Aileen the Alien , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Andrew MacLaren-Scott

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42 pages

English

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A light-hearted novella about alien abduction that will make you smile and will make you think. A middle-aged man heads off for a break on the wild west coast of Scotland but gets a much greater change of routine than he expected. This fast-paced tale is surprising, entertaining and thought-provoking. It reveals another world rather close to home that is strangely similar to our own world, but also very different.

Sujets

Humour

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	27 mai 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782342342
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title Page
AILEEN THE ALIEN

by
Andrew Scott

Publisher Information
Aileen the Alien
Published in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © Andrew Scott
The right of Andrew Scott to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Introduction
I can’t be bothered with people not believing me, so I will pretend that this is just a silly story

1
It was meant to be a quiet week away with an old friend. It was meant to be some time out to recharge the batteries, chill a bit, kick off the shoes and feel the sand between my toes and relax.
All that kind of calm and lazy sort of thing, is all that it was meant to be.
With Lizzy. A week away on the wild west coast of Scotland with lively Lizzy. That is how I thought of her. She was 57 years old, three years older than me, and as mad a singing, poetry-writing, wine-drinking and brown bread-making old hippy as you could hope to find.
Just me and Lizzy relaxing for a week in her lonely cottage at the end of a winding potholed track that left the main road a few miles inland and took you down to her place beside the sea.
Heaven in the sunshine. Hell in the wet, cold and wind. Often a mixture of heaven and hell each day. The west coast of Scotland, in other words.
A walk was suggested on the first afternoon, along the thin track that led to the top of the cliffs. That brought the first indications of the weird stuff.
She took me up to the cliff-top then we turned in towards the hills, until a thick mist descended, and we got lost.
So there I was, a couple of miles from the cottage, near the top of a hill, enclosed in an impenetrable mist with a rather odd woman who I considered to be at least half mad, and with dangerous cliffs between us and the safety of her home, which was down there, somewhere, I reassured myself.
So we just had to sit and wait for things to clear, and after a while sitting in silence, surrounded by clinging wet mist, she said, ‘You know, there is supposed to be a ghost on this hill.’
I frowned, and responded, ‘Aren’t you thinking of Ben Macdui? The Old Grey Man of Ben Macdui, way over in the Cairngorms?’
But she insisted, ‘No. On this one too. They call it the Bochun. Don’t know what that means, but it’s supposed to be a grey shapeless thing that emerges from the mist and terrifies people off the ridge, sometimes to their death.’
‘Oh great!’ I said, laughing, ‘That’s just what we need. A big grey shapeless thing that comes out of the mist and chases us over the cliffs!’
And she was laughing too, but she insisted there had been many stories about it, down through the years. None that I had ever heard of though. Look up the Bochun on the internet and there is nothing there about ghosts on Scottish west coast hills.
So... the Bochun. It was nonsense, I was sure. But sitting in the clinging mist I almost wanted to believe in it. Almost wanted to think that it might wander out of the void and convince me that this world is more complex and wondrous than I think, or I should now say than I thought , it probably is. That’s how badly I wanted there to be something else to this world, until I found out there really is.
But the Bochun didn’t come to scare us, although disaster nearly arrived in a simpler and more stupid way when, after an hour or so of waiting, she suddenly shouted, ‘What’s that?’ and jumped up, startled.
She was moving away from me. Must have heard some noise, maybe just the wind.
But she backed off, sideways, into the gloom. Slipped, fell, cried out.
But when I edged towards her carefully, crouched down and peering through the gloom, I found her hands and hauled her back up off a ledge. Quite a wide ledge. I don’t think there was ever any risk that she would actually have fallen far. But still, it was a ledge. Silly lady.
So after that alarm we were afraid to move any more and were up there for another hour or so, huddled together against the cold.
Then the mist cleared just as we were worrying about darkness descending, and we found the track again and trudged back down for some food, some drink and some sleep.
