by Ross Welford
Mr Roper, married with two grown children, described the creature as ‘about five foot seven (170 cm). It had grey hair all over, and a darker streak running from its scalp down its back.’
Mr Roper fixed his tyre and reported the incident at Wongan Hills Police Station.
Mr Roper says, ‘I know what I saw and it spooked the hell out of me. I think I had a lucky escape.’
Inspector Trisha Muscroft of WA Police confirmed Mr Roper’s report. She told The Bush Telegraph: ‘We were notified of an attempted assault on Hospital Road. We have no further reports of a person matching the description given by Mr Roper and no nearby hospitals have treated an eye injury in the last four days. We have alerted our officers to be on the lookout.’
When the creature got near, it raised its hand, which, says Mr Roper, held a baton ‘about the size of a rolled-up magazine’.
‘There is no doubt in my mind that it was about to hit me with it. It got right close. I could smell its breath and it stank like a koala’s rear end, I can tell you. I think it had a tail as well.
‘Well, no one takes old John Roper without a fight. I grabbed the wheel brace I’d been using to change the tyre and whacked it a beauty, right in the eye. It squealed and ran back the way it came.
‘Then the strangest thing happened: this thing just melted away. One minute it was there, then it just vanished. There was a cloud of dust like a column going into the air and then nothing.’
Mr Roper’s drawing of the ‘alien’ is reproduced below.
I swiped the page and gasped at the drawing. It was exactly like Hellyann – the wide eyes, the big nose, the long hair – only Hellyann had not had a streak of dark hair.
How many are there?
I read the article again and again. Below the article were the usual readers’ comments, suggesting that Mr Roper had been drunk, or hallucinating. One said: Hairy, violent aliens? Isn’t that every resident of Wongan? LOL.
I searched for follow-ups, or additional articles, but there was none. Eventually, I flipped my laptop shut and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Next morning, Dad is on the phone talking to police and journalists, or meeting with people from the village who are being really nice and everything, but there’s just not much more that people can do.
I talk to Mam in the hospital. Her voice is hoarse and she is making a real effort to sound normal, but it’s like when people try to sound happy when they’re not. You can tell they’re lying.
‘Are you all right, Mam?’ I say, which I know is a daft question. I can almost hear in my other ear Tammy saying, ‘Obviously she’s not, dummy. That’s why she’s in hospital!’ And even though I know it’s my imagination, it scares me because I wonder if I’m going to have a breakdown like Mam.
She says, ‘I’m fine, pet’, but she isn’t. She speaks a little slower than usual, but Dad says that’s to be expected because she’s been given some pretty heavy-duty medicine, and I want to hug her and smell her.
Tammy and I have this thing. We haven’t done it for ages, actually, and it sounds silly written down. We’d both hug her together and try to squeeze as hard as we could, until she begged us to let her go. ‘I cannit breathe!’ she’d say, but she would be laughing at the same time. Then, when we released, she’d say, ‘Double trouble!’
And I so want to do that again that it makes me really sad but I can’t tell Mam because that would make her even sadder, so we have this sort of weird conversation where we pretend that she’s OK and I’m OK and really neither of us is, so that by the time she says, ‘I’ve got to go, pet’, I’m almost pleased, and that makes me feel even worse.
Then I hand the phone back to Dad, who talks to her for ages. He’s trying to be encouraging and upbeat and reassuring and all those things that Dad is normally good at.
There’s going to be a press conference held at the pub at three this afternoon, and already there are journalists arriving, while Sandra, the police Family Liaison Officer, is in the kitchen talking to Gran.
I hear Dad say, ‘Bye, love’, then he goes outside.
When he comes back in, his nose and eyes are red, though it might be from the cold.
Meanwhile, I get a text from Iggy.
Same place? Half an hour. OK?
Sandra says she’s ‘not sure if it’s a good idea’ for me to go out, but when I ask her why, she can’t really give a good answer.
I feel a bit bad leaving Dad and Gran in the house but I don’t think Dad’s head is all that straight, and Gran’s not going to forbid me from seeing a friend, even one like Iggy.
