Jane sat back tentatively against the cool leather of the chair, her heart racing, her breath still coming in heaves. She blinked at Dr. Allister, sitting stock still and calm across from her, pen poised above his yellow, legal sized pad.

"What happened?" She managed. "Why did you bring me back like that?"

"I didn't," the doctor told her. "You did that yourself. It happens sometimes when we remember particularly alarming things. Are you okay?"

"Yes," Jane answered, her breathing and heart starting to slow now. "I think so. That was so.. real.I mean I honestly felt like I was there. Like I was in two places at once. I didn't expect that."

"And what do you remember?"

"I remember everything," she told him. "It's clear as day. I'm telling you, it's like I was there. It's like I was eight years old again and back in my bedroom. I can't get over it."

"And was it what you expected?" the doctor asked. "What you saw, I mean, was it what you expected to see?"

"I think so," Jane began, rubbing her temples and closing her eyes. The images from that bedroom were so clear, so detailed, but they were already slipping away, blurring somehow. "It's like I remember it all happening that way, but don't know how I remember it. But it was all so vivid. So exact. I mean I even remember the smell of the room, the scent of the sheets. If those details were right, there must be something to the rest of it. I mean, how could I remember something with such detail if it didn't really happen?"

"Memory is a strange thing," Dr. Allister began, "and not entirely understood. It can be crystal clear and deceiving all at once. I'm not saying this wasn't an actual memory you were recalling. In all likelihood it is something you'd repressed. But I think we need to tread carefully here. I think we need to go back again. Are you prepared for that?"

"Yes," she said, "absolutely. But I think we need to go back even further, Dr. Allister. You see I remembered the lights and the man...the being... what I mean is, the little girl remembered. This wasn't the first time it happened."

How long had it been happening? She'd been eight years old that night in her bedroom. Eight years old. And what frightened her most was the fact that she somehow knew what was happening - recognized it - and was terrified of it happening again.

"I need to know what happened to me," she said. "I need to know what they did to me."

"What who did to you?" Dr. Allister asked, prodding.

"The alien."

This was the first time she'd ever said it out loud. She'd believed it her whole life, somehow knew she'd been taken, maybe more than once, but had never allowed herself to utter the word with any seriousness. She'd never told another living soul of her suspicions.

Even when she met Dr. Allister, she'd said only that she wanted to find out if her memories of childhood abuse had been real or imagined. She'd never mentioned aliens.

And he didn't even seem all that shocked by what he'd heard.

"Jane, I'd like you to listen to something before you leave," he said. He put down his pen and paper and went to a glass cabinet behind his desk. After a moment he came back to the tape recorder on the table. He took out the cassette of her session and replaced it with another.

"I want to play part of this tape for you," he said. "This is of a session I had two months ago with another patient."

After a few minutes of forwarding through it, he pushed 'play' and leaned back in his chair across from her.

She heard a man's voice on the tape, it was difficult to guess at an age, but she'd have said he was older, at least sixty. She listened intently and with growing disbelief.

"...and this is the same one that took me before," the voice said, calmly. "I don't know how I know that, because they all look the same, but I just do. He's lifting me up now, as though I am nothing. His hands and arms are so thin, it seems like there's no strength in them. They're like bird legs, his arms, but he lifts me and carries me to the light. Now we're walking on the light and I can't see anything else but the light and his big, dark eyes. His face is glowing white. I lte myself be carried away. I know, after all these times, I know I can't stop it. But I'm scared. I'm always scared of walking on that light. There's no sound there, nothing to hang onto. Just light and quiet. And I wonder how long I'll be away this time."

Dr. Allister pushed stop and waited for a response.

"I don't believe it," Jane said. "It sounds just like what I remembered. How can that be?"

"I think you two should meet," he said. "I'd like to arrange it, if it's okay with you."

Jane nodded. It was all she could manage to do.