Cold Skies: A Psychological Thriller

by Zoe Drake

  Gareth himself had felt remarkably cheerful and free of sarcasm for the whole morning. Perhaps his spirits had been bolstered by the eye-opening testimony of the witnesses… or perhaps it was the supple and stretched feeling he had after last night’s rugby coaching back at Impington Village College… or the flirting last night with Carol, the barmaid at the Artichoke, which had almost turned into asking for a date until Gareth had stopped himself and left. For Caroline’s sake.

  So, with a smile on his face and a briefcase full of UFO questionnaires, Gareth drove north out of Ely and towards the village of Witchford, and the most unusual interviewee so far; a priest.

  The address on the note Bennings had handed him was the Church of St Peter, Witchford. Entering the village, he drove up the main road – which was surprisingly long – until the church eased into view around a slight bend.

  He parked the car, and crossed the road to the vicarage gate. The slanting winter sun flooded his line of vision, and he squinted to look across the front of the churchyard to see the name above the door. Yes, this was it.

  As he studied the church’s exterior a spark of recognition kindled inside him. He marched back to the car, slid over the driver’s seat to retrieve his briefcase, and fished inside it for what he was looking for. Returning to the church, he compared it with one of the photographs he slipped from the envelope and held firmly to prevent the wind plucking it away. There was no doubt about it; this was the same building. Somebody had sent him a photo of this church.

  Walking down the driveway, Gareth moved slowly to the left along the fork in the path, around the side of the church. He looked at the tawny weather-beaten details of the walls, observed the play of light and shade along the escarpments and perpendicular windows. Every few seconds he glanced down at the photo and the odd nimbus of light that made it so apparently special. Gareth tried to see in his mind an alien craft hovering above the church, spinning and signaling.

  When he reached the back of the churchyard, he looked soberly around at the graves sloping away from him down a short hill. He ambled slowly among them, reading the names and dates. A number of them held fresh flowers, the petals rippling in the wind. With a mild sense of alarm Gareth noticed that many of the headstones were cracked and leaning over to one side. Some of the plots looked slightly concave, as if the ground were subsiding. Perhaps the peaty soil of the Fens was slowly sucking its former inhabitants even deeper under the surface.

  Having reached the end of the graveyard and a wire fence that looked out onto open fields beyond, Gareth observed the somber clarity of the stone walls in the mid-morning light. What was it Bennings had called those things? Spook lights? No, corpse candles, that was it. Corpse candles. Ghostly, flickering lights, hovering above the graves like attendant spirits. Standing in a country churchyard, with so many reminders of his own mortality, he could easily forgive anyone for coming up with names as fanciful as that.

  “Hello?” came a call from the top of the driveway. Gareth looked up to see a waving figure at the gate to the vicarage, a long dark coat draped over a navy blue sweater. “Are you looking for me?”

  Gareth trudged up to meet him halfway. As he got closer, he took in the man’s tall figure, the bearded face, and the white dash of dog collar above the sweater. “My name is Michael Rose, I’m the Minister of this parish. Are you Mr. Manning?”

  “I am, indeed.”

  “Why don’t you come inside? You could probably do with something to warm you up.”

  Tea with the vicar, thought Gareth. Why not?

  A little later, although Gareth had polished off most of the pot of tea, and sat inside a living room warm as toast, the observation report remained half-finished. The Minister was being strangely vague about whatever he had made the appointment about.

  “You might think it’s unusual that a clergyman should be talking about such things at all,” Michael Rose was saying, as he steered Gareth around another of those unexpected bends in the conversation. “Well, in the past, I was a nonconformist priest in the Anglican church in Scotland. That’s where I was ordained. You could take the nonconformist part literally, I suppose.”

  “Yes, people might expect you to be more down to Earth–”

  No. Gareth stopped himself and rephrased the statement. “I mean… clergymen are always warning people against superstition, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, but where do superstitions end and miracles begin?”

