h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Halloween one year, think it was 93: I was in a band with a crazy acid-head guy, and his girlfriend invited us to a Halloween party at this castle in Cumbernauld, which is in Scotland. Friends of her family were caretakers for this place. They looked after it for the National Trust, who had it but weren't doing much of anything with it, so they had these parties. They lived in the servant's quarters, which were still pretty funky: but the place had a drawing room, a huge hall that could sleep twenty, and gigantic gardens. They had fireworks and the whole shebang, food for all and much goodvibeness.

There were about thirty people there: we had a big meal and then did the party thing. It got pretty late and David- the acid-head- shared out his sacramental, or just plain mental, LSD. He was pretty insistent about it too: so I accepted the proffered tab, but quietly pocketed it for later use at a less bizzare moment.

We had a guitar and some handdrums. The walls were two feet thick, so we didn't care about noise, and we made crazy mad music, David's acid-warped brain sending him flailing around the room drumming on every available surface. Him and Susie, his girlfriend, had that fierce intent drugged glow and it was doing strange things to the atmosphere. I suddenly realised that they really were glowing, and sending off sparks, just beyond what I could see, and then I saw the thing that was in the hall with us. There was a shape, glowing quietly green, like a Kirlian photograph but without anything to generate the aura... a man-shaped space, that felt very sad and lonely. I stopped playing, and slowly the din in the room ceased as David ran out of steam.

'Do you see it?' I said.

They didn't. I pointed. They stared. Slowly, they came back down to earth.

The shape stepped forward. I hesitated, then spoke to it... I couldn't get any words from it but the sense of it flooded my brain, that it missed life, and it missed the days when there had been travellers here, feasts, children, laughter... I told it with my mind, that it could go free, it didn't have to stay here, if it was in pain... I don't know if it heard, but the shape writhed, like it was wrestling with something. It paled, and then it dissolved from my vision, and whether it left or just decided it didn't want to talk anymore I couldn't say.

There was more that night, but I'm going to skip to the end of the story for now. The next morning David and Susie woke up late, as can only be expected: we packed up and went back to Glasgow. On the way back, David told me that he woke up just before dawn to find something sitting on his sleeping bag. He knew it was watching him and Susie: so he woke her to see if she felt it too, but as soon as he moved it was gone, leaving a faint imprint on his sleeping bag.

Weird story Ben. Are you sure you didn't drop that acid?
Actually, only kidding, I've heard things like this before!

Yeah, I had it six weeks later and it was ultrasmooth. Don't do that sort of thing too much anymore but hey, you've got to do these things when you're young and have too many brain cells for your own good.

Cheers for putting it up on the page!