My mind is a swirl of everything as I cycle along the same route as yesterday afternoon. The road is icy and slippery, and my heart is thumping at what we might find.
A real-life alien?
I show the news story from Australia, about the man being attacked, to Iggy. My phone is charged and ready to take pictures, although the camera function is still unreliable. I’ve sort of allowed myself to daydream about what we’ll find. I’ll be famous! It’s all going through my head as the cold wind whistles past.
Ethan Tait – the boy who contacted outer space!
It’s the sort of thing you see on television: ‘Coming up next on CNN: it’s out of this world! The president meets the plucky British kid whose close encounter changed history …’
Best of all, I’ll get Tammy back, and Kielder will be famous for something other than a tragic disappearance. People would flock to the village where it happened. I can imagine Dad’s excitement!
Come to the Stargazer – the best pub in the universe!
Iggy and I stand on the rickety wooden jetty and I feel a fluttering in my stomach. The decking is littered with evidence of yesterday evening’s adventure. There’s a fishing weight and the laser lure, an aluminium canoe paddle and a length of fishing line from Iggy’s attempt to catch the giant pike. I kick away the dusting of snow where he had lain, bleeding, and the wood is stained with blood. Bobbing in the water, a few metres from the jetty, is the red buoy.
Iggy hasn’t said anything. Perhaps he feels the same as me: that we’ve spent a sleepless night and half the day wondering if we had both had some sort of dream: a double hallucination (is that even a thing?). And here in front of us is real-life evidence that we were there – that Iggy did bleed on to the planks.
Suzy pecks in the snow, but keeps close to us. It is almost as if she can remember the events of yesterday and isn’t keen to repeat them.
We did not – definitely not – imagine it all.
Further along the shoreline to my right, about a hundred metres away, lies our upturned canoe: a little speck of orange in a tangle of undergrowth that comes down to the shore. And on the next little inlet along from our narrow pebbly beach is something I had hardly noticed before: a shabby boathouse, with a rusting corrugated iron roof jutting out into the water. One side is completely open to the reservoir, revealing an empty interior. Its wooden walls had once been green but the paint is now flaked and faded and covered with moss and ivy. It’s difficult to see how you could get to it, so dense is the growth around it.
Iggy and I haven’t actually said much. He comes alongside and nudges me. He has taken off his flat cap and scratches his red hair thoughtfully. ‘If you had landed here from who-knows-where, where would you go?’
I look at the empty boathouse as I answer slowly, ‘I suppose … I’d look for shelter?’
Getting to the boathouse means scrambling up the path to the main road again and walking along to the next path down. The thorns and twigs obscuring the path have been cut away in recent days by search parties who have been up and down the path to look in the boathouse for Tammy, probably a few times.
Iggy gets off his bike and points to the ground. Thanks to the tree cover, the snow is less deep here, but we can still make out footprints leading away from the boathouse: large footprints. I put my foot next to one: it’s adult size. I feel my heart starting to thump again as we go down the path, ev
en though there’s no way of knowing for certain who has made them. The prints are ridged, as if from a boot of some sort, but I recall that the creature we met had been barefoot, so …
‘Hey! Tait! This way!’ Iggy calls.
The boathouse door is locked with a rusty bolt and a huge padlock, but it’s easy to follow the footprints round to the side, where there’s a window a bit above head height that looks as though it has been forced open. It is just a bit too high to see in.
‘Here – gimme a leg-up,’ I say to Iggy, who links his hands and helps me up so that I can see in.
It is basically a large shed and dark inside. Where the floor would normally be is water, with a wooden walkway running around three of the sides. There’s stuff hanging on walls: looped ropes, a lifebelt attached to a rope and life jackets. It looks like it hasn’t been used in years and smells of mould.
I call down to Iggy, ‘It’s empty.’
‘Come down,’ he says. ‘Let me have a look. There’s an idea … something … I dunno.’ He rummages in his shorts pocket and pulls out the laser lure, detached from its hooks, that had been left on the jetty. ‘Come on – leg me up!’