  Rose had a rhythmic, carefully modulated voice, as if he had been rehearsing this conversation the way he presumably rehearsed his sermons. The features of his face – eyes, nose, and ears, and widow’s peak of receding hair – were accentuated by the paleness of his skin and the darkness of his beard. “After all,” he continued, “there is a long tradition of prophets and other spiritual leaders seeing omens in the sky.”

  “Yes, in those days they’d call them angels, wouldn’t they?”

  Another mistake. The Minister’s face was momentarily blank, but then he gave a charming smile. “Which days would those be, Mr. Manning?”

  “Well, you know… Biblical times… and there are parts of the Bible…” I’m making a right hash of this, Gareth thought. His left hand rustled Littlewood’s questionnaire in indecision.

  Oh, stuff it. Get to the point.

  “Minister,” he asked directly, “do you believe in UFOs?”

  The bearded man almost winced. “What a question! Well, I don’t think this is about belief. If a person sees something, it’s not a case of believing it or not. They either saw something or they didn’t, and they try to interpret the event in terms of their experience and understanding.” He leaned forward in the armchair. “So what do you believe in, Mr. Manning?”

  Gareth was stunned into silence, too shocked at the vicar’s sudden question to even take offence. “You mean – do I believe in UFOs?” he eventually stammered. “Or – am I a Christian?”

  The vicar sank back in his chair, as if in retreat. “Oh, forgive me, I shouldn’t be asking you that. You’re my guest and I’m being impolite. It’s you who should be asking the questions to me.”

  “No, that’s all right,” Gareth said, calm and no longer defensive, prepared to air his views. What would the lads in the locker room have said?

  “I’m afraid I’m not a churchgoer, but I believe in some sort of divine spirit, if you like. In my job, I use my eyes. I work with the light. I’m looking at things all the time. The things I see tell me that the world we live in, and the bodies we have – well, it’s a bit much to try to explain all of this by genetics. I’m not religious, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone or something made all of this, and the world is not some kind of biological accident.”

  The minister nodded vigorously in agreement. “Mmm. Mmm. I do take your point. You’ve just described the case for Intelligent Design. The works of Our Lord can be seen all around us, and we behold His wonders everywhere. And yet… perhaps there are some of the Lord’s works that we are not aware of. Not under ordinary circumstances, at least. Do you remember what I said about superstitions and miracles?”

  “Uh… yes.”

  “Well, let’s assume that the miracles mentioned in the Old and New Testaments actually happened. Sometimes they happened in the full view of a great number of people, such as Jesus distributing the loaves and the fishes. But sometimes, they happened in the dark. Away from the public view. Miracles in the shadows, that make their consequences felt later on. The Nativity, for example. The birth of Jesus, hidden in a barn with a farmer’s beasts, and the countryside around lit only by the miraculous star. And much later… the resurrection of Jesus. An empty tomb, and a vanished corpse. Another miracle with nobody to witness it.”

  “I’m working with a guy who says he knows what UFOs really are,” Gareth blurted out.

  The vicar stared at him for a long moment, and then Gareth went on to gabble as best as he could through the ‘earthlights’ theory. Something
– either the warmth in the living room or the conversation itself – was making him feel quite light-headed.

  “I think what you’re talking about there are nature’s miracles,” the vicar responded, after Gareth had stumbled to the end of his explanation. “I think I understand what you and your colleague are getting at. You know, last year I watched a TV program about the crop circles that appear overnight from time to time. They had this scientist chappie on the program who said that of course it wasn’t aliens using the fields as landing sites, or obscure messages from the spirit world, or anything like that. He reckoned that it was a previously unknown force of nature, like a kind of stationary whirlwind, leaving a mark in the fields. Well, some people might be disappointed and say ‘I wish they were made by spaceships landing and taking off’, but if instead of that there might be forces of nature still beyond our knowledge and understanding, unknown forces that might be hiding in the sky above us… doesn’t that strike you as miraculous?”

