The Watchers

by Neil Spring

  A.After? That was when hell opened.

  – 59 –

  Stack Rocks Fort, St Brides Bay

  A concussive column of light – silver then red – burst through the floor, passing up through the centre of the circle which enclosed the pentacle. My face stung with the rushing blast of fiery air.

  ‘He is coming,’ the admiral cried, personifying the obscenity that was about to appear.

  I was only five feet or so away from the column of flaming light, watching the ripples of heat spiralling out of the floor. Araceli was staring into it, her eyes as wide as planets, and I realized the heat was drying my drenched clothes. To my disgust I found the sensation almost pleasant.

  The gun chamber filled with a swirling mist and the putrid stench of sulphur. I didn’t want to look at the pentacle, but it drew my gaze as water draws a dowsing rod. The centre of the pentacle was a curtain of shimming radiance, and within that light, gradually taking form, becoming solid, was the shape of . . . something monstrous.

  I looked with growing revulsion at the legs – not human legs. They were glimmering silver, as thick as pillars. And some sort of a face was taking shape, a diabolical cluster of interwoven shadows. I watched as gradually the light became brighter until the materialization was complete and towering over me.

  ‘My Lord Taranis,’ the admiral cried. ‘Welcome to your new domain!’

  It looks just like the Watcher at the window, I thought. A silver giant in a shimmering one-piece spacesuit. The mass of shadows where its face should have been had solidified to form a convex black visor, which glowed. The visor flickered with features that were at once recognizable and unfathomable: the face of a cherub, the face of a man, a lion and then an eagle.

  It’s reaching for my mind, I thought. And what I felt then was an emotion that went far beyond terror. But why doesn’t it advance? Why doesn’t it come for me?

  The Watcher was so large, exuded such power, it should easily have breached the circle. But when it tried, it flinched back, as if an invisible barrier was stopping it.

  The admiral addressed me: ‘Only your sacrifice can unleash the ultimate sky spectre.’

  In those breathless seconds I saw what the admiral intended. Not by his actions or any words. I saw it in my mind: panic in the streets of the village, people running, falling over one another as the sky above them burned.

  This awful ceremony, the admiral’s chanting of blasphemous prayers, his knife, had one purpose: my soul was to be offered to the Watcher, this thing that had possessed minds, projected fearsome images into the skies, invoked fear so that it might feed.

  ‘No,’ I pleaded, looking desperately into the eyes of the man I had always trusted.

  The admiral raised his knife.

  – 60 –

  Darkness.

  Then the distant crashing of the surf against the cliffs.

  I was floating on seawater that should have been freezing and turbulent. A presence was watching over me. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Robert. It’s too soon.’ My father’s voice. Never a man who could show his emotions, but in this nebulous moment that was at once disconnected from the world and part of it, he had returned to me.

  I saw the dark water around me break as a bony shape rose from out of the sea.

  ‘Dad?’

  He looked diminished and frail, an echo of the sea, nothing like the muscular soldier who had yelled at my mother, demanded she give up her anti-nuclear protests. His teeth were black, the skin of his face split and raw in patches. ‘I should have listened to her,’ he said in a coarse voice. ‘I should have listened to your grandfather too. Son, I am haunted by shame for my mistakes.’

  It was him all right. Only it wasn’t, couldn’t be, because my father was dead.

  ‘Where am I?’

  Lying on my back on the still water, I could see the stars above, could hear the suck of the tide, could see the lights of Little Haven on the distant shore. But what was keeping me afloat? Why wasn’t I wet or cold or sinking? I didn’t care. I was alive. Somehow. But not physically. None of this was real. I was drifting in a space between two worlds.

  ‘I came to ask for your forgiveness. And to guide you.’ He looked at me with sorrowful eyes and said, ‘There isn’t much time.’

  The way his form merged with the darkness and the water on which I was somehow floating was particularly unsettling. It made me think of ancient legends of creatures dwelling beneath the sea. And I understood that he wasn’t real.

  ‘You must understand how we died and why you are special.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  But I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear what I feared the most. I only knew this: I had been wrong to blame Grandfather and I wished I could see him again and tell him so.

  ‘What happened to you and Mum?’ I asked through numb lips.

  My father’s lifeless eyes were swimming with guilt and his once-handsome face was contorted in a way that communicated unspeakable truths. I was afraid, not of him, but of what he would tell me. Though I knew it was necessary for me to hear it. How did the old saying go? Tell the truth and shame the devil.

  ‘It was the night of the Great Flood. December 1963. I think you realize there was nothing natural about that event.’

  ‘The sky spectres?’

