The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still (7 page)

‘So the mayor claims to have a premonition that I will be poking my nose into his business and chops up my desk to teach me a lesson. The very same day a man walks in with a case involving Iestyn and two crooks who robbed a cinema twenty-five years ago. The cop who arrested them just happens to be the mayor. Sounds like he has a good soothsayer. Or he knew Raspiwtin was coming to see us.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

I formed my hand into a mock pistol and shot her. She grinned, then smiled shyly and said in a small voice, ‘There’s something else. Something you . . . you won’t like.’ She placed the palm of her hand down on a cutting and twisted it round. The headline read, ‘MORE STRANGE LIGHTS IN CARDIGANSHIRE SKIES’.

‘Don’t get angry.’

‘I won’t get angry.’

‘It’s the Ystrad Meurig incident – the Welsh Roswell. Just like Raspiwtin said.’

‘I told him Roswell was just a crashed weather balloon.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘It’s what the US Air Force said.’

Calamity rolled her eyes. ‘What do you expect them to say?’ Her tone suggested that she expected better of me than to fall for the official narrative. ‘They performed autopsies on three aliens; that was
some
weather balloon.’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘We do! I’ve seen the footage.’

‘So have I – on a documentary once. But I don’t understand – how come the footage is so shaky and grainy?’

‘Because they . . . they’re shooting covertly.’

‘But the cameraman must have been in the same room as the medics. You can’t hide in an autopsy room, so why not just use a proper camera and a tripod and shoot a proper film?’

‘I don’t know . . . loads of reasons.’

Calamity’s spirits began to sink under the weight of my obtuse refusal to see the dark truths of this world. I backed off.

‘Tell me about the Welsh Roswell.’

‘It took place the same week as the raid on the Coliseum cinema; it happened in a wood outside Ystrad Meurig. There had been a number of flying-saucer sightings in the days leading up to it, and then, so the story goes, a saucer crashed and the military sealed off the area. They found wreckage and dead aliens in silver suits. Some say there were three, others five. Some say they were still alive.’ She looked at me, not crestfallen but fully expecting the eventuality. ‘I know you don’t believe this stuff.’

‘I don’t want to be a killjoy, but aliens in silver suits? Looking humanoid? Why would they look like us if they were from a different star system?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe they just disguise themselves to look like us so as not to frighten us, the same way people who shoot ducks have whistles that sound like duck calls.’

‘Don’t you think it’s odd, though, that these super-advanced beings from another star system keep crashing their saucers?’

She began to lose patience with me. ‘They don’t
keep
crashing –’

‘Yes, they do! It seems to happen a lot. How can they master the intricacies of inter-stellar flight and then hit a tree?’

‘You’re making assumptions.’

‘Yes, I’m assuming there is probably a simpler explanation located in the realm of human psychology. People have been seeing strange visions throughout history; once upon a time they attributed it to the Devil or his works; now we live in a more rational scientific age and people are embarrassed to profess belief in the Devil –’

‘Not in Ystrad Meurig, they aren’t.’

‘Most people are, so they find a more scientific explanation. I’m not saying they are lying; I’m sure they genuinely experience the hallucination and their mind provides an interpretation with which they can feel comfortable.’

‘You could be right, but there’s one sure-fire way to find out, isn’t there?’

There was a pause. I gave her a quizzical stare. ‘Is there?’

‘Of course. Men in Black.’

‘Who are they?’

Calamity pulled a library book from under the pile of clippings. ‘I’ve been looking through Project Blue Book, the official US Air Force investigation into the flying-saucer phenomenon in the ’50s. Judging from the newspaper report, it sounds like the aliens from the Ystrad Meurig incident were Nordics, whereas the ones from Roswell were Greys. Greys are malign and are known to say the thing which is not.’

‘Not what?’

‘Just “not”. They say it, whereas the Nordics are more spiritually advanced. Some people call them Pleiadeans because they come from the Pleiades star cluster.’

‘How do you know the difference between a Nordic and a Grey, apart from saying the thing which is not?’

‘Nordics are very attractive and look like Scandinavians. They are tall and statuesque and have pale skin and blonde or white hair. They admire the human race.’

‘Are you sure? That sounds like the thing which is not.’

Calamity ignored the jocular tone and continued with earnest mien. ‘Nordics never say the thing which is not. Maybe “admire” is the wrong word. They take a close interest in our spiritual development.’

‘And what about Greys?’

‘They are short and stumpy and grey. They have big almond-shaped, slanted eyes that go round the sides of their heads, like a praying mantis. They also have no irises or . . .’ – she consulted her notes – ‘Sclerae.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know; I think it means the white of the eye. They mean us harm.’

‘They are not great admirers of the human race, then?’

‘No, they are malign.’

‘So is it just those two races?’

