The Watchers

by Neil Spring

  ‘No, of course not,’ Dr Caxton said. ‘But physical changes may be psychologically induced. In Celtic folklore it is an old and widespread belief that sickness was caused by elves. In the Middle Ages there was a condition known as alfabruni – elf burn. Now then. People who study UFOs don’t talk about elf disease,’ he said, nodding at Randall. ‘Nowadays we might interpret this man’s lesions and boils as radiation burn. They will lessen in time.’

  Randall just shook his head in stubborn disagreement. Mrs Jones, however, seemed relieved by what she had heard. Dylan still seemed less than convinced.

  ‘I’m telling you, Dr Caxton. Something wants control of my mind. There is something out there, crossing over from another world into ours.’ He touched his neck wound again. ‘Whatever it is, it’s alive, it’s dangerous and it brings dread upon me.’

  *

  I wanted to be completely satisfied by Dr Caxton’s explanation, which appealed to my belief that there was always a logical explanation to outlandish events – but I had to admit feeling a little doubtful as we left the Joneses’ house. More than a little doubtful, actually. Not only was I still struggling with my flashbacks from the previous night – the memory of my father coming into my room, taking me somewhere – I was also thinking of Araceli. I pictured her on her own in that dilapidated hotel, cleaning glasses, making beds and not even thinking about me.

  Now, bidding goodbye to Mr Jones, taking one last look at the seriously ill man who had witnessed nightmarish visions, I drew a comparison between him and the woman whose picture had enticed me here. And I knew very well that this situation was getting worse.

  Randall had mentioned a cult which he believed was connected with the Happenings and the killing and mutilation of animals in the area. If the Haven Hotel and Araceli’s family was in any way connected to that cult, as Dylan Jones had implied, then that worried me. But what worried me more was the knowledge that a satanist – Jack Parsons, a protégé of the self-proclaimed wickedest man on earth – had lived and operated in this area shortly after the war. Parsons, whose name appeared over and over in Selina’s reports. It wasn’t much to go on, but it told me that Parsons was a figure of interest and probably therefore a figure of influence. As influential as the greatest stage hypnotist capable of making you feel as though you’re a passenger in your own body.

  Perhaps Dylan Jones was just suffering from hallucinations. Perhaps he was suffering from depression, was suicidal. That seemed possible. But of course there were doubts.

  ‘I brought you there because I wanted you to see what state Dylan was in. I did not expect Dr Caxton to be there,’ Randall said, restlessly nodding. ‘And yet, as we both know, science cannot explain everything. Dylan had a close encounter; so did his son. And now unearthly forces are distorting his reality, just as easily as they manipulate space and time and physical matter and minds like his little boy’s.’

  Just at that moment Dr Caxton came out of the house. He stood rigid in the slanting, sharp rain. ‘Poor man. His mind has created a fantasy.’

  Randall shook his head. I was eager to return to the village because if Randall was correct – if any of this was connected to a cult engaged in ritualistic slaughter – then I wanted to know, and to make sure that the community was safe.

  I turned to leave, squinting against the rain.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ I asked. There was a mark on the roof of the house opposite.

  It was the impression of a figure. A very large figure.

  Giants, Robert . . .

  Randall and Dr Caxton followed me as I strode swiftly into the middle of the road to examine the roof more closely. The stain had to be at least eight feet long. It stretched from where the guttering collected the rain to a few feet below the chimney stack.

  Randall was already marching back to Rose Cottage to see if Mrs Jones had a ladder.

  When he returned with the ladder, Dylan came to the door and looked across at the stain on the roof.

  ‘You haven’t noticed this before?’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re going up?’

  ‘Why not?’ Randall said. Then looked at me.

  I didn’t look down as I climbed. I was trying to think of an excuse in case whoever lived here came home. I had to be quick. It began to rain harder.

  ‘See anything?’ Randall called from below.

  I pulled myself up, gripping the guttering, and scanned the roof tiles.

