CHAPTER ONE

April 3, 2000 AD

They were back! What did they want this time?! The paralysis began and she could feel the creeping of ice water through her veins. Her muscles refused to cooperate! She wanted to run, to hide, anything but this awful feeling of being unable to move. Her mind shouted, No! No! Not again! I don’t want to go with you! As usual her wants were not taken into account, and she watched in fascinated horror as the familiar process began to take place.

The white light that was blinding and so common to these experiences spilled into the room from one window on the west wall. She’d deliberately turned her bed so the foot of it faced the opposing wall in an attempt to deter her tormentors. She’d thought it would prevent them from floating her out the window feet first. It hadn’t worked.

She heard Wolf her half husky half timber wolf howling loudly in the back yard, his chain rattling as he tried to get to her. There would be no protection this night. They had found her again. She’d moved many times, many states, and many cities. It didn’t seem to matter they always found her. Finally in desperation and the hope that perhaps she could fool them she’d returned to the Pacific Northwest and Portland, Oregon. She’d been there a year, and had no experiences. It didn’t matter now, they’d found her and the torment would begin again as it always did.

She felt her body take on a lightness of being and realized she was levitating off her bed. The feeling of her blood freezing in her veins, and paralysis grew even stronger. So did the sensation of fight or flight, not that she was capable of either at the moment.

She heard a small scraping to her left and turned her eyes towards the sound. The window was opening by itself. A blue beam in which were floating the tiny, gray, hairless beings who were her tormentors came into the room and surrounded her. She shut her eyes. She couldn’t stand to look at them! She felt the blankets covering her being removed, but she didn’t open her eyes. She knew what would come next.

Their hands were so cold she shivered involuntarily. They had a grainy leathery texture. She hated the touch of their hands upon her. They were hanging onto her arms and guiding her inside the blue beam to float out the window and up, up towards something she had hoped never to see again.

She felt her back brush the top of the cedar tree in her backyard. She knew which tree it was because she could smell it’s calming scent. Far below her Wolf had ceased his howling, but she could still hear his whimpers as though from far away. Tears that wouldn’t fall grew in the corners of her eyes. I should never have tied Wolf up in the backyard. If she had kept him with her maybe she wouldn’t be about to suffer this again.

Unable to resist she opened her eyes just in time to see the bottom of a craft from another world open up before she floated inside. Terror moved through her, making her previous fear seem as nothing. What are they going to do this time? What tests will they perform? Will they return me to my home, or will I disappear from Earth never to be seen again? The not knowing what to expect was the worst. The only thing that was ever certain with these experiences was it would be extremely painful both psychologically and physically. Everything else about the experiences depended on the tormentors.

She opened her eyes, and looked around. I must’ve blacked out again. She wiggled her fingers and attempted to pick up her hands, but found she couldn’t. They’d put her wrists in restraints. She tried to lift one of her legs and found her ankles restrained as well.

They removed my clothes again! It was one of the worst things about the experiences. She had nothing, nothing! No way to protect herself! No way to run! No way to escape! It was always the same, trapped like a rat in a maze with nowhere to hide!Suddenly, huge black tilted eyes that seemed to almost encompass the entire width of an overly large gray skull were peering down at her. She couldn’t seem to look away.

Don’t be afraid, we will not hurt you. An almost mechanical voice touched her mind.

Leave me alone, let me go!

You are special, you are one of our chosen ones. Only you and others like you can help save your planet. The voice continued as though she had never resisted.

In some dim corner of her mind she knew she’d been told this before. In fact this was their main communication at the beginning of an experience. They were trying to distract her from what they were doing! She remembered this from the other times! They would speak to her in her mind, tell her how special she was and how what they were doing to her would help them to save her world. It was all lies! She knew what they were doing, and she knew it was wrong!

She felt their leathery hands on her stomach. She tried to look down, but the tormentor’s black eyes wouldn’t let her. A sharp agonizing pain in her stomach below her navel told her they were doing a familiar procedure. A procedure they called a pregnancy test and which was performed by inserting a large needle about a quarter inch around into ovaries to extract eggs. Why they called it a pregnancy test, she’d never been able to figure out.

