‘So this is all paid for by suckers.’
Marie frowned. ‘That was an extreme example. We don’t rip people off. We offer genuine advice to people who are frightened or confused and need reassurance. Like Fraser. I mean, we didn’t charge him but we talked to him and made him feel a lot better about what he’d seen.’ Her voice rose a little in indignation.
‘Hey, I’m sorry. I wasn’t judging you.’
I put my cup down and reached across and lightly took hold of her wrist. She looked into my eyes and something shifted in the air between us. My breathing became deeper. Her pupils expanded.
She crushed out her cigarette on the window ledge and orange sparks fell into the open air. I shifted closer to her and put my arms around her back. I kissed her cheek then her lips. She kissed me back. She tasted of wine and smoke. I could hear blood pounding in my ears. I was kissing her. This was what I’d wanted to do since that night on the hill. I felt my lips curl into a smile against hers.
I opened my eyes. Marie was looking at me. We broke off and laughed, holding each other’s hands, foreheads touching. I felt exhilarated and light-headed. She kissed me again and made an ‘Mmm’ sound as her lips left mine. I felt hot. There was very little air in the bedsit. We had used it all up.
‘I was going to tell you what I believe in,’ she said.
I wanted 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. This was back in the fifties and sixties. They’re usually known as the Nordic type. But the Nordics have mostly been replaced now by the Greys. They have large, egg-shaped heads, big almond-shaped eyes, tiny noses and mouths, and grey skin.’
I looked around the room. Many of the cuttings on the walls showed artists’ impressions of Greys – it was a familiar image and again I thought that the reason everybody described aliens as such was because they were echoing all the others who’d gone before them.
‘We believe that Greys exist, as do many other types of extraterrestrials. We think the Greys come from a system that is relatively close to Earth and that the other extraterrestrials nominated the Greys as a kind of scout party, to see if we humans are worth inviting into the Chorus.’
‘The what?’
‘It’s a community of non-humans made up of intelligent species from different planets. We call it the Chorus.’
She sounded like she was quoting directly. ‘Like an alien club?’ I said.
‘More like a council. Or, I don’t know, like the UN or something.’
I laughed. ‘United Planets.’
‘Yes.’ She gave me her ‘don’t mock’ look and I adopted a straight face. ‘Andrew believes that the Chorus are monitoring us to see if we are worthy of joining them. This will lead to what we call a close encounter of the fifth kind. Which is where a select group of humans will be chosen as ambassadors, or emissaries, to join the Chorus in order to represent this planet. Eventually, if this group is successful in showing that we can make a positive contribution, the Chorus will reveal itself to the planet as a whole and the entire human race will be invited to join.’