The Watchers (31 page)

From the official testimony of Emma Wheal, taken before the National Security Council in connection with the events of Tuesday 15 February 1977 in the Havens, west Wales

Q. Ms Wheal, do you still live in Little Haven?

A. No.

Q. Where do you live now?

A. Milford Haven. Little Haven was always a ghost town, especially in winter, but after what happened, well, very few people wanted to stay around, you know. Businesses closed up. The post office went, so did the Nest Bistro. I was glad to leave. No place for a young person.

Q. Were you at home on the night of 15 February at midnight?

A. I was working late in the Ram Inn. I was paid double-time that night, it was so busy.

Q. What was so special about that night?

A. The sky watch. There were camera crews and tourists and everything. Every holiday cottage in the village was booked because of the blood moon. You know, the lunar eclipse.

Q. And you rented out your home, Albert’s Cottage on Wesley Road?

A. Yeah, well, people were paying a lot. It’s only three hundred yards from the seafront, you see.

Q. And who did you rent it to?

A. A pair of UFO spotters. They were everywhere. Even the Talbenny Caravan Park was full, and that’s completely dead in winter.

Q. All right. Let’s discuss the events of the night of 15 February. What was the general mood in the pub before the sky watch began?

A. Well, excitement, I suppose. A lot of people were taking it seriously, but some weren’t. They were laughing and joking and saying they were going to be taken, you know, by aliens. That was around seven o’clock. We had the radio on loud in the bar; they were reporting live from the front. That was where people would have the best view of the sky. At Giant’s Point.

Q. And what did you think of people’s behaviour?

A. Well, it wasn’t normal, but at the same time you couldn’t help going along with it. Everyone seemed convinced that something was going to happen, with all the stories in the papers, you know, and everyone wanted to go out along Giant’s Point to see. I’d never believed the stories or taken an interest, but if it wasn’t for me working and having to lock up, I probably would have gone too.

Q. What happened then? Later, at 8.30?

A. We were listening to the radio, and we could hear everyone at Giant’s Point cheering and whooping, and . . . well, that was when things began to get really strange.

– 48 –

8.30 p.m.

And so we come to the worst of it.

I was in the front room of Ravenstone Farm, and Dr Caxton was snoozing in the armchair nearest the fire with his hands interlocked across his chest. He had been asleep for about an hour, and during that time not a word has passed between Araceli and me, sitting side by side on Grandfather’s tattered old sofa. I don’t know what thoughts were keeping her silent, but as for me, my head was full of satanic cults and demons from the deep. Frobisher, still unsettled by his exploding Dictaphone, was preparing coffee in the kitchen

I thought of the incantation at the church that I’d copied down: ‘
Gha D’rcest Cthasska, Gha D’rcest Cthassiss
.’

The sense that these words were important, that I might need them, still hadn’t left me, and that’s probably why I had taken the paper on which they were written into Randall’s study. And locked it in the desk drawer.

I stared at the barred window and the darkness beyond. Grandfather out there somewhere.

Gather and watch the skies.

He’ll come back
, I told myself
. He’ll take one look at the crowds, realize it’s too late, realize he can do nothing and come back.

‘What time does the sky watch begin?’ Araceli asked.

My gaze shifted from the flickering television to the small silver clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Any time now. We spend the night here. None of us leaves this house until it’s over. You should go to bed,’ I said, ‘get some rest.’

‘What if something happens again?’ As she spoke Dr Caxton stirred and opened his eyes. ‘Besides, I want to hear how they report it on the local news.’ She rubbed at her eyes and drew her knees up to her chin.

‘You know, tiredness only makes anxiety worse,’ I said.

‘And you’re an expert on anxiety?’

I surprised myself with a laugh. ‘I’ve learned a thing or two.’

‘Indeed,’ Dr Caxton said. ‘Hunger, anger, loneliness and tiredness: all of these states heighten anxiety.’ He kept his eyes on me. ‘It must be very difficult for you being back in this house, Robert.’

My gaze shifted to the study, just visible across the hall through the doorway, and I thought of the picture hanging over the mantelpiece. My shoulders tensed. I glanced at Araceli. Something in her eyes. Pity? Understanding?

Frobisher appeared in the doorway, coffee mug in one hand. He looked agitated. ‘I’m going upstairs for a lie-down. I’ll check on Tessa while I’m at it.’

Araceli nodded thanks and ran an agitated hand through her hair.

