by Zoe Drake
“What does that mean?” asked Gareth.
“As I think we discussed before, Mr. Manning, people have been seeing lights in the sky for a very long time. The Bible is full of miracles, angelic visitations, aerial phenomenon, and, erm, close encounters. The Church has been debating the issue of life beyond this world and the ramifications of that for, oh, almost as long as the Church has existed. Come in here, and look at these.”
Standing up, Rose ushered them into the drawing room. As they entered, they saw and heard Jenny chatting animatedly to the empty air in front of her, but she stopped abruptly and turned to stare at her mother.
“Who are you talking to, darling?” Caroline asked.
The little girl stuck her thumb in her mouth and shook her head in answer.
“Girls will be girls,” Rose said with an admiring laugh, then gestured to the two other adults to view the prints adorning the vicar’s walls – paintings and etchings by Blake, Durer, Goya, and others Gareth didn’t recognize.
He stared at a print where a man, dressed in simple robes, cowered before a quartet of strange creatures that seemed to be composed of both the organic and inorganic. Framed within blazing wheels, four humanoid creatures hung in the air, each with the heads of three animals and one human crammed onto their shoulders. As well as those, each wheel had a number of glaring eyes studded along its rim. Gareth listened to the vicar’s voice, the cultured, resonant tones reeling off the names of Ezekiel, Jacob and Job, Old Testament names which triggered memories of Sunday School and dusty Bibles in Gareth’s mind.
“It’s all a bit Von Daniken really,” Caroline said quietly, as if to herself.
Gareth stared at the pictures, that seemed to be so bizarre but also hauntingly familiar, until he realized that the attention of his companions had swung to something else.
“Are these yours?” Caroline was asking.
“Yes,” admitted Rose. “I’m honored – or maybe embarrassed – to say they are.”
“You wrote these? Wow!”
Gareth turned around to look. On top of a small bookcase were about half a dozen copies of a black-bound hardcover, with the name of Michael Rose on the spine. Caroline passed a copy to him. The cover had an embossed gold cross against an ominous, dark horizon, and above it the title The Approaching Light was written also in gold.
“I didn’t realize you were a author,” Gareth said.
“Modesty forbids me from telling all and sundry. But, despite the ostentatious cover, it’s more a work of academic research than anything else, so please don’t think it’s some kind of ‘Pop-Christianity’ or anything. I spent some time studying the Manichean Heresy, and its effect on the early Church.”
“The what?”
“Most people haven’t heard of it. Shall we go back to the other room?”
Once more seated, the vicar drained his tea and leant forward in his armchair. “A heresy is, as you may know, a belief which originates inside the Church but later becomes condemned and expelled, mainly because of differences between the heretics and the prevailing liturgy at the time. To put it bluntly, if the new ideas seem too far beyond the mainstream orthodox view, then the people who support them get slung out.”
Rose cleared his throat. “The ideas of the Manicheans were, very briefly, that the Universe was an eternal battleground between God and the Devil, symbolized by light and darkness. The Devil held sway over the world of matter, therefore signifying that all matter, and flesh, was inherently corrupt, and something to be escaped from. The righteous person could do this by finding what they called the ‘pneumatic spark’, the light within. This is the part of the Godhead which resides inside us all. By prayer, the faithful could liberate the light within, burn away the gross shell of matter and the flesh, and stand revealed in innocence before God.”
There was a pause to take all of that in.
“Yes, that does seem a bit like a heresy,” Gareth commented.
“I’ve got a friend who’s Catholic, and what you said reminds me of the way she was brought up,” Caroline said. “The sense of guilt and sin about the body, and all that.”
“Very astute, my dear. That was the point I was trying to make in my book. You see, despite it being a heresy, some of the elements of Manichean philosophy have remained with us, creeping into the main body of Church law. It became part of the dogma of the Calvinists and the Puritans, it crept into the Protestant Work Ethic, and lingered in that sense of Catholic guilt and disgust about the workings of the body.”
Rose looked slightly embarrassed. “My argument in the book was, however, that the Church had been directed down the wrong path. The holy spirit may reside within the flesh, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the flesh. God made man and woman in his own image, and it is up to us to treat our bodies as the temples they are. It’s foolish to be ashamed of our natures. That’s why there’s so much sexual confusion among the clergy, if you ask me.”
“It could be dangerous going around saying things like that,” said Caroline.
The darkness of the vicar’s beard was broken by another grin. “Indeed, it could. Perhaps that’s why my book wasn’t reviewed very widely. But please, don’t take what I say too seriously. I might be a bit of a heretic myself, but at least I’m not the leader of a cult.” His grin softened, became a little wistful.
After eating the last of the Rich Tea biscuits the vicar had put out for them, Gareth and Caroline called a reluctant Jenny out of the drawing room, and prepared to brave the cold once more.
“One last thing,” said Gareth. “Do you know if anything else happened around here the night I crashed my car? Anything… odd?”
Rose gave him a quizzical look. “What do you mean by odd? We’ve been talking about all kinds of odd things today, Mr. Manning.”
“Well, for example… someone else seeing UFOs that night.”
