The Watchers (27 page)

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

by Dr R. Caxton (Clementine Press, 1980) p.120

Randall Llewellyn Pritchard was born and raised in Egryn, a scattered hamlet on the coast of Merionethshire between Barmouth and Harlech in north Wales. As far as I can tell, his early life was spent at the bleak farmhouse owned by his mother, Mrs Pauline Pritchard, a religious mystic who had endured many personal tragedies, most notably the death of three infants in childbirth. In 1904, the year of Randall’s birth, Mrs Pritchard was at the heart of a religious revival that was bringing whole congregations to their knees.

In the opinion of this psychologist the spectacular incidents surrounding Mrs Pritchard’s mission make up one of the most astonishing accounts of paranormal events in British history. At the dilapidated roadside chapel in Egryn the Welsh Seeress (as she became known) would lead scores of people to Christ, making reference to signs in the heavens, telling how she had seen each night a fire rise before her from the marshy shore, a rapidly vibrating light, ‘as though full of eyes’.

According to one report from the time, ‘The chapel became bathed in mysterious light. After the meeting a professional gentleman returning homeward suddenly saw a gigantic figure rising over a hedgerow, with right arm extended over the road. Then a ball of fire appeared above, a long white ray descended and pierced the figure, which vanished . . .’

We now know that it wasn’t just lights that Randall’s mother saw, but visions of the devil. In the years following the manifestations – Randall’s formative years – Mrs Pritchard became distant and ranted incessantly about a battle with Satan for human souls. By the time Randall was fifteen his mother had stopped speaking to him, stopped speaking to anyone. And by the time Randall was eighteen, she had been locked in an asylum.

We now know, of course, that Randall would grow up to embrace his mother’s fascination with religion and the occult and would become the focus of intense media speculation and mass hysteria when the Broad Haven manifestations reached their climax.

– 40 –

Monday 14 February 1977, Ravenstone Farm

‘My God, what’s wrong with the lights?’ Araceli asked as the bulbs blinked on and off in the kitchen. Tessa was shaking and pale-faced on her lap at the imposing kitchen table.

You’d better get used to it
, I was thinking
. Because anything electrical or mechanical has a habit of going wrong at Ravenstone Farm.

I put my hand on Araceli’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. After what had happened at the hotel, I knew the monsters weren’t just in my head any more. They were in the village, in the sky and in the sea. Even in the phone lines.

Randall had gone out to inspect my car. He came in, shaking his head and frowning. ‘Nothing wrong with it as far as I can see.’ He looked down at Araceli coldly.

‘It’s all right,’ she managed to say, stroking her daughter’s hair. ‘We’re OK, aren’t we, Tess?’

The child nodded, yet her skin was the colour of gone-off milk and oddly shiny.

The kettle whined as it came to the boil. ‘Coffee?’ Randall asked.

Araceli nodded wearily and Randall got to work.

‘There’s a bed upstairs for the child, if you like.’

‘Absolutely not!’ Araceli answered. ‘She isn’t leaving my sight.’

Randall handed her a mug, all the time keeping an uneasy gaze on Tessa, who was not just withdrawn now but sullen. ‘Do you remember your dreams, Tessa?’ he asked suddenly, surprisingly gentle.

She hesitated, then nodded.

‘And do you like dreaming?’

‘No,’ she replied.

‘Can you tell me what you see in your dreams, Tessa?’

‘The bad men.’

‘Tell me,’ Randall said, taking a seat at the table opposite mother and daughter. ‘When did you first see these bad men?’

‘The night before the football.’

Araceli was watching Randall intently from under her lashes. ‘She means the light that chased our car. Before the thing at the school.’

‘There was a man in my bedroom,’ Tessa said. Then, with a little more prompting from Randall, ‘A big black shape. I knew he was bad. I hid under the blankets, and when I looked again he was gone.’

‘She had to sleep in with me,’Araceli said.

Randall asked for a further description but Tessa only pursed her lips and shook her head.

‘You’ll remember what I told you, boy: the Black-Suited Men are the messengers of deception, the harbingers of death.’ He glanced at Araceli and added, ‘There are secrets buried in houses all over the Havens.’

For a further ten minutes Randall asked us both more questions and listened in silent fascination as we told him about the unexplained knockings and poundings at the hotel and Tessa’s misadventure.

