Who were they?

What were they?

I didn’t assume they were human, even though the tents looked familiar. By now, I’d learnt enough to doubt everything. I guess you could say paranoia had taken hold and I saw the campsite as a threat rather than a rescue. A mirage. A trap.

Even if they were human, how would they view me? A strange, half-starved guy stumbling towards their camp in an even stranger world. I didn’t know the rules here. It could be every man for himself. Dog-eat-dog.

What could I possibly offer them? I had no food, no water, no survival skills, and certainly no sparkling conversation. They’d already mastered the art of fire, whilst I’d been sat for fucking hours contemplating whether eating a piece of fruit would result in instant death.

Maybe I was overthinking. I have a habit of doing that.

Juice seeped from the stalk of the fruit where I’d torn it from the bush. I sniffed it. Sweet, warm and tempting, almost like zesty honey. I dabbed my fingertip against it and thought about touching it to my tongue before hastily wiping it off on the seat covers.

I found myself juggling the fears of dying from poisoning against the possibility of starving to death. Which would be the most painful?

I decided that if this was going to be the end of the show, let’s make it quick, and I took a bite. A bold, burly bite that squirted juice all over my face.

I stared at the wound I’d created in the fruit as I munched on its fleshy insides. It wasn’t easy to eat. There were crunchy seeds and stringy pith, a little like an unripe pomegranate, but there was something familiar about the taste even though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Sharp at first, but then more subtle and winey.

I swallowed and waited.

For what, I don’t know.

I took another hearty bite, then another.

Pulling back the furry skin, the culprit behind the sharp tang, I found myself enjoying it more with every mouthful. The hunger kicked in and I ravaged the rest of the fruit, leaving nothing but an unpleasant skin and a wet patch down the front of my T-shirt.

I recognised the taste.

Gooseberries.

It reminded me of visiting my Grandma. Monthly visits that seemed endless at the time. It was always a busy house, and busy houses meant small talk. A skill that was never in me. As a kid, I was always labelled shy. When I was older, I became an introvert. I don’t know which I preferred. I never really saw myself as either.

Either way, I would avoid the ass-clenching chitchat and take refuge in my grandmother’s garden. It was long but narrow, typical of council house yards of that time, yet my late Grandfather had made good use of every inch of space, filling it with homegrown produce and a labyrinth of ramshackle outbuildings.

I was in my element exploring that garden, tiptoeing between the rows of fruit and vegetables. Helping myself to anything that looked ripe and didn’t contain any suspicious holes. I never met my Grandad Tom. He died before I was born, but I could almost picture him sitting in one of those dilapidated sheds, watching me enjoy the allotment he had obviously cherished.

In the height of summer, I was always drawn to the gooseberry bushes that hugged the fences. I was a gooseberry addict. I loved that pop when my teeth burst through the tart skin and released the sweetness. I couldn’t get enough. I’d eat them until I went a shade of green, which was inevitably followed by the world falling out of my arse several hours later.

This didn’t bother me then, and it still didn’t now.

For a few minutes, I almost forgot where I was.

I threw the skin out of the caravan door and headed back towards the bush of goodies. My confidence was growing, helped by the fact that I was no longer convinced every mouthful of fruit would be my last.

I looked towards the mountains.

The tents were still there, tiny against the huge slate peaks. The light was fading, although it never seemed to become fully dark. I could see the amber glow of the fire flickering against the rocks around them. It was hard to judge how far away they were. A few miles, maybe more. The tents were perched high on rough terrain and it looked a like ball-ache to reach them, even if I wanted to.

I looped my T-shirt into a makeshift basket and loaded it full of the moorish fruit.

The wind blew gently past my ears, almost as if it were whispering to me in a language I could never understand. It happened a lot whilst I was there, and I never quite got used to it. Some nights I would bolt upright, convinced there was someone right there in the caravan with me, but there never was.

It was like the wind wasn’t simply passing around me, but with me. Watching me.

I headed back to the caravan.

I’m not sure how many of the fruits I ate, but I didn’t stop until my belly was full and a large heap of skins had gathered outside the door. In hindsight, I should have paced myself. I couldn’t see any more bushes nearby and it was only a matter of time before I’d stripped this one bare. But it felt good to have a heavy stomach. For the first time since waking up in that place, I felt more like myself.

I felt strong.

Human.

Alive.

With my newly discovered energy, I began to pick through the rubble of the caravan. I found my old Blackberry Bold phone. It was coated in a thick layer of dust but, surprisingly, seemed mostly unscathed. From the remains of my wardrobe, I unearthed an old rucksack and began to pack it with whatever I could find that I thought might be useful.

A plastic bottle, some cord, a couple of knives, some clothing and anything else that looked remotely useful.

I was packing for a journey I knew I had to take. I just didn’t know when.

I was beginning to adjust to the world I found myself in. I found a routine of sorts. I knew when the moon would rise. When the wind was the strongest, and where the sand would gather. I slept in shorter bursts when the light went dim.

I was never comfortable, but coping.

The fruit seemed to be giving me just enough food and water to function, but before long I found myself picking the last two from the bush. I packed them into my rucksack and stood for a while looking across the landscape.

I strayed further from safety, but found nothing but dust and rocks. No water. No other food. No sign of whoever was occupying those tents.

I couldn’t put it off any longer.

I knew it was time.

One last sleep as the light dropped and the large, smooth moon crept slowly overhead.

I woke feeling nervous, but ready. This time the flutter in my tummy hadn’t been caused by stuffing my face with overripe fruit.

I pulled on my tatty boots and stepped outside, taking one last look back at the caravan. The only thing that seemed to make sense in that world.

Somehow, I knew it would be the last time I laid eyes on it.

A beaten shell of twisted aluminium.

My mother was going to fucking murder me.

I began to walk.

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Start Here: For the Missing (foreword)

→ Next: E8 - Coming 6th September

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It’s strange, the irrational thoughts that whirl through your head when you’re frightened. As I looked around the crumbled shell of my home on wheels, all I could think about was how pissed my mother would be.

I was sick of letting her down.

I must have watched the large moon rise out from behind the mountain range, creep slowly across the lilac sky and eventually vanish over the horizon, a dozen times. I had no idea what that equated to in Earth days. Time seemed to have lost its importance.

For the time being, I concentrated on staying alive.

I ate whatever I could find.

The milk in the fridge had curdled and the bread had turned pea green. Another indication of how long I must have been aboard the craft before being deposited in this foreign land.

