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.I don't know to this day how he got there, but I saw him clearly outlined,head, shoulders, arms against the moonlit square of window.I reared upwith a yell.'Hey, you! What are you doing there?'There was a huge snapping roar that seemed to fill the whole room andsomething whistled past my head.I leaped for the light, snapped it on; theshadowy form lurched and was gone.I ran to the window to see whether hehad fallen or jumped, and beyond, in the garden, something flapped something huge, ugly, horrible and dark.Sickness surged up in me, andhorror; I retched, and ran for the bathroom.I just made it.I was still there, still heaving with that inexplicable crawling sickness, when Iheard them all in the hall, and after a minute my father came into thebathroom.He didn't say a word, just wet a washcloth at the sink andhanded it to me.I mopped my face, but I was dripping with cold sweatagain.'What happened, Barry?'I could only say, 'There was something at the window -' I felt my voiceshaking and failing.'I knows it sounds crazy.Something -I thought it was aman and then I saw it wasn't; it was something, some thing-''I heard you yell,' Dr Cowan said, 'and I heard - I didn't see anything,though.Barry, this can't go on.Your mother and sister can't take it.And you- ' He looked at me sympathetically, but I thought I knew what he wasthinking.'You think I ought to get out? Just pack up and leave before I cause anymore trouble?''Good God, no!' He sounded honestly horrified.'That never entered myhead.Son, how can you say a thing like that? This is your home; we're yourfamily! Whatever happens to you, we want to share it! But we've got to findout, whatever is going on! We've got to find out if it's real, or-'' If it's real,' I said bitterly.'You still think I'm crazy! If you'd only seen - ''No,' he said.'I admit I thought, at first, that all you'd been through had leftyou mentally unbalanced.Now I'm not so sure.And besides - when I heardyou cry out, I went into your room first, and this was lying on the floor.' Heheld out his hand, a small round thing lying in it.I didn't recognise it, andsaid so.'It's a cartridge case,' he said, 'from a rifle bullet.Someone shot at you.''But - the thing I saw - ' I began to shake again.'Son, you had a nightmare and mixed it up with what happened,' he said.'But - there was a man there, and however he got up to that window, hewas real.Nightmares don't carry guns.'There was no more sleep for me that night.The blending of memory andnightmare kept me lying awake, staring into space and racking my brain fora solution.When morning came, I knew what I had to do.It might not be the bestsolution, but it was the only thing that came to me, the only thing I couldthink of doing at this time.At breakfast, neither Nina nor my father mentioned the disturbance in thenight; I wondered whether they were waiting for me to bring it up.But whenWin had taken her schoolbooks and gone, and my father was getting hisbriefcase, I buttonholed him in his study.'Father, when I first came back, you told me I had some money of my own money I'd saved after working one summer.'"That's right.That's why I was sure you hadn't run away on your own, you'dsurely have taken that with you.It was yours, and though you'd been savingit for college, if you'd left home of your free will we'd have wanted you tohave it - and you knew that.''I want it now,' I said, and he looked at me, startled.'What for? It's yours, you don't have to ask, but if it's for anything ordinary,we are both morally and legally ready to pay your expenses, you know.''I know it,' I said, 'but this isn't ordinary.I want to go back to Texas.'I saw the startled question in his eyes and before he could ask, I rushed on'I'm going out of my mind, not knowing what happened! I want to backtrack- to find out where I was, what I was doing, when, where, how - to dodetective work on myself!''Do you think you can?''I don't know,' I said, 'but I've got to try.''And suppose you never do find out?' Dr Cowan asked.'Son, I think I knowhow you feel, but do you think it will do any good? I'm afraid you'll simplydisappear again!' His eyes were shrewd.'You say you want to remember,but - you have remembered something, haven't you?'That's the main thing,' I told him.'I can't believe that what I remember isreal.It seems - incredible.''I'm good at believing things.Why not give me a chance?'I felt tempted; and yet - how could he believe it when I didn't believe itmyself? He'd surely believe I was deluded, hallucinating.How could anyonebelieve these weird memories of mine - memories of spaceships, of strangeviews of alien worlds, of things that had the form of men and weren't surely he'd say they were dreams.I believed they were dreams, and yet Ihad to know why they seemed so real to me.And if these memories werenot real, what had I been doing? Where had I been? And what was thatbrass dragon, that I turned sick and sweating - scared at the sight of it?'Barry, is it a girl?'I laughed a little wryly.'No, Dad.Whatever it was, I can promise you that.The only girl I can think of is the nurse in the hospital.She's nice, and I'dlike to see her again, but - she isn't part of this, and I don't want her to bepart of it.''And suppose you never do find out why you remember these things whichyou say don't make sense?''Then I'll have no choice.I'll come home and go to that psychiatrist.But giveme a chance to prove it to myself first.''That's reasonable,' he said slowly.'When do you want to leave?'Once he had given way, he helped.He helped me break it to Nina, andeven made it sound reasonable to her.He took me to the bank to get mymoney and put it in traveller's cheques, and bought me a new canvassuitcase.The hardest thing was to tell Win.I knew she'd hardly got over the shock ofhaving me come back and knowing I didn't remember her, and now I wasgoing again.I tried to explain, but it wasn't any good [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]