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121 us heard the other one ask the question, it turned out, although neither of us had even been thinking about the subject. Throughout August and September, there was an undercurrent of tension in our lives that felt just as it had back in 1988, after alien contact had renewed with Casey but before he was consciously aware of it. His usual coping mechanism for work and personal concerns seemed impaired, so that almost every interaction was stressful. The stress was affecting me, too, leading to recurrent insomnia and sleep disruptions. | started doing something I’ve never done in the past-leaving my bed, and Casey, to try to rest elsewhere. Sometimes I'd lie on the couch, with the dogs nearby on another couch, and sometimes | wrapped up in a blanket and slept fitfully on the guest bed. There were no conscious events to show that anything suspicious was occurring, but the insomnia was not normal, and neither was my willingness to be separated from Casey. We weren't in step with each other or comfortable with ourselves in those weeks. | became worried as the situation seemed to go on and on, but | couldn’t pick up any clue from Casey about his thoughts. Given all that had happened in the past months, | should have asked him if he thought the stress indicated suppressed memories of new contacts. But | was honestly afraid to ask and risk a confrontation with something that felt so heavy or ominous. It was Casey who broke the silence, one night as we drove home from visiting friends. In the quiet of the evening drive, he began to talk after a long period of silence, seriously and very tentatively. | could feel he was searching for a way to be both confiding with me and reassuring of my feelings at the same time. What he told me were the details of two dreams. The first one had occurred in early September, but he hadn’t told me at the time. When the second one occurred later in the month, however, he had described it to me the next morning. | recalled he said we were a team of detectives in the dream, and then he sketched out the details of our pursuit of two suspects. We had chosen to follow one of them, a woman, but when we caught up with her we realized she was innocent, that the other suspect was the guilty party. “I think it was a symbolic message,” he told me that morning. “I think it was telling me that you and | are on the right path in this work with the abduction situation. We're following the truth, that’s what the beautiful woman we caught represented.” In our talk in the car, Casey began by telling me about the first dream, from early September, and | could see why he’d been reluctant to discuss it. “Something’s been going on,” he said, “and | want to tell you about it. | had a dream earlier this month. It woke me up, and | looked at the clock. It was around 4 a.m. | thought there would be plenty of sleep time left so | wouldn’t be tired when | got up for work. Satisfied, | rolled over and started to drift off, wnen | remembered what the dream was about. And | noticed then, and only then, that my heart was still pounding faster than usual. “| thought there must have been something to that dream, so | tried to remember more. There was a strong odor of spicy sweat and a stronger scent of fear in the dream. | think I was nude, and so was this woman who was sending out fear and pain signals. She seemed to be very confused and upset by the situation. | felt dazed and angry, dazed by whatever control was being exerted on my mind to get me into this situation, and angry at being in the situation in the first place. “| felt pity and sorrow for her, so | held her gently and tried to calm her down. | tried to talk normally, and that seemed to reassure her and give her back some sense of control. When she calmed down, | awoke. And immediately, | remember now, | smelled the air to see if there was any scent from the dream left on me. But there wasn’t.”