The Watchers (28 page)

– 42 –

The small booklet in the drawer wasn’t thick, thirty-five pages at most, but it certainly looked old. The title, positioned in the centre of the cover page, was in block capital letters:

‘
SKY SPECTRES’

THE PARSONS REPORT

SELECTED CIRCULATION

I opened the booklet and scanned down to the introduction: ‘This report is being brought to the attention of a considerable number of very responsible and influential people. Its subject is of the greatest possible importance to every human being on this planet.’ And on the next page: ‘UFOs are essentially a religious matter rather than a military threat from outer space. The problem of the UFO phenomenon is that of a non-human paranormal kind. It isn’t just anti-Christian, it is demonic, in nature and intent.’

I winced at that passage, and wave after wave of anxiety pulsed through me. What would it take, I wondered, to become convinced? I wasn’t religious, but at the same time my determination to know the truth, to find some frame of reference for everything that was happening, was overwhelming and forcing me to revaluate what I thought about UFOs.

Demonic? Was this report how Randall knew so much about the UFOs? How had he got his hands on it? Were they looking for it? Was it the reason they had ransacked my room at the Ram Inn? Who were
they
? The Parsons Elite maybe?

I turned the page and another passage stood out:

What we are witnessing are modern manifestations and interpretations of archaic legends found in all major religions. The most pertinent being the struggle for the souls of humanity, the battle between good and evil, God and Satan. But the rules of the game have changed. Religious symbols and imagery have been replaced by sky spectres – flying saucers and their pilots. And they are working against the Peace of Christ.

Beneath this was a tantalizing extract from the Bible, Ephesians 6: 12: ‘Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood: but against . . . the spirits of wickedness in the high places.’

‘Boy?’ Randall called from the kitchen.

‘Yes, yes.’ I dropped the report into the top drawer, locked it quickly and returned the key.

‘What were you doing?’ he said as I entered the kitchen.

‘Calling Caxton. He said he’s got something he needs to tell us.’

I was surprised to see Randall donning his overcoat, collar pulled up. He saw my questioning expression and said gruffly, ‘Going to check on the animals.’

The kitchen door banged shut behind him and I locked it immediately. I felt Araceli watching me but she said nothing.

Through the barred window over the sink I watched Randall by moonlight, huddled against the freezing coastal wind, a lone figure in the night.

Araceli gave me an exhausted smile and ran a hand through her cloud of black hair. I thought she looked beautiful, but I was beginning to realize that she wasn’t all she seemed either.
Why did you feign ignorance about the inscription we found in your cellar?
I wondered, and then I knew, just as I had known she was withholding information concerning Selina.

‘Something wrong, Robert?’

I stared at her in blank astonishment.

‘What is it? You’ve gone white!’

‘The room in your hotel, Selina’s room – that was your mother’s old bedroom, wasn’t it.’ The thought had slipped in as if from nowhere.

Already Araceli’s face was changing in a way that made me uncomfortable. She looked at her daughter. ‘I’m not supposed to talk about this, Robert.’

‘Why did your mother ever want to live in that hotel?’

‘I told you. She was keen to run it as a business.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. My father – I
told
you – he moved away and—’

‘Left you both with nothing. Yes, you said. And the people in the village told me your mother was mixed up with black magic. Witchcraft.’

‘Oh now, come on, Robert.’

I thought of the black candles we had seen in the cellar of the Haven Hotel.

‘How many times did the Jacksons stay at your hotel?’

‘I don’t know exactly. They visited my mother.’

‘And my colleague Selina knew this? She asked you about them?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought I’d have earned your trust by now, after what happened this evening.’

She just looked at me tiredly.

‘They had maps and cameras. They went walking at night. The Jacksons were looking for UFOs.’ I couldn’t be sure of that and yet I was. ‘Correct?’

‘It’s possible,’ Araceli said. ‘Yes.’

A thought leaped into my head. ‘Araceli, did they know about the inscription in the cellar? Did they ever ask to see it?’

She looked at me, and I looked back at her; neither of us broke the connection.