Luckily, a box of stale cereal and half a bottle of lemonade had survived the wreckage.

It was getting me through.

But I knew it was only a matter of time before they both ran out.

During my time cowering inside the battered can, I began noticing strange marks on my body that I had initially missed. There were patches on my forearms and calves. Red and irritated, with sharp edges, almost like tape had been ripped away from my skin, leaving sores or burns behind.

I could only imagine what they were from.

I also had a puncture mark on my right palm. Almost a perfect circle in the meaty part at the base of my thumb.

Inside it, I could see a greyish object, no bigger than the tip of a pencil.

No matter how hard I picked away at it, I couldn’t remove it.

It still sits beneath the skin today. Deep and barely visible, but there nevertheless. Of course, it could be anything. A splinter of wood. A shard of glass, maybe. But you would expect something like that to eventually work its way out.

Whereas this stubborn bastard is now just a part of me.

A souvenir.

A little forget-me-not.

And then there was the ring.

A gold band sat snugly on my wedding finger, except it was on my right hand.

Simple, dull and slightly misshapen.

It didn’t belong to me.

Most certainly, it hadn’t been on my finger when I was taken.

Nothing about my experience made sense, but it was the ring that would toy with my mind the most.

In an alien world, I had somehow inherited something so human. So personal. Something that had obviously meant something to someone.

It felt innately wrong to see it on my finger. But strangely, it was comforting too.

For this reason, it would leave it on.

There were countless little quirks and abnormalities like these throughout my experience. Some would eventually explain themselves. Others would remain mysteries.

Some might remain mysteries until the day I die.

Every so often, I would poke my head out through the broken window and peer at the strange landscape I’d been plonked into. A world that appeared so familiar, yet so different. It was like an interpretation of Earth created by someone who had never laid eyes on it.

An impersonation.

At first, I would peer out looking for threats. I had no idea what could be living out there, and frankly, I didn’t want to know. But as more moons passed, I began looking for something else.

Nourishment.

My throat was as dry as assholes and my stomach groaned so loudly it kept me awake.

Then I spotted something.

A small tree or bush in the distance, breaking through a cluster of tooth-like rocks. It was tough and wiry, a bit like hawthorn, but with large, bulbous growths hanging from its thin branches. They strained under the weight of the chunky, teardrop-shaped objects.

Fruit?

Who was I kidding?

At that point, I was far too petrified to leave the caravan, let alone munch on an Alienberry that would probably melt my insides at the first bite.

I lay on what was left of the couch.

Frayed and beaten.

Just like me.

I thought about home.

What must everyone be thinking?

The mess I had created before my disappearance was now laid bare. It seemed that the only thing I had left behind for my loved ones was lies and shame.

I thought about my mother.

I imagined some time had passed since I vanished, although I could never be sure how long. Maybe she’d had time to get past the initial shock. Maybe my absence was becoming easier to live with than the embarrassment of having me around.

I later learned that a police officer, PC Growden, had visited my mother only a few hours after my abduction.

My abandoned car had been reported, and the police had acted quickly because of the perilous weather. They sent a patrol to Harbury Fields Caravan Park and discovered that my pitch was now empty.

They searched the obvious routes from the abandoned vehicle well into the following day, but found nothing.

There were apparently two theories.

I’d died of hypothermia and my body would eventually be stumbled across by a dog walker. Or I’d hooked up the caravan to another vehicle and deliberately fled.

The search was called off far too abruptly and they simply waited for the mystery to resolve itself.

Just like that, I’d become a statistic.

Back in the caravan, I could feel my body beginning to fade. My thin, frail body barely made a lump beneath the sheets draped over me.

I remember thinking:

Well Cal, this is probably it, buddy.

But, then another thought came.

A line from my favourite poem.

“Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay.”

I don’t know why it suddenly sprung into my head, but once it did, I couldn’t get it out. The feeling of woe and self-pity instantly evaporated.

Yes, I had severely fucked things up.

But nothing’s unfuckable.

Get back home and unfuck things.

I don’t know where the energy came from. Maybe it had been there all along. A second wind. A second chance.

I hauled myself to my feet and staggered towards the doorway. My eyes were fixed on the inviting bush of unidentifiable offerings.

Then I stepped out.

My bare feet sank an inch into the sandy floor. It was light, crunchy and new beneath my feet, like stepping into that first snowfall of winter.

The light felt different outside than it had through the broken windows of the caravan. It was like I’d stepped into an Instagram filter.

The soft purple light transformed everything.

It felt gentle.

Serene.

Not half as scary as I’d imagined.

The sound travelled differently too. Clean and crisp, as though the planet was amplifying noises it had never heard before.

I crept across the sweeping landscape towards the tree. My newfound confidence dwindled with every step. The further I got from the caravan, the more exposed I felt.

Vulnerable.

Alone.

It was so quiet I felt like I could hear my own eyelids blink.

The tree was packed with plump fruit, almost like pears, but with a yellow, furry skin. None had fallen to the ground. None appeared to have been nibbled by animals or insects. That was a relief.

I was nervous to touch one.

I don’t know why. I had visions of them coming to life, unfurling into yellow alien bush monsters and chasing me back to the caravan. At that point, anything felt possible.

I poked one.

It swung exactly as you would imagine hanging fruit to swing. I gently gripped the peach-like skin and pulled. It came away smoothly, almost invitingly. It fitted perfectly in the palm of my hand. Soft, greenish veins ran through its skin. I reached for another.

That’s when something caught my eye.

A flash of red in the far-off mountains.

Then another.

Blue.

They were small. Triangular. Familiar.

I stared for a moment before my brain finally caught up with what my eyes were seeing.

Tents.

Just like the ones we would have back home.

Between them, a faint trail of black smoke rose into the purple sky. A campfire, I remember thinking.

Someone was there.

The thought that others were actually out there hit me like a brick to the face. I grabbed the fruit and ran.

I felt like I was barely touching touching the ground on the way back to the caravan. Like gravity had been turned down a notch.

I threw myself inside and pinned my back against the wall. Panting almost uncontrollably.

For a moment, I’d forgotten about the fruit.

I’d forgotten about the hunger pains that had been crippling me.

My appetite had vanished.

All I could think about was what I’d seen.

The tents.

The smoke.

Someone else was here.

I wasn’t alone.

