Ice Trilogy (75 page)

Thomas Urban, fifty-two years old, Zürich, Switzerland

Three years ago I was in a car accident and for a time I completely lost all short-term memory. I forgot my wife’s name, didn’t believe that I had a daughter, didn’t know that I was an architect, and so on. My long-term memory, on the contrary, became so vivid and strong that events from my early childhood and adolescence began to surface, memories that I had never recalled before. For example, I remembered in great detail how my fifth birthday was celebrated at home, who was there, what we ate, what we said, what presents I received. I also recalled many other things. During the six months I spent in the clinic, I remembered quite a lot. It was as though I were being shown a film about myself. Among the myriad episodes from childhood and youth one very strange one arose. I still can’t find a sensible explanation for it. It was the summer of 1972, when I was fifteen years old. My older sister, Miriam, bought me a ticket to a Led Zeppelin concert in Zürich at the Hallenstadion. I didn’t know this group very well at the time, but a lot had been written about it in young people’s magazines, and it soon became a super band. My sister bought me an expensive ticket, and I turned out to be right in front of the stage. The concert was amazing, I was seeing these great musicians for the first time, I saw Robert Plant up close, I heard his incredible voice. The concert made a huge impression on me. Before that I had only been to see the Who and Chicago. But Led Zeppelin was a head above those bands. I especially liked Robert Plant — he was tall, slim, with a golden mop of hair, blue eyes, and a “golden” voice. When the concert was over, the audience went wild. We ran onto the area in front of the stadium stage and shouted, “Led Zepp! Led Zepp!” And then I saw two girls, very pretty, curly-headed blondes, holding a poster that said
ROBERT PLANT FAN CLUB
. Young people crowded around them. I went over too. Next to the poster there was a table where a third curly-headed blonde was sitting and signing up fans for Plant’s club. I read the conditions for membership on the poster: long blond hair and blue eyes. I was eligible! My hair nearly reached my shoulders at the time — I was imitating George Harrison. The girls wrote down my address and telephone number, saying that they would call. And I set off happily for home. At home I broke open my piggy bank, went out and bought two Led Zeppelin albums. I listened to them constantly. And a few days later I got a call and they said that the Robert Plant Fan Club was holding its first meeting. I got right on my bicycle and by 4:00 p.m. I was at the address they’d given me, in a rich area of Zürich on Hadlaubstrasse. There was a big old villa, covered with wild grapevines, a poster saying
LED ZEPPELIN
on its gates, and a large portrait of Robert Plant. I left my bicycle at the fence, rang the bell at the gate, and stated my name. I was let in and I entered the villa. It was an old, richly furnished house. And the song “Whole Lotta Love” was playing nonstop! It was so strange in that old-fashioned setting, amid Victorian furniture — and then the music of Led Zeppelin! One of the curly-headed blondes met me in the foyer and guided me into a spacious living room. About thirty kids were already sitting there: light-haired, blue-eyed girls and guys. For the most part it was people my age, but there were some who were older. There was a table of nonalcoholic drinks, cigarettes, and chips. First we listened to the music. Then we started talking, getting to know each other. During this part other blond kids came in. The whole hall filled up gradually and then the music stopped. And a blindingly beautiful woman came out — tall, stately, with bronzed skin, goldish hair, a proper aristocratic face, and dark blue eyes. She was dressed all in blue, wore blue gloves, even her shoes and all the jewelry on her was deep blue. Standing in the middle of the room, she began talking to us. Not in the Swiss dialect but in pure German. She said that Robert Plant was an angel who fell from heaven and got lost among humans, that he sang in the language of the celestial spheres, that in listening to his voice we would become freer and kinder, that we would understand what heavenly love was, that today we would begin our fellowship, that the music of Led Zeppelin would help us to become beautiful both outwardly and inwardly. Her deep, calm voice was mesmerizing, and we couldn’t take our eyes off her. She picked up a flat blue box with a picture of a falling golden angel on top, opened it, and offered it to us. In the box were small chocolate figures of this same angel in gold foil. “Commune with the music of the celestial spheres!” she said with a smile. And at the very same second Robert Plant’s voice rang out, powerful and poignant: “Baby, I’m gonna leave you.” We all began to take the chocolates from the box, unfold the foil, and eat. It was good Swiss chocolate. I ate my chocolate. A few minutes later I fainted. I woke up at night lying on some pavement somewhere. Two cops were shaking me. It was in the center of town, near the Odeon bar, where students drink. My mangled bicycle lay by my side. My head was spinning, I was nauseous. And my chest hurt horribly. It was completely crushed, and the police told me that most likely a car had hit me. They called my parents and I was taken to a clinic. They found alcohol in my blood. Then I fell into a feverish state, and my temperature soared. They bandaged my chest and gave me a shot to help me sleep. I spent two weeks in the clinic. A small dent remained in the