Some small part of her mind grasped weakly at the idea, there was something here she was not remembering, something important.

You are feeling no pain, no pain. It interrupted her thought processes.

No pain, my ass! Her mind yelled.

For some reason, her tormentors seemed to think if they told her there would be no pain, it would somehow miraculously disappear. What a crock! She always felt the pain of their procedures.

The agony escalated to enormous proportions, and her mind in an effort to escape it caused her to black out. At least this was what she always had felt happened. She could never be sure if it was the pain, or if the being who kept her distracted somehow put the suggestion into her mind.

Angel Whitedove opened her eyes. Her stomach hurt, badly. She pulled her legs up and held herself in a fetal position. It was starting again. They were back. She groaned softly and realized she couldn’t run this time, there was nowhere to go. They always found her in the end. It might take them a year or so, but they always found her. Now that they had, the sleepless nights, the nightmares, and the silent horror was about to start all over again.

Her mouth felt like the inside of an old shoe, and tasted like one too. A wild shiver moved through her. She looked down and saw she was naked. They hadn’t bothered to redress her this time. Carefully she sat up and checked out her stomach. Just below her navel was a small red puncture wound. It hadn’t just been a bad dream then. They’d really found her again. Damn!

She reached up to brush long strands of dark hair away from her face, and her hand came away with small sprigs of cedar. She pulled the cedar from her hair and got up from the bed. She looked around for her robe and couldn’t find it. Her tormentors must’ve decided to keep it for a souvenir. Taking a deep breath to clear the cobwebs from her mind she went to her dresser and pulled a clean t-shirt and underwear out and put them on. She knew from experience she needed to get out her Polaroid camera and take a picture of the small puncture wound on her stomach because it would be gone by early afternoon.

Angel despondently wandered into the kitchen for a plastic bag to put the cedar twigs in. She knew they weren’t really proof but like the puncture wound they were the only tangible evidence that the visitors had found her.

She felt like crying but what good would that do? As a child when she’d first begun to remember the horrible experiences she’d cry for days after being taken, her father really the only person able to console her. Her father was no longer with her though, and there was no one to hold her and tell her everything would be ok. Angel made sure of it. She allowed none close to her so that no one could be touched by the visitors as she had been. She didn’t want the responsibility.

The Polaroid camera positioned, her shirt lifted and the panties lowered she took several pictures of the puncture mark on her stomach. The journal lay open to a new page with the date written at the top, and the bag of cedar was taped to it. There was room for at least one of the Polaroid pictures beneath it. The other two pictures along with a few other of the sprigs of cedar would be placed in a safety deposit box at her bank along with a second copy of the journal. She’d deposit the pages with the experience along with them later in the day. If there was one thing she’d learned in investigating this phenomenon, the visitors weren’t above stealing evidence. She always made sure she had two sets, one locked away safely where they hopefully couldn’t get to it.

Fortunately, they hadn’t tampered with her coffee maker and the required two cups was hot and waiting for her just as she’d set the timer to do. Standing at the counter she looked out the window at what promised to be another sunny but cool day. Spring in Oregon could be incredibly fickle, boasting sunshine in the morning and black roiling clouds filled with rain by afternoon. Angel didn’t mind though, she loved Oregon. It was worth all the rain to have the beautiful green everywhere. The trees, the flowers, the grass; it was all so colorful this time of year. I should never have left.

She stood on tiptoe to reach up and grab a mug out of the cupboard above and to the left of her sink. She poured herself a mug of caffeine fortification and added cream and sugar before she turned and walked to the table to record the events of last evening in what she privately called her “tormentor journal.” She needed to get it all down while it was fresh in her mind, at least what she could readily recall. Later she would transcribe her notes into her computer and take the printed pages to be added to her typed version of the journal that was ensconced in her safety deposit box at her local U.S. Bank. One could never be too sure with the visitors.