Continue Reading The Light Years

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← Previous: E5 - The Awakening

Start Here: For the Missing

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I knew I wasn’t dead. At least, I thought I wasn’t. I could feel the scratchy material of my cheap sleeping bag against my skin and could smell the familiar musty hum of the caravan. It was comforting in a strange way. Whatever had happened, the caravan was still there.

I was still here.

For a moment, it felt like no time had passed at all. Like I’d been sucked into that strange craft and instantly spat out the other side. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that couldn’t be right. There were fragments. Sharp, vivid little flashes that didn’t feel like dreams.

I remember being captive. Being suspended in something thick and cold. A tank of gloop. I remember the Beings. Their black eyes watching over me. Their smell. But they were only fragments, broken pieces of something I couldn’t yet put together. Still far too real to be dreams or hallucinations.

Over the following weeks, those fragments would slowly return to me. Not all at once, but in little pieces. Little breadcrumbs that teased me at random points of the day. Each time, it would be like another piece of the puzzle that would fall into place. I couldn’t always tell whether I was remembering something or simply convincing myself that I was. Either way, I will share those memories along the journey.

Maybe I could open my eyes. I just didn’t want to.

There’s comfort in the darkness.

After all, what would I discover if I opened them?

I’d seen the movies. I’d read the stories. Someone gets abducted, subjected to unspeakable things, then dumped back down to Earth to fend off a lifetime of disbelief and ridicule.

But what if I opened my eyes and I wasn’t home? What if I was still aboard the craft? What if the worst of it was still waiting for me?

I listened to the silence for clues. Hoping for the familiar and dreading the unfamiliar.

There was nothing but the deep whistle of wind. The sound when you blow over an empty milk bottle.

Eventually, my eyes opened. Just enough to catch a glimpse of my surroundings. Like a petrified child pretending to still be asleep.

I was in the caravan, or what was left of it. The windows were smashed, the walls dented and every item of furniture reduced to little more than splinters and sawdust. Yet I was lying perfectly straight inside my sleeping bag, zipped tightly to my chin. Almost serenely. It was obvious I’d been placed there rather than simply thrown into the wreckage.

That should have frightened me more than it did. Instead, I found myself strangely comforted by the sight of the old four-berth caravan. Even destroyed, it was familiar. It was home. Or at least, it had once been.

Although my eyes were open, my body was still closed. Like it belonged to a stranger and I wasn’t given instructions to operate it.

If nothing else, it gave me time to think. I thought about my mother. My family. What must they be thinking? I had no idea that, back home, my disappearance had already become a police matter.

The wind whistled through the gaps in the walls. A warm, dry wind. Dust hung in the air and every now and then a stronger gust would send tiny particles skittering across my face. They scratched against my eyes and stuck to my skin.

There was no traffic, no birds, no distant voices and no rustling leaves.

Then I noticed the ceiling.

Huge sections of it had disappeared, leaving jagged gaps above me. Through one of them I could see the sky.

A purple sky.

Not the purple of a sunset. Something else. Lavender and lilac hues. Gentle swirls of cloud moved slowly across it. It was beautiful, almost unnaturally so.

I felt a weight on my chest. I hadn’t realised it was there until it began to ease. My fingers tingled, followed by my toes, and then a strange warmth travelled through my arms and legs. I could breathe more deeply. The air entering my lungs felt cold at first, then strangely warm as it spread through my body.

My sense of smell improved too. Over the unsavoury odour of the caravan upholstery, I caught a whiff of damp rock and something sweet and floral. It reminded me of hiking in the Peak District, wet stone and vegetation after rain. Over time, it became almost overpowering. My nostrils tingled every time I breathed.

I watched the sky slowly change over time. Lavender became lilac, lilac became plum, but it never became black. There was no proper night. I noticed the stars. They were incredibly bright, almost painfully so, and seemed to move quickly across the sky like one of those little nightlights people put in children’s bedrooms. Although, maybe this was normal. I’d never spent any real length of time admiring the night sky until now.

I tried to move my head. It eventually slumped to one side, bringing the doorway into view. The frame had been beaten into more of an oval shape. Jagged like the mouth of a shark.

Beyond it were mountains.

They were huge. Tall and broad, far greater than anything I’d seen in the UK. Slate grey against the deep plum clouds.

Sand whipped through the air and peppered the side of the caravan. Clumps of thin, reddish grass bent and twisted in the wind. It looked almost like fur.

A feeling of dread began to take hold. Someone had obviously been given the wrong fucking return address, because this landscape looked far from the peaceful rolling hills of Middle England.

It took another two or three hours before I began getting proper movement back. My muscles spasmed and my calves cramped so badly that I thought they’d pop. Eventually, I could move my fingers, then my toes, then my arms. My legs followed.

Every muscle groaned as though they had been ordered back to work.

I barely recognised my own body. My stocky frame had wasted away. I was skinny, frail and weak. My beard had grown caveman wild. I stared down at myself for an age, wondering how much time had passed since I’d last looked at myself properly.

I tried to stand on jelly legs. Hitting the deck like a sack of shite more times than I could remember before I eventually made it to the doorway.

I grabbed what was left of the door frame with both hands. My bony fingers wrapped around the battered metal.

I peered outside.

At first glance, it almost looked familiar. There were mountains, grass, rocks and a sky. It could have been somewhere on Earth. Somewhere remote, perhaps. Somewhere I’d never been.

Then I started noticing the things that weren’t right. The angle of the mountains, the movement of the grass, the sound of the wind.

It felt like I was staring out into a world that was trying to fool me.

And then the illusion fell apart.

Something moved behind the mountains.

At first I thought it was another mountain, but then it rose.

Slowly, silently, impossibly.

A pale sphere emerged above the ridge.

A moon.

It looked like ours, except it was fucking enormous. Smooth and pale, without the familiar scars and craters I knew so well.

It ominously kept rising until I instinctively stepped backwards.

That’s when I finally allowed myself to consider the thought I’d been desperately trying to avoid.

I was so very far from home.

*****

Continue Reading The Light Years - A True Story of Alien Abduction

Reading order:

← Previous: E4 - The Abduction

Start Here: For the Missing

→ Next: E6 - Coming 23rd August

It might have been the caravan heater rattling away beneath the bed, sounding like it was finally on its last breath. It might have been my bladder, which had developed an uncanny habit of waiting until the deepest part of sleep before declaring an emergency.

Whatever it was, I woke to something I hadn’t experienced in weeks.

Heat.

Not warmth.

Ass-melting heat.

Within seconds I was throwing the sleeping bag aside. Sweat had soaked through my T-shirt and my hair clung damply to my forehead. My first thought wasn’t anything remotely extraordinary. I thought I was ill.