Rose grinned and nodded. “I’ll speak to some of my parish. You never know what tales they might have to tell. God bless you, Gareth, Caroline, Jennifer… have a safe journey home.”
“I told you he’s a very interesting guy,” Gareth said later, strapping himself into the passenger seat.
Caroline gave him a sidelong glance. “He sounded a bit of a perv, if you ask me.”
“He’s a nice man!” Jenny shouted from the back. “He’s got lots of toys.”
“He certainly has, sweetie.”
“And he’s a friend of the angels, just like Gareth. Angels saved your life, didn’t they, Gareth?”
He turned round in his seat, and beamed at Jenny and then her mother. “Yeah,” he said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “Yeah, I guess they did, sweetheart.”
*
Thursday, March 21st
The buzzing at the other end of the line ceased, and a slurred male voice said, “B & H Transport, how can I help you?”
“Hello, my name is Gareth Manning, and I’d like to speak to a Mr. Nasirul Khatun, please.”
“Who?”
“Do you have a driver called Nasirul Khatun?”
“Err…” The voice hesitated, became audibly wary. “May I ask who you are, sir?”
“My name’s Gareth Manning, and I was involved in an accident six weeks ago, in the Fens. It was Mr. Khatun who found me, and I just wanted… to say thank you.”
The voice at the other end suddenly made a peculiar whooping noise. “Oh, I remember you! Nasirul found you one night and took you to hospital!”
“That’s right.”
“Well, how are you?”
“On the mend. I’m out of hospital.”
“Great! Well, I’m sorry you can’t talk to Nasirul at the moment, because he’s on his way back from France. I’ll tell him you called, though, he’ll be well happy. What did you say your name was again?”
After more congratulatory chat, Gareth put the phone down. He looked across his front room, and stared at his own reflection in the glass doors of the
rugby trophy cabinet.
Although the scars had healed, he thought he still looked different. The glass didn’t show him the lingering discoloration of the skin, and he couldn’t see whatever it was making his cheek throb from time to time, but he could tell he looked different. He’d been eating fairly normally, but he was thinner than before the accident. He had the sudden feeling his metabolism had burned away more than a few pounds of fat. Something else had gone.
Part of my personality?
Part of my life?
He sighed, then picked up the phone again, and the note with the number for Wisbech Police Station.
CHAPTER NINE
Tuesday, February 6th.
Ms. Chung Mae, clerical officer:
(transcript)
It was cold and there was rain in the air when me, Michelle and Selina left the pub. We were at the Artichoke Inn at Littleport, out celebrating Michelle’s birthday. It was about ten o’clock and we said goodnight at the corner of Market Street. Michelle and Selina went to catch a taxi, but I lived only a few streets away. So after they’d gone, I started walking.
I lifted my head to look around as I crossed the road that turned off Market Street, and that’s when I saw it. There was a funny light on the roof of the pub opposite.
Let me see… the light was about two-and-a-half feet across, I suppose. At first I was really shocked and I couldn’t move because I thought it was a much bigger object coming over the roof of the church, like a helicopter taking off, but it wasn’t. It was just… a light. Floating there. The color? It was white… and sort of semi-transparent. It looked ball-shaped because the edges were rounded, and I think they had a bluer tinge of white.
I couldn’t move and I was staring at it for – I don’t know – a minute, I guess. Then I started to cross the road for a better look and I got another shock because when I moved, it rolled along the roof, and it stopped, opposite the place where I’d stopped. Well, you could imagine how puzzled I was, and a little scared as well; so I didn’t cross the road but started to walk towards home, keeping an eye on that light on the other side of the street. It started moving again, to the edge of the roof, and then it floated through the air onto the next roof, which surprised me again because that building was a thatched cottage. It kept pace with me until it came to the edge of the cottage, and then it jumped another gap onto the roof of the next house, rolling along to the edge of the roof, keeping pace with me…
Well at this point I was really scared. My friends and my mum and dad had told me what to do if a man ever tried to follow me home, but this thing wasn’t a man, was it, but it was following every step I took! I tried to walk faster, but I tripped because of my heels and nearly fell, and when I looked up again the thing had gone. For some reason that scared me even more, so I crossed the road and started walking as fast as I could towards my house, which was past the next turning. I got further up the road and looked across to my right – and there it was again! On the roof of the house opposite me! It was like someone playing a joke, as if the light were hiding and then popping up again to say, “Here I am!”
It moved along the apex of the roof, like before, and floated onto the next house and the next, always keeping level with me, and when it got to the edge of the last house on that street, it rolled down towards the back of the building and dropped down out of sight.
So finally I got home, and I got inside, and my parents could see I was in a bit of a state. I told them what had happened and my dad put his coat on and walked with me back down the street, to see if we could spot it, but it had disappeared.
I’ve often thought about what it really was. I’ve read some books about weather, and they mention ball lightning like you said, Mr. Manning, but in the books they seem much smaller than what I saw.
Oh – and one more thing; it was completely silent. I can’t remember any noise it made. And the street was empty, there was nobody else around to see it, which was a shame. Ever since then, I can’t stop myself from looking up at the roof of that house when I walk down Market Street at night, because you never know, perhaps I might see it again. Next time I might find out what it really is… but somehow I don’t think I will, will I?