  The area that had stood out to me below was visible now, and the truth sank in slowly as the rain fell. This is crazy. This defies every law of physics. The mark on the roof wasn’t a stain. It was a dry patch.

  – 36 –

  ‘Completely dry!’ Randall took charge as Dr Caxton and I followed him back into Rose Cottage. ‘So we’re dealing with a close encounter of the second kind. The sighting of a UFO with associated physical effects – an object summoned here.’

  What if it’s us calling them? Gethin’s question came back to me.

  I had wanted to believe that our old neighbour was a superstitious fool; now I really wasn’t sure. Of anything. I kept trying to make sense of it all and kept drawing a blank. How could the UFO sightings, or their physical effects, have anything to do with a cult in the local community?

  Unless Gethin had been right: we weren’t being visited, we were being listened to; someone in the community, or a group of people, was summoning these phenomena. But who and why? This was the question I put to Randall in the hall of Rose Cottage, and although it was one I expected him to rebuff, he answered it decisively.

  ‘These phenomena are extremely powerful, boy. Whoever controls the skies controls the world.’

  That sounded mildly convincing, but when the words came out his eyes slid past me, and that told me that maybe, probably, he was holding something back. Protecting himself perhaps, or protecting me.

  ‘And I’ll not hear much more of your specious explanations and facile attempts to demean these poor people’s experiences,’ Randall thundered, his eyes flashing defiance. The atmosphere in the hallway was tense and uncomfortable as his gaze jumped to a well-supplied bookcase in the Joneses’ living room. ‘Got any maps of the area?’

  Mrs Jones found an Ordnance Survey map and handed it to Randall, who spread it open over the dining-room table. After examining it for a minute or so he took a red pen from his jacket pocket and marked the map. ‘I’d like to show you all something I have discovered – the reason I came here with Robert,’ he said. ‘There is a method behind these sightings – a pattern, an intelligence.’

  We all leaned over and looked down at the map. He had marked various locations.

  ‘Ley lines,’ Randall said. ‘Straight lines linking sites and objects of prehistoric antiquity – burial chambers, hill forts and temples. See how this line connects underground caves, standing stone circles, wells and earthworks? In ancient folklore these points, where two ley lines cross, are known as nodal connections, ley markers. Supposedly strange things can happen at these points – dizziness, disorientation, visions, and even—’

  ‘The appearance of UFOs?’ I asked.

  Randall shot me a glance. ‘Exactly right, Robert. Monumental sites like the fort at Stack Rocks are believed to be ancient centres of power that incorporate ley lines and earth energies.’

  Dr Caxton was shaking his head. ‘You’re making a connection between UFOs and lines connecting the paths of prehistory? You’re trying to explain one mystery with another.’ And it was unclear to me how this had anything to do with the cult that Randall had mentioned and implicated in the strange happenings. Yet, unlike Dr Caxton, I was at least prepared to hear Randall out in the hope of learning something new here.

  Randall pointed to a long red line. ‘This very house sits on a ley line. It terminates here.’ He pointed to Stack Rocks. ‘And Stack Rocks intersects every significant site in our investigati
ons.’ He circled the primary school and the Haven Hotel.

  ‘But what’s so significant about Stack Rocks?’ I asked. ‘Or the Haven Hotel?’

  Randall’s face darkened. ‘There are some who believe ley nodes may be the doorways to other worlds and times running parallel to our own. The ancient Celts believed that the worlds of spirit and man were separated by a veil that grew thin at certain periods of the year and in certain places. Perhaps that time is now.’

  ‘Why now?’ I said.

  An idea ignited in Randall’s eyes and he glanced hopefully at Mrs Jones. ‘How’s your boy? Can we see him?’

  She returned minutes later, guiding the rotund eleven-year-old into the room, carefully, deliberately, as if the child was blind. We all heard his rough breathing. Trying not to look at his missing hair – there was more than one patch now – I said, ‘Hello again, Isaac.’

  The boy didn’t speak, didn’t move. His mother tried her best to summon up a smile while looking fearfully at her son.

