‘Well, you two are different to us. That’s all.’
‘For God’s sake. That’s the way it works, Sylvie. That’s the way of the world.’
‘The world can go jump then,’ I said. ‘And if you don’t mind, Claire, I’m tired and I’d like to go to bed.’
‘Oh, Syl,’ she said and there was the shine of tears in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry to have lectured you like that. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that I’m ... I don’t want you to get hurt. I couldn’t bear to see you hurt. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said, and felt the tears start into my own eyes too as we hugged each other goodnight.
Dread
I thought I’d have trouble getting to sleep that night but actually fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. I had heaps of dreams though, nothing very clear or that I really remembered, but one of them woke me with a jump in the middle of the night. I lay there as the last image from the dream, or rather nightmare that had woken me, ran through my mind. In the dream, I was on the top floor of some house and someone unseen was creeping up the stairs towards me. I could hear their stealthy, sinister rustle, and it filled me with such a horrible dread that it had jerked me awake. My heart was racing and my palms felt clammy. I couldn’t shake off the feeling of dread, as if that unseen presence was somewhere in here with me, as if I had heard the rustle not only in the dream, but in reality. My room was quiet and dark, the shutters tightly closed against the night. Trembling a little, I clicked on my bedside light, and the room sprang into focus, looking peaceful and ordinary, everything just as I had left it. I got up and went quietly to the door. I turned on the hallway light. Everything was quiet. Not sinister quiet. Ordinary quiet. No rustles, no footsteps, nothing but the gentle stillness of a sleeping house.
I went back to my room. I drank the glass of water I kept on the bedside table. I told myself I had to go back to sleep, or I’d never wake up in time to meet up with Daniel and Mick. Think of that. Think of nice things. Think of Daniel. Darling Daniel. Lie down. Keep calm. Count to a hundred. Count sheep. Whatever. Go back to sleep. Everything is fine. It was just a dream.
I never caught myself falling asleep again but when next I woke, the light was coming in sketchily through the cracks in the shutters. I got up and threw them open. It was a beautiful sunny morning. I looked at my watch, and panicked. Jeez, nearly nine o’clock! I was supposed to meet Daniel and Mick down at the car park at nine. I had a quick shower, flung on some shorts and a T-shirt and raced downstairs.
No-one was in the kitchen. I drank a glass of orange juice and snatched up a piece of bread with jam. I poked my head in at Freddy’s study. She was there, tapping away furiously on the computer.
She pushed her glasses up her nose and smiled at me. ‘Hi, Sylvie. Sleep well?’
‘Okay, I guess. Sorry, Freddy, I’m in a hurry. I’m meant to meet Daniel and Mick like, right now. We’re going out to look for UFOs.’
‘Wow. Should be fun. Glad you’ve made friends here, honey. You have a good day.’
‘Thanks, Freddy. I don’t know when I’ll be back, exactly. Probably not before dark.’
‘Sure. You have a good time. Claire’s out, too, on the film shoot. Won’t be back till late. Suits me. I’m on a roll today. See you.’ Her attention had already wandered off back to her work, so I left her to it and hurried to the car park.
Mick was already there, but not Daniel. Mick smiled at me. ‘You look a bit hot and bothered, Sylvie.’
‘Yeah. Thought I was late. Overslept a bit.’
‘Lucky you. I got woken up at the crack. Some stupid bird making a racket at the campsite.’
‘You’re sounding more and more Aussie,’ I said, laughing.
He grinned. ‘Comes back quick when you’re with a fellow sufferer.’ He opened the car door. ‘You ready, then?’
‘But Daniel?’
‘Sorry. Should have said straight off. He rang me first thing this morning. Said he couldn’t make it this morning. Something had come up.’
Gabriel was my first thought. He’s got worse. My second thought was, why hadn’t he rung me?I’d given him my mobile number. But, yeah, of course, I’d switched it off last night. Automatically, like I always do. I hate getting woken up by the phone. And I hadn’t switched it on this morning. In fact I’d been in such a panic that I hadn’t even picked it up when I raced out of the house. It must still be back in my room or wherever I’d left it last night.
