What You Wish For Read Online Free PDF Page B

to carry on kissing her, but she was calling the shots here. I could wait.
    I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she spoke. She was so animated, gesturing, drawing symbols in the air with her hands.
    ‘OK,’ she said. ‘There are four recognised types of close encounters. Type one is merely a sighting of a UFO.’
    ‘Like the sighting over the East Hill?’
    ‘That’s right. Type two is when the UFO has some sort of physical effect on its surroundings. For example, a patch of ground might be scorched or trees might be damaged.’
    ‘This is simple so far.’
    She smiled. ‘Type three is the famous one, and that’s when aliens are actually sighted, like in the film, though we don’t really like to call them aliens because it has negative connotations. We call them visitors.’
    She lit another cigarette. ‘The fourth kind of encounter is one where a human is abducted.’
    ‘Uh-huh.’
    ‘Please, Richard . . .’
    I kissed her. ‘Sorry. Carry on. I’m interested, genuinely.’
    ‘OK. So, abductions. The most common description is that somebody will be in their house and they’ll be seized by a beam of light and be taken aboard a spacecraft. Or they might be in their car. The car stalls and they don’t know what’s going on. Very often people only remember this under hypnosis. They get home and find that their journey took two hours longer than expected. They call this “missing time”. There are a lot of variations, but the basic encounter is usually the same. The people tend to find themselves lying on an examination table. That’s when they see the visitors. Often the visitors will talk to them – sometimes telepathically – and usually they carry out some kind of . . . procedure.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Well, it might be a physical examination, or sometimes they pass lights over the human, or they might simply talk to them.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Sometimes the encounter is sexual. There are loads of reports of women being made pregnant by extraterrestrials. Or men being asked to father half-human babies. Hybrids.’
    It took all my willpower not to laugh.
    ‘The similarity between people’s experiences is incredible. It’s one of the reasons why the abduction phenomenon has so much credibility now. Everyone’s telling the same story.’
    ‘But surely—’ I was careful not to offend her. ‘Surely that’s because they’ve all heard it before and they’re copying each other.’
    She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe that. I can’t believe that that many people would lie. Why risk all that mockery?’
    ‘I don’t know. Perhaps they’re attention seekers. Maybe they’re the kind of people who will do anything to get in the paper. Or they’re – how can I put it? – crazy.’
    ‘No, Richard.’ She shook her head. ‘These are ordinary people. And there are thousands of testimonies, books filled with interviews and stories – true stories. Some people have said it could be a mass hysteria, but I think it’s the truth. Every day, people are having encounters. And the people who come forward, well, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. How many are too frightened to tell anyone? And there are thousands more who have blotted out the memories because they’re too traumatic. So many people have had memories of abductions brought back under hypnosis or during therapy. And they all tell the same stories.’
    I wasn’t convinced, but I nodded thoughtfully. I stroked her fingers as she spoke. I realise that it might seem like I was being cynical in more than one way. That I was humouring her because I wanted to get into her knickers. But it was more than that. I liked her. I liked that she believed in something. I spent my life surrounded by nihilists and irony. It was refreshing to meet someone who wasn’t like that.
    She went on. ‘The visitors themselves are usually one of two types.’ She smiled. ‘They used to be described as tall and beautiful with long blond hair.