The Watchers (29 page)

– 44 –

Monday, Ravenstone Farm, 11.30 p.m.

I closed my eyes and saw the Black-Suited Men at the farmhouse door fourteen years ago. This memory wasn’t a momentary flicker; this was a lasting and harrowing image. Their hair was as white as snow, their lips so red they might have been covered with blood. I didn’t need to ask Randall what they were. The answer was already floating up:
messengers of deception, harbingers of death
.

When Randall had first uttered those words, when I was a boy, I had thought he was mad. I didn’t think that now. What I thought now was,
Why had they come? When are they coming back?

These questions must have shown on my face but they never made it from my mouth. I was too stunned to speak.

‘
The Lawless One will arrive with all power, signs and lying wonders,’ Randall said in a low voice. ‘He promotes false miracles. What we call flying saucers are really images from hell. The sky spectres, the Black-Suited Men, the silver giants – the world naively thinks of these phenomena as aliens.’ He shook his head. ‘They are here to deceive us. Demonic manifestations. Fallen angels.’ He nodded grimly. ‘The Bible refers to them as the Watchers.’

I had so many questions but the only one I could manage was, ‘Will they come again?’

‘I fear so. They have been summoned by the cult at work in this village.’

‘When will they come? Tonight, tomorrow?’

‘They will keep coming until they get what they want.’

‘Which is what?

He gave me a hard look. ‘Our souls.’

From overhead came a loud crack of thunder. As the rain began to fall, Randall helped me to my feet and studied my face for a long time. I studied his and wondered again about the jagged scar on his face. That scar was easily his most compelling feature and, looking at it, I sensed there was so much more to learn about him, so much more he might tell me if I only knew the right questions to ask. ‘We ought to get back inside,’ he said, ‘check on the girls.’

‘Yes,’ I said distantly. I was still thinking about what he had said as he slammed the gate to the cattle shed shut and shot the bolt:
You were a violent child, boy. But I brought you through the worst of it.

Nerves still jumping, I followed him across the yard to the farmhouse. The outside lights blinked out behind us and we covered the distance in less than a minute. I was glad to get out of the rain and the freezing sideswipes of the coastal wind. I needed rest. The phone was ringing. There was no sign of Araceli or Tessa in the kitchen – I thought they must have finally gone upstairs to sleep. Grandfather went into his study to take the call. I headed for the stairs, but his words stopped me short.

‘Could you say that again? They’re not my cows, Gethin . . . Yes, I’m bloody sure.’

I stepped back to watch him from the hall.

‘An hour? No, impossible. I’ve just been with them . . . Yes, a bloody minute ago.’ Randall saw me in the doorway. ‘It’s Gethin over at Broadmoor Farm,’ he said, covering the mouthpiece. ‘He reckons my cows are on his land, right now, making a hell of a mess. All of them.’

‘He’s having you on,’ I said with a note of derision. ‘Or he’s mistaken.’

‘Well, he reckons they’ve been there for over an hour. He’s been phoning.’

Of course it was impossible. Not only had I watched Randall secure the milking shed just now, he’d triple-checked the bolt as well as lashed it with twine to be extra sure. There had to be another explanation.

‘Wait here,’ I said.

The freezing night air struck me as I plunged out of the front door again, running now, until the yard lights blinked on. Then I walked slowly. Suppose, just suppose, someone was watching me from beyond the trees that screened the farmyard from the fields. The same someone, perhaps, who had done that terrible thing to Jasper. I wouldn’t see them in the darkness through the glare of the lights. If they ran at me, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

There was no one. Yet some presence was with me. Nerves sloshed in the pit of my stomach as I approached the cowshed gate. My gaze fell on the bolt. It was still shot and lashed with twine. One-hundred-per-cent secure.

I leaned over the gate and into the darkness, flicked on the light switch.

Vanished off the face of the earth.

All of them.

But that wasn’t quite true, because if our nearest neighbour was to be believed the herd was a mile away, scattering grain everywhere and trampling all over Broadmoor Farm.

Randall was still holding the phone in his hand when I re-entered the farmhouse. When I told him his cattle were gone he looked both confused and afraid. ‘I . . . I really don’t know how this happened, Gethin,’ he said, ‘but I’m coming to get them. Now. I’ll herd them back myself.’

It would have been churlish of Gethin to insist on that, considering the lateness of the hour, so it was a relief to hear that he was willing to wait until morning.

