Cold Skies: A Psychological Thriller

by Zoe Drake

  Several times he felt like he was falling, and his whole body spasmed, his eyes snapping open.

  He was woken sometime later by an overwhelming dryness in his throat, and an itching feeling in his groin. Have to get out of bed, he thought. Have to go to the bathroom.

  But he had a headache… he couldn’t move… and there was too much going on in the bedroom, anyway. They were shining torches through his windows and the beams of light crisscrossed the room. Even with his eyes shut, it was too bright.

  The acrid smell in his nostrils set off alarm bells in his mind. What’s that? Something burning? There could be a fire inside the house. But he couldn’t get up, he couldn’t move…

  There was a fire.

  The landing was on fire and the flames were creeping under the door, and he still couldn’t move.

  No, it wasn’t a fire; it was only the landing light from outside. He’d forgotten to switch the light off.

  Everything was all right.

  His eyes opened and closed spasmodically and he let out a strangled grunt. The sweat on his skin was freezing cold. His muscles were rigid, as if all of them had gone into cramp at the same time. Something shone through his bedroom window like a helicopter searchlight, but there was no noise of any engines.

  Gareth forced his eyes open to their fullest extent as the beam of light struck the bed and slowly moved down his torso, down to his feet. He tried to cry out, but could only make a slow gurgling in his throat.

  Then the light blinked out. The window was solid with blackness.

  But he still couldn’t move.

  … And now something was creeping under the door…

  … Light, burning like liquid fire… light flowing up the inside of the door, licking the wood, seeping into the chill air of the room. Light swirling around in the air like oil trying to mix with water.

  Gareth still could not scream, could not move, every limb was as rigid as an iron bar.

  There is… something… in… the house…

  Shadows moved in the bright gap between the bottom of the door and the carpet on the landing. There was a presence. He felt it in the prickling of his hair, every follicle charged with electricity. The blankets crackled against his cold, clammy skin. He almost expected to see sparks fly from his fingertips.

  Everything… is… happening… so… slowly…

  The presence behind the door could not be seen, but it could be felt through the wood and plaster. Don’t come in. It was part of the light, it was the light, and the light belonged to it. Don’t come in and Gareth knew it’s eyes were burning darkly like a photographic negative as it calmly and dispassionately watched him through the door get out of my house if it entered the bedroom, it would fry him like a finger jammed into a wall socket Oh Jesus I can’t move don’t come any closer don’t come in OH GOD NO OH JESUS IT’S OPENING THE DOOR NO DON’T OPEN THE DOOR DON’T OPEN THE DOOR

  … and the neighbors were awoken by a series of screams, the like of which Oakington had not heard in all of its suburban life.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Wednesday, February 7th

  The next morning, there was no hurry to get up; the Skywatch was scheduled to start later that evening, so everyone had arranged to get as much rest as possible during the day.

  As Gareth leisurely showered, he realized he was quite looking forward to the Skywatch now. He’d been infected by Bennings’ enthusiasm; the explorer of mysteries, the investigator of the unknown. The discoverer of a new scientific principle. Ladies and gentlemen – the Bennings-Manning Effect!

  Stepping out of the shower, Gareth felt a sudden blood pressure headrush and sat on the edge of the bathtub to let it pass.

  What utter bollocks.

  Gareth was never going to see a UFO, never in his life. Things like that just didn’t happen. Not to him. The best he could hope for was a check from an American college with more money than sense.

  He drove out to a greasy spoon café on the outskirts of Ely to have a late lunch of liver and onions, then went back to his Oakington home to pick up more film. He kept extensive supplies all over the house, something for every photographic opportunity, including a low-light environment. After calling some friends and catching some TV news, he loaded up his car, checked his equipment bag one more time, and started the drive back to Witcham.

  On the road leading out of Oakington, he slowed down, parked at a lay by, and lifted one of his cameras to his eye. The lay by was next to the dressage school that he always passed on his way out of the village. There, grazing peacefully by the hedge near the road and idly flicking their tails, were two horses.

