The Watchers (26 page)

‘Did you get a good look at it?’

‘It was some sort of disc. I don’t want to say it was a flying saucer, I don’t, but that’s exactly what it looked like to me.’

‘What was it doing?’

‘Just hurtling through the sky towards Giant’s Point. Then it stopped and hung in the air above Stack Rocks.’

‘Now you’re scaring me,’ I heard myself say.

‘I couldn’t believe my eyes, Robert.’ She drew in a sharp breath. ‘The bloody thing nosedived into the side of Stack Rocks!’

‘You mean it crashed?’

‘Well, sort of, except . . . I expected flames, an explosion – and I know how this is going to sound – but I thought I saw a door open in the rock face.’

‘Robert?’

‘I’m here.’

‘Impossible, right? A door! It opened, and the disc dived into it and vanished.’ She was gasping to get the words out. ‘I’m beginning to think I’m losing my mind. There can’t be a door in the rock, can there?’

You should know
. ‘Is it true Stack Rocks Island belongs to your family?’

She hesitated. ‘It came with the estate.’

‘And now the locals, the Rotary Club, want to do up the abandoned fort on the island?’

‘You think that’s important?’

My mind went back to the conversations of that afternoon. ‘I don’t know what to make of this, Araceli. I’m coming over. Sit tight.’

I ended the call. The telephone rang again immediately. I lifted the receiver.

‘Hello?’

The line crackled and buzzed.

‘Hello, Mr Wilding.’

My breath caught. The voice had a stilted metallic quality, as if I wasn’t speaking to a person but a . . .

‘Will you give yourself too, Mr Wilding?’

My skin prickled. ‘Will I what? Who is this?’

‘Are you enjoying yourself, Mr Wilding? We are enjoying watching you ever so much.’

I was so furious, so scared, that I wanted to throw the phone down, smash it against the wall.

‘Tell me who you are!’

‘Robert, you will come to us. We are legion. And we are coming. Coming back.’

The line clicked dead.

– 38 –

Haven Hotel, Skyview Hill, Little Haven

I stumbled out of the car, ran to the great front door and pounded on it. ‘Araceli?’

I tried ringing the bell. No reply, no sign of life.

I looked around me wildly. The moon was hidden behind a bank of cloud. I felt like I was drowning in the dark.

Will you give yourself too, Mr Wilding?

I couldn’t get that voice on the telephone out of my head.

‘Araceli!’

A sound from within, bolts drawing back. The door opened. She looked dreadful. Her face was dead white, her eyes red and swollen. I gave in to the urge and pulled her to me. She let me hold her.

‘Since I saw that thing earlier, this place has gone mad,’ she whimpered. ‘It’s out of control. I don’t know how much more I can take.’

I looked past her and started with surprise. For a few seconds I was speechless. There were fresh paintings on the floor – paintings that had not been there when I had last visited – six or seven of them propped against the wall.

‘When did you find the time to do these?’ I asked.

A strange look crossed her face as if she was reaching for an answer but couldn’t find one.

That lighthouse again – Stack Rocks clearly recognizable – projecting its sickly beam of yellow light across a turbulent sea. There was something about the image that filled me with an intolerable, uncertain dread. There was no lighthouse on Stack Rocks, and yet it was in every one of her pictures. It was purely a figment of her imagination. Or a memory of something else. Hidden.

‘I can’t explain why,’ she said falteringly, ‘but the lighthouse is important. I’m sure. The lighthouse is vital, Robert. To you and to me.’

Somewhere . . . we went somewhere.

We turned to go inside and the stench from the hall hit me. Jesus, what is that?’ I asked, too shocked to feel nauseous. ‘Sulphur?’

Her head shook with bewilderment. ‘It’s everywhere!’

I let go of her and went into the hall. Followed my nose. The odour grew stronger with each step, drawing me past the suit of armour towards a wooden door.

‘Where does this lead?’

‘The cellar.’

Suddenly Randall’s voice was in my head again. The sightings occur on historical points, ley lines. Frequently there is an underground connection. And Frobisher’s comment:
You know they say it was built on ley lines.

‘Can I go down there?’ I asked, shivering and rubbing my arms.

When we had located a torch and the key to the cellar door, she led me down into the dusty dark, both of us clasping our hands over our noses and mouths.

At first there was just old furniture and boxes of foul-smelling candles piled in a corner. ‘Why do you have so many of these?’

‘Mother always worried about the lights going out,’ she said in a curt tone that suggested this wasn’t something she wanted to discuss.

I reached into a box of candles anyway and pulled some out. They were black. The Jacksons. They were found with black candles.

‘Did the Jacksons come here?’ I asked. ‘Did they stay here before their murder? Is that why Selina asked for that particular room?’

Araceli blinked, then nodded, her eyes rolling back to look reluctantly about. Her face turned towards the wall.

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me, Araceli?’

Silence.

‘Wait. What the hell is this?’ I had noticed something on the rough stone and peered hard at it. ‘There’s something here in chalk.’

A symbol, a five-pointed star, pointing down. Beneath it a chiselled inscription.