Randall thanked him, sounding dazed, and dropped the phone into its cradle.

*

When Dr Caxton arrived, around midnight, I greeted him warmly and with genuine relief. Despite our differences, I felt I was at risk of losing perspective on everything that had happened and was eager to hear his opinion on the cattle as well as whatever new information he had gleaned.

‘I’m not going to deny it’s extremely strange,’ he said, taking a stool in the kitchen. ‘Some sort of intruder driving the cows off would seem the likeliest explanation, but still . . .’

There was no route the cows could have taken to reach Broadmoor Farm other than the lane out of Ravenstone Farm which ran immediately adjacent to the house. If one hundred and forty-two cows had passed the house, we would certainly have heard them. And even if we hadn’t, they could never have covered that distance so quickly.

‘They moved a mile in a matter of minutes,’ I said.

The psychologist shook his head. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘But how did they get there?’ Randall asked, rapping his hand on the table. ‘They can’t possibly have crossed any of the fields because of the electric fences.’

Dr Caxton had brought with him a small leather bag from which he removed a thick bundle of notes. ‘How are Araceli and the little one faring?’

‘They’re upstairs asleep,’ I answered. I had gone to check on them after Randall had got off the phone.

Randall was sitting at the head of the kitchen table, his penetrating eyes fixed on our visitor. ‘Remind me of your qualifications,’ he said, and Caxton straightened at the sharpness in his tone.

‘Ah, well, it might interest you to know that I am related to one of the greatest psychical researchers ever to have lived.’ He listed his father’s greatest cases and Randall seemed to know immediately to whom he was referring.

‘The man was a charlatan. A fraud.’

‘Perhaps,’ Dr Caxton said, keeping his voice level. ‘But in many respects he was a diligent researcher and a committed investigator. Ruthlessly sceptical.’

‘The acorn never falls far from the tree, does it?’

We didn’t have time to squabble like this. ‘You said on the telephone you had something important to tell us?’ I reminded the doctor.

He nodded. ‘I did as I said I would and visited some of the children from the school.’ His face turned dark. ‘They’re in a bad, bad way. Crying, shaking, mumbling about “the Summoning” . . . One of the children, Dafydd Pugh, poor thing, was completely distraught. Couldn’t speak, wouldn’t eat.’ He went quiet for a moment, as if selecting the order in which to tell us the important facts. ‘We were in the lounge and his mother had made him a sandwich which was on a plate on the coffee table. I saw the plate move. No, not move. It flipped right off the table! And I swear no one was near it.’

I realized then that the psychologist had been building his courage to tell us this, that his scepticism was protection against phenomena he simply could not explain.

Dr Caxton cleared his throat. ‘I’m not sure the conclusion I might draw would have any form of scientific validity, but I believe the witnesses are either attracting poltergeist phenomena, or—’

‘Or the sky spectres are inducing psychic abilities in the children,’ Randall broke in. ‘Just as they induce physical symptoms and psychosis in adults. This is how the Watchers operate. They induce terror and then feed off that terror.’

For once I was taking him seriously – the events involving the cattle shed were too strange to ignore. What if a power existed that could project itself in whatever form it wanted? And what if that power could exert influence over the minds of people who saw it? Make them do things against their will?

I thought of the sky watch planned for tomorrow night and understood why Randall wanted so badly to prevent it.

‘I am worried,’ Dr Caxton said cautiously, ‘that we are dealing with something . . . diabolical. As far as I have been able to ascertain, none of the children who observed the UFO at the primary school was baptized. Not one. Whereas every child who attended the school trip,
was
baptized. Now, I’m all for coincidences, but that’s rather remarkable, wouldn’t you say?’

A flash on the horizon.

We leaped to the kitchen window.

There was something in the sky, an orange streak, arcing away from the lower fields up and out across St Brides Bay.

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

by Dr R. Caxton (Clementine Press, 1980) p.110

My wife, Julia, often asks me what I dream about. This might surprise me because dreams are so rarely interesting to anyone except the person who has them, as I am fond of telling my students whenever they ask me to interpret their dreams. But when Julia asks, it’s different. Because Julia knows that for too long I only dreamed about one thing. That terrible Tuesday. The night of the sky watch in the Havens.

The hours that led to that event were packed with things 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.