‘Said he tried to reach you, but couldn’t. Said you mustn’t worry, everything was fine, he’d join us later. I told him where we’d be.’
‘Oh, okay.’ I felt uncertain, disappointed, but I didn’t want to disappoint Mick too. Daniel was going to join us later, after all.
‘Ready, then?’
‘Sure.’ I thought briefly then of fetching my mobile, just in case Daniel rang, but Mick was already in the car and revving the engine with an impatient air, and I decided not to bother. After all, he had Mick’s number. He must have given it to him yesterday when we made our date. If he needed to call, he’d call that. And besides I wasn’t sure exactly where my phone was. I have a bad habit of not always keeping track of it and have lost one or two of them in the past, much to Mum and Dad’s annoyance. It must still be in the clothes I’d worn yesterday, because it hadn’t been on the bedside table, or I’d have seen it when I woke up.
So I got in the car and we drove off and took the turn-off out of town. Mick seemed very cheerful despite having been woken up at ‘the crack’ and rattled on about the case he had been investigating. A few nights ago some local farmer had seen bright lights hovering in the night sky over the woods, and several other witnesses had also reported a kind of weird light effect in the sky during the day, a short distance away. That day had been overcast with heavy cloud but some sun and the witnesses reported a feeling that something hidden was hovering in the clouds, sending down waves of light in a kind of pattern. ‘It could just be the effect of sun rays refracted through cloud moisture,’ said Mick, ‘and normally we’d take little notice of that kind of thing, but taken in conjunction with the lights seen by the farmer, who’s a rock-solid witness.... It’s interesting, because we’ve checked and there was nothing that could have made the bright lights that night. No passing aeroplanes or helicopters, no lightning, no lights from town or discos or fireworks – it’s a remote place.’
‘You mean, you think it’s a Class D case?’ I said, interested despite my slight anxiety over Daniel.
‘Could be. Not sure yet,’ he replied.
‘But Mick, if it is a UFO–’
‘A UAP,’ he said, smiling. ‘Remember? Unidentified aerospatial phenomenon.’
‘Whatever. If it’s a UFO, I mean, actually if it’s a spaceship – what are they doing? Why would they hover above the woods? What are they looking for? What do they want?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s above my pay grade. Can’t answer that.’
‘Do you think they – do you think aliens feel friendly towards us?’
He smiled. ‘I have no idea. But I tend to think they can’t be unfriendly. They haven’t attacked us, have they? At least, not yet. Maybe one day...’
‘Don’t! That creeps me out. I don’t believe they exist.’
‘Believe it or not, Sylvie, it doesn’t matter. If they exist, they do, regardless of what you believe.’
‘You can say the same about anything,’ I said. ‘Angels, for instance.’
‘You can,’ he agreed. ‘But aliens are more likely than angels. In fact, I think that the phenomena people associated with angels in the past actually has to do with aliens. I think they’ve been visiting us a long time.’
‘Bull. If they’ve been visiting us for ages, why haven’t they made proper contact?’
‘Maybe they’ve tried to and we’ve just misinterpreted them because they’re at such a higher level of intelligence than we are and so it’s like an ant trying to understand a human. And that might explain their attitude to
us. We don’t go out of our way to kill ants, do we, unless they invade our territory or annoy us. Most people just ignore them most of the time. But some of us study them, observe them for scientific reasons. Maybe that’s how aliens feel about us. Because we don’t invade their territory or annoy them, why would they bother to attack us? Some of them could be curious about us on a scientific basis, and perhaps the rest don’t care. I don’t suppose that’ll change unless we manage somehow to get into alien territory. But I’d say that’s very, very unlikely at present.’
We’d reached a turn-off and were bumping down a woodland track. ‘You really have it all worked out, don’t you?’ I said.
Mick grinned. ‘I’ve thought about it, that’s all.’
‘Do you work full-time on it?’
‘Oh no. I’d like to one day but at the moment I just do freelance work for GEIPAN. Mostly, I’m at uni studying IT and I work part-time in a computer place in Toulouse.’ He looked sideways at me. ‘Yep, I’m afraid I’m a real geek. I suppose that rules me out.’
