by Neil Spring
‘What if you’re wrong? What if they won’t be controlled?’ There wasn’t a doubt in the admiral’s eyes, not even a glimmer. ‘You’re so certain the Watchers will give you what you want. Immortality? Power?’
He nodded. ‘Now I am dying, but they will reward me with everlasting life.’
‘You’re sure they’ll bargain? You’ve opened a portal to hell. Or somewhere worse.’
‘I bring the ancient deities, I am completing Jack Parsons’ work.’
‘Just listen!’ I screamed. ‘Jack Parsons failed. He may have raised these powers but he was destroyed. Why should you succeed?’
‘Because of the prize I have won for them.’
‘And what prize is that?’ I asked.
‘You.’
All the air was punched from my chest.
‘You are our selection. You are the moon child.’ His voice was unsettlingly calm. He looked down at the blade in his hands.
‘I don’t understand,’ I murmured.
The admiral came nearer. ‘You had to come here of your own free will. That was essential to the ritual. That is why we needed Araceli – to lure you here.’
She looked up at her father. I saw tears shimmering in her eyes. This time they were genuine.
‘I’m sorry to say you’re going to die tonight, Robert, just like the Jacksons.’ He saw the question on my face and nodded. ‘When they threatened to expose our plans, they had to be silenced.’
‘But they were members of the Parsons Elite?’
He nodded. ‘They complained when they realized they weren’t to assume positions of power. They needed to be silenced.’
‘Like you silenced Howell Cooper, the headmaster?’
The admiral nodded, feigning sadness. ‘Poor Howell. His suicide was a great sadness to the order. You see, old chap, when he realized how he had been used against his will, he objected strenuously. His soul was taken and damned. We had to show him what he had done, hold a mirror to his crimes. Just like your parents.’ He looked back towards the mainland. ‘They died over there, you know, up on the coastal path, very near where the Jacksons were killed.’
My stomach dropped. For a moment I couldn’t speak. I felt faint.
‘No . . . My parents died in the Great Flood. Their bodies were washed ashore.’
He looked down at his knife. ‘But it was not the water that killed them.’
– 56 –
I felt his disclosure rip through me like white lightning.
‘You complete bastard,’ I said in a low, trembling voice. ‘You manipulative, twisted bastard.’
His thin lips curved into a smile.
‘Tell me! Tell me who killed them.’
‘Oh Robert. All your life combating war, fighting the good fight, striving to complete your mother’s good work, never pausing to consider what took her from you in the first place. You were so easily convinced it was the Americans – or the Russians. Look how easily led you are, how blind you were to the truth. Your sins are multiple and they have followed you here.’ He listed them on his fingers: ‘Self-deceit, stupidity, pretentiousness. No one should be protected from the consequences of their own stupidity.’
‘What did you do to them?’ I managed to ask.
Araceli bowed her head.
‘Like your grandfather, your mother understood very well the dangers of dabbling with the occult. And living with a man on a military base intimately associated with the subject, it was something she came to know a lot about.’
I raised my head slowly, defiant but also resigned. Here it was at last, the truth I had been running from since the day they died.
‘Based at Brawdy, it was inevitable your father would read the Parsons Report – your grandfather circulated it at the highest level there.’
‘Randall circulated the report?’
‘But your father showed wisdom, foresight. The potential of that report spoke to him, as it spoke to me.’ The admiral smiled. ‘I’d wager your grandfather will regret circulating that document for the rest of his days.’ He took a step towards me. ‘Do you know what your father did? When he realized the limitless power available to him through worshipping the Lawless One? He joined our order, even involved his own family. The ritual of initiation requires the sacrifice of an innocent. A child who is selected for exposure to demonic manifestations. You.’
He paused for a moment, and I felt a sensation of awakening within me. It was similar to the sensation that had accompanied my visions, except it was stronger.
‘The exposure left you damaged; you were mentally scarred, anxious, made worse when your parents died. But your grandfather’s religion, his devotion to you, gave you some protection. He helped you to forget. But now –’ the admiral’s tawny eyes gleamed an eerie yellow ‘– your grandfather is nowhere to be seen, and you have no faith. No hope.’
The sky cracked. I was incapable of speech. My head was whirling.
‘Remember that day, old chap? The sun was setting over St Brides Bay. Your mother was away at the Croughton protests. And that night your father asked . . .’ whether I wanted to ride with him on his motorcycle.
The memory broke in as it had done many times over the years. The difference now was it had colour and sound: the radio announcer was saying something about Harold Macmillan, and I could taste the sausage and egg that Dad had made me for dinner.
‘Do you remember going with him, Robert? Do you remember he . . .’ whispered to me about that place. The women damned as witches, put on trial there and burned. The children who had chased a yellow balloon through the woods in the hotel grounds. A balloon . . . ‘that floated among the branches, back and forth, back and forth . . .’ a balloon, bright and yellow and shining. Like a tiny sun.
My eyes flashed open and I whispered, ‘I remember!’
