little heated. ‘I’m telling you what I believe to be true. Don’t you believe me?’

‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘How long did the examinations last?’

She took in a steadying breath. ‘I don’t know. It became frequent, or seemed to be. I had a number of different things done to me. Things pushed in my mouth, my ears, up my nose.’

‘What happened after the examinations?’

‘The next thing I know I’m being cuddled by my husband Bruce. I’m naked in the middle of Flinder’s Field. At first I don’t know what’s going on. But it’s as if a veil or something had been lifted from my mind, and suddenly I see the storm, feel the rain and the wind, and I see Bruce. Then I feel terrified. So horribly afraid I want to be sick. I remember I could not stand upright, my legs being so weak, and I collapsed against Bruce and he had to hold me upright and all but carry me home.’

‘What then?’

‘Then, some time later, I found out I was pregnant with Adam.’ Her voice was cold.

‘Did that bother you?’

‘He’s not my son, Mr Forde. He’s the result of something that was put inside me.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because I was there! I know what happened, Mr Forde!
I know what happened!
’ she yelled, looking anxiously at the curtains again. ‘They’ll come back for me, you know. I can’t escape. They’re already on their way back for me!’