I’d been running myself into the ground for months. Living off cheap food, shite sleep and carrying a bucket load of stress. A fever seemed the most sensible explanation.

But then I noticed the windows.

Every morning I’d wake to a lacework of ice coating the inside of the glass. Some mornings it was so thick I’d scrape it away with an old bank card before I could even see outside. There wasn’t a single crystal.

Something wasn’t right.

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The heater was still ticking away beneath the cupboard, but it had never managed anything more ambitious than taking the edge off the cold. The forecast had promised another night well below freezing. Outside should have been a blanket of fresh snow.

Instead, it was hotter than the Devil’s armpit.

Then I noticed something else.

The mug of tea I’d forgotten to empty the night before was trembling on the fold-out table.

Only slightly.

Just enough for tiny ripples to spread across the surface.

I watched them for several seconds before convincing myself it must be the heater vibrating through the floor.

I reached down and flicked it off.

The rattling stopped immediately.

The ripples didn’t.

Something in the air had changed. My skin prickled with static, the hairs on my arms standing to attention for no reason I could explain.

I checked my watch. Just after two in the morning.

During the cold snap I’d stopped using the caravan toilet overnight. The cassette had a habit of freezing solid, and I wasn’t about to spend the morning wrestling a tank of frozen piss. It was easier to step outside. I unlatched the caravan door, bracing myself for the familiar slap of freezing air. It never came. The air outside was just as warm.

I stood in the doorway for a moment, genuinely confused. The cold had become so constant that I’d almost forgotten what ordinary air felt like. This wasn’t ordinary either. It was humid. Heavy. The sort of warmth that punches you in the face when the aircraft door opens after landing somewhere Mediterranean.

My eyes dropped to the steps.

The snow had gone.

Not melted into slush.

Gone.

The gravel beneath my feet was dry, every stone clearly visible in the glow from the caravan light. Tufts of green grass pushed through the edge of the pitch as though winter had simply forgotten this tiny patch of ground existed.

I stepped down carefully.

The warmth hugged me. I unzipped the coat I’d slept in and took another few paces, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

Then I realised it stopped.

Not gradually.

Abruptly.

The snow began only again just yards away, banked neatly around my pitch in what looked like an almost perfect circle. Beyond it, the campsite was exactly as I’d left it the evening before—white and frozen.

If I’d been marking it on a survey, I’d have called it twenty yards across.

I walked towards the edge and reached my hand across.

Snowflakes landed instantly on my palm.

Cold.

Real.

I pulled my hand back into the warm air and watched them melt almost immediately, flooding between my fingers.

For a few seconds I did nothing but stand there, one arm stretched into winter, the rest of me stood in late spring. I stood there for what felt like several minutes, but probably only seconds. The campsite remained silent.

No wind, nothing. Just silence.

Not even the distant rumble of traffic from the motorway. Just that faint static in the air that I’d felt inside the caravan.

It was only when I happened to glance upwards that I realised the sky looked... wrong. At first I couldn’t work out why. The snowfall was still there beyond the circle, drifting lazily through the darkness, yet directly above me there wasn’t a single flake.

It created an invisible column leading upwards.

There, suspended above the caravan, was an object so enormous my mind refused to accept it as a solid thing. It occupied almost my entire field of view, yet because it made no sound and seemed to absorb the darkness around it, I’d looked straight past it.

Estimating height was impossible. Surveying had taught me to judge distance with reasonable accuracy, but this was so unreal that it was almost impossible to calculate. Sixty metres, perhaps. Maybe more. Maybe less. Without any point of reference, it could just as easily have been twice that.

It wasn’t silver.

It wasn’t metallic.

It was black, but not the black of paint or polished steel.

More like wet obsidian. It created an appearance that I couldn’t quite grasp. It was both there and not there at the same time. I had to keep rubbing my eyes before checking again, like a cartoon character.

Its surface seemed to swallow the little light, giving just enough back to reveal its curves. The edges weren’t entirely smooth. They shimmered faintly, as though thousands of tiny glass scales overlapped one another, shifting so slowly they were almost impossible to notice. It was round, but I felt like it could be any shape it wanted.

I couldn’t make out windows.

No engines.

No rivets.

No lights.

Nothing that suggested it had been built by man.

Only then did my eyes settle on the centre.

It reminded me of the iris of an eye viewed from impossibly close. Thousands of glossy hexagonal plates lay fitted together so perfectly they appeared to be a single surface. I watched them began to move smoothly.

Each panel folded beneath the next in waves, opening and closing with the slow rhythm of something alive rather than mechanical. The whole structure flowed with an elegance that didn’t belong to engineering.

The deeper the iris opened, the darker it became.

Not black.

Absent.

As though the centre wasn’t a hole at all, but somewhere light simply ceased to exist.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was opening for me.

Watching me.

I don’t know how long I stood there staring. Time seemed to lose its usefulness. Then something changed and a faint white glow appeared beneath the iris, slipping between the hexagonal plates like water finding cracks in stone. It wasn’t a spotlight. There was no beam cutting through the darkness. The light seemed to live beneath the surface, pulsing gently through the black glass before fading again.

Then another pulse.

Slightly brighter.

Another.

Like it was breathing.

The tingly of static deepened into some type of force. A pull almost like magnets.

The hairs on my arms lifted and my jacket tugged gently against my shoulders.

I looked down.

Tiny pieces of gravel beside my feet were twitching. One pebble rolled a few inches, before another simply in the air. No drama. It just rose into the air as effortlessly as a bubble rising through water.

Then another.

Within seconds dozens of tiny stones floated around my feet. They drifty casually as though they had forgotten they were made of rock.

The snow outside the circle stopped falling and started to rise towards the centre of the craft. It streamed upwards in silent white ribbons, disappearing into the darkness beneath the object.

I held my breath.

Something tugged at my hair.

Loose strands lifted.

Then the sleeves of my jacket fluttered upwards against gravity.

That familiar feeling swept through my stomach, like driving too quickly over the crest of a hill, only it never settled.

My body was becoming lighter.

Not much, but just enough that my feet no longer felt firmly planted on the ground. Fear consumed me. I’d seen enough movies to know how this shit goes down.

Whatever this was...

It had come for me.

I turned and ran.

My feet barely seemed to touch the ground. Every stride carried me further than it should have, as though gravity had quietly loosened its grip. I stumbled more than once, not because the ground was uneven, but because my body no longer seemed to weigh what it had seconds earlier.