middle of my breastbone. I still have it. No matter how I described the Robert Plant Fan Club to my parents, whatever proof I offered that I had actually been in the villa, they didn’t believe me. They were certain that I had been drinking with friends in some bar, ridden off drunk on my bicycle, and got hit by a car. Then I went to Hadlaubstrasse and rang the bell of that very villa. A maid opened the door. Naturally, no club had ever existed in this villa, the maid had never heard of Plant. A family of Hassids lived in the house; many years later I learned that they were the biggest diamond dealers in Switzerland. My peers and friends didn’t know anything about this club, either. Once in the tram I met a girl who had been at the villa that time. I recognized her. But she smiled and said that she had never been there. And so all this was forgotten, like some strange dream. Until I got in an accident and lost my short-term memory. And then I remembered, remembered everything that had happened after I ate that damn chocolate! I crawled from the chair onto the floor. But I didn’t fall asleep, I just couldn’t move. I couldn’t move a finger. But I was conscious, I heard and saw the red-gray pattern of the rug near my nose. And I heard what was happening to others — they either froze stiff in their chairs or fell on the floor. Then I heard several men come in. A kind of muffled hustle-bustle could be heard. Then I was grabbed under the arms and dragged down some steps. I ended up in a basement. I was trussed up and chained to the wall. Next to me some guy and a girl were in chains too. Someone’s strong hands ripped my shirt off, and I saw them open a sort of long case. There were strange hammers in it; at first I thought their heads were made of glass. Some muscular light-haired man took one of those hammers, swung back, and slammed the guy next to me in the chest with all his might. That same woman in blue went right up to the fellow and pressed again his chest. Then she shrank back. The man hit him again. She came up again, and then said, “An empty nut.” The guy was taken down from the wall and dragged away. The man took another hammer and began to strike the girl’s chest in the same way. The lady in deep blue pressed close to her, like she was listening. The man had struck such a blow that the hammer had shattered and pieces flown off. Again the woman said, “An empty nut.” The girl was unchained, but when they dragged her away, I noticed that blood was trickling out of her mouth, and her legs were thrashing convulsively. At the same time they dragged in another two and started attaching them to the wall. Then the man came up to me with the hammer, swung back, and struck me in the middle of the chest with all his strength. The blow was so powerful that slivers sprayed from the shattered head of the hammer. Everything swam before my eyes from the pain. But I still couldn’t move. The woman in blue pressed her ear against my chest, listened, and shrank back. He hit me again. Everything went blurry. The beautiful woman came up close again, wiped shards of the hammer off my chest with a blue glove, and I realized that the hammerhead wasn’t glass at all but ice! She pressed her ear to my chest. I began to lose consciousness. The last thing I heard was “An empty nut.” Then everything was just like it was — the Odeon bar, the police, alcohol in my blood, a broken breastbone, a crushed ches
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This affair surfaced in my memory a year ago. I wrote it all down immediately so I wouldn’t forget anything. On leaving the hospital after the accident and thinking about the girl who had been beaten to death, I went straight to the library and dug out the newspaper files for the summer of 1972. And I discovered something striking! It turned out that that summer in Zürich four girls and two young men disappeared without a trace! Their photographs were published in the paper. All of them were blond and blue-eyed. In the very same summer, forty-eight people in a condition of alcoholic and narcotic inebriation had been hit by cars. All of them had serious wounds to their chests. The chief of the Zürich police in an interview in
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
declared that he had never seen such a mass series of young people being hit by cars during his entire twenty years of service. With great difficulty I found three of the forty-eight, all my age, who had suffered that summer. All of them had blondish hair (two had already gone gray) and blue eyes! And all of them had seriously scarred chests. One even showed me the scar in the center of his breastbone. And all of them had been at that Led Zeppelin concert! And later, as I did, had signed up for the Robert Plant Fan Club. But they hadn’t been in any villa. And to my stories about the basement where we’d had the breath knocked out of us with an ice hammer, they reacted, to put it mildly, with skepticism. My attempts to contact the owners of the villa were also unsuccessful. My family basically thinks that I dreamed all this up when I lost my short-term memory. My doctor is certain that this is a temporary aberration caused by the memory loss. Let God be their judg
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When I took to surfing the Internet, curious about abductions, and I finally came across your site, I shouted out for joy! I have read so many testimonies! So many people were kidnapped and beaten with an ice hammer, beaten till they died! So that means that I’m not insane! That means it all happened! Who did this? Why? Who are these vile beings? How I would like to find out!!