"3 a.m." by Laura Peregrin

The air is saturated with smoke, balloons drift and settle like exceptionally large, bright snowflakes and I finally have somewhere to sit. By this stage of the night the real party animals, the life and soul people, have moved on to louder, cooler places – the nightclubs or a stranger’s flat ‘for coffee’.

So there’s just me and a few others left, screwing up our sleep patterns and having slurred conversations of amazing and meaningless depth. I tune into a few of those:

A male voice - “No, it’d be so cool, right? Darth Hedgehog!” – followed by sycophantic female giggles.

A female voice explains, “I really think you need to switch otherwise there’s no empathy” to sounds of approval.

Another female voice declares that “The Mission really were awful.” I can agree with that. “Put this on instead” I don’t recognize what she chooses. I think ‘cyber’ is the polite term. I relinquish my seat and slink away.

In the next room a cartoon, probably a Cult Classic, is showing. A joint is circulating languidly. I step over prone viewers, making for the kitchen in order to satiate the case of munchies I have acquired without actually taking a single drag of a joint. Passive munchies, I suppose.

I’m not the only one to have sought this goal. A couple of guys are leaning against the kitchen top, discussing something earnestly. One looks like pretty much a regular guy – blue jeans and tablecloth -fabric shirt. I wonder what he’s doing in a place like this. The guy he seems to be cross-examining is pure geek material, right down to the t-shirt with the fuzzy UFO picture on it like the one in Mulder’s office. I just realized that I recognized that t-shirt – who am I to call anyone a geek?

They don’t seem to have noticed me yet as they’re pretty intense with each other. I try to listen discreetly before going over – I don’t want to interrupt anything – but they’re suddenly drowned out by a cry of “pitiful human!” from the cult TV room.

I move over slowly, giving them time to adjust to my presence in the conversation. I wave a half-eaten muffin and mutter about those passive munchies by way of explanation. The geek grins at me but the other guy just glares and slopes off, leaving me and the geek standing in the middle of an expanding cloud of silence.

“So … erm … do you believe?” I ask, gesturing at the t-shirt UFO with my muffin.
Half an hour later I’ve discovered that his name is Ben and he does indeed believe.

“Aren’t you even curious?” he asks me.
“Ok, I’m curious,” I admit. “Isn’t everybody? I mean, I’ve watched loads of TV shows and films and stuff, but never really thought about it much in the real world, if you get what I mean?” He does. A thought occurs to me. “Have you ever actually seen a UFO? Like really, in the sky, that’s not a weather balloon or the planet Venus or whatever?”

He gives it some consideration. “No,” he admits. “But I’d really like to,” he adds quickly. “One night I’m going to go up the top of Tower Hill, though. Apparently there’s loads of them been seen from up there.”

“Tower Hill – that’s not far from here.” This is the point when I have an Idea, the sort of Idea that only ever occurs at this stage of the party. “Why don’t we go up there now? It’s not raining or anything.” I look at him and he looks at me like we’re daring each other.

“Ok then,” he says. “This party’s pretty lame anyway.”

Get your coat luv…

So we walk side by side through the outskirts of the city till the pavements and the streetlights and our conversation peter out. Through a gate which leans off one hinge like it can’t quite decide whether or not it wants to fall and onto an overgrown gravelly path that leads ever more steeply up the hill till we flop onto the sparse grass at the summit. By this stage we’re out of breath and hot despite the October chill and the feel of the frost rime against our faces is welcome.

For a while we lie like that, just gazing at the stars and absorbing the night air till we start to absorb the cold as well and we stand up and stamp about a bit. Our feet make dark patches in the frost like still shadows and of course our breath is pluming so we pretend we’re still at the smoky party, exhaling from a joint. I take a step closer. Our breath plumes mingle.

“So, aren’t you going to kiss me then?”

A look of shock crosses his face like I had physically hurt him. I guess he really does believe. We turn away from each other, taking a minute to mentally erase my words, then we go back to standing around looking at the sky just a bit further apart.

I’m just about to suggest that hey, it’s late, we should get some sleep when we are doused in an impossibly bright light. He cries out like someone in a rapture. Through the kaleidoscope of retinal after-images, I try to make out the source of the light. It seems brighter to one side, like it’s coming up the hill not from the sky. There are sounds too but not the bleeps and machine-noise that past screen experience suggests ought to accompany this kind of experience. Instead the sounds are low, breathy, underscored by a regular hoof-like thud. I begin to make out a figure within the brilliance, but it doesn’t look any alien I’ve ever seen. It does look familiar however, and the light is coming from the mist which surrounds it.

“They’re here!” Ben shrieks, moving into the light.

I’ve asked about Ben at other parties, at Rocksoc, in the science departments, at first discreetly but with increasing desperation. I can’t find him, I can’t even find anyone who’s seen him or heard of him lately. Most people don’t remember him at all. I did stumble into a conversation about Tower Hill once, though. A second year was regaling his audience with a ghost story about ‘The Headless Horseman of Tower Hill’.

Apparently the tower of Tower Hill, the ruins of which we’d have seen if we’d visited in daylight, belonged to a petty lord renowned for his cruelty and insanity in a cruel and insane age. He owned a horse that he loved above all else. I guess he rides at night from Hell or something, though the local history sources were silent about any haunting and whenever I’ve visited the hill since I’ve seen no sign of his presence.

I found a website detailing ‘Scottish UFO Hotspots’. It listed Tower Hill as a sight of moderate activity but repeated visits have failed to validate this.

I wonder what Ben saw? Where did he go? I hope he’s still blissed out there, wherever he is.

I’ve been banned from visiting his halls of residence, and I don’t seem to get party invites any more. I don’t care. There’s always another 3 a.m. on Tower Hill. One night he’s going to come back.