  Muybridge.

  The name, as usual, flashed into his mind. Edward (or Eadweard) Muybridge was a personal hero of Gareth’s. His research had led to the development of the ‘zoopraxiscope’ – an instrument that would eventually evolve into the cine-projector. Muybridge must have started his career out of a fascination for the visual image, as Gareth had. But Gareth didn’t – and, he knew, never could – share Muybridge’s capacity for obsession.

  Using a battery of electrically triggered cameras placed along a racetrack, the old Victorian gent had taken thousands of photographs of horses in motion. Horses running, all frozen in time, separated by milliseconds. “What was the point?” people had asked at the time, as they gazed at the images covering his walls and display boards at exhibitions. He answered that he wasn’t only demonstrating the effectiveness of the cameras. He and his sponsor were trying to prove that when running, it was physically possible for a horse to have all four hooves off the ground – simultaneously – once the horse reached a certain speed.

  Finally, after years of such documentation, Muybridge got the proof he was looking for. The pictures were later copied as silhouettes onto a disc, and became one of mankind’s first successful attempts at creating a moving image.

  As Gareth watched the movements of the horses in the paddock, he realized once more that he would never be able to feel an overwhelming passion like that. He could never devote his life to any one thing except a wife and kids, sometime in the future. But Littlewood and his cronies were a different matter. Okay, so searching for UFOs wasn’t a scientific obsession in the way that Muybridge’s was; Littlewood’s habit of spending a large part of his life looking for ET might set him apart from most other people slightly more well adjusted to reality. But, hey… at least it was harmless, and it got him and his nerdy friends through the day without a phone call to the Samaritans.

  He finally put down the camera and checked his watch. The horses showed no interest in moving; so Gareth did.

  A reed-cutter wind was blowing across the hollow darkness of Farmer Winslow’s fields as Gareth and Bennings met again at the barn – this time by moonlight, at 11pm.

  “Hey! How’re you doing?” Bennings called cheerily.

  “Oh. Well, you know.” A sniff, and a forced shrug. “As well as can be expected, for someone who’s going to stay up all night in the freezing cold.”

  “It’s not going to be that cold! I’ve got the generator going.” Indeed, that was the machine inside the barn; Gareth could hear a buzzing like a swarm of angry bees. “The other guys should be turning up sometime soon.”

  “I still don’t see why I have to stay at a B & B. I mean, I’m grateful for the expenses and everything, but… Cambridge isn’t that far away.”

  “Yeah, I guess not, but… put it down to one of my little peculiarities. I like having everyone within a short radius. If something happens, we can get together as quickly as possible. Let’s check the equipment, okay?”

  Once inside, Gareth found the barn was indeed getting warmer; a necessary refuge during the Skywatch. He started by unzipping the camera kit bag and taking out the pieces he intended to use.

  “This is the best film for this kind of job,” he told Bennings. “Fuji 400 – very slow. I’ve got some Ektachrome as well. I’m using an SLR with interchangeable l
enses; the one on here has a focal length of 200mm, good depth of field. Tripod – to get rid of camera shake. I’ll set the aperture at manual – but if it’s open for long enough, you know there’ll be star trails, don’t you?”

  “This isn’t astronomy, Gareth. I think you’ll be working on a pretty short exposure time. We may be able to use light sources, too.”

  “All right. Here’s a couple of other things that’ll come in handy… This is an army surplus range finder. It’ll tell you how far away an object is. Won’t tell how big it is though, I’m afraid.”

  “Excellent. So, er… what’s the hair dryer for?”

  “To keep condensation off the lens.”

  Bennings grinned at him. “You know, you’re a handy guy to have around.”

  Gareth grinned back. “That’s what the girls keep telling me.”

  Laughing, Bennings looked over the rest of the equipment on the bench. “Okay now… let me go through the procedure, if – and this is a big if – we get a shot of anything. Any film has to go through a series of stringent tests, to make sure we’re not faking it. We send the whole roll of film, still in the camera, to NASA.”