Around me, the world was coming apart.

Pebbles skimmed across the pitch before lifting into the air. Dead leaves spiralled upwards. Loose twigs, scraps of paper and frost-blackened grass all rose together, circling silently above me.

Everything was climbing.

I reached the caravan steps and hauled myself inside. The familiar smell of damp upholstery and propane hit me. Never had that tired old caravan felt more like home.

Silence. For a few seconds, nothing happened.

I stood gasping in the doorway.

The static had followed me inside.

I could feel it stinging across my skin. It seemed to cling to everything. The cupboard doors began to chatter and a discarded plates slowly shifted across the worktop. The spoons in the cutlery drawer jingled softly against one another.

I saw my phone laying where I was sleeping and grabbed it. Thumbing to unlock it with hands that didn’t even feel like they belonged to me. I finally opened the camera just as the whole caravan lurched.

Not a bump, not a shake, but smooth, deliberate lift.

Everything began to hang in the air like a scene from Poltergeist. A blankets, plates, clothing.

The suspension groaned beneath me.

I risked a glance through the open doorway to see the caravan steps were hanging mid air.

Below them, the shower block roof was already falling away.

I couldn’t have been more than a few seconds into the ascent, yet the ground already looked impossibly distant. Far too high to risk a jump. Snow swirled around the caravan in a white funnel, wrapping itself around the walls until it didn’t resemble a caravan at all.

My senses were a scrambled mess.

I dropped to the floor and wrapped both arms around the leg of the fold-out table, as though thirty-year-old plywood somehow stood a chance of protecting me.

It didn’t. Obviously.

The higher we climbed, the rougher the ride became. The caravan lurched sharply to one side, throwing me across the floor. Plates and mugs burst from the cupboards, clattering against the walls before hanging weightless for a heartbeat, only to be flung in another direction as the caravan rolled again. My entire world had been reduced to a four-berth caravan, and now even that was going to shit.

I tried to stand, convinced I could somehow take control of the situation, but it was hopeless. Every time I found my footing the floor shifted beneath me again. My shoulder slammed into the kitchen unit before my head caught on something, maybe a cupboard. Warm blood trickled down the side of my face, though I barely noticed it. My only thought was to stay inside the caravan.

Then, as suddenly as the utter chaos had begun, it stopped.

The silence was almost as shocking as the violence. The crockery crashed back to the floor. Clothes settled in heaps. Somewhere behind me a tap dripped into the sink, as though nothing unusual had happened at all. Had it gone?

I pushed myself onto one elbow and looked through what had once been the doorway. The door itself torn clean from its hinges. Ahead of me, the underside of the craft had opened completely. The iris I had watched from the ground now resembled a mouth. The whole structure pulsed with slow waves beneath its surface, as though it possessed a heartbeat instead of machinery.

The caravan drifted almost gracefully now. There was no jolt, no sense of being pulled by cables or anything. It simply glided towards the opening with a strange beauty.

I caught one final glimpse of the world below. Through the swirling snow I could just make out the headlights of a car. They seemed impossibly small against the darkness, yet I remember someone must have witnessed this. If they did, then maybe it would prove I wasn’t losing my mind. Maybe they would know where I’d gone. They would get help, from someone, anyone.

As the caravan crossed into the opening, the walls around me came into focus. They weren’t metal, or at least not any metal I’d ever seen. Thousands of black glass-like panels curved away in every direction. Soft pulses of light. Alive.

Every panel reflected the caravan. It was like thousands of tv screens all tuned into my abduction.

The last thing I remember thinking was how strange it was that, for weeks, I’d wished I could disappear. I’d wanted the world to swallow me whole. Yet now, all I could think about was how desperately I wanted to stay.

After that, everything went black.

Though the darkness wasn’t the frightening part.

It was what came after.

Continue Reading The Light Years

Reading order:

← Previous: E3 - The Being

Start Here: For the Missing

→ Next: E5 - Coming 16th Aug

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There wasn’t.

If someone had asked me at eight o’clock how the night would end, I’d probably have complained about the cold, made myself another cup of fucking tea and gone for my shower. It was just another night. That’s perhaps why so much of it has faded. I couldn’t tell you what I ate, whether I’d bothered switching the TV on, or what I’d been thinking during those last few ordinary hours.

I survived those months through routine.

The caravan demanded it.

It was old, temperamental, and forever finding new ways to remind me it had been built decades earlier. Every day seemed to begin with another small job. Emptying the cassette toilet before it froze solid. Wiping the rivers of condensation from the windows. Clearing leaves and fluff from the roof vents. Checking the gas hadn’t given up overnight. None of it was important in the grand scheme of things, but together those little jobs shaped the day.

Without them, I suspect I’d have spent every waking hour staring through the windows wondering how my life had gone so epically arse over tit.

The caravan itself was hardly luxurious. Pine-effect cupboards, floral upholstery that had probably looked cool as shit in the eighties. There was just enough room to stretch your legs if you remembered to tuck the table away first. Most people would have called it cramped.

I didn’t.

Oddly enough, I found it comforting.

When your world shrinks to a few square yards, your problems seem to shrink with it. I only had to think about getting through another night.

Sometimes it’s simply finding enough reasons to make it until morning.

Every evening had one reward…

The shower block.

I’d grab the same faded beach towel and make the short walk across the frozen campsite. The showers were absurdly hot. Painfully in fact. But that’s how I liked it. I’d stand beneath the water until the feeling returned to my fingers, letting the heat soak into my bones. For twenty minutes I could almost pretend I was somewhere else.

I didn’t even wash properly most nights.

I just stood there.

Thinking.

Sometimes not thinking at all.

That evening I headed down a little earlier than usual. Around half past eight, I think. My legs were still throbbing after the six-mile walk back from abandoning my car, and I needed to thaw out.

Outside, the snow had started again.

Large flakes drifted lazily through the darkness like handfuls of torn cotton wool. Snow hadn’t been forecast that evening, but nobody told the sky.

The farmhouse stood silently beyond the shower block, its upstairs windows glowing amber. The campsite owner lived there with his elderly mother, although I never once saw her during my stay. It struck me as an awfully large house for just two people. The whole place had an odd feel about it. Bates Motel vibes, but maybe just lonely not threatening.

The shower block was nothing special. Grey breeze blocks. Tiled floor. Fluorescent strip lights that buzzed louder than they illuminated. I’d walked through that door dozens of times without giving it a second thought.

