The Watchers (39 page)

‘Robert, stop! Stop!’

I thought of Selina. I felt sure the attack on Parliament had been orchestrated by the admiral and had channelled my anger. I was pulling on invisible threads to manifest my will directly on him. From nowhere I heard myself mutter the incantation from the church:
‘Gha D’rcest Cthasska, Ha D’rcest Cthassiss
.’ As the words fell from my lips, the sigils etched themselves in the air in front of me, rendered in thin strokes of shining silver, as if my tongue was writing on the world with liquid light. Sliding onto the admiral’s chest as if projected there, they proliferated, entwining about his entire body like a living tattoo.

He screamed.

Araceli was staggering towards me. There was something human in her eyes again. I felt a link open to her mind, giving me direct access to her subconscious. Ghosts of her emotions buffeted my awareness like a psychic storm, her fear an enveloping chill, her worry for her daughter a stinging lash. But stronger was her reluctance to believe she had done what her father had instructed – deceived me, lured me here – and that she had involved her own daughter in a web of deceit and darkness.

She came close, not even looking at the Watcher, which towered before us, and wrapped her hand around mine. ‘Stop now, stop. Your grandfather would never have wanted you to kill him.’

I felt a smile come on my lips, knew she was right, and released the admiral from the mental vice I had seized him in. And was suddenly horrified, disgusted at myself.

The Watcher’s arcane voice burst in my head:
‘Finish him, finish him.’

Scalding air washed over me. I could feel the suffering the Watcher had inflicted on this village, how its malign influence had seeped into its consciousness, drawn people here since Jack Parsons’ experiments, made men, women and children fearful and corrupted minds. I was in no doubt: the Watcher was the reason people had drowned. It was the reason the locals never walked the cliffs alone, saw strange lights in the sky and told stories about mutilated farm animals. It was the reason my parents were dead.

I would not stoop to its level. I stepped back, relinquished my hold on the admiral and watched as he staggered to his feet, tripped and fell into the circle.

There was a blast of ferocious light. The admiral lifted his head and tried to raise himself. Looking at Araceli at my side, he said, ‘My little girl,’ then raised his voice. ‘Get away from him! Continue our work!’

Blood ran from his ears, from his nose, his eyes. A putrid stench filled the trembling air.

‘Oh God,’ Araceli said. She started forward.

‘My lungs.’ The admiral dropped to his elbows. His face was yellowing, his eyes pleading, bulging. ‘Araceli, my lungs . . .’ A phlegmy racking sound emanated from his chest and blood erupted from his mouth. His whole body lurched as he retched, retched, retched. Blood puddled around him. Blood everywhere.

Araceli stared at him with glazed, horrified eyes.

‘No!’ he growled desperately. Then his body slumped forward, lifeless.

Araceli dug her fingers into my arm and I felt her shudder, either in grief in guilt or horror.

The Watcher’s beaked face stared down at me with nightmarish clarity, and in its eyes I saw Little Haven in flames.
‘
Give yourself to me. Swear the Oath of the Abyss.
’

A burst of radiant red light came down from the sky, reflected off the sea, flooding the island fort. The earth trembled. Sirens and screams sounded from the village.

‘I have a better suggestion. I’ll have hope. Faith. In the people of our world.’
I fixed my eyes on Grandfather’s lifeless body, the jagged scar on his face. ‘He thought you were from hell. So did Jack Parsons. And maybe you
are
from hell. Or maybe that’s just what you wanted us to believe – like maybe you wanted everyone in this village, everyone in our world, to think that the sky spectres were from outer space.’

The Watcher twisted and shuddered.

Grandfather, Grandfather
 . . .

‘You hear all those people screaming? Well done! You’ve made them believe. All those little people. The blessed and the damned. Husbands and wives. Brothers and sisters. They’re terrified now because you tricked them. And now you’re tasting their terror.’

As the fear in the Havens had grown, the Watchers had grown, and now they wanted the one they had marked with their power fourteen years ago. Me.

I spread my arms wide. ‘So what’s stopping you? Feed on
my
fear!’

Its beaked face yawned open, releasing a burst of unholy light that drenched me from head to toe, and a raw wind ripped into the fort. And somehow, perhaps because I wasn’t afraid any more, I pulled out a formidable voice that convinced me I could win.

‘I fought for my country! And my grandfather fought for our country. He foresaw the coming of your sky spectres!’

The Watcher howled. But that wasn’t what made me raise my voice. What did that was my fury, my self-belief. My faith in the man who had raised me to be the man I was.

‘Do you think you can just use people? Expect them to forget? Do you think secrets as black and depraved as yours can be supressed?’ I raised my chin.

I saw its immense form flicker as it howled again and understood that it wasn’t my physical strength that enabled me to resist; it was the force within me, planted long ago. Secrets had consequences. I had faced down my fears with faith in myself. I had learned there were worse threats to our world than military weapons.

‘I will stop you,’ I vowed quietly. ‘I deny you in the name of this woman’s protection. I deny you in the name of truth.’ I closed my eyes, blinked out a trickling tear and pictured my mother. My father too. ‘And I deny you in the name of the man who gave us hope. Randall Llewellyn Pritchard!’

The gun chamber shook. Cracks leaped through the floor and up the walls as if the earth itself was splitting open. And the Watcher threw back its head and staggered back, releasing a wrenching sound that went beyond a scream.

‘Give us leave to go. Release us!’

‘I do!’ I shouted, remembering the ancient prayer from the church. ‘I cast you out!’

There was a thunderous explosion from across the bay, and a flash of white light spliced through the night to Stack Rocks.

I stared at the Havens, where the huddled houses across the sea were now illuminated by flickering flames. A pillar of fire rose from where Broad Haven Primary School had stood.