  “Hey, hold on! Are you sending my camera to the States? I’m going to need that–”

  “You’ll be reimbursed, Gareth, with a new camera straight away, or the cash to buy the same model. We can do that before we send it. I might take it over myself on the plane, for added security. But NASA is the best in the world for this kind of thing – they’ve got a computerized enhancement process that you wouldn’t believe. They’ll transfer the negs onto CD-ROMs and send them to five different researchers. And, of course, I’ll also be examining the negs using the labs at Midwestern.”

  “You don’t leave anything to chance, do you?”

  “I certainly don’t, my friend. I’ve got too much invested in this project. Here’s another little insurance policy.” He lifted a small square device off the bench.

  “A Polaroid camera?”

  “Yup. It is incredibly difficult to tamper with these things. Once an exposure’s taken, that’s it, there’s no chance of a double exposure or any other shenanigans. If we see anything, I’ll start snapping away with this. You said you have one, too.”

  “Yeah, in the bag.”

  “Great.”

  “Look, speaking of hardware,” Gareth said, lowering his voice. “Have you seen those UFO detectors that Brian and his little fan club are carrying?”

  A wry smile. “Yes, I have. You can get them mail order for twenty dollars.”

  “Are they for real?”

  Bennings rolled his eyes. “Aw, who the hell knows? They’re designed to detect rapidly changing electromagnetic fields. So yeah, if a UFO were emitting those, and it probably would be, then the gizmo would detect it. But you’d have to be standing right next to the UFO to set it off, which kind of defeats the object. Standing next to a TV set would set it off too, for that matter.”

  “Speak of the devil,” muttered Gareth. “I think I can hear Brian beaming down from the mother ship right now.”

  They opened the doors and peered outside the barn, to see a small convoy approaching slowly up the lonely path. Brian’s Ford Mondeo, with the students crammed into a Vauxhall Astra and a Toyota Corolla behind it. They parked at the edge of the field, and quickly ran inside out of the wind, joining Gareth and Bennings.

  The barn filled with hubbub as the students stood by the heater to test the warmth it was emitting, muttering and joking about what they’d all volunteered to do. Gareth watched Bennings edge away, back to something he’d left spread out on the desk. Maps. Sheets of paper displaying statistics and calculations. The shining metal case of his laptop that he’d opened up. Gareth moved closer to peer over the American’s shoulder.

  “You’ve really gone to a lot of trouble, haven’t you?”

  Bennings turned to give a sly wink. “Leave it to your Uncle Doug, m’boy.”

  Gareth picked up one of the papers on the bench. It seemed to be an analysis of soil types in that part of the Fenlands, and he started reading it aloud.

  “Wormholes!” One of the students exclaimed, apparently in response to something Gareth had said. “So that’s where they’re coming from!”

  All of Littlewood’s colleagues burst into laughter.

  Turning away from the laptop and waving for attention, Bennings gestured to the folding chairs. “Okay, guys! Let the Skywatch commence!”

  It could be colder, Gareth tried to persuade himself silently. It could be snowing.

  Four folding chairs were stationed outside the barn doors, each one facing a different point of the compass. They had chosen to watch by rota; four people outside, three in the barn to keep warm. Each watcher was armed with a camera – along with sandwiches, and a thermos flask of hot tea or coffee.

  “God, it’s freezing!” One of the students complained.

  “Well, we can’t wait until the summer comes, can we?” Littlewood replied patiently. “The Visitors will have gone back by then.”

  Later, on his break, Gareth was surprised to find a bag of sports equipment at the back of the barn; maybe left behind after a recent Young Farmers outing.

  “Now this is more like it!” Gareth took a football out of the bag and went outside when his break had finished. He balanced it expertly on his instep, then bounced it up and down, keeping it in the air and off the ground.

  “Yeah! Some physical exercise! That’ll keep us all warm.” Benning threw himself into a rapid series of physical jerks. “C’mon, everyone! Let’s do what the Japanese do every morning! Ichi! Ni! Gambatte, you assholes!”