As I watched him go, I dug my fingers into the cushion next to me. ‘My friend Selina used to say my face was a mask of worry. I thought I’d grow out of it, but you know what happens with habits – they take hold of you.’ I stood and went over to the fire, gazing at my hands as I spread them before the flames. ‘I suppose the only thing to do is shake them off.’

‘Or prevent them taking hold,’ Dr Caxton said. ‘The more you indulge your fears, the more they will rule you. You can’t control events, Robert. Only how you respond to them. When you see a distracting thought flying at you, name it for what it is. Then step out of its way, cast it away.’

‘You make it sound so easy,’ I said.

‘What if?’ Dr Caxton said. ‘The most worrying words in the English language, because once a person starts asking that question, it can be very hard to stop. The problem,’ he added, leaning forward, ‘is that that particular question never allows you a satisfactory answer. Robert, you crave certainty, it’s what you need to feel safe, but I promise you this. You’ll never lay a hand on it.’

I allowed the words to sink in but almost immediately my head began to swim like it had done at the hotel and at the Ram when I had witnessed – predicted – Selina’s death. Dr Caxton must have seen that memory on my face because he promptly asked what was wrong.

‘I don’t just fear what’s happening here; I fear for my sanity.’ He listened patiently as I told him about my premonitions, my visions.

‘And these visions are new?’

‘Yes. Yes, I think so.’ It was hard to be sure when so much of my childhood was hidden from me. ‘Doctor, what’s causing them?’

His tone became peremptory. ‘Have you seen a UFO up close, like the children at the school?’

I hadn’t. Only the amazing lights cartwheeling over RAF Brawdy. ‘But my visions began after that. And since I’ve been here they’ve been getting stronger.’

Dr Caxton’s expression betrayed not the slightest hesitation or embarrassment. ‘If you are psychic, you should endeavour to nurture that ability. Master it before anyone else does.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps it will go away, perhaps it will get stronger, but there is no reason to think that you are suffering from pathological hallucinations. OK?’

I felt at once reassured by his tone, which was clear and calm and commanding. Yet I was still confused. ‘If I can see the future – if the future already exists – then our actions, ours words, our choices, they all count for nothing.’

Either he had heard such musings before or they vexed him because he simultaneously nodded and frowned. ‘Instead of thinking of time as a sequence of events, try picturing it as a series of overlapping and interlocking dimensions, like a deck of cards shuffled with another.’

I tried but came up with a mess.

‘That would make your premonition a shadow of one future reality. Our reality. But equally,’ he smiled, ‘there could be other realities, dimensions in which your friend is still alive.’ His academic’s eyebrows drew together. ‘If there
are
other dimensions, it’s certainly conceivable that the human unconscious might glimpse them or even influence them.’ He told me then about clairvoyance, psychogenesis and other psychic phenomena, and I was enthralled until an unsettling thought broke in.

‘If other dimensions exist it follows that other life forms exist . . .’

His smile faded. ‘Your grandfather believes that the entities plaguing this community originate in hell. He thinks they are demons.’

‘And you?’

‘I don’t care where they come from or what they’re called.’ His intelligent eyes met mine. ‘I care about what they want from us.’

*

When I opened my eyes, the others were fast asleep, the television flickering its harsh light across Araceli’s face. A local news reporter faced the camera; behind him the scene reminded me of Guy Fawkes night: groups of excited youngsters and people with flasks of coffee, binoculars and cameras.

‘I’m here in Little Haven, where a group sky watch has been under way for the last forty-five minutes,’ the reporter said. The grin on his face was saying,
Stay with me, folks. We all know this is a bit of fun
.

As I shifted in my seat something made me turn my attention towards the window – a slight movement, a flicker of light. No more than that.

I held still, really focusing on the window. Lightning? If so, it would come again. But I couldn’t hear thunder.

Your imagination. You’re seeing things that don’t exist.

There!
I definitely wasn’t imagining it: a light had flashed in the bottom of the window.

Don’t respond
,
I reminded myself.
The more you indulge your fears, the more they will rule you
. Just a day earlier my response to a strange light would have been totally different. I would have been on my feet, checking and checking, until my paranoia turned to anger at myself and finally guilt. Not this time. I squeezed my eyes shut, yet even as I did the air hummed, vibrating. I opened my eyes again. The urge to wake Araceli or Dr Caxton was almost irrepressible.

How are they sleeping through this? And why are both of them asleep
? That didn’t seem right to me, didn’t seem natural, somehow. Unless something was making them sleep.

The light came again, and again.

Just ignore it
.
Nothing will happen. Nothing will happen.

