"He Was Supposed to Be the Next Stephen King. Then the Aliens Came"

From an interview with Whitley Strieber (author of The Hunger and Communion):

There were occasional intrusions from a strange reality. One time when I was 11, my parents suddenly said, “We’re going up to the country house but you’re going to stay here in San Antonio.” They packed up my sister and my little brother, who was then a baby, and off they went.

Night fell and I watched television for a while, and it got quite dark in the house. I wanted to turn on lights. I went into the hall and then went up to my room and when I turned on the light in my room, I saw the window above the air conditioner — there was a window unit in the room — had been pulled down. That window was closed with insulation. It wasn’t meant to be opened.

I was scared because I hadn’t opened it. It hadn’t been open when my parents left. So I telephoned the country house and my mother said, “Well, if you think there’s somebody there, call the police.” It wasn’t like calling the police in some big city. So I called over there and said what I was seeing and he said, “Well, I’ll come right over.” And he stopped in the front of the house, came up the walk with his gun in his hand, and he was terrified. Terrified. And he went upstairs. I followed him and he shone his flashlight out on the roof and I thought I saw someone. But I was a little boy, I could have just been scared. He said, “Well, there’s nobody there,” and he literally ran down stairs and drove away.