There was nothing out of place.

Nothing that should have warned me about what was to come.

There were six shower cubicles.

None of them had working locks.

Not that it mattered. I was the only numb-nut staying on a campsite that had been closed for weeks.

I always used the same cubicle. Habit, I suppose. The shower seemed to run a little hotter than the others, although that was probably just something I’d convinced myself of.

The water hit like a pressure washer. Almost painful at first. Then, after a minute or two, the warmth reached places I’d forgotten could feel warm. My shoulders finally loosened. The ache in my legs eased.

I didn’t wash that night.

I cried.

I don’t cry very often. But if I do, it’s usually in the shower.

You can’t see tears in the shower.

Maybe it was abandoning the car that afternoon. Watching the only thing that still connected me to the outside world disappear behind me as I trudged six miles through the snow. Maybe it was the realisation that my world had become even smaller.

Whatever the reason, I’d reached my limit.

The cubicle slowly disappeared behind a veil of steam. My breathing sounded louder than the water itself. I remember hearing myself sniff and feeling embarrassed, even though I knew I was alone.

“Get a grip, Cal,” I muttered.

I scrubbed both hands across my face and stood there for a moment with my eyes closed beneath the water.

That’s when I heard the entrance door.

Not a bang.

Just the slow, familiar creak as it opened.

I looked up.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

Only the hiss of the shower.

For a few seconds I stayed exactly where I was, listening.

The wind. I’d obviously not latched the door properly.

The temperature changed and a blast of freezing air drifted through the block and wrapped itself around my legs.

I stepped out onto the cold tiles and pulled the cubicle curtain aside. The main entrance stood wide open and snow drifted lazily across the floor.

“Brilliant...”

I padded across the wet floor, more annoyed than worried. As I reached the doorway, I stopped.

There were tracks in the fresh snow.

Not boot prints, but something else.

They were neatly spaced, each one split into two narrow points. Almost like tiny hooves. They came across the yard from the darkness and disappeared through the doorway beside me. There weren’t any leading back out.

It was inside.

I stared at them for a few seconds, trying to make sense of what I was looking at.

A muntjac.

That was my first thought.

I’d seen them around the caravan plenty of times. Small deer have a habit of turning up where you least expect them, and the weather had probably driven one in looking for shelter.

It made perfect sense until I remembered I’d never seen a muntjac open a door.

I turned back towards the showers.

The steam had swallowed the room while I’d been standing outside. It rolled gently between the cubicles, shifting with the breeze coming through the entrance.

I couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead.

Then I heard it.

Not a growl.

Not breathing.

A sound I still struggle to describe.

Soft.

Almost like someone trying to whisper without knowing any words.

It rose and fell with an odd rhythm, somewhere between a hiss and a murmur.

Every hair on my arms stood up.

Then...

A footstep.

Light and deliberate.

Another.

Closer this time.

I crouched slightly, trying to see beneath the layer of steam.

At first all I could make out were two black legs.

Long.

Unnaturally thin, but solid and strong.

They reminded me of the hind legs of a deer, except these belonged to something standing upright.

It took another step.

Then another.

The steam drifted aside just enough.

The rest of it followed.

It was roughly my height, perhaps a little taller, but it felt enormous. Not because of its size. Because of its presence.

Its skin (or whatever covered it) was black.

Not dark.

Black.

The sort of black that seemed to swallow the light instead of reflecting it. Even under the fluorescent strip lights it had no shine, no detail, no texture I could make sense of.

It simply absorbed the room.

Its eyes were locked on mine.

Large and glossy.

Completely still.

It blinked once.

Not with eyelids as we know them, but with something thinner. Like dark veils sliding silently across polished glass. The blink of a reptile.

Its mouth was tiny.

Its nose barely more than two slits.

Yet the strange whispering sound was still coming from it somehow.

Neither of us moved.

We just stood there.

Watching each other.

The shower continued to roar behind me, but everything else seemed strangely quiet. Water dripped from my hair onto the tiles. Steam drifted lazily between us, sometimes revealing more of it, sometimes swallowing it whole again.

People often ask whether I was terrified.

The honest answer is no. Not at first. I was spooked and unnerved, but not terrified.

Fear only arrives once your brain understands what’s in front of you. Mine was still desperately trying to convince itself I was looking at something ordinary. A dummy or mannequin. An animal of some sort. A man in dark clothing. Someone playing a prank. Anything that made more sense than what my eyes were telling me.

It found nothing.

The being tilted its head slightly, almost the way a curious dog does when it hears an unfamiliar sound. It didn’t feel threatening. Not yet. If anything, it seemed just as interested in me as I was in it.

Then I noticed its hands.

Its fingers were impossibly long, hanging almost to its knees. They didn’t stay still either. Each one moved independently, curling and uncurling with slow, deliberate movements. They reminded me of spider legs feeling their way across glass. I remember thinking they didn’t look like fingers at all. They looked like something learning how fingers were supposed to work.

The whispering hiss continued. Soft. Rhythmic. Not loud enough to drown out the shower, but impossible to ignore. It wasn’t speech, at least not anything I recognised. It wasn’t an animal either. Even now, I struggle to compare it to anything I’ve ever heard before or since.

Then it took a step.

It wasn’t a lunge or a sudden movement. Just one careful step towards me.

Its arms began to lift away from its sides.

Slowly.

Almost cautiously.

That’s when whatever spell I’d been under finally broke.

Every instinct I possessed suddenly caught up with my eyes.

Run.

I turned and bolted for the exit.

Butt naked.

Looking back, there probably wasn’t a less dignified way to make a getaway, but dignity wasn’t high on my list of priorities.

The cold hit me like a brick the moment I burst outside. Snow stung my skin, but I barely noticed it. The caravan couldn’t have been more than fifty metres away, yet it felt like a marathon. My feet slipped on the compacted snow every few strides, arms flailing just to stay upright.

People often ask if I looked back.

Would you?

Every step I expected to feel those long fingers wrap themselves around my shoulders. I could almost feel them before they were there. But they never came.

I crashed into the caravan door and threw myself inside, slammed the door and immediately switched off the light.

Only afterwards did I realise how ridiculous that was.

The walls of that caravan were little more than thin aluminium sheets. If whatever I’d just seen wanted to get in, a caravan door wasn’t going to stop it. Even so, shutting that door felt like putting a castle wall between us.

I stood there gasping for breath. Steam rolled off my skin into the freezing air inside the caravan. Water pooled around my feet as I listened.