Bydd giât y cythraul

yn agor a bydd y frwydr

o bridd yn dechrau

‘That’s always been there. I don’t know what it means,’ Araceli said. ‘Can you read it?’

I had never learned Welsh. So I had Araceli hold the torch as I scribbled it down. Then I saw a row of symbols to the right of the inscription. They looked familiar. I copied them down too.

Otherwise, the cellar was empty. No clue as to where the smell was coming from.

‘Now, please, let’s go,’ Araceli said.

When we were back in the hall, I demanded she tell me about the Jacksons.

‘I told the police everything I know, OK?’

It was very far from OK. ‘What were they up to? They were local, so why stay here?’

‘They’d been coming here for years. Long-time friends of my parents. All that time we’ve had . . . disturbances here. Objects disappearing, reappearing. It got worse recently.’ She told me what had happened since she had seen the disc dive into the rocks. Doors opened and closed on their own, lights in empty rooms, unexplained banging, objects moving and furniture being overturned.

First UFOs, now poltergeists? It was too much. Still, there was no doubting Araceli’s distress or the awful atmosphere that permeated the hotel’s hall.

‘How’s Tessa?’

‘I had to put her to bed. Her hair’s falling out, and her eyes are red and swollen with conjunctivitis.’

I thought back to my conversation with Randall and Dr Caxton. ‘Araceli, tell me. Was Tessa baptized?’

‘Is that important?’

‘I don’t yet know how, but yes, I think it could be.’

Araceli shook her head warily. There were other emotions in her eyes. Guilt? Suspicion? Alarm?

‘Right, let’s get her and leave. You can’t stay here tonight.’

As I said this, I wasn’t just thinking about Araceli and her daughter; I was remembering the bizarre phone call at the inn, the metallic taunting voice.

We got as far as the stairs when the lights blinked on.

‘Power’s back,’ said Araceli, sounding relieved but only a little, I thought. The scent of sulphur was definitely growing stronger again on the first-floor landing, and by the time we reached Tessa’s bedroom door, it was almost overpowering. I was about to mention it again when a scream ripped through the hotel.

Tessa.

‘The door, it’s locked!’ Araceli shouted.

The scream came again from behind the door as Araceli fumbled with the lock.

‘Hurry, hurry!’ I said, my hands on hers, trying to help.

The lock clicked. And as the bedroom door swung inward my stomach gave a sickening lurch. The room was empty.

Tessa?
Tessa?
’

Araceli’s eyes were wild with panic as she hurtled around the room, throwing open the wardrobe and diving to the floor to look under the bed.

‘We’ll find her.’ But even as I said it, scanning the dolls that lay scattered on the floor, I was seized with uncertainty. How could a child get out of a locked room?

‘My God,’ Araceli whispered.

Her eyes were fixed not on the French windows but something beyond – a white nightdress fluttering in the wind.

Tessa was outside.

I grabbed the handle. ‘It won’t open!’

‘It doesn’t open! How the hell did she get out there?’

I hurled a chair at the windows. The glass smashed, spraying out onto the flat roof beyond and crunching under my shoes as I stepped out.

The roof was spongy underfoot, cracked and blackened, a raindrop away from collapse.

‘Tessa,’ I said, reaching out a hand, ‘Come to me. Come away from the edge.’

But the girl seemed not to hear. Her back to me, she was walking with purpose across that roof with an awful stop-motion slowness.

She’s going to throw herself off the roof.
The thought hit me so clearly I didn’t pause to doubt it.

I knew what was beyond the edge of this roof. A sheer drop off the cliff.

I took a step. The roof creaked under my weight.

‘Tessa, sweetie, just don’t move,’ I called, amazed at how calm I sounded.

Another step. Another.

Araceli screamed again.

The wind pulled at me.

Tessa was at the edge now. Still. Arms raised. Head tilting back. One foot stepping out into nothing . . .

My hand found the back of her nightdress, grabbed it and yanked her back against me. She was rigid for a moment and then melted into me, and I clasped her in my arms. Held her tight. Felt the relief rush from my hands, up my arms and into me.

I glanced down long enough to glimpse the sea smashing into the rocks and then crept back across the roof to Araceli’s outstretched arms. She ripped her daughter from me, staggered back inside and collapsed to the floor.

Tessa lay limp in her mother’s lap, eyes closed. But there was a pulse. Strong and regular.

‘Sleeping,’ I told Araceli. ‘She’s sleeping.’

Tears were streaming down Araceli’s face and her body was shuddering. She looked up at me with pleading eyes and I cupped her cheek with my hand. I wanted to reassure her. To tell her the child had simply been sleepwalking. That she must have opened the window somehow. But lying wouldn’t erase the terror from this mother’s eyes.

‘You need help,’ I told her.

We needed help.

III

Sky Watch

‘What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?’

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 28 July 1952

From
The Mind Possessed: A Personal Investigation into the Broad Haven Triangle

by Dr R. Caxton (Clementine Press, 1980) p.100

The hours that led to the sky watch, that tragic event, were packed with events that skewed my interpretation of what it means to be human, indeed what it means to be me. They were hours that cast the longest shadow of doubt across my science, and they were hours I would give anything to forget.