  ‘Come on, Izzy. You remember meeting Robert at the post office. Say hello.’

  Isaac puckered up his face and shrugged.

  ‘Izzy, these nice gentlemen are here to help.’

  ‘Can you tell us again about school?’ I asked. ‘About your headmaster?’

  ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ Isaac yelled.

  After a moment his mother glanced away and shook her head. ‘You see what I mean? He’s changed. I think that—’

  Isaac whipped round and bit his mother’s arm.

  I didn’t know what was worse: Mrs Jones’s cry of pain, the blood that was drip drip dripping onto the carpet or the blood smeared around her son’s mouth. At the same time I began to hear strange sounds that no one else seemed to register, fierce guttural moanings.

  ‘Quickly, we need to bandage it,’ Dr Caxton said. He had gone towards Mrs Jones. ‘I’ll get a towel.’ He left the room.

  Abruptly Isaac threw his head back and growled. I swear, the boy actually growled. The skin prickled across the back of my neck and I saw something on Randall’s face that I hadn’t seen since I was a boy. It was a look of pure fear. Isaac was watching me like his life depended on it. Just me. I felt in that moment as if I had stopped breathing. The room had receded into silence. I could feel the boy’s fury while the moaning, agonized cries intensified around me. And at the same time I suddenly knew Isaac hadn’t intended to shock us; he was ashamed and frightened and couldn’t help it.

  I thought suddenly of the evening I had first laid eyes on Randall’s farm, the rusty swing outside my window, creaking through the night and the sense of feeling utterly alone.

  ‘What’s wrong with you!?’ Mrs Jones screamed. It took me a second to realize she was addressing her husband. ‘For Christ’s sake, I need you!’

  Dylan didn’t move.

  Isaac’s eyelids fluttered and the overhead light bulb exploded with a pop. He scrambled away into the hall and up the stairs, leaving us stunned.

  Somewhere upstairs a door slammed.

  Mrs Jones sat numbly, resting her bleeding arm on her skirt, which produced a spreading stain. She was trembling all over.

  Dr Caxton returned with a towel for her arm and glanced at her husband, who was staring out of the window at the sea – or at the Stack Rocks. Suddenly I remembered that the Havens Rotary Club planned to restore it, turn it into a visitors’ centre . . . Something floated up in my mind. Something that made me freeze. The symbols at the church, the ancient incantation protected by the expensive-looking glass cabinet. Father O’Riorden had told me, The Rotary Club had it translated.

  ‘Mr Wilding, are you all right?’

  How could I have missed it?

  ‘Mr Wilding?’ Dr Caxton said again.

  ‘The Rotary Club!’ I shouted. Startled glances. ‘Mrs Jones, do you know anything about their work?’

  ‘Yes, a little, but I don’t see wh—’

  ‘The headmaster, Howell Cooper. Is he a member?’

  ‘Why is that important?’ Dr Caxton asked. He looked confused; everyone did. Except Randall, who just gave a curt nod.

  ‘Is he a member?’ I demanded again of Mrs Jones.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think he is. Why?’

  I thought about the headmaster visiting Father O’Riorden. I thought about the ancient prayer for exorcism on the wall in the church, which the priest said the Rotary Club had had translated. And I thought again of Gethin Yates on the cliff path telling me he thought the UFOs had been summoned.

  ‘I have a growing suspicion that the Rotary Club is somehow behind all this.’ It sounded mad, so I hurried to explain about the Stack Rocks Fort ‘renovation’ and reminded them that many of the sightings had occurred near or above that tiny island in St Brides Bay. Then I looked at Randall, whose expression had become grave.

  ‘And I think my grandfather is right. Your husband and your son are sick because of the UFOs . . .’ I trailed off.

  Isaac’s mother looked me in the eyes. ‘And you suspect the headmaster because he let the children out early, the day they saw it?’

  I nodded. I didn’t want to tell her about the symbols at the church, not until I knew what they meant. ‘They wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.’