Nothing.

No footsteps.

No scratching.

No whispering.

Just silence.

Eventually curiosity got the better of me. Or maybe disbelief. I still wasn’t entirely convinced I’d seen what I thought I’d seen.

I crept over to the large front window overlooking the shower block. The blinds were already closed. They always were. I eased two fingers between the slats just enough to look out.

It was still there.

Standing in the entrance of the shower block.

It wasn’t looking towards the caravan. Instead it stood beneath the security light with its face turned upwards, watching the snow drift through the darkness. Every so often it slowly raised one of its long arms, spreading those strange fingers as though trying to catch the flakes before they landed.

It wasn’t frantic.

It wasn’t hunting.

If anything, it looked... fascinated.

I remember thinking how odd that was. I’d expected a monster. Instead, I found myself watching something that seemed to be experiencing snowfall for the very first time.

Then, without warning, it stopped.

Its head turned.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

Straight towards my caravan.

Straight towards me.

I froze behind the blinds.

There was no way it could have seen me. The lights were off. The blinds were closed. Yet somehow I knew it could see me.

It was looking at me.

We stayed like that for what felt like an eternity.

Then it moved.

Not like a person.

Not even like an animal I’d ever seen before.

It bounded away in huge, effortless strides, more like a gazelle than a man. Three... maybe four leaps, and it had vanished beyond the hedgerow at the edge of the campsite.

Just like that, it was gone.

I stayed at the window for another twenty minutes, too frightened to move and too curious to look away, half expecting it to come back.

It never did.

I don’t know how long I stood at that window.

Long enough for my breathing to slow and for the snow to cover the tracks outside. Every few minutes I’d convince myself it wasn’t coming back, only to find myself peering through the blinds again a few seconds later.

It never returned.

Eventually the cold caught up with me. I found myself trembling more from hypothermia than fear. I peeled myself away from the window, found the nearest towel and started pulling on layer after layer of clothes. Thermal top. Jumper. Another jumper. Thick socks. It still didn’t feel enough.

The caravan was silent again. Almost too silent.

I made myself a cup of tea more out of habit than thirst. My hands shook so much I spilled half of it before it reached the table. I sat there staring into the mug, trying to make sense of the last ten minutes.

I couldn’t.

The more I replayed it in my head, the less believable it became.

Maybe I’d finally cracked.

It sounds ridiculous now, but that honestly seemed more likely than what I’d just witnessed. I’d spent months living under constant pressure. I’d isolated myself from almost everyone. I’d been sleeping badly, eating badly and carrying around enough guilt to sink a ship. People have breakdowns. People hallucinate. Maybe this was mine.

It was the explanation I wanted. But I knew what stress was and I knew what depression looked like. It didn’t look like what I’d just seen standing in that shower block.

Every now and then I’d catch myself looking back towards the window.

Just to make sure.

Nothing.

Eventually I climbed into bed fully clothed. The caravan creaked as the wind picked up outside. Branches scraped against the roof. Every little noise suddenly had me sitting upright again. Sleep came in short bursts, broken by dreams I can’t remember and long periods of staring into the darkness, listening for footsteps that never came.

Sometime during those early hours, I made a decision.

I’d had enough.

Whatever happened after that didn’t matter anymore.

The hiding.

The lies.

The waiting.

I couldn’t do it another day.

In the morning I was going to hand myself in.

I’d tell them everything. About the money. About running away. I’d accept whatever came next because, for the first time in months, prison almost sounded easier than carrying on like this.

It was strangely comforting.

For the first time in a long while, I felt as though I’d made a decision instead of running from one.

I eventually drifted off believing the hardest day of my life was waiting for me when the sun came up.

I had no idea I wouldn’t be here to see it.

Continue Reading…

Reading Order

← Previous: E2- The Bonus

Start Here: For the Missing

→ Next: Out Sunday 9th Aug

I’d spent six years under his dictatorship, as had most of the lads at the surveying firm. The hours were long, the pay was average, and we spent more time in motorway services than we did at home. If the job itself didn’t grind you down, our boss usually finished what it started.

I’ll never know what truly possessed me one evening in 2009.

Sure, there was revenge. A touch of greed. But ultimately, I’d simply reached the point where consequences felt less frightening.

My father had passed away just months earlier. Not peacefully, at a ripe old age, but face down in track ballast with a shovel in hand and 58 years on the clock. This was my father in a nutshell, and I guess many working-class men like him. Sacrificing their best years in an occupation they loathed, for a family they adored.

This sat heavily on my mind as I headed to the company’s payroll computer.

Calling it a “hack” gives me far too much credit. In those days, company security consisted of a big beige desktop computer and a password written on a Post-it note stuck to the monitor. All I did was log in and give myself and (for reasons I still struggle to explain) everyone else a £1,000 bonus.

I didn’t honestly believe it would work.

I assumed payroll would reject it, or the bank would question it, or someone in accounts would notice before payday.

Someone always notices.

Nobody did.

A month later, the money landed.

Mine.

Everyone else’s.

Not a single question was asked.

Most of the staff probably assumed it was an admin balls-up. Nobody was about to march into the office and ask if their unexpected thousand pounds had been sent by mistake. And the company? It was making money hand over fist. There was so much coming in that nobody gave a turd-waffle about what was quietly drifting out.

So, I did it again.

Then again.

Funny how quickly the unthinkable becomes routine.

Over the next six months, I quietly redirected more than fifty thousand pounds.

Writing those words now makes me feel physically sick.

It didn’t then.

Back then, I convinced myself I was balancing the scales. Robin Hood in steel-toe boots. I’d never spoken much to the people I worked with, but I noticed little things. New tyres on old cars. A family holiday. Even just a little bounce in their step. Whether the money genuinely changed anyone’s life or not, I wanted to believe it had.

The truth was, I needed to believe I wasn’t stealing.

I was socially awkward long before it had labels. Small talk felt like a test everyone else had somehow revised for. I kept my head down, did my job, and went home. People probably thought I was quiet. The reality was I simply never knew what to say.

It’s a dangerous thing when someone like that convinces himself he’s doing the right thing.

Reality caught up with me on a wet Monday morning. I knew something was wrong before I reached my desk.

Nobody was pretending to work.

My boss was pacing the office, his face the colour of beetroot, while a man in an expensive suit hammered away at the payroll computer. I knew next to nothing about accounting, but I knew enough to understand that sooner or later somebody would reconcile the books.

