It is perhaps needless to say that all the characters and incidents portrayed in this novel are fictitious. Nevertheless the books by Dr Ian Stevenson, Jeffrey Iverson and Dr Karl Wickland which are mentioned in the text are real and may be read by anyone interested in such matters. They will be found to be, at the very least, thought-provoking.

A.E.R.

Glasgow, 1978

1

1 White Wedding

The windscreen wipers were still able to cope, refusing occupation to the heavy cotton-wool flakes invading the screen in ever-increasing numbers. Inside the car it was warm. The metronome flick-flick of the wipers and the strain of peering through the swirling snowstorm added to his sense of dissociation. He blinked, feeling his eyes hot. Beside him the girl – his wife – peered at the one-inch-to-the-mile map.

‘We turn left immediately we cross the stream.’

Her voice was soft, unworried as yet.

Outside the car daylight was fast yielding to dusk.

‘Perhaps we should have stayed the night in Fort William,’ she said. ‘The forecast was bad.’

He opened his eyes wider, glanced at her.

‘You found time on your wedding-day to watch TV?’

‘Not me. Sister Jane. She said at breakfast that snow was threatened. “How on earth,” she said, “will you while away the time if you’re both snowbound in the cottage?”’ She looked across at him, eyes wide and solemn.

‘We may well find out,’ he muttered, correcting an incipient skid. The car crossed the bridge and they were on a straight stretch. But the snow drove more fiercely at them now, borne on the wind funnelled by the unseen valley sides.

‘We could turn back now,’ he suggested. ‘There was that village ten miles back.’

She shook her head.

‘No, let’s go on. It’s barely fifteen miles now to the cottage. And everything’s waiting for us. Dad had it fully provisioned and fuelled.’ She leant across, touched his arm. ‘Let’s go on, Paul. I’d hate to begin my honeymoon in some bed-and-breakfast place.’

The little knot of anxiety tightened within him. Through the car’s steering he could feel the road surface deteriorate minute by minute. And with the verges blotted out by the heavy snowfall he also knew he’d probably put the car into a ditch if he did try to turn.

‘Wasn’t there a junction we’d to look out for?’ he remembered.

‘Two . . . I think?’ The map crackled. ‘Yes. Three miles on.’