‘Of course not! There are loads of exobiological entities visiting us.’ She counted them off on the fingers of her hand: ‘Reptilians, Sirians, Tall Whites, Hairy Dwarfs, the Hopkinsville Goblin, Dropa, Andromedans and the Flatwoods Monster. But the interesting thing is this: in all the celebrated cases, the contactees received visits shortly after from mysterious strangers dressed all in black. The first was the Maury Island incident. Harold A. Dahl was scavenging with his dog for some logs on Puget Sound in Washington State in 1947. He saw six flying doughnut-shaped craft and one of them seemed to be in trouble; it started ejecting debris which fell on his dog and killed it. A few days later he got a visit from the Men in Black; they seemed to know everything about what had happened and told him not to talk about it. Men in Black always turn up in a black ’47 Buick. They claim to be from the Government, usually the Air Force, and give names and stuff, but when their IDs are checked it turns out that either they don’t exist or are the names of dead people. Men in Black act strange; sometimes they giggle and seem unfamiliar with Earth customs.’

‘I think I saw a film about them once.’

Calamity looked irritated.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m being serious.’

‘I know. So am I.’

‘The films are . . . films like that just make jokes of it, but the Men in Black are a very real and mysterious phenomenon attached to early flying-saucer contact reports.’

‘OK, forget the movie. Who do they work for?’

‘Some people say they are G-men, but my money’s on them being aliens. They turn up afterwards to silence witnesses.’

‘If they are aliens and they don’t want people to talk, why do they abduct people and make love to them in flying saucers?’

‘When they do that they wipe the memory, it only comes out later under hypnosis.’

‘You mean they dream it.’

‘It’s different.’

‘It seems awfully similar to me.’

‘They report details under hypnosis that they couldn’t possibly have known.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the map of Zeta Reticuli. In 1961 Barney and Betty Hill were taken aboard a saucer and saw a map on the wall. They drew it under hypnosis. It had stars on it that hadn’t been discovered yet.’

I stood up and went over to the kitchenette. ‘You really think they have maps of the stars pinned to the wall of their flying saucers? It seems a bit primitive.’

She followed me, not willing to let the subject drop. ‘Why not? You’ve got a map in the glove compartment of your car. What’s the difference? It had lines connecting the stars; the aliens said they were trade routes.’

‘I can’t believe that if there really are such things as flying saucers the skipper needs a star map to avoid getting lost.’

‘How else can they find their way? There are more stars in the Milky Way than grains of sand on the whole of Planet Earth.’

I filled the kettle and shouted over the sound of gushing water. ‘But there are no corners in space, there’s nothing for the stars to hide behind. You just work out which star you want and head for it. You don’t need a load of lines on a chart. What for?’

‘We’ll see, then, won’t we?’ said Calamity. To disguise her growing irritation she began to help me; she swirled hot water round in the teapot to warm it and then put three tea bags in. ‘The black ’47 Buick is the nutcracker; this is what we use to crack open the case.’

‘You’re about to unveil one of your schemes, aren’t you?’

Calamity pulled two mugs down from the cupboard and carried on as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘The way I see it, the aliens are not likely to carry the Buick in the saucer all the way from Zeta Reticuli, are they?’

‘It would seem an extravagant thing to do, although of course people often tow boats behind their cars when they go on holiday, so it’s not out of the question.’

‘I’m going to assume they don’t do that; in which case they must get them when they arrive. And that is how we trap them.’

‘Don’t forget that the most likely possibility is this whole Raspiwtin story is moonshine.’

She carried on doggedly. ‘We don’t know why the aliens insist on black ’47 Buicks, but the evidence is clear. Back in the ’50s, that wasn’t a difficult item to get hold of, but here, now, in Aberystwyth, there aren’t any. So what do they do?’

‘Look in the classifieds.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I was joking.’

‘I’m not. We advertise a second-hand black ’47 Buick in the
Cambrian News
classifieds section. If anyone rings up we can count them as a possible alien, or an intermediary representing their interests.’

‘Nothing I say will stop you, will it?’

‘It’s worth a try.’

‘Is it? Of all the wildest goose chases you’ve ever proposed, this . . . this takes the biscuit.’

‘How can a goose chase take a biscuit?’

‘You know what I mean. We’re looking for a chap called Iestyn who robbed a cinema in 1965 and was hanged; but for some reason as yet unexplained he is still alive. Allegedly.’

‘Looking for a dead man is also a wild goose chase. If you are allowed then so am I. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.’

I looked at her in surprise. She grinned. ‘Point is, we are not the only ones looking for him. If the farmer is to be believed, so are the aliens. Raspiwtin says they had a rendezvous arranged. So we find out what their connection is. That way we find Iestyn.’

‘Assuming the farmer can be believed. My guess is, he dreamed the whole thing up.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘I don’t know. We’ll ask him. Get his address.’

‘Already have. He lives out at Ynys Greigiog.’

I filled the teapot with hot water and carried the tray over to where we once had a desk. ‘We’ll go and see him.’

‘Sure, but we also do the ad.’ She picked up a sheet of paper torn from an exercise book and read. ‘For Sale. Secondhand 1947 Buick, black. One careful lady owner, 27,000 miles on the clock. Must be seen to be believed.’ She looked up grinning. ‘I’ve already placed it.’

I put my hat on.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to see the mayor and ask for the address of his soothsayer.’