  The others declined. After a fierce bout of running on the spot, Bennings assumed a peculiar crouching position and slowly extended one hand.

  “I was on a lecture tour of China last year, and one morning I was woken up by a whole load of chanting,” Bennings said, all eyes upon him as he continued his slow maneuvers. “When I looked outside the hotel window, I saw dozens of men and women, all doing this freaky slow-motion dance.”

  “Tai chi?” asked one of the students.

  “You got it.” Lifting up one leg as if to step over an imaginary hurdle, Bennings stopped and remained frozen, one foot poised in the air.

  “So you joined them?” Gareth ventured.

  Bennings resumed his usual standing position, muscles slouching back into shape. “Nah. Screw that. It was too damn Oriental for me.”

  “Do you mind if I take a look at that?” Gareth asked.

  At 2 am, he was spending a period off-duty in the barn, huddled up in front of the heater with Andy, one of the students. Andy had been cleaning the lens of an expensive-looking SLR camera, and he carefully passed it over to Gareth’s gloved hands. Gareth cast an expert eye over it. Pentax K1000, with a 15-30mm native glass lens.

  “What kind of film?” Gareth asked.

  “Kodak TMax P3200.” Andy was a tall lad wearing blue jeans, black trainers, and a black corduroy coat with a fleecy sheepskin lining and collar. Silver bangles were coiled around both his wrists. He had a pale, pointed face made even more so striking by the dark rings around his eyes that could have been touches of make-up. “It’s panchromatic, but Dr. Bennings is using color film, so that’s OK. I’m after a high-quality image, even if it is in different tints of gray.”

  Gareth nodded. “That must have set you back a bit.”

  “I love photography,” Andy said firmly, “and I love taking night pictures. It makes me angry that it’s so difficult to see the night sky these days. I mean, London’s a great place to live, but it’s got no night sky at all. You can’t see the stars, and the sky never gets really dark. It fades between bright blue and dark gray, and there’s a kind of sickly glow around the tower blocks, but it’s never as black with the blackness of space that it should have.”

  That was exactly the conclusion Gareth had reached a few years ago. “You’re right, that’s the problem
with big cities. My brother lives in Buxton up in the Pennines, and that’s got fantastic night skies.”

  “Yes, clean mountain air and so many stars,” Andy said wistfully. “There’s so much light pollution around these days. Pollination, bird migration, people’s sleep patterns… it’s going to cause so many problems.”

  “So I heard.” Gareth looked reflexively upward, thinking of not photographs, but paintings. “I saw Van Gogh’s Starry Night when I went to New York a couple of years ago. They say at that time, it was possible to see the Milky Way from where he lived.”

  “Saint Remy? Yes, yes, of course. It’s such a shame.”

  Gareth took a sip from his thermos flask, looking around appraisingly. Andy produced a jumbo packet of Trail Mix from his backpack, opened it, and offered it to Gareth. He took a handful of nuts and dried fruit. The voices and footsteps of the other Skywatchers could vaguely be heard through the doors and beyond the barn walls.

  “So,” Gareth asked, “If those lights really are spaceships, then… who do you think’s flying them?”

  Andy looked up, his pupils huge in his dark-rimmed eyes. “You mean, are they piloted by aliens?”

  “Well yeah, I suppose so. I mean, if there really are aliens, what do they look like? Would they look like us? Somehow, I don’t think so. In all those films and TV shows, the alien’s usually a man in a rubber suit. That’s too easy.”

  Andy gave a melodramatic shrug. “Well, think of all the different forms that life can take right here on planet Earth. When they first discovered the duck-billed platypus, the scientific community believed it was a sideshow hoax, because they thought no mammal could be as weird as that. Then there are creatures in the really deep parts of the sea… and in prehistoric times… Did you know that there’s a fossil from the Cambrian Era, which is called “Hallucigenia”, and that’s a good name for it. It was discovered in the 1970s and they’re still not sure if the bits sticking out are legs or defensive spikes, or even which end the head is.”

  Gareth chuckled. “You mean they might be studying it upside down, or back to front?”