‘But you didn’t remember, did you?’ The admiral’s voice was soft, hypnotic. ‘You forgot. Because your grandfather was watching. He saw what your father had exposed you to – what he had arranged – and when your parents were dead and gone, he kept you safe. Helped you. And in your ignorance you repaid him with hatred.’
He gazed at me with a half-smile on his dry lips, and the dreaded memories flooded back.
We went somewhere. I’m seeing it again, all of it. Reliving it in my head.
– 57 –
February 1963
Eleven years old.
Mum hasn’t returned from RAF Croughton. When she does she’ll have forgotten what happened there and how she lost her sight in one eye.
Dad entering my bedroom. I see the whites of his eyes as he tells me to get out of bed, to get dressed.
His heavy bike wobbling underneath me as we get on; the catch of the ignition and the snarl of the engine. We’re flying, I think, as his bike rips along the coastal road, Dad leaning over the handlebars, head low.
It’s a clear night, oddly warm for a winter’s evening.
‘This way.’
We leave the motorcycle in the shadows of the Haven Hotel to walk through ancient trees and wet leaves, twigs snapping beneath our feet.
After a short while we enter a clearing. And I freeze. Five figures – hooded and robed – stand before me in a circle.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Dad whispers. ‘Stand in the centre.’
I don’t want to. In the middle of the circle are dark silhouettes I can’t make out clearly. Logs perhaps?
I look back at my father with pleading eyes.
‘Do as I say, son.’
The robed figures part and beckon me forward, but I only manage a few faltering steps. Something makes me look up. Dangling from the gnarled branches overheard is an assortment of broken wooden crucifixes.
‘Dad?’ I say, looking around me.
No sign of him but the five hooded figures have become six.
&n
bsp; ‘Get in the circle,’ a woman’s voice commands.
Though every muscle screams against it, I obey.
I see now that the dark shapes in the circle are not logs but the eviscerated corpses of three black Labradors. The creatures have been blinded; their eyes are nothing but black holes.
My stomach lurches sickeningly and I’m screaming now: ‘Mum! Mum! Help!’
‘Shut up!’ Dad barks, and I obey.
One of the dogs is still alive. It whimpers, one paw twitching.
‘Sit down on the ground,’ says the woman’s voice.
She isn’t talking to me.
A dark figure advances from the shadows, kneels beside me on the tangled floor. A girl on the verge of adulthood. She looks me in the eye. It’s Araceli. Her expression is pained, her hands clasped behind her back.
‘It’s time,’ one of the figures says, and the three figures in front of me break the circle to stand behind me.
I stare ahead into the gaps between the trees, back in the direction from which we came. Towards the sea. Towards Stack Rocks.
Araceli doesn’t move.
‘Keep looking that way,’ Dad instructs, and that’s when I catch the light in the distance, flashing through the spikes of dark trees. ‘Don’t move.’
His words sweep away any hope of escape. I squint hard, listening to my breathing, focusing on the light. A sickly yellow light.
I think perhaps it’s a lighthouse, because that’s what it looks like, but I know it’s not. It’s bright, brighter than Venus. And it’s moving.
The hooded figures chant faster, harder: ancient words, evil words charged with power. My impression is that they are causing this light to exist; they are calling it. This thought strips away any vestiges of calm and leaves me with the most awful sensation of helplessness.
‘Here they come,’ Dad whispers.
From Stack Rocks the light arcs across the sky – it is astonishingly quick – leaving no trail. No sound.
For a moment there is just darkness. Then it is above the trees directly ahead of me, slowly descending. It’s an enormous eye, I think, winking at me. It appears to be dripping molten metal, and as it falls it swings with the motion of a pendulum, scattering beams through the trees.
Next to me Araceli begins to cry.
I call out. No response. They’ve gone, I think. The adults have left us here.
There is a sudden blistering flash, so hot across my face I assume the yellow ball has exploded, but when I open my eyes I see that I am wrong. The light hasn’t exploded; it has transformed. I’m staring at a dome-shaped object, some sort of craft. It’s at least twenty feet wide and dark grey with a rough surface. It looks mechanical.
I feel my bile rise as a stench overcomes me. It arrives the moment the craft releases two balls – each about four feet wide and covered with spikes. They remind me of sea mines.
They come rolling across the tangled ground. Towards us. One ball connects with Araceli’s leg. She screams as its spikes dig in and I watch, transfixed, horrified, as the ball drags her towards the craft.
Araceli’s eyes scorch into me and nightmarish images flash in my mind: debauched ceremonies at her father’s hotel, men whispering unholy prayers, Araceli, just a teenager, tied down on the floor, animal guts spilled around her. And, watching from the shadows, my father. Araceli screams again.
The other spiked ball rolls towards me.
Suddenly someone grabs me, heaves me up. ‘You’re coming with me,’ Grandfather’s voice hisses urgently in my ear. He breaks into a run, stumbles, and we hit the ground with a thud. My head throbs, but I manage to open my eyes.
No sign of Araceli but the domed craft is still visible. So is the spiked ball. It rolls but not towards me; it heads for Grandfather.
‘No!’ The spike catches him; skin rips.