As I hold his foot, he shines the laser lure into the shed and I hear him say, ‘Oh my word!’
‘What? What is it?’
He calls back down to me, ‘It’s here, Tait! It’s here!’
I hardly need to ask, but I say it anyway. ‘What is, Iggy?’
‘Let me down.’
I do so and he stands facing me, eyes shining with excitement and fear.
‘I’d say it was a spaceship, Tait. An invisible flippin’ spaceship! The same one we saw, or rather didn’t see, last night.’
We swap over again, and I take a turn with the laser lure, shining its beam at the empty space in the boathouse, and marvelling as the green line bends around whatever is there, floating on the water. This thing is about the size of a big leisure cruiser, but I can’t work out its exact shape: there are lines, and curves, and they don’t seem to meet where they should.
I mean, is there a ‘normal’ shape for a spaceship?
I have an excellent idea. ‘Iggy!’ I say. ‘I’m going to try to take some videos of this laser thingy. It’ll be proof!’
I steady myself by hooking my arm over the window ledge and I put my other hand into my back pocket to get my phone out, all while balancing on Iggy’s hands. The video app on my dried-out phone still isn’t loading properly, and I’m trying to swipe the screen when Iggy starts to shake.
‘Careful!’ I say. Then Iggy says, ‘No, Suzy! Get off!’
I wobble. As I wobble, I feel the laser lure in my left hand slip from my grasp and hear it plop into the water on the other side of the wooden wall. Iggy’s hands give way and we both slide to the ground in a heap.
‘Sorry,’ he says when we’ve picked ourselves up. ‘Suzy got under my feet.’
‘At least now we know,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t our imaginations.’
He nods but I stay silent, staring at the ground.
‘What’s up?’ Iggy says. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? We’re not crazy!’ He’s excited, tugging at my sleeve.
I turn away, biting my lower lip. The snow has stopped and the still lake is a deep silvery grey, perfectly reflecting the sky. I can hardly speak for fear, and I feel a huge blockage in my throat.
‘It means we have to act, Iggy. It means this is real. We’re in the centre of it all – you and me. If there is even the slightest, tiniest, minutest chance in all of this weirdness that Tammy is safe somewhere, and we can get her back, then I have no choice.’
Iggy fixes me so hard with his grey-green eyes that I have to stop myself shrinking back. His gaze is magnified by his thick glasses and I swallow hard. I recognise the look: he had it that day on the school taxi-bus when he demonstrated the Death Ray. It’s a look that is both determined and slightly crazy – and it’s the crazy bit that scares me.
I take out my phone to look at the time. ‘Gotta go, Iggy.’ I explain about the press conference at three.
‘What if we both speak to your dad, Tait? You know: double the …’
I think of me and Tammy and our ‘double the trouble’ thing with Mam.
‘… double the number of witnesses, sort of thing.’
If anything, having Iggy back up the story is going to make it less likely that my dad believes me. I don’t want to tell him my dad’s opinion of him, but as for me, I’m beginning to think that having Iggy on my side is an advantage.
I mean, in a truly crazy situation, having someone crazy with you might actually help.
I have texted Dad and Gran that I am on my way back so they don’t get all anxious. Dad has pretty much given up objecting to Iggy anyway lately, and Gran doesn’t even know him so far as I am aware.
It’s two forty-five by the time Iggy and I push our bikes up the driveway of the Stargazer: it’s already getting too snowy to ride them easily. Parked in front of the pub are various vehicles belonging to the TV people, two police cars and an old Mini with a British flag painted on the roof which belongs to Sandra the police FLO. She’s standing in the doorway of the pub without a coat on, arms wrapped around her against the cold, and she gives me one of those sad smiles when she sees me, and raises her eyebrows in greeting to Iggy as well.
‘Hi, boys,’ she says. ‘Where’ve you been?’
Beside me, I notice Iggy straighten up a bit, as if offended by the question. I’m pretty certain that Iggy’s had run-ins with the police before, and I know he’s met Sandra.