  “Above us… oh! Just a minute.” Gareth fumbled in the briefcase, and produced the envelope. “Would you mind taking a look at these?”

  He slid the prints out and passed them to Rose. The vicar fanned them out on the coffee table, adjusted his glasses, and stared at them for a long time.

  “That’s our church,” he said finally, tapping one of the prints with a long finger.

  “Yes,” Gareth said, nodding. “I noticed it when I arrived. Those lights above the steeple… do they resemble the things that you saw?”

  Rose picked up the photo and held it closer to his face. “Mmmm. Well, I never. That kind of thing is hard to forget, so I can tell you yes, they look very similar. My, my! Someone must have been lucky enough to have a camera with them.”

  “Someone shared your vision,” said Gareth.

  The vicar put down the picture and grinned at him. “How true, Mr. Manning.”

  “Does the other church look familiar to you?”

  Rose picked up the other photographs and went through the same process of scrutinizing them. “Yes. Yes it does, actually. This one’s quite famous around here. It’s St. Wendreda’s, in the town of March, not far from here.”

  Later, Gareth found himself at the door leading out of the vicarage, stepping out once more into a wind eager to slap at his face.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Manning. Have a safe journey.”

  Michael Rose stood upon the threshold, fixing Gareth with his stare. “With every step, I enter the kingdom of Heaven; every moment is sacred.”

  The minister was quoting, but Gareth had the sudden inexplicable thought that he wasn’t quoting from the Bible.

  Then the door closed, and Gareth was in front of his car, listening to the familiar chirp as he switched off the alarm. Perhaps the feeling inside his head was a headache caused by the overheated living room; or perhaps it was the nagging suspicion that he had missed something, some opportunity to ask questions… but he had no idea what those questions could have been.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tuesday, February 6th: 2:30 pm.

  “The name of the church is St Wendreda, in the town of March,” Michael Rose had said. “It’s not difficult to find. I think someone in your profession won’t be disappointed.”

  After driving into March and buying a street map, Gareth eventually found the church in question. As he turned the car into the indicated cul-de-sac, he studied the building in front of him. He scanned the tawny 14th-century stone with its high perpendicular windows, and glanced at the photograph lying on the passenger seat. No doubt about it: he’d found the second church.

  The main door was locked, but taped to the dark wood was a note saying – Visitors who wish to see the church: the key is held at Borrow’s Newsagent’s. Please ask for Mrs. Borrow.

  Gareth duly reported to the newsagent’s on the corner of the cul-de-sac, and was presented with the largest metal key he’d ever seen; it looked like something out of a kid’s picture dictionary. Walking back to the church, he unlocked the doors with a heavy klunk and let himself in.

  Once inside, he felt again that peculiar sensation that only came from standing inside a church. When he was a child, taken by his mother to reluctantly attend Sunday School, Gareth always noticed that it felt cooler in the church’s interior. As he got older, Gareth found out it was due to the heat being reflected away by the stone walls; but he was still touched by the cool, hushed atmosphere. Calm, tranquil, and somehow holding an air of expectation.

  He raised his eyes to the roof; suddenly, the church was filled with the unheard flutter of dozens of wings.

  Gareth found himself looking at a double-hammerbeam roof, holding dozens of carved wooden angels at almost every angle and junction. They roosted like birds on the corbels, the beams and the wallboards. Some carried musical instruments – horns, harps and organs – and some carried human figures (maybe saints) on their backs. Some even nested in the apex, gazing at each other from opposite sides.

  The effect was breathtakingly beautiful.

  Gareth had left the camera in his car; but even if he went back and got it, he realized regretfully that the dynamic range of the interior was beyond the scope of any lens he carried with him. The intense light coming through the high, narrow windows would illuminate the angels on the north side but throw the rest of the roof into darkness.