And when they did, my little act of generosity would become a rather serious act of fraud.

I stopped halfway up the stairs.

For a moment, I convinced myself I could bluff it. Smile. Ask what was going on. Act surprised.

Then another thought arrived.

Run.

So I did.

I turned around, walked back out through the front door, climbed into my car, and drove.

That was the last day I ever saw the office.

In a heartbeat, everything I’d spent years building had been reduced to three bags of clothes and a borrowed caravan in the middle of nowhere.

The waiting was the worst part.

Not knowing whether the next set of headlights crawling along the frozen lane belonged to the police, the lease company, or simply another lost driver. Every knock on the caravan door made my ass cheeks tighten. Most of the time it was only the campsite owner, checking I hadn’t frozen to death. I began pretending I wasn’t in.

Days blurred into one another. I stopped shaving. Stopped caring what day it was. The little gas heater fought a losing battle against the cold, and every morning I woke to find a fresh skin of ice on the inside of the windows. It was remarkable how quickly a caravan could shrink. Not physically, but mentally. The walls crept closer every day until the world consisted of a bed, a kettle, and the sound of the wind rattling the flimsy panelled walls.

I thought about handing myself in more times than I could count. I even drove halfway to the nearest police station once before turning around at the last roundabout. I kept telling myself I was waiting for the right moment. The truth was, I was terrified. Not of prison. Of finally admitting, out loud, the sort of person I’d become.

Food became whatever I could afford. Usually beans. Sometimes nothing. I measured my life in cups of tea. Tea was cheaper than thinking.

The strangest part wasn’t the loneliness, but how quickly I got used to it.

I stopped answering my phone. Then people stopped calling. The world carried on without me. Somewhere beyond the frozen fields, people were going to work, arguing over parking spaces, watching TV and planning holidays. Meanwhile, I was congratulating myself because I’d managed to make a tin of soup last two days.

Looking back, I think I disappeared long before anyone reported me missing.

Tomorrow no longer held any promise.

It’s strange what the universe does when you’ve run out of places to fall.

Continue the Journey

Reading Order

• For the Missing (Foreword)

• Entry One – The Big Freeze

• Entry Two – The Bonus

• Entry Three – The Last Night (Coming next)

As the owner of the site limped away through the fresh snow, I remember thinking, so long as the money exchanged hands, I still existed in a small but undeniable way.

The 12^th of January 2010.

Snow had erased almost every road. Schools were shut. Shops and offices silent. The country called it the Big Freeze.

I called it Tuesday.

Harbury Fields Caravan Park, tucked away in the Warwickshire countryside, had been closed for the season for some time. As I glanced around the rusting barbed-wire fences and crumbling shower block, I began to wonder whether it had ever been open at all.

I imagined it looked lovely in summer. Everything does. Ordinary places seem kinder beneath warm sunshine. Rows of pristine white motorhomes. The smell of sausages browning on disposable barbecues. Children weaving between caravans on battered bicycles while their parents enjoyed a week’s escape from ordinary life.

Instead, I found myself walking through its winter ghost. The only sound was the distant call of a Ring-necked pheasant. The imagined smell of barbecues was replaced by the sharp scent of the conifers bordering my caravan.

More accurately, my mother’s.

She’d reluctantly lent it to me out of pity, despite knowing full well it wouldn’t cope well through the cold months. I vowed to make amends when I was back on my feet.

My mother wasn’t the only person doing me a favour.

The owner was letting me stay on the site during the closed season.

We’d known each other years earlier when he’d managed my football team. We never really saw eye to eye back then, and judging by the look he gave me that morning, not much had changed. I doubt he’d imagined that ten years later he’d still be watching me from the touchline. Only this time, the pitch was a frozen caravan park.

“Just a few days,” I’d promised.

I told him I was caught between house moves.

Another lie.

It had become a habit.

If you’re already questioning my credibility, I wouldn’t blame you.

The truth is, I wasn’t always like that.

Somewhere along the way, lying stopped feeling like a choice and became a reflex. By then, I’d lied to creditors, friends, family and eventually to myself.

That night, sitting alone in a freezing four-berth caravan, I realised I’d lied to almost everyone who still cared about me.

It was the first promise I’d made in months that I intended to keep.

No more lies.

Earlier that afternoon I’d walked six miles through the snow after my car finally surrendered. It had been running on fumes for days. Honestly, it deserved a medal for getting as far as it did. I abandoned it halfway across a junction with no intention of ever seeing it again.

The lease company had been threatening to repossess it for months. The only reason they hadn’t found it sooner was because nobody thinks to look for a missing car at the arse-end of nowhere. It’s not a place I ever imagined washing up.

The night I was taken wasn’t the beginning of my story.

It was the last chapter of the man I used to be.

That is how long I was missing.

While I was gone, Britain elected a new Prime Minister, welcomed the Olympic Games, and legalised same-sex marriage.

The world kept turning.

By the time I returned, I was little more than a statistic - one of over 200,000 people reported missing that year. Most came home. Others never would. Every one of us had a story.

This is mine.

I was later told it was the longest reported UFO abduction in history. They said it like it was an achievement. As though I should wear it like a medal. Add Alien Survivor to my dating profile. Cash in with a book deal.

For years after I came back, I couldn’t think of a single reason to tell anyone what happened. It wasn’t shame and it wasn’t secrecy. It was ownership.

During those three years, I learned more about myself than I had in the thirty before them, or the dozen since. Whatever happened to me wasn’t an abduction.

It was an intervention.

And because of that, it belonged to me.

Then there was the fear.

There’s always fear.

Not fear of what happened, but of becoming the man whose story everyone politely nods through before changing the subject. Of being doubted. Mocked. Reduced to a punchline.

That fear kept my mouth shut far longer than any other authority ever could.

So, what changed?

Middle-aged fart syndrome.

Somewhere in your forties, you stop climbing the mountain and realise you’ve already reached whatever height you were going to. The cracks you spent years trying to hide simply become part of the landscape. You stop worrying whether people believe you, because the people who matter either already do... or never will.

There’s a strange freedom in that.

Eventually, I realised this story was never for me. It isn’t even for the sceptics who’ll roll their eyes before they’ve reached the second entry.

It’s for the missing.

For the ones who came back. And for the ones who never did.

I’ve spent years trying to separate what I remember from what I later came to believe.

If I’ve succeeded, this is what happened.

If I haven’t, then this is at least how I remember it.

The rest is yours to decide.