After I had inspected Randall Pritchard’s cattle shed for myself, I decided to return to the village. The rain was driving down as if someone wanted to cleanse the Havens of all their trouble. Wherever I went in the Havens, whoever I spoke to, I could feel heaviness in the air. An expectant dread.

‘You know, Doctor, ever since those kids at the school saw that damn thing, this place hasn’t been right.’ I heard that a lot. Only the sky watchers seemed content, in spite of the rain. As I drove around the Havens I noticed a surprising number of people with maps and backpacks, and cars loaded with camping gear. By mid-morning there must have been over a dozen cars parked around the slipway, which should have been kept clear for the lifeboat. Some were here for the lunar eclipse; most were here to look for UFOs.

They had come like moths to the flame and seemed to have no idea of how dangerous these phenomena were. I drove around the bay and parked on the stone jetty known as Giant’s Point. The sea was crashing in on both sides.

‘Out there,’ a local woman told me, pointing. ‘That place is in my nightmares, at the heart of them.’

She was staring out to sea at Stack Rocks, the fort crouched sullenly on its peak.

– 45 –

Tuesday 15 February 1977, 9.30 a.m., eleven hours until the sky watch . . .

Randall had dozed in his study, then left early for Broadmoor Farm to round up his cows.

I hadn’t slept well. All night the rain had been drumming harder and harder on the roof. By now the fields surrounding the farmhouse were nothing but mud and ice. The nightmare hadn’t helped either. It came back to me as I scrambled some eggs on the hotplate of the Aga. In the dream I saw myself surrounded by ancient trees, saw the lighthouse in the distance. Except this time there was something else – a group of hooded strangers. Watching me.

As I downed some coffee and struggled to finish my eggs, I wondered again what it meant. The dream had never been clear but previously it had always been mixed with memories: Dad’s motorcycle, Randall’s facial scar, the child I had been before coming to live here at Ravenstone Farm. I dropped my plate in the sink, looking out over the fields and St Brides Bay and thinking about what Randall had told me about my childhood.

A violent child?

So much I had forgotten.

I crept into his study. The Parsons Report would be where I had left it. I had a suspicion he didn’t want me, or anyone, anywhere near it. All the same I felt a deep and welling desire to read it, a feeling that was like going for a medical test you knew deep down was very likely to come back with a dreaded, life-changing result. Although I had never been religious, I had always wondered about the source of Randall’s fervour, whether his interest in UFOs and religion ended with him or went back generations. Either way, the Parsons Report echoed his warnings, warnings that I had thought so long to be the product of his religious fanaticism.

I retrieved the key to his desk and unlocked the drawer. There was no chance of being disturbed. Randall was at Broadmoor Farm; Dr Caxton had left early. Araceli and Tessa were still asleep. I slid open the drawer.

The Parsons Report was gone.

Back in the kitchen my mind was still trying to catch up with everything that had happened. The headmaster had known something about the Happenings and had killed himself. The Jacksons had also known something. I thought about heading over to Broadmoor to help Randall, but before I had a chance to put my coat on the telephone jangled in the study. Frobisher was on the line, and I had never heard a man sound so frightened.

‘Where the hell were you? I waited on the beach like you said.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Last night! You called and told me to meet you this morning. Seven thirty sharp, you said.’

That stunned me into silence.

‘Remember we talked about your grandfather, and you said you had found a document to show me?’

The line crackled and hissed. Whoever was behind these phone calls wanted me to know that they knew my every move. They wanted to intimidate me. And they were succeeding.

‘Frank, we never spoke.’

‘So what’s in this report?’

The fear that had clutched my stomach the night before returned now, made me clutch the phone with mounting alarm. ‘It’s a document that was circulated among an elite group of the Establishment – military, politicians, the Church. It talks about UFOs as signs. Religious signs. And now it’s gone. It could be the key to all of this.’

‘I’m worried, Wilding. My phone’s been going crazy all morning.’ Even as he told me this, heavy static was drowning out his voice.

‘What do you mean?’

‘This morning it was a little girl. She said, “Events in the Havens will worsen with the Summoning. There will be a war that marks the coming of the beast.” I mean, what the hell is that supposed to mean? What’s the Summoning?’

The rain drummed down harder.

‘Frank, were you planning on attending the sky watch tonight?’

‘Not with all this rain. Much more of this and they’ll call it off.’

No. The Watchers are too clever for that. The village will have its lunar eclipse.

‘Frank, come here, to Randall’s farm. Please. Come as quickly as you can.’