But something was happening. There was a heaviness in the air and the flickering light was getting brighter.

My heart was thundering now as I sat upright, frozen, on the edge of the sofa. The ice-white glare shimmered at the bottom of the window. Determined. It wanted my attention. It wanted me to look. I wrenched my gaze away.

Suddenly I found the strength to move again. If there had been any curtains I would have shut out the light by dragging them across, but as there were none I turned to face Dr Caxton. I whispered, ‘Wake up.’

His eyes fluttered as he surfaced from sleep. Then he saw it. He leaned forward out of his armchair. ‘What on earth . . .?’

I raised a hand. The doctor nodded in understanding, his eyes as wide as saucers.

I tracked his bewildered gaze back to the window. ‘What do you think it is?’ I whispered. I felt a panicky twist in my gut. ‘Can you feel that tremble in the air?’

Dr Caxton nodded. ‘I can see it too.’

The window’s single pane of glass was trembling. Rattling now. The silvery light on the other side had begun to shift and swirl, slowly, slowly . . . solidifying.

Dr Caxton was staring into the room across the hall. ‘Robert! Oh Jesus. Look!’

The Welsh dresser in Grandfather’s study was pushed aside and the carpet on the floor was rolled back, light spilling in and flooding the floor.

That was when Araceli woke. She jumped to her feet and stumbled, disorientated, releasing a startled cry. Any nightmare she had been having had fused with waking reality. ‘What is it?’ she managed to say. She was pointing at the window.

An awful figure was framed there.

The glass rattled even harder and the television hissed snowy static.

The three of us fell silent.

It was huge. Wide shoulders seemed to fill most of the window. It was pressed right up against the glass and at least seven feet tall. ‘Spaceman’ was the word that came to mind, but at no point did I think this was an alien; rather something or someone that was trying to look like someone’s conception of an alien. It wore a one-piece silvery suit similar to the sort of protective gear worn in a nuclear plant. Its arms were disproportionately long, its neck too short, and the head wasn’t round, but rose to a peak. I caught myself staring at where its face should have been and knowing I could not look away. There were no features – none at all – just a convex black visor framed by a silver helmet.

This is what Selina was looking for. This is what Martin Marshall saw. This is what appeared at RAF Croughton in 1963.
I didn’t know why it was there, but a sickening thought occurred to me:
It’s come for the child
.

Araceli looked at me with sudden horror.

‘Go to Tessa,’ I shouted, and she darted for the stairs.

Dr Caxton was paralysed. There was no sign of Frobisher.

I turned back to the window. The figure was still there, motionless, menacing, its whole body emitting a shimmering white light.

One day, Robert, the giants will return.
Randall’s warning from my childhood rattled in my head.
If Grandfather was here he’d know what to do.
But Grandfather wasn’t there. And whatever this entity was, I was certain of one thing: it wanted to get in.

I thought desperately, almost with relief,
Thank God for the bars over the windows
, but then I remembered what had happened at RAF Croughton. If these entities could pass through chain-link fences then bars and glass wouldn’t stop them.

My stomach rolled, and I thought I might pass out.

Suddenly, the beat of feet on the stairs. Frobisher burst into the room and immediately staggered back, falling against the wall, arms outstretched as if to push the frightful vision away. ‘What the hell is it?’ he yelled.

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. Evil was everywhere, corrupting and persuasive.

That glass is going to shatter. Those bars will bend, and that monstrous thing will get in here with us.
And some part of me thought that was all right.

‘Robert, listen to me.’

Was that Dr Caxton speaking? I thought it might be.

‘You remember what your grandfather told us? They can’t get in unless they’re invited. Don’t look at it. Turn your back. Deny it!’

The giant silver figure, standing like a statue, began to glow an eerie red and raised an arm. The temperature had rocketed. My face was burning and the rank smell of sulphur filled the air.

I took a step forward, weakening. I wanted a closer look. I wanted to let it in. The black space where its face should have been was mesmerizing.
It’s easy
, a voice in my head said
. Just unlatch the window and push it up.

‘Robert, what are you doing?’ It was as if Dr Caxton was calling to me through a dream. ‘Get the hell away from the window!’

Suddenly I thought of the incantation that Father O’Riorden had allowed me to copy down, and something in me snapped free. Without a moment’s hesitation I bolted from the living room into the study and to the top drawer in Grandfather’s desk.

Locked, of course.

The picture above the mantelpiece fell from the wall with a
thump
. A moment later I had retrieved the key from the back of the picture. The lock turned and the desk drawer slid out.