‘I’m right?’ I asked. ‘That’s why they always came back. Because of the inscription in the cellar. It meant something to them, like it meant something to your moth—’

‘No, enough! I’ve heard this shit all my life. I don’t need to hear it from you too!’

I thought about Selina’s notebook and imagined I was holding it now as if it proved my case. ‘My colleague discovered the existence of something called the Parsons Report, warning the government about the dangers of these phenomena.’

‘Really? Well I know nothing about that.’

‘Selina traced the origins of that document right here to the Havens. For some reason the Havens have had an extraordinarily long association with UFOs and other phenomena – whatever they are. Now Selina is dead because of a deliberate attack carried out by someone who wanted her silenced.’

‘And you know this for sure?’

Yes
, I thought fiercely.

She shook her head, tense and angry. ‘There are easier ways to get rid of people, Robert.’

‘Are there?’

‘Ask him!’ Araceli snapped. I followed her gaze to the kitchen window, out into the night. Randall had turned on the outside lights. The enormous concrete yard was bathed in a harsh glow.

I was torn. Go back to the study and read the Parsons Report or follow Randall?

‘If you want answers,’ Araceli said. ‘Talk to him.’

– 43 –

The wind was screaming across the cliff tops as I took the route I remembered so well. I imagined Jasper trotting along beside me, loveable and alive – tongue out, tail beating.

It was only ten thirty, but the evening was inky black with just the huddled lights of Broad Haven twinkling across St Brides Bay. If the sky watch went ahead as planned tomorrow night for the lunar eclipse, I was willing to bet there would many more lights around the beach – campfires, torches, headlights.

My hands were stinging from the cold, and the night felt dead and black. I went slowly into that darkness, keeping close to the rutted path I must have walked hundreds of times as a boy.

I tried focusing on the stinging smell of cow manure but all that came to mind were the faces of the dead: my parents, Selina, the Jacksons – murdered just a few fields away on the coastal path. Anyone could be out here, watching me now. I did all I could not to imagine the gigantic silver humanoids with black spaces for faces and spindly Black-Suited Men with eyes like fire and ice.

With the Atlantic wind at my back, I took another step, looked anxiously about me. Nothing. Nobody.

What was that?

I froze. I had heard something behind me in the tomb-like blackness. It sounded like
footsteps. Something moving. An animal perhaps? I listened intently. Nothing.

The Watchers were judged by God and bound for seventy generations.
Randall’s voice echoed in my mind, a story told to me years ago, something about legions of devils in the earth.

A long way off a fox howled, and a shiver ran down my spine. I tried not to think about the Parsons Report or the occultist Jack Parsons and quickened my pace.

Randall’s milking shed was a huge concrete and asbestos building that had always reminded me of an aircraft hangar. Inside everywhere was corrugated metal bolted together, and there was the stench of manure. I found Randall standing in one of the first internal enclosures watching over a cow pacing around in agitation.

‘She’s going into labour, boy,’ he said.

I stood awkwardly beside him, watching the animal panting. It was always a long and anxious process, but Randall must have done it hundreds of times before. He looked out across the paddocks that contained the other hundred or so cows and said, ‘I just hope the rest of them are all right. Milk yield is down some 40 per cent. They won’t even enter the lower fields.’ He gave me a grim look. ‘I found footprints down there. Gigantic, at least fifteen inches long, with a smooth surface and a prominent rounded heel. Circular burn marks too. Now every time I get the herd to the gates they turn and stampede in the opposite direction. Perhaps they can see something we can’t.’

I felt my uneasiness grow. ‘I feel like that sometimes,’ I said, remembering how I had known of Selina’s death before it had happened. ‘Like I’m aware of things I shouldn’t be.’

He looked straight at me, raising an eyebrow. ‘I was afraid of this. You’re remembering. It’s easier to forget when the past is hundreds of miles away and your focus each day is protecting the country. Serving government. But here, at the eye of the storm, the memories are closer, less easily suppressed.’

‘This place makes it worse,’ I admitted. ‘The farm never felt right to me.’

‘Aye, your mother used to say the same thing.’ He smiled fleetingly.