‘How on earth did you get onto the roof?’ Randall asked the girl.

She shook her head.

Then Randall began reciting from the Bible: ‘“Let there not be found among you anyone who immolates his son or daughter in the fire, not a fortune-teller, soothsayer, charmer, diviner, or caster of spells, nor one who consults ghosts and spirits or seeks oracles from the dead.”’

‘I don’t know what you mean. We haven’t done anything like that!’ Araceli insisted. ‘We’re not consulting with the dead. Why would we do such a thing?’

Randall looked suspicious.

Araceli shook her head vigorously. ‘It’s true!”

‘Have you or your daughter brought any unusual items into the hotel recently? Gifts perhaps?’

‘No.’

‘Any unusual guests stayed with you?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know anyone who might want to hurt you?’

‘No.’

‘And you say there was a distinct smell of sulphur?’

Araceli and I nodded without speaking, and I watched Randall’s gaze travel from the young mother and her daughter to the window and the night beyond. ‘Isn’t it extraordinary,’ he said, ‘how many so-called poltergeist infestations have succeeded or coincided with spates of intense UFO activity?’

I had no idea whether this was true or even why it was important, but Araceli leaned forward and said hopefully, ‘Other people experience these things?’

‘Many other people,’ Randall answered. ‘And foul odours like sulphur are common at seances and in haunted locations. They are also extremely common at UFO landing sites.’

He’s right
, I thought. The coincidences are undeniable. The spontaneous movement of objects at the Haven Hotel. And here, at Ravenstone Farm, when I was a boy, the picture on the wall that had turned upside down in Randall’s study. My mind raced and I decided to confront him on an earlier comment.

‘What did you mean – secrets all over the village?’

‘Did you explore the cellar at the Haven Hotel?’ Randall asked.

How did he know?

‘You saw the inscription.’

I had it written on a scrap of paper in my pocket. I took it out and tried reading it aloud then asked, ‘What the hell does it mean?’

‘Ask her,’ Randall said sternly. His gaze, clear and penetrating, focused on Araceli, and she looked up sharply.

‘She said she doesn’t know,’ I countered. But then I looked in her eyes and saw they were furtive.

‘I don’t want to say it.’

‘No, young lady. I bet you don’t.’

But eventually she got the words out. She didn’t need to translate, I quickly realized; she knew the words by heart.

I wrote them down.

The battle on earth will commence with signs in the heavens.

The Demon’s Gate will open.

Darkness will rule for eternity.

– 41 –

The wind was moaning about the farmhouse. Even from the kitchen I could hear the rusty old swing at the front creaking as it kicked back and forth.

‘You said you didn’t know what the inscription meant,’ I said to Araceli. My accusing tone was deliberate. I was hurt to think she was holding back on me again, especially after what we had just been through together. ‘Who chiselled it into the wall?’

Silence.

Frustrated by her refusal to answer me, I got up from the table and stalked into my grandfather’s study.

I needed some time to think. I would call Dr Caxton, I decided. Like me he was a sceptic at heart. He was obviously here to learn the same things as I was, and would be able to apply a scientific mind to the problem. And maybe, when the admiral arrived, we could all work together. As it stood, I wasn’t sure how many more lies and superstitions I could take before I went completely mad.

Inside Randall’s study the air was as perfectly still and stale as I remembered, but the room seemed much smaller. There was the picture that had turned on its nail. Now it was in its proper position, thank God, the androgynous St John the Baptist with his enigmatic smile, taunting me, still pointing into the sky. I couldn’t take my eyes off that finger.
The truth is up there
, it said.

Only the walls had changed. Whereas before they had been lined with overstocked bookshelves, now they were covered, floor to ceiling, with newspaper clippings, fuzzy photographs of flying saucers and drawings of bulky, wide-shouldered, helmeted figures with black spaces where their faces should have been. There were maps of west Wales too. Clusters of red pins marked the locations of the reported sightings that formed the Broad Haven Triangle.

I dialled Dr Caxton’s number and released a sigh of relief when he answered.

‘Hello, Robert. You sound terrible.’

I updated him on recent events. ‘I know you are an expert in paranormal psychology and sightings. I also know you are a sceptic, but I don’t know what to believe any more, and I really think we need as much help as we can get. How soon can you get over here?’ I gave him my location.