Then he is on his feet and pulling me up and away, but my head hurts and I am shaking and so he heaves me onto his shoulders and struggles through the maze of trees.
We reach his car, and he bundles me into the back. I stare at him blankly, at the blood, bright and flowing, from his torn-open cheek. The jagged cut looks painful. And I want him to feel the pain. I do not know why, just as I do not know how he had found us or for how long he had been watching.
‘I’m going back for her,’ he says coarsely. ‘Robert, my boy, your father will be punished and I will protect you. You will not remember this night.’
I close my eyes and surrender to his promise.
– 58 –
Stack Rocks Fort, St Brides Bay
Thunder split the sky. Shadows leaped at me from every corner of the dilapidated gun chamber. Everything Grandfather did was for me, I thought, and from out of the past my own demons reached with guilty claws.
Grandfather’s voice: You were in a terrible way. Hysterical, kicking over furniture, writhing on the floor. You were a violent child, boy. But I brought you through the worst of it. On one occasion you lashed out at the other children in school.
‘He knew,’ I muttered. ‘All this time he knew.’ That’s why he was wary of me.
The admiral nodded as I looked at him desperately. The betrayal of the man I trusted and a woman I had come here to help had left me empty. Yet I wanted to feel anger and rage. He had told me my father had sacrificed me and my parents had been murdered. I wanted the rage to flare from me and burn the admiral.
And now Araceli was lighting black candles.
‘What does this make me?’ I managed to ask.
The admiral met my gaze. There was a horrible intent behind his eyes that could have been madness or determination. ‘The night your father exposed you to the sky spectres, your grandfather intervened, disrupting the process of demonizing you and Araceli. But something, some small residue, remained.’
‘What do you mean, “something”?’
‘Remember the strange disturbances in and around your home?’ the admiral asked. ‘Electrical appliances malfunctioning? Odd sounds? The telephone ringing at strange times? The spontaneous movement of objects?’
Only as a boy. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right, so I shook my head. I had always known that I was different to other people and felt guilty for it.
And there was something else. Grandfather had always regarded me warily; I used to think he hated me. But perhaps he was simply protecting himself from whatever abilities the process of demonization had awakened in me.
As I struggled to process this the admiral said, ‘Your anxieties – the buried memories – are the after-effect of psychic abilities induced in you as a child after your own sighting of a sky spectre. It’s not your own fear, anxiety and guilt that make you the way you are; it’s the anxiety and fear and guilt of everyone around you. Your brain is tuned to these neuroses like a radio. Your subconscious awareness of other people’s problems has consumed you.’ He came right up to me and added, ‘You should be thanking me. Without my guidance it might have driven you mad.’
Time halted with this revelation. The moment I inhabited felt like an eternity of loneliness. The admiral’s shadow wavered on the decrepit stonework of the chamber. Behind him I could see Little Haven flickering in the glow of an evil light, and as I pictured the sky watchers huddled in the darkness, I realized what was going to happen.
The admiral turned towards Araceli, who was looking out over the sea. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I remember the days when Robert was a bright young thing in the halls of power. Wilding, oh, that rising star, waging his war against the injustice of foreign weapons based in the UK. Battling scientific progress, demanding the abolition of nuclear weapons, calling for the accountability of American bases.’
He gave me a pitying look. ‘And look at you now. Trembling before the greatest weapon of all.’
I looked on as the admiral prepared to summon some unspeakab
le intelligence. ‘Begin!’ he ordered his daughter, and Araceli began muttering strange sounds that were almost exactly like the ones made by the children at the school. She was possessed, she had to be. God only knew how many times her father and his confederates had exposed her to the sky spectres.
The admiral said, ‘What do you feel now, old chap? Rage, despair?’
I didn’t need to answer, my emotions were graven on my face.
‘Good. That will help.’
Before the altar, the admiral closed his eyes and in a low, controlled voice began murmuring invocations.
For a very short moment everything was quiet.
From the official testimony of Emma Wheal, taken before the National Security Council in connection with the events of Tuesday 15 February 1977 in the Havens, west Wales
A:We felt this terrible rumble – that was when Stack Rocks opened up.
Q.Stack Rocks is about half a mile offshore from Little Haven?
A.That’s right.
Q.Could you see Stack Rocks from the pub?
A.In daytime, yes.
Q.But this was at night. How did you know the rocks had . . . uh . . . opened up?
A.Well, that’s the difficult part.
Q.Just tell the committee what happened in your own words, please, Ms Wheal.
A.A shaft of light came out of the sea, just off the headland next to Giant’s Point. Scared the life out of me. It lit up the whole bay. It was like a tower, beaming up.
Q.And this light was coming out of Stack Rocks?
A.Yes. All silver. Then it turned red. So bright.
Q.What time did this occur?
A.About quarter to midnight. That was when people were running around, screaming and shouting, you know.
Q.With excitement?
A.No. I thought we were having some sort of earthquake. And I followed the others outside.
Q.Why did you go outside if you were afraid?
A.The light . . . it drew you. You wanted to walk towards it.
Q.What happened after the light appeared?