‘None of your—’
‘It’s OK, Iggy,’ she says gently. ‘It’s all right. It’s good that, well … good that you two are gettin’ out of the madness for a bit.’
‘We’ve just been for a walk, haven’t we, Iggy?’ I say. ‘You know – fresh air, an’ that.’
She nods. ‘Too fresh, if you ask me. Flippin’ freezin’, isn’t it? Come on – let’s get in and get this over with, eh?’
As we walk in, Sandra allows Iggy to get a few steps ahead, with Suzy hopping alongside him, and then she puts her arm around my shoulder and squeezes. ‘You all right, pet?’ she murmurs, and I nod. ‘I’m sorry about your mam. I spoke to your dad earlier – she’ll be back in a couple of days, he reckons.’
Inside the main bar area, there are TV lights on stands, and people milling about, and I can see Dad talking to the police superintendent who’s now in charge of the search for Tammy. When Dad sees me he breaks off his conversation and comes over to me.
‘You OK about this, champ?’ he says. ‘You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, you know.’
I look over to the table that is set out for the cameras, with little microphones and signs with names on: Supt D. Jones and so on. Gran is already sitting down.
‘I’ll be all right, Dad,’ I say. ‘It … it’s for Tammy, eh?’ I have to force the words out.
In fact, I can hardly speak at all. It’s as if everything I want to say – about the creature Hellyann, the invisible spaceship in the boathouse, about what happened on the jetty and what she said about Tammy, and the report on the Australian website – all of it is backed up in my head like cars in a huge traffic jam, honking their horns and revving their engines, and nothing can move and nothing can get out.
I take a deep breath, and I’m about to say, ‘Dad, can we talk for a minute – like, quietly?’ and I’ll tell him everything.
But then Sandra comes over and says, ‘All right, Adam, Ethan – shall we do this?’
Dad says, ‘Aye’, and he takes a deep breath and pats me on the back. ‘Ready, son?’
I’ve lost my chance.
Moments later, it starts. The superintendent makes a statement about ‘every effort being made’ and ‘not giving up hope’ and ‘massive support in the community’ and other stuff which I’m not really listening to. Camera clicks and flashes are going off all the time.
Through it all, Gran is holding my hand under the table.
‘Can you tell us how you’re feeling, Ethan?’ asks one of the journalists, and all I can do is shake my head and keep staring ahead and blinking while the camera flashes are going off – fsst, fsst, fsst – and Gran grips my hand even harder.
How am I feeling? What sort of question is that?
I feel like I have been transported into another world. A world that I have seen before, on TV and in films, where people read statements to the cameras, flanked by officials in uniforms and suits, and flashes go off, and reporters thrust microphones at you, and call you by your name even though they don’t know you. Only now I’m in that world.
Instead I shake my head and say nothing.
‘Adam? Adam! Can you tell us how you’re feeling?’ says the same man after a moment.
Fsst, fsst, fsst …
‘Ethan, can you remember …’
‘Adam, do you think there should have been more progress?’
‘Ethan, what’s it like not knowing what happened to Tammy?’
Fsst, fsst, fsst …
Then, without warning, Dad gets to his feet, toppling his chair. ‘Get out!’ he says. He doesn’t shout, but he doesn’t have to. ‘Get out of my pub. Now!’ Dad is as gentle as anything, but he’s so tall that he can be intimidating even when he doesn’t mean to be.
Sandra, the FLO, is on her feet now too. ‘All right, that’s enough, everyone. Enough. Thank you. We’ll keep you informed. You all have the relevant numbers. You will learn of any new developments in the usual way.’
She turns to us, smiling grimly. ‘Come on. You’ve had enough of this, I expect,’ she says but she has to raise her voice, because the journalists and the others have all started to talk among themselves. It’s chaos.
And then I see him, striding through the crowd. I had forgotten that Iggy was even there, but he had been standing quietly at the back with some of the other people from the village and now he is coming straight at us, pushing through the press of people.
He grabs a microphone from the table and, in one movement, leaps up on to the pool table in the middle of the room, followed by Suzy, who flaps her wings to perch on the side.