Mr. Thomas Paston
Retail Area Manager
SparkRite Electrical Stores
(transcript)
Let me tell you about the first time I saw a UFO. It was last year, one night in August, and I was on my bike. I was coming back from the local Community Centre at Waterbeach, where there’d been a meeting – I won’t bore you with the details. What I saw was a dark red ball hanging in the sky… and it wasn’t the sun, of course, it was around nine-thirty and too late for that. It definitely wasn’t the moon, and although I was cycling near Marshalls Airport, I could tell it wasn’t a plane. Also, I checked afterwards and there are no night flights from that airport. Anyway, when I saw it I was really surprised. I could tell right away that it was – well, you know – out of the ordinary. I got off my bike, leant it against a lamppost and took a pretty good look at the thing in the sky.
It wasn’t really a light. It looked more like a physical object with its own light coming from inside it, a kind of luminescence. It wasn’t that high up; about thirty degrees from the horizon, and perfectly stationary. It didn’t flash or have any winking lights around it. I stood there for about two minutes, I think, long enough to have a really good look. I can still see it now, if I close my eyes; I can remember it perfectly. Have you ever noticed those things that float in front of your eyes, like they’re swimming around inside your eyeballs? It was kind of like that. There were… veins… running through the thing, like it was… organic. It reminded me of looking at a blood cell under a microscope.
When I turned my head and looked up the road I saw an old man walking his dog, about five hundred yards away. I got the idea of asking him if he could see it too, so I started walking towards him. As I got closer, he turned and walked down a driveway – it was his house, and he went inside. I was too embarrassed to knock on the door and ask him if he’d seen anything. So that was the only possible witness, I suppose. After he went into the house, I looked at the sky again, and the thing had disappeared.
That was the first time. There were incidents, soon after that; they were things that could be put down to my imagination, to be honest, but the most dramatic event happened in November. Now I’m going to tell you this, and you’ll have to bear with me because it sounds crazy and I know what you’ll think… but this is what happened and I swear, it’s absolutely true.
I suppose I’d been trying to contact them subconsciously. For about a month I’d been reading about UFOs, I’d read a lot of magazines, and books, and watched some TV documentaries. So one day I was driving up the M1, on a lovely sunny afternoon, about a few miles outside Bishop’s Stortford. My mind was… wandering… I was thinking about the things that I’d seen, and – I can’t believe I’m actually telling you this, Gareth – I said to myself, if those things have been following me because they’re aware of me for whatever reason, then perhaps I can transmit a message. Transmit something to whoever or whatever was hanging around me. So I said, in my mind, if you’re aware of me, if you’re listening – can you give me a sign? Can you take the wheel – turn it slightly, to let me know you’re there?
At the same time I thought to myself, Tom, you’re going barmy – but the next thing I knew, the steering wheel was really twisting in my hands, all the way round side to side, left to right and back again, and then I let go.
And the car drove itself.
As sure as I’m sitting here, the car drove itself along the motorway, round the bends, changing direction. The car went around the curves independently; my hands were off the wheel, and I was getting very hot and bothered because that’s when I knew it was no joke, there was something serious going on. I was operating the foot pedals – but they were steering the car.
I sat there with sweat pouring down my face and
chest – until I thought, that’s enough. I panicked and grabbed the wheel – and the car was under my control again. Whatever had been driving it was gone.
Did I tell anyone? Only my wife. She’s very tolerant, so whenever I go on about things or get on my high horse she nods her head and says “Yes, Tom.” She doesn’t get too involved. But after that incident, I was in a state of shock and I told her what happened. She ended up shocked as well; she said I could have been killed. Somehow… I don’t think so. I don’t think they would have let me die.
Who are they? Well, I don’t think they come from our solar system, or even our galaxy. They’re very advanced, obviously… but not so advanced that they can’t relate to us. I think that they have feelings pretty similar to ours.
What gets me most is the sign they gave me. I was holding the steering wheel, but they were moving it. That’s the moment when I felt I had personal contact with the forces reaching out, and now, because of that, Gareth, I know something; I know they exist. I feel changed, in a way. I feel… privileged. If they were to land on Earth now, right here outside this café, I wouldn’t be scared. Because I know… that they know that I know. I don’t think I’m in any danger… and they know that I’m no danger to them.
Tuesday lunchtime.
Gareth had started on the task Bennings had persuaded him to share. He’d gone to the Littleport home of a secretary in her mid-twenties, and then to the Ely office of an electronics store manager, with the questionnaires provided by Littlewood in his briefcase.
“The interviews have all been set up, and they’re really keen to talk,” Bennings had promised. “All that’s needed is the manpower, the people to travel around and ask the questions.”
On his visits, Gareth had – to his relief – found the interviewees lucid, well-balanced and very down-to-earth individuals. They weren’t fanatics in any way, and they didn’t have a particular point to argue; one thing they both expressed was their relief in talking about their experiences, because they usually had to be very reserved and circumspect about what they said.