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ He sounded perturbed. ‘I wanted to speak to you and your grandfather in any case. I have some new information concerning the children.’

‘You got the addresses?’

‘No. Something else.’ He left a pronounced pause that quickened my blood. ‘I owe Randall an apology. Something very dangerous is most definitely taking place here.’

‘Why the change of heart?’

‘I’ve discovered something deeply troubling.’

‘What is it?’

‘Not over the phone. I’ll tell you when I get there.’

The call over, I steeled myself to return to the kitchen to question Araceli. I needed to know what she was hiding. But as I headed for the door, I knew I had one person left to speak to. The admiral. Perhaps he was still in his Westminster office.

I dialled the first three numbers quickly, facing a wall plastered with newspaper clippings I had once considered sensational, scanning the headlines. I held the telephone against my ear, thinking,
Please answer, please answer
.

‘Admiral of the Fleet.’

‘There was something I didn’t tell you. Something I only suspected before but now I know.’ I said immediately. ‘It’s not the Americans.’

‘Robert? What’s wrong, old chap? It’s late.’ His voice sounded terribly hoarse. He coughed, then said, ‘Did you find the Parsons Report?’ I told him I hadn’t. ‘Then what has happened?’

‘Too many things,’ I said, hardly knowing where to start. ‘Seriously weird things. My gaze roamed the forest of red pins protruding from the map on the wall. ‘Admiral, what I have learned . . . These UFOs, they seem to come and go as they please. They buzz planes and cars. They terrify and they never make a mistake. They never crash. And there’s no consistent appearance – many shapes and sizes, with no obvious power source. Everything about their behaviour suggests to me that they are trying to confuse us. No, not confuse us. Deceive us.’

‘Robert—’

‘They can be seen or not seen, even by radar. Admiral, it’s almost as if they operate outside our laws of science.’

He coughed again, long and hard this time.

‘Also, they’re definitely not harmless. They have substance,’ I said, scanning the pictures and articles on the study wall. ‘They can inflict what look to me like radiation burns. They can stop cars.’

‘Old chap?’

‘I’m here.’

‘I’m worried about you. You sound . . . strained.’

He means mad.

‘I’m fine,’ I lied.

Then came a bout of fierce coughing. I knew then that there was something awful rattling around in his chest, and I was pretty damn sure it wasn’t any sort of cold.

‘Robert, it’s important you don’t lose perspective now.’ It was clear he was still thinking that this was something to do with the Americans and the Soviets. ‘Exactly how much does Randall know about all this?’ he continued.

I glanced at the desk, at the piles of letters, documents, tape recordings and dog-eared books. ‘I don’t know. It’s hard to tell but . . . more than he’s saying.’

Another hacking cough. ‘Robert, remember why you went down there in the first place. You
must
make him tell you what he knows.’

I thought about the enormous floating figure that had appeared opposite Dylan Jones’s cottage, I saw Isaac biting his mother’s arm, and I knew something was hiding in the folds of these experiences, some sort of controlling force. I could feel it pressing against the back of my mind, as if it was struggling to take a part of me.

‘We’re not just talking about UFO sightings,’ I said firmly. ‘When people see these craft, the entities controlling them . . . I don’t know, it’s like they suffer intimate intrusions into their minds. Their souls.’

This time there was no coughing, no words either. Just a long silence.

‘Admiral, why did you send me here if you won’t believe what I’ve found?’

‘Find out what Randall Llewellyn Pritchard knows,’ the admiral said in response. He sounded like he had lost all confidence in me. ‘I’ll aim to be at Brawdy from midday tomorrow.’

I replaced the handset and looked down at Randall’s desk. Tried the top drawer. Locked. The others. Locked. There was no key in sight. My gaze roamed from the desk to the walls. Clippings. Map. Picture over the mantelpiece hanging upside down.

Hanging upside down!

I felt a sudden burst of adrenaline that quickened the blood, my eyes going in and out of focus.
I’m supposed to notice it
.

Cautiously I reached up, gripped the painting and lifted it off the wall. Nothing. Just a faint mark where it had been. But wait – taped to the back of the painting was a small key.

Feeling my heartbeat quicken, I removed the key, hung the painting back in position and tried the top drawer of the desk. It slid out. And I looked down at the truth.