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to his visitation from the soldier, and this time there was a dear connection to his eight-year-old abduction. “Remember what that soldier told me when I was at your house last weekend?” Ted asked Karla over the phone. “Sure,” she replied, “why? Have you figured out what he meant about returning something?” “Maybe,” he said. “You'll never guess what happened this morning. When the alarm went off, I raised up in the bed and saw something brown and fuzzy moving in the furrows of the quilt. It scared me, so I jumped, and when I did this fuzzy thing jumped, too. Grandma, my cat, was sitting on the corner of the bed where she sleeps, and she was staring real intently at this thing when I woke up. But when the fuzzy critter took off, so did Grandma, and the chase was on. “T was yelling and dancing around, trying to get out of the way of this thing,” Ted laughed, “because I still didn’t know what it was. God, after everything else I’ve been through, it could have been anything! By the time Grandma cornered the creature, I had climbed up on top of the bookcase, armed with a pillow and ready to attack anything that came at me!” “What on earth was it, Ted?” Karla asked, laughing, too. “Did you ever find out?” “Oh, yeah,” he said, “and you won’t believe it. When I got up my nerve and went over to the corner of the room where Grandma had pinned this thing, I saw a beautiful baby rabbit just scared to death. It was covered with cat slobber where Grandma had clamped it down there, so I cleaned it off and cradled it in my arms to calm it down.” “Was it hurt?” Karla asked. “Did Grandma kill it? Any- thing my cats have ever dragged in were already dead and half eaten.” “Yeah, Grandma’s like that, too,” Ted replied, “but there wasn’t a scratch on it. The poor little thing’s heart was just racing like crazy, though. It looked about six weeks old.” “How do you think the rabbit got in your bed?” Karla wondered. “Could Grandma have caught it outside and car- ried it in last night?” “T thought about that,” Ted said, “but when I let the cat and the dog back inside for the night, I didn’t see anything in Masquerade of Angels 220 the cat’s mouth, or in Lucky’s. Grandma’s other critters have always been dead, like you said.” “And you think this might have a connection with the soldier?” “Right. Stop for a minute and remember back to the Karly story. When Karly was picked up and taken through the fog to the place where the children’s choir was singing....” “He was carrying a baby rabbit,” Karla finished. “But when it was all over and they brought him back to the farm, the rabbit was gone.” “Yeah, that’s what I thought about,” Ted said. “I don’t want to read too much into this rabbit thing, though. It might all be a coincidence.” “With all the weird experiences you’ ve been through,” Karla remarked, “‘it’s hard to say. It could just as easily have been a staged event, coming so soon after your scenario with the soldier and the little boy. That really did sound like a vir- tual reality event.” “Maybe the first one was, but the rabbit was real, though,” Ted said. “I released it back out into the woods.” “After someone went to all the trouble to return that which had been taken from you?” Karla teased. “Real funny,” Ted said. “Too bad they can’t give back everything else they’ ve taken from me.” Not long after this, Ted had a surprise visit from Marie. When he told her about the investigation Karla and Barbara were making into his past experiences, Marie offered to help. Plans were made for them to visit Karla and Casey for an extended interview. One of the most important things Karla needed to discuss was the episode at Ted’s trailer a couple of years earlier, when Marie encountered the small creatures who wanted to take her outside. In their discussion, Marie described the events of that night in the same way Ted had first related the story to Karla. She had seen the wall dissolve, and then some little beings came through and tried to lead her out. “But I was too stubborn,” Marie finished, “and when I got through telling them off, they brought me right back inside.” “T thought you said you never went outside in the first Masquerade of Angels 221 The Light - Twenty-Two The Light - Twenty-Two