I stared at him. ‘What?’
He laughed. ‘Never mind. Just teasing. Tell me, you known that Daniel guy long?’
‘Er – no. I just met him the other day. In the cathedral.’
‘That place. It’s weird. Got a sinister atmosphere.’
‘Really? I didn’t feel that at all. I thought it was beautiful. What do you mean?’
‘I guess maybe I’m influenced by that MR James story, The scrapbook of Canon Alberic.You ever read it?’
‘No. Never heard of it.’
‘MR James was a writer of ghost stories early in the twentieth century,’ said Mick, turning into a rough parking area just off the track. ‘The scrapbook of Canon Albericis one of them. It’s set in St-Bertrand de Comminges. A guy goes there who’s interested in old books. He goes into the cathedral and this priest tells him about this strange cursed book. Anyway, it goes on a bit but the gist is there’s a kind of demon thing – an evil presence – in the cathedral, and it is out to get people...’
‘How can there be a demon thing in a cathedral?’ I asked. ‘That’s not logical. It’s like the last place they’d go. They’d be scared of God and stuff.’
‘It’s a story,’he shrugged.
‘Yeah, but a story’s got to make sense.’
‘But I think the church had somehow been corrupted. Wasn’t holy or whatever any more. Plus maybe it was a strong sort of demon. And cunning. In a church people would think they’d be safe. They’d drop their guard. It’d be the perfect place to attack them.’
‘Still can’t see it happening there. It’s a good sort of place,’ I said stubbornly, remembering Gabriel in that dazzle of light, and the first time I set eyes on Daniel.
‘Have it your own way,’ said Mick, smiling. ‘Okay. Now, here we are. This is not far from the place where the farmer saw the lights. We start off down this path...’
We went down the path he pointed out only a little way, then he stopped and pulled out his phone. ‘It’s got GPS,’ he explained, when he saw my puzzled look. ‘The place we’re heading to is off the path, and it isn’t easy to find your bearings otherwise.’
‘That’s so cool,’ I said, looking over his shoulder as the little map flashed up. Trust an IT guy to have the latest thing in iPhones or whatever it was. My phone was so basic, it didn’t even take photos. That’s because it was a replacement for a much more expensive one I’d lost. Mum and Dad had hit the roof and said I had to have the base model until I could look after my things properly. Parents!
‘Okay, this way,’ said Mick, and I followed him as he plunged into the wood.
It was easy at first, because there wasn’t much undergrowth, but soon the wood became thicker, the trees thinner, closer together. There were vines and thorns and tangled things. Then, a little to my alarm, Mick produced a kind of machete thing from his backpack and started slashing at the undergrowth, clearing a mini-path for us. It was surprising, I thought, how agile he seemed in here, sure-footed, not at all like my idea of your standard geek. He was more like a power bushwalker or explorer or something, and he seemed to be enjoying himself too. He was concerned for me as well – stopped a few times to ask me if I was okay, and of course I was hardly going to admit I wasn’t. Well, I was, but I did have a few scratches and things from bramble bushes and things like that, and I wished I’d worn jeans not shorts but there was nothing I could do about that right now so I was hardly going to whinge.
We finally emerged from the worst of the undergrowth into a kind of mini-clearing, surrounded by big trees. On the opposite side to us was a little path leading off into another part of the woods.
Mick said, ‘This is the place,’ and I stood looking around, trying to feel the atmosphere, as if the aliens – if it had been aliens – had somehow left a trace. I don’t know what I expected – burnt trees or grass, space junk, whatever – but it just felt like a clearing in the woods. Quiet, peaceful and remote.
I asked, ‘How come the farmer saw the lights? Why was he out here?’
‘His farm’s not far away, on the other side of the woods. Two of his cows had disappeared. There were rumours of a cattle thief. He decided to stay up and see if he could catch them in the act. When he saw the lights, he thought it might be them. So he went out looking, and came to this spot.’
‘What did he see?’
‘Just the lights. Hovering. A feeling of – of something up there. He realised it couldn’t be the thieves. He had no idea what it was. But he said he didn’t like it. There was a feeling about it – something inhuman, he said. He made sure to keep out of sight.’