But during the next morning she got a phone call, and told me she had to go. Not much detail, just some stuff about a troubled friend, and so off she went in her rusty old car, leaving me to enjoy the solitude on my own.
And that is why I ended up climbing the cliff track again late at night, when I had been unable to sleep.
It was a clear night, and I also had a torch with me. I had already had a fair bit of whisky, and was feeling rather sorry for myself, trying to avoid the demon depression that can strike at times and wondering if going up there all alone was really such a good plan. And rather stupidly I took the rest of the whisky with me, stopping for little sips as I wandered upwards with a double layer of sweatshirts and a thick jacket to keep me warm. I was walking along thinking about science and physics and life, and feeling these were all fairly profound thoughts, as happens to us when we are somewhat drunk.
It was a moonless deep dark night, and I was relying on my torch to see my way. And I was feeling the comforting weight of the whisky bottle, though half empty, bumping through my jacket pocket against my side.
The light sped from the torch bulb filament at, well... at the speed of light, hit the stones that had been cracked and rounded by many millions of years of erosion, and then it bounced back to the light-sensitive chemistry of my eyes. The visual wisdom of several billion years of evolution was (I thought) required to make it possible for me to walk up this winding rugged slope. The gentlest of breezes cooled my face - the weakest remnants of an ocean storm that had been stirred up by the heat of the sun. Stirred up in fact, by nuclear fusion among sub-atomic particles 93 million miles away. Even in this darkness, my face was caressed by the ripples of those impossibly distant fires. All things are connected, I thought, they truly are.
And as I picked my way upwards, nearing the top, I became very aware that the image I was using to navigate by was not really out there beneath my feet, but was inside my head. An illusion of light and shadow conjured up by chemistry within the deep darkness of my brain. And hopefully the illusion would correspond quite accurately with the invisible reality that was out there, especially since there was a sheer drop on my left. A wall of ancient stone between me and the cold salty water licking the broken rocks below.
But I reached the cliff-top safely, breathing quite hard, and settled down on a flat mossy shelf about ten yards from the edge. I put the torch out then, and was smothered by the starry darkness, which I found quite comforting. No spooky concerns about the peak that rose unseen behind me, and its mythical beast, that even then, I sarcastically pondered, might be stirring, sensing my presence, moving down towards me.
I allowed myself a sip of whisky, and sat listening to the very gentle slap of the sea, far below. Sipping more whisky, far more whisky than was good for me and setting the near empty bottle down by my side.
Sitting looking out at the dark water, I became rather transfixed by the pulsing lighthouse beam from the rocky island a few miles away. It was flashing steady and reassuring, looking unusually close in the calm dark atmosphere we had that night.
It took me a few minutes or so to realize that something seemed wrong. Something seemed significantly different. And it made me shake the whisky bottle to assess how much I had taken.
And then I realized, eventually, that it was the light. It was coming too fast.
I was counting carefully then, and the light was coming about once every three seconds, not five, as it was supposed to do.
Too fast! I counted again. No way! Definitely too fast!
That was when my memory tells me I smelled burning, and I am fairly sure I heard a sound like the spit and crackle of a fire taking hold. And it was getting confusing then, but I was definitely on my feet, looking round behind me, and seeing only blackness where I somehow expected to see some flames, and though surely I should still have been several yards from the edge I suddenly appeared to be slipping, and falling, alarmingly!
I definitely felt myself falling. Definitely downwards. Going over, with that light seemingly flashing brighter, faster, closer...
I fell.
I definitely fell.

2
I found myself coming back into consciousness in a dimly lit place that had the appearance of a cavern.
There was some light, although I couldn’t discern where it was coming from.
The walls were glistening like polished stone, or maybe brushed steel, and horror of horrors, there were things moving around in there with me. Just shifting shapes. Dark, never close enough for me to make them out.
I believed that I was lying down. Could not seem to get up. Something was stopping me.
And I was like that for a long time, or so it seemed. It is very hard to say anything accurate about my memory of this particular time. But shifting shapes were coming and going. And I was not fully awak