A picture rose in my mind: Randall dragging me into his study to pray. Had he done the same to Mum? Was that why she had stayed away?

‘What won’t you tell me?’ I demanded.

‘How much do you remember?’ he countered.

‘I remember Mum and Dad arguing. I remember it was something about me. I remember him taking me somewhere late at night, and a lighthouse.’ I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. ‘Afterwards, you brought me here. I remember the cross in the sky and Jasper. I remember you making me pray. I remember someone hammering on the door, you pointing your shotgun.’

His eyes met mine, and the memory travelled between us.

‘I was trying to protect you.’

‘From who? What?’

A haziness entered his expression. He blinked and it cleared. ‘Tomorrow isn’t the first sky watch; there was one planned for that night too. The people outside the farm were locals but members of a nasty association with a global reach. People like them have existed in this village for centuries. Members of a cult.’

A cult now calling itself the Parsons Elite.

‘Did they come for you,’ I asked, ‘or for me?’

Or did they come for the Parsons Report?

‘The less you know about it, the better – you’ll just have to trust me on that.’ He nodded towards the farmhouse, where Araceli was waiting, and sighed. ‘Her mother was a member of the cult, her father too, I believe. Evil places attract evil people. That’s why they bought the place. It drew them as it drew the Jacksons. That couple weren’t innocent either; they had blood on their hands, no doubt. Whoever finished them off did the world a favour.’

‘Please don’t tell me you—’

‘Killed them? Course not. But I imagine you’ve already heard differently down in the village. Who told you about all that?’

‘Frobisher.’

‘Oh, really? I thought it might have been that filthy communist priest . . .’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘You don’t trust a man who thinks Marxism is the future. That Russia is a land where dreams come true.’

‘How do you know he does?’

‘It wasn’t coincidence he arrived in this village when they upgraded the runways over at Brawdy. He’s different.’

‘And being different makes him suspicious?’

‘Don’t apologize for him. You can’t reconcile Christianity and communism. I look at that regime – its stinking corruption – and I see the devil. Father O’Riorden looks and sees the kingdom of heaven. Paradise! But it’s not a paradise. It’s shrewd and godless and cruel, with labour camps and show trials.’ He shook his head. ‘Who’d have thought that after the last world war we’d find ourselves living again on the brink of annihilation? In a land of nightmares.’

His passion was undeniable. Listening to his voice I was struck by the memory of my mother denouncing nuclear weapons as
a reckless threat to world peace
. My father – being a military man – hated her for that.

‘Assume you’re right,’ I said. ‘Assume there is a cult at work here in Little Haven. Why did they come to the farm? We’re out in the middle of nowhere.’

He was still holding back as if a truthful answer would inflict upon me irreparable harm, and that made me even more nervous.

‘This farm and its immediate surroundings – Stack Rocks, the abandoned airfield up the road at Talbenny – these areas are of intense interest to this group.’

‘Why? And what makes you an expert?’

‘You forget I served in the air force during the war.’

It suddenly dawned on me that he was referring to a specific military site in the area. But which one? The number of airfields abandoned by the RAF and converted to agriculture was almost as great as the plethora of shipwrecks in St Brides Bay. Randall could have been stationed at any of these, but there really was only one plausible candidate.

‘RAF Ravenstone?’

He nodded. ‘Nothing but isolated ruined structures now, less than half a mile from here. That substantial brick building near the turning for Dale? That was the operations block, part of a radar station where we tracked enemy aircraft.’

‘You were a radar operator?’

Randall nodded. ‘We had targets on radar that moved like nothing you’ve ever seen, but when you looked with the naked eye, they weren’t there. Unexplainable echoes. Some people refer to them as “angels”. I know them as sky spectres.’

My stomach jumped. That was the phrase from the Parsons Report, the document hidden in his study, the document that someone wanted – badly.

‘Definitely not German aircraft?’

‘Do you think a German aircraft could reach twenty-eight thousand miles per hour, come to a dead stop, then disappear?’

I was silent. Stunned.