Perhaps it’s because I knew that strange things seen in the sky were once interpreted as religious signs and wonders that I came away from the Joneses’ house hoping for a rational explanation for the shocking behaviour exhibited by young Isaac, but hope was all I could do as I drove away from Rose Cottage.

Deep down I knew that Randall Llewellyn Pritchard was right. There had been too many UFO reports at ancient sites and along ley lines, too many sightings that coincided with natural disasters. And too many witnesses with horrific physical side-effects.

The UFO experiences in the Broad Haven Triangle were not the result of local superstition and folklore. It wasn’t folklore that made Isaac bite his mother’s arm, and it wasn’t folklore that induced Tessa Romero to try to throw herself off the roof of the Haven Hotel. Both events were symptomatic of an occult condition known as demonomania, an affliction that drives individuals to harm themselves or others, a weakening of the soul that can lead to possession.

Was this a real condition? I’d always assumed most cases had psychological explanations. But now? Increasingly I felt I had to do more to help Randall and his grandson. I had to check all of the children. Were they also exhibiting symptoms of demonomania? If so, God help them.

– 39 –

Monday 14 February 1977, twenty-four hours until the sky watch . . .

It was gone nine o’clock.

As the road uncoiled from the biting blackness I became aware of the blood pulsing behind my eyes. I was scared and with good reason. Because we were close now and I had nothing but bad feelings for Ravenstone Farm.

So what makes you think Araceli and Tessa will be safe here?Perhaps it will be different for them
,
I wondered. Hoped. Because my decision to bring them here came purely from the desire to alleviate their fear. To make them safe. And yet it was hardly the work of some noble saviour. Rather, I felt I had lost my grip on the world – my best friend dead, my job forgotten, my sanity . . .? Some part of me knew that returning to Ravenstone Farm wasn’t just a way of helping Araceli and Tessa, it was a last, desperate attempt to help myself.

I knew my grandfather thought that the Happenings were real and related to a religious cult operating in the village – members of the Rotary Club, by my guess. I also knew that whatever they were doing was creating a force so menacing, so powerful that it could influence people’s behaviour. Perhaps even control them. But how far could I trust Randall? After our conversations about my parents and about the Jacksons, it was clear he was still keeping many things hidden.

Trees arched together overhead.
As we approached the farm down the narrow rutted track I heard the scrape of branches on the car doors and roof and pictured myself coming here for the first time, all those years ago, in the back seat of Randall’s truck, huddled under a blanket, frightened and grief-stricken, watching the crucifix dangling from his rear-view mirror.

I brought the car to a stop, killed the engine.

‘Welcome to the end of the world,’ I said. We were three hundred miles from London. Araceli looked at me silently. I looked back for a moment, until my gaze drifted and settled on the house to which I had hoped never to return.

‘You’re sure it’s OK for us to be here, Robert?’

‘Sure. Just give me a moment.’ Just keeping my voice steady was an effort, and she must have noticed me trembling – her eyes were wide and wondering as she touched my hand. The contact gave me gooseflesh. I was filled with a sudden longing to abandon this responsibility I felt for Araceli, for Tessa, but resisted. I made myself get out of the car and look around me.

The place stank of manure, but that wasn’t the first thing I noticed. Randall had never taken much pride in the upkeep of the place. But whereas such details were hazy in my memory, the emotions that swept through me were not: a powerful mixture of grief mixed with anger and fear made me lean for support on the front of the car.

‘This place still feels unnatural,’ I whispered to myself. And it did. It felt like nowhere else on earth. A slight but undeniable disturbance suffused the air, an electric charge that prickled the skin and filled me with the deepest conviction that at Ravenstone Farm the fabric of the world was so thin you could believe it touched another.

Araceli was staring at me through the windscreen, and from the back seat of the car so was Tessa. The child’s face was still tear-stained and exhausted.

‘Give me a minute,’ I muttered.

I could hear my breathing – rough and dry – as I walked towards the farmhouse. Squat and sullen. A monument to everything I hated in life. I focused on the small window with iron bars just above the porch. The glass was rattling in the sea wind. The wave of memory that rolled through me was so intense I couldn’t help but shiver, and in jagged white flashes I remembered what had happened to me here: Randall forcing me to kneel and pray on the hard floor of his study; Randall training his shotgun on the front door as the thuds had shaken the house. But what had happened after that?

No
, a voice in my head said.
We forget because we must
.

The car alarm went off. I jumped and spun round.

‘We didn’t touch anything!’ Araceli shouted as she helped Tessa out of the back. Her face was panicked. ‘You’ve got the keys!’

She was right; I could feel them in the pocket of my jeans.

The car’s headlights burst into life, projecting two powerful beams at the farmhouse. I turned to look. A black space had replaced where the front door had been. And framed within it was Randall, unshaven and in his dressing gown.

He surveyed the scene before him: the shrieking car, the flashing headlamps, Araceli holding a sobbing Tessa in her arms, backing away from the car. Finally, he looked at me.

‘Welcome home, boy.’