Sometimes in the Night They Come a short nightmare by Jean Buckhalter (1980-1990, about)

Sometimes in the Night They Come
a short nightmare by Jean Buckhalter (1980-1990, about)

Sometimes in the night they come and carry me to that place I fear. Sometimes in the day, my old memories, my old fears come back to haunt me and I run crying to my mother. She dries my tears and comforts me, and it is better then.

My old memories, which they try to tell me are just bad dreams; I have learned to keep to myself. Some know, for others who have shared my memories and given me theirs to keep have been taken in the night as well. My old fears which the old one tries to take away with the touch of his long, cold fingers on my forehead, I have learned to hide in my other self, my true self.

I am writing this to tell others, even those who have never been taken in the night, or whose own memories are so deeply hidden that they will not fill them with fear in the day, what I and others have learned. For we have learned the secret. We have learned the secret of how to let them take our bodies and do what they will to them without fear, for we have learned how to pour our true selves into our other bodies, bodies which they cannot touch or even sense. Others must know of this. Everyone must be ready.

They came for me in the night again many months ago. The one who was doing things to my body did not care about my fear or the pain he was causing me and the old one who takes pain and fear away was not there. I was held fast to the table and the pain was so great that I wished there was a way I could leave the body and suddenly I was floating free over the table, over the body and the one who was doing things to it with strange instruments. At first I was afraid that he would see me and force me back, but even when I passed my other "hand" in front of the creature's eyes, he did not react.

I explored this strange place where they had taken me and saw others of my own kind on other tables with other creatures doing strange, hurtful things to them. My little brother was in another room; crying and asking for mommy to make the bad men go away. I found that I could enter his thoughts and showed him the way to step out of his body. He clung to me, which was strange at first, as our other bodies had no substance, but his presence brought me a sense of calm and I comforted him as well.

Together we joined with the others in that place. All but one, that is, for when I entered the room where another was being experimented on, the old gray who takes pain and fear away sensed me. I do not understand clearly exactly how I knew this, I just did, so I immediately withdrew and watched from where he could not sense me.

The others and I and my brother spoke together and compared what we had learned. My teacher was one of the first I taught, and she has helped me write this. Before the awakening, some may have found my writing strange for a child of my years, but one of the others who are taken in the night explained it by saying something about a group mind. You will understand soon. You will be changed as the rest of us have been.

Over the past sixteen months or so, ever since the night I learned how to leave my body and taught the others, we have done some experiments of our own. The first thing we learned was how to hide our other selves from the old grays. We discovered how to enter the thoughts of the others, those creatures which come for us in the night. We have learned their secrets and have brought them back to the day. Others are learning how to use those secrets and some day we will go to the place those creatures came from, and we'll show them what we have learned and we'll use the knowledge they gave us without knowing. Then they will know fear; they will know pain.

We do not enter just the minds and memories of those others, we enter the minds of our own kind as well, waking them and teaching them. Everyone is responsible for waking as many of our own people as they can every night as our bodies sleep. We are united, asleep and awake and everyone stands ready. Soon the entire world will have been awakened. One of our people has used the computer he works with at NASA to estimate that we will have wakened everyone within three months.

Sometime they will come for one of us in the night, but this time we'll be ready. Oh, yes, we'll be ready.