‘That was my reaction,’ Randall said heavily. ‘We considered scrambling some planes before we realized they didn’t stand a chance in hell of keeping up. But I didn’t forget it. The target disappeared over St Brides Bay immediately above Stack Rocks. That’s when I decided to buy this farm. It’s the nearest property. And I imagine that’s why the atmosphere here always feels so . . . alien. ’

‘What about Grandmother?’

He smiled distantly. ‘Of course she died before you were born, but she left me when I bought this place. I became obsessed. I wanted to know everything I could about the sky spectres. And as soon as I began my studies, I was monitored.’

‘By whom?’

‘I never knew their names. Slender, dressed all in black. The telephone rang at all times, hissed and buzzed. Someone’s idea of a joke, I thought at first. I was wrong about that.’ He looked at me for a long moment. ‘What’s important is that you help me ensure that this sky watch tomorrow does
not
happen. You’ve seen what happens when people experience these things up close, the way they change. Imagine that happening en masse.’

I was imagining it, and it worried me enormously. At the same time I was thinking of Isaac Jones and his desperately ill father.

I was about to ask Randall if he was the author of the secret report I had left in his desk drawer when the cow we were watching groaned.

‘Help me with her,’ Randall said.

*

‘She’s out!’ Randall cried. His face radiated genuine happiness, pure relief.

For just over an hour we had worked side by side to deliver the calf. An exhausting tense experience, but a release because I had allowed myself to forget, just for a while, Araceli sitting in the farmhouse, Dr Caxton on his way and all the horrors of the farm and the village.

Randall was still smiling, his eyes on mine.

A question occurred to me, one I had pondered hundreds of times in the last ten years. Only now, with the mother licking her newborn calf at our feet, did I find the courage to ask it. ‘Why did you never cry? After Mum and Dad’s accident?’

His smile faded but his tone remained warm. ‘You never
saw
me cry. I had to be strong for us both.’

The memory of that time – the night of the Great Flood – caught in my throat. I looked away, suddenly angry. How could my parents have been so bloody stupid, so reckless, to go out on a night like that, to leave me?

Randall’s next question was careful. ‘Do you recall our sessions together?’

I shook my head, waited for more.

‘Those were bad times. You were in a terrible way. Hysterical, kicking over furniture, writhing on the floor.’

I stared at him. I thought this had to be bullshit.

‘You were a violent child, boy. But I brought you through the worst of it,’ he said gently.

My limbs had gone cold. I remembered anger, rage. Was that why I had been kept away from the funeral?

‘On one occasion you lashed out at the other children in school.’

I didn’t like what I was hearing, not a bit. But it sounded . . . right. The more he spoke, the more I thought perhaps I could reach fragments of memory that confirmed what he was saying: the stale scent of his study, my head tilted back as I sat in a deep armchair, his hypnotic voice.

‘I had to keep you safe, Robert. It was my duty.’

My mind filled with wisps of black memories, long buried . . . and there it was, the door handle turning, the dark profile I knew now was my father, creeping into my room. Taking me away.

Then Randall’s husky voice in the gloom – the voice of a reasonable man bartering with someone who didn’t know where reality begins and ends – was back in my ear. ‘If you decide to stay, if I can’t change your mind, then it’s important you face this darkness, boy.’

‘Listen to yourself!’ I shouted so suddenly he gave a start. The cow groaned. ‘Is it any wonder I’m so confused? Growing up with you and your secrets, I was a nervous wreck
.
I still am!’

I lost control. An awful jumble of half-formed, half-choked-back words spilled from my mouth before embarrassment took the place of anger. I crouched down in the milking shed, hanging my head so he couldn’t see my tears.

His heavy hand dropped on my shoulder. It provided unexpected reassurance. ‘Robert.’ I was momentarily shaken by the empathy in his tone. For the first time he really sounded like a parent. ‘Let’s try again, shall we? If you’re to face your fear you must understand it. Why are you afraid? Why must you constantly lock doors? Why did you never return to the farm?’

‘Because of what might happen,’ I heard myself say. My eyes closed and the memories crowded in.

‘Why? What do you fear?’

‘That they can see me.’

‘Who, boy?’

And suddenly the words were out. ‘Them,’ I heard myself answer. ‘The Watchers.’