  ‘Isaac . . . he’s been saying that the craft at the school was communicating with him and his friends.’ She was still nursing her arm. ‘Isaac says he felt it. Evil. Danger. Bad feelings. These words come up again and again.’ She explained that her son was increasingly kept awake at night by a message which ‘pops into his head’. ‘He says it’s about something that’s going to happen. That the world is going to end.’

  Randall’s face was crumpled with concern. He looked at the frightened couple and said, ‘There are worse things you could do now than pray.’

  ‘We’re not at all religious,’ Mrs Jones said shakily. ‘Never even had Isaac baptized.’

  Dr Caxton looked up suddenly.

  ‘What is it?’ Randall asked.

  ‘Something one of the locals said, down in the village – a very odd comment, really. They said that there “weren’t enough baptisms in the area”.’ He tilted his head to the side, musing on the memory. ‘Not important.’

  ‘It could be,’ I said steadily. ‘Very important.’ A dizzying memory swirled of my conversation with Father O’Riorden about Howell Cooper: He comes in once in a while to look over the church records: births, deaths, baptisms.

  ‘Were the other children who saw the craft baptized? Was Tessa?’

  ‘Robert, what’s wrong?’ Randall was staring at me.

  I told him.

  His nostrils flared, either from surprise or anger. ‘It’s clear that the children are the key to this. The headmaster must be found and questioned. And we need the addresses of every child witness from the school.’

  ‘What’s the urgency?’ broke in Dr Caxton.

  ‘Just help with those addresses. If I’m right,’ Randall said, ‘it’s not just these children and their families who are in terrible danger. We all are.’

  From The Mind Possessed: A Personal Investigation into the Broad Haven Triangle

  by Dr R. Caxton (Clementine Press, 1980) p.56

  After the scandals caused by the Society for Psychical Research’s poor quality control in certain high-profile investigations, anyone operating in this field is compelled to act in accordance with the highest professional standards, and this was very much at the front of my mind during my discreet inquiry in the Havens.

  It wasn’t an easy task. The locals were rather closed off, and not just in their suspicions of the English.

  I was fortunate to stay with a relative during my time in the Havens; I certainly had no wish to stay at the local inn, of which my enduring memory is of a bleached goat’s skull hanging beside the bar. The horned goat, of course, is a symbol of the occult
, intended to mock the image of Jesus as the lamb who died for Man’s sins, after a reference in the Bible to the obedient sheep being separated from the unruly, non-believing goats.

  In retrospect, I came to the Havens determined to prove that there was a prosaic explanation for everything. Who or what was behind the UFO and humanoid sightings? I had no idea. But aliens? A technologically advanced civilization visiting this remote corner of the British Isles? To contemplate such an absurd notion made the rational part of me yearn to know the truth.

  If I had recognized the clues earlier, I doubt I would have looked so hard.

  – 37 –

  Evening of Monday 14 February 1977, thirty-six hours until the sky watch . . .

  I couldn’t exorcize the terrible thought running through my mind: perhaps Howell Cooper was mixed up in some sort of cult – the Parsons Elite? Perhaps the Rotary Club was a cover for that cult. Perhaps Selina had discovered something about it and was now . . .

  ‘You know the way?’ Randall asked. He was in the driver’s seat with me beside him.

  ‘Up ahead, take a right.’

  The car swerved into another winding lane. We were coming into Little Haven and the light was draining from the afternoon. I thought about Dr Caxton, who had surprisingly agreed to help us. He would visit Father O’Riorden and find out where each of the schoolchildren who saw the UFO could be found.

  Randall and I had our own sights trained on the headmaster.

  The wind had got up and was screaming around the village as we drove past the Nest Bistro and pulled into Marine Close. Howell Cooper’s house was directly ahead, I remembered. His car was in the drive but the curtains were drawn. I rang the doorbell. Waited. Then knocked, pulling my coat around me against the rising gale.

  A middle-aged woman finally answered the door. Her hair was a tangled mess and she was wearing a red towelling robe. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Cooper?’

  She nodded at Randall, looking dazed.