No doctor would ever do that, which also means that these are not buried childhood memories of operations. There is no operation that proceeds as the visitors do, jabbing their needles up the nose. What's more, the nasal intrusion is not an epileptic prelude. Mine did not occur until weeks after I had remembered and reported my first experience. Far from suggesting a disorder of some sort, the consistency of the stories and the reported side effects

— nosebleeds and nasal damage — were a strong suggestion that something real was happening.

Had the temporal-lobe intrusion initiated my experience, I would be tempted to suggest that perhaps all my perceptions were somehow tied to it. But the intrusion did not initiate the whole experience. It may well have profoundly altered my perception of what happened to me — and all my past memories as well. Perhaps that is what it was meant to do.

I thought back over the previous few weeks. Most of the things that had happened since December were well documented, in the sense that I had immediately told others as soon as I was aware that they had happened.

Besides the visitation of March 15, which I will discuss in detail in a later chapter, there was one earlier incident that is worth recounting, because it was this incident snore than any other that opened the door to the past. And it did this via my sense of smell. Again, it happened before the apparent temporal-lobe intrusion, not after.

The night of Friday, February 7. we spent in out apartment to the city. I was absolutely frantic. I had an awful feeling. I felt their presence. It was palpable. Most upsetting, I could smell them. I could smell a distinct odor as if of smoldering cardboard, and it was familiar from the past. My wife could also smell this odor; it was one we had both smelled man, times. Until now, though. I had not understood its significance. There was also another odor.

as if of cheese and cinnamon, that I remembered from December 26.

I remained lying in bed. sweaty and sleepless. But I was shocked to discover that hour hours had passed without my noticing. very suddenly. I was reading at midnight, turned a page. and saw by the clock that it was four A.M. and I was no longer wearing my pajamas.

When I got up the next morning I found two little triangles inscribed on my left forearm. I don't know what happened, and there is no way at all to explain the event in a conventional manner. The larger triangle was quite straight. delicately incised in just the outer few skin layers as if by the work of a skilled master surgeon. The other triangle. very tiny. was pointing at the larger one.

On the morning of February 8, I stood looking down at those triangles with the shower pounding on my back. I also remembered the odors I had smelled the night before. Odor is an excellent trigger of memory, and the odor of smoldering seemed to unlock a lot of doors.