I shivered. Suddenly, the clearing didn’t seem so ordinary any more. I could imagine it all too clearly. The dark night. The night-time woods. The bright lights, hovering. The feeling of being watched by something inhuman, unknown ... I said, ‘It must have been frightening.’
‘I think it was. And he doesn’t frighten easily. He’s one of those tough old farmers. Not imaginative, you know? Hard. Practical. But he knows what he saw, no question. He made a full statement of it to the police. I’ve checked out everything. I’ve come out here with him and got him to explain everything too. It seems genuine. Of course, the researchers back at GEIPAN need to go into it a bit more. Mine is just a preliminary finding.’
‘What about those other witnesses? The ones who saw the stuff in the day? Where was that place? Where I met you the other day?’
‘That’s right. I checked all that too but less thoroughly because I’m not sure if it really is a part of the same thing or just coincidence. It could be, you see. Come over here. I want to show you something.’
He had his back to me, crouching at the base of a tree, pointing at something – a silvery discolouration in the bark. I started to bend down to take a look, he started to get up to give me room, we cracked heads, his glasses flew off, I cried out, stumbled and tripped. He checked my fall and suddenly, I was in his arms, his face very close to mine, his eyes on mine, and I saw an expression in them that made my heart clench and my throat flutter. I said, ‘Mick, I don’t–’ and then I felt his arms tighten around me and a startled expression come into his eyes as he looked at something over my head. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’
He didn’t answer. He helped me to my feet and then I turned, and I saw...
Daniel! Daniel, standing as rigid as a statue, on the other side of the clearing, near the path. My mind flashed with lightning-bursts of confusion. What was he doing here? How had he got here? Why was he looking at me like that, with such cold, dead eyes?
Oh God. He must have come into the clearing just as Mick ... just as we – ‘Daniel!’ I called out. ‘Daniel! It’s not what you think!’ and pulling myself away from Mick, I tore across the clearing towards Daniel. But he didn’t wait for me. He turned swiftly, picked up the bike that had been lying in long grass at the entrance to the path, got on it, and cycled swiftly away. I ran after him, screaming his name, begging him to stop
, begging him to listen. But he did not stop. He did not turn around. By the time I reached the beginning of the path, he was already well down it, bumping over the hard ground at such a rate his teeth must have rattled. I ran after him for a way and then I saw it was no good and I’d never catch him up. I dropped to the ground like a stricken animal, sobbing, screaming, my whole being on fire with pain. He thought I was two-timing him with Mick. He thought I had betrayed him. I feared he wouldn’t believe it was all innocent. Just an accident. Just a misunderstanding. He wouldn’t understand. I’d lost him. Lost him forever. And I thought my heart would break, my whole body explode with the horrible, horrible pain of it.
Fox
I don’t know how long I was huddled there, crying and carrying on, but after a while I became aware of Mick’s presence, hovering uneasily but patiently just at the edge of my vision. I didn’t particularly want to speak to him, but as I slowly got a grip on myself, I began to feel embarrassed, not only because he’d seen me crack up like that but because, well, of what had happened just before Daniel had turned up. I mean, it had been an accident, my ending up in his arms, but there had been that look in his eyes – and I didn’t want him to get any ideas about that.
I took a deep breath, scrubbed at my swollen eyes, and scrambled to my feet. I looked at Mick. I took another deep breath and was about to speak when he interrupted me by saying, ‘I’m so sorry, Sylvie. It was my fault.’
That didn’t make me feel better. In fact, it made me feel worse. Small. Mean. I mumbled, ‘No, no. It’s okay.’
‘It’s clearly not okay,’ he said gently. ‘Look, maybe I can drive you straight back to St-Bertrand – we’ll catch up with him on the way. You can explain, properly. Or you could use my phone to call him. Maybe he’ll have his mobile with him. It’s worth a try.’
I swallowed. I couldn’t look at him. I said, ‘I don’t know if he will listen.’
‘Maybe not now. But give him time to cool down.’
Bright Angel Page 10