  Instead of leaving to get his camera, he walked down the aisle to the nave and studied the roof from all angles. He could tell it was a remarkable architectural achievement. Below the silent host, the wood had weathered so unevenly that it was patched all over with rosy highlights.

  To his right, the afternoon sun set the stained glass windows ablaze. Gareth walked up to it, peering closely; a figure – obviously Jesus Christ – stood in the center, surrounded by a golden sunburst. The inscription that unfurled itself across the pane read–

  IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE, THERE ARE MANY MANSIONS: IF IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU.

  The heavy oak door that Gareth had entered by suddenly opened with a loud creak. Feeling self-conscious, Gareth called, “Hello there!”

  A short, balding man in dark clothes, with a long wooden pole in his hand, stepped into the chancel. “Hullo, bor,” he said.

  “I just came in for a look around,” Gareth said. “Do you work here?”

  “Do I work here?” The shorter man smiled sarcastically, and tilted his head to one side. “Do I work here?” Leaning over, he studied the floor by Gareth’s feet.

  What is it with these Fenspeople? Gareth asked himself silently. Aloud, he began to ask a few questions. The verger – as Gareth assumed that’s who he was – answered in a soft Swaffham accent. He’d worked at the church for six years. No, the Minister was not around at the moment. No, he hadn’t heard or seen any ‘unusual activity’ around the church – but yes, he did know the stories of the will-o-the-wisps, and the moving lights out on the Fenlands.

  “Tricky little waarmin, they are,” the verger muttered. “They’ll lead yew inta all kinds of trouble. So they’re back agin, are they? It don’t surprise me. Nothing surprises me these days, my old booty. Yew’ll need a safe-keep, yew will.”

  Gareth blinked. “I’ll need a what?”

  “A safe-keep, bor. Suffin’ to carry on yew to stop the waarmin leadin’ yew hither and thither. Hazel twigs’ll do the trick. Or Bible verses wrutten on a few scraps o’ paper. Best is a four-leafed clover, though, tied with the hair of a ded’un.”

  Gareth tried to smile as warmly as he could. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He thanked the verger and left him to his chores. He returned the key to the newsagent and drove off. St. Wendreda’s Church, with its host of angels concealed within, beating their wings in infinite slow motion above an enigmatically smiling verger, receded in the rear view mirror.

  *

  It was only a short drive to Ely, and Gareth still had time on his hands before he met Littlewood, so he decided to have a
tour of the city itself. He’d been to Ely a few times before, on business – but he’d never bothered to take a good look at the cathedral. Now, as he was in full ‘church-inspection’ mode, he parked the car, bought another street plan, and made his way to Minster Place.

  As he stood at the far end of the small public park and appraised the cathedral’s façade, the first thing that hit him was the sheer sense of scale. It was the same feeling he’d had seeing Notre Dame on his first trip to Paris. His eyes followed a weary-looking female shopper crossing in front of the stone arch, and mentally compared her figure to the huge monolithic structure she was framed against. It was as if the cathedral was too big for this world; its solid, bulky paleness dominated and distorted its surroundings, putting itself in a dimension removed from the townspeople walking past on ground level. If looked at for too long, the building was awe-inspiring… in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

  Gareth blinked and told himself he was looking at a postcard photograph held in his hands, and at once the pressure was removed. The cathedral had become an object of manageable dimensions. Shaking his head, he decided to have a look inside.

  He bought a guidebook, and walked along the nave to the section of the floor beneath the Cathedral’s pride and joy – the Octagon Gallery and Lantern. Standing directly beneath the structure in the central tower, he tilted his head back and aimed his gaze upwards. Above him, the Lantern lay open like a flower. Suspended in the middle floated the life-size figure of ‘Christ in Majesty’, as the guidebook called it – with the right hand raised in blessing… or summoning… or commanding. In the roof-spaces around the Messiah, angels hovered on the brink of life, glowing in their rich medieval colors in the last of the day’s sunlight.