– 62 –

It was hard to believe the Watcher was gone.

‘Araceli!’ My voice competed with the bellowing wind, the water crashing below.

The walls and floor were still shaking.
You have to get her out.
At any minute this place would be underwater. But there was no way to escape: the boat had been smashed to pieces. A freezing hand gripped mine. I felt the squeeze of hope in my hand and in my heart.

‘There is a way,’ she said urgently.

Araceli grabbed a stone and chiseled the metal band off, then led me around the curved edge of the room until the smooth stone floor gave way to a rockier surface. I felt a rush of freezing air.
We’re entering a cave – or a tunnel
.

And then I realized what it was about Grandfather’s appearance that had nagged at me when he’d burst into the room. He had been dishevelled, bloody – but dry.

‘You’re sure?’ I asked.

‘Trust me.’

‘Wait.’

Against every impulse I went back, picking my way back to my grandfather. I knelt, touched his rough face and allowed my fingers to trace the scar on his cheek. Which emotion to feel first? There were so many: remorse and fear and anger. The thought of myself as a little boy under his secret protection magnified every emotion and made my parents’ legacy complete.

I had grown up, moved away, and left him to grow old alone. And I’d preserved the guilt, kept it inside. Grief welled up inside me then. I couldn’t help reflecting on the similarities between loneliness and obsession – emotions that bred sad and destructive and addictive behaviours – the enemies of peace and restfulness – and then I held those thoughts down and pressed a kiss onto Grandfather’s forehead.

Peeping out from inside his jacket was a booklet. I wasn’t surprised to see it was the Parsons Report. I claimed it, struggled to my feet and made my way back to Araceli.

‘We have to go.’

*

I was right: there was a tunnel. We were passing under the seabed, I felt sure, because above us we could hear the crashing of waves. Our only light my torch, we stumbled through the damp darkness for what felt like for ever. I assumed the tunnel had been dug when the fort was constructed, but it was not well maintained. Araceli was breathing heavily and her face was drawn. But she held my hand tightly. I had asked her where the tunnel led but she was silent, and all I could do was remember Grandfather’s dry coat and have faith.

Finally the floor began to slope up and a few minutes later I made out the faint light of an opening ahead. Araceli had slowed, and now instead of her leading me I was pulling her along. As I helped her over the rubble into the space beyond, the reason for her reluctance became clear.

It’s the cellar of the Haven hotel. This is how Grandfather got out to the fort. How long had he known it was here?

I saw the old furniture, the boxes of black candles Araceli had claimed her mother kept for power failures, a fragment of the inscription that had marked the location of the tunnel on a brick lying at my feet. My mind raced, making connections: this place had belonged to Araceli’s father – the admiral. He had been stationed here during the war when Jack Parsons had conducted his experiments, had read Grandfather’s Parsons Report and had joined a deranged cult, then manipulated my father and Araceli and God knows how many others from the village.

Araceli was gasping for air now.

‘Come on,’ I said, leading her up the stairs. ‘Come away.’

I planned to take her to the dining room, to sit her down and find a dusty bottle of brandy to take the edge off the shock.
It’s just shock. Just shock. The Watcher is gone.
But there was a man in the hall blocking our way.

– 63 –

Dr Caxton was shockingly pale and struggling to speak. ‘You have to see!’ he said. ‘Come quickly!’

‘It’s over,’ I said, staggering past him with Araceli to the dining room. ‘We defeated it.’

Then I saw through the highest window what had petrified the psychologist and a new horror took hold of me.

‘My God . . .’

Roads had turned to rivers, trees were ripped up and cottages burning. About fifty or sixty people were huddled down on Giant’s Point, gazing at the sky.

I looked at the devastation and thought,
I did this.
All along I was too slow to see the true nature of the phenomenon. Too preoccupied with every threat except the one that mattered most: a demonic influence that painted visions in the sky designed to deceive us.

Dr Caxton’s gaze held me. ‘You actually
saw
the force that caused this?’

I nodded, the movement feeling slow and dreamlike. The Watcher was a memory now, a nightmare. ‘I questioned it, defeated it, cast it out.’

His face looked suddenly panicked. ‘What did it say to you, Robert?’

‘It vanished, like it couldn’t stand to be in my presence.’

‘But what did it
say
?’ he almost screamed.

My breath caught. I felt my heart racing. ‘It pleaded with me for release,’ I answered. My voice was a whisper because I knew what was coming next.

The psychologist was looking straight at me as he recited a passage from the Book of Matthew, a passage I’d read less than a week ago, standing in my flat in London, flicking through Selina’s Bible: ‘The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water.’

Fear gripped Araceli, shocked her into action.

She bolted through the door and out onto the drive. I did all I could to catch up with her but froze when I saw her stumble close to the edge of the cliff. In the far distance, at the end of the jetty reaching out into the bay, I could see the sky watchers lined up at the edge of the water.

‘Get away from the edge,’ I yelled. ‘Araceli, there’s no time.’ I pulled her away and held her as she shuddered in my arms.

‘
No!
’ She screamed. ‘
No, no, no, no!
’

Her cry was lost on the wind, the sky watchers simply too far away to hear. But I’ll never stop hearing it.

I held Araceli as we looked down upon Giant’s Point, at the men and women and their children. There was no way to stop what we were seeing, nothing we could do to help. Hopelessly I gazed out over the black waves – from Stack Rocks to Monks Cove and back to Giant’s Point – as the children jumped one after another. The adults went next. Every one. Finally only a lone child remained. One little girl. Tessa.

She faced us as if she knew we were watching, and I felt the presence of the malignant demon in my mind as the little girl took three paces towards the edge of Giant’s Point and raised her arms.

A gesture of despair maybe or a final goodbye.