  He nodded sorrowfully. ‘They had been summoned. And your brain was coming to life in new, remarkable ways. But your mother –’ his eyes dropped ‘– it was as if all the torments of the world were at work in her body. It was ten months since Croughton, ten months since the protest and the arrests.’

  My breath became shallow as I remembered Mum coming back to us afterwards, blind in one eye, her face horribly burned, disorientated. Forgetful. I remembered her nausea, vomiting and weakness. I remembered the painful blisters on her skin.

  He nodded and said in a slow voice, ‘When I realized she had witnessed a sky spectre, I brought her to Ravenstone Farm. Randall would know what to do. But there was no controlling her. She ran from the house down to the cliffs.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Your grandfather had the courage and the faith to confront what I never could. As you will discover, if you go back.’ Under the stars in that other place, somewhere beyond the sea, my father looked down on me with an expression I had never seen him wear in life. ‘Go back. Warn the world.’

  ‘The world won’t believe me.’

  Then warn someone who will. You’ve always fought for justice and peace, but your fears have paralysed you. Rebel now, my boy. Use your one true defence.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘Faith.’

  The air became tense and I felt the water beneath me solidifying.

  ‘Certain minds, minds like yours, can tune into the extra-dimensional world. You’re doing it now, Robert. Use it. You are not defeated.’

  And I wasn’t. Not yet.

  The ghostly shape of my father receded, merged with the glassy water and the darkness and the distant shore. The stars above me began to spin.

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

  by Dr R. Caxton (Clementine Press, 1980) p.213

  11.50 p.m. Praying that Frobisher would be all right, I reached the black bulk of the Haven Hotel up on the hill just as St Brides Bay turned crimson. I could still hear the village drains gurgling with the sudden downpour; could still see the narrow lanes turning into dark rivers; could still see the slow procession of people heading for the end of Giant’s Point.

  I came to the great door of the Haven Hotel, surprised it was unlocked, and pushed it open. The smell in the main hall was of wet leaves.

  ‘Randall?’ I called, and my heart kicked into overdrive as I realized that anyone – or anything – could be in here with me.

  I went into the ground-floor dining room
and from the window looked down on to Little Haven. A second later I witnessed the spectacle that has for ever remained burned onto my retinas: out to sea a great column of light was punching out of Stack Rocks, up into the clotted clouds, as if it had exploded right out of hell.

  Then I saw a vast shadow break through the clouds and descend towards the sea. It appeared in the sky immediately above Stack Rocks Island, and as it did a low rumbling sound came down from the heavens.

  Those who survived that night would all give varying descriptions of the object, but most agreed it was like no aircraft they’d ever seen. Gigantic, triangular, emerging from rolls of swirling mist. If it had any engines, they weren’t making any sound.

  An advanced airship, some sort of balloon?

  I heard a low bellowing roar and for an instant night turned to day: the craft projected a great red radiance that washed the shore of Little Haven in a shimmering glow. As it did I thought, We should have evacuated the village.

  The rain was torrential. The river above the school burst its banks. Water cascaded down the steep hill towards Little Haven. Anyone who saw the water and mud and sewage from the plant at the top of the hill come pouring down would have said there was something unnatural about the sight, but the truth is there weren’t many people looking. They were on Giant’s Point, as still as statues, gazing up.

  The school, where all of this strangeness began, was hit first. A pole carrying electric wires was ripped right out of the ground by the torrent. Cables snapped, sparks flew, and under a bellowing wind the pole crashed down onto the school hall.

  The school hall exploded. And the water rushed on.

  By 11.55 it was sweeping through the village towards the cove. The post office, the pub and the church were flooded, and those people who remained on the seafront were swept away in the surge. A team of investigators later said it was the water in the Ram Inn that seeped through into the electrical system of the restaurant next door that caused the Nest Bistro at 42 Grove Road to explode. Even from the Haven Hotel I felt the shudder as flames leaped from the windows, licking out into the night. Then the roof came off, flipping in the wind, crashing into rivers that had been roads.

  In the sky over Stack Rocks the triangular craft was rotating. Its underbelly was the source of the light beam which burst across the sky and held the village, but as I struggled to rip free from the paralysis that kept me there, watching, I couldn’t think of it purely as a light beam. More of a death ray.

  – 61 –

  Awake. Rain was sweeping into the fort, my island prison, and from across the black expanse of sea I heard screams, hundreds of screams – a nightmarish chorus that sounded as though all the horrors of hell were pouring into the Havens. Two realities spinning together. This world and another.

  What happens when they clash?

  The Watcher was still in the chamber with us, its broad silvery outline flickering in and out as if it was only halfway through the portal or was about to change its appearance. Through the nearest casemate I could see the glow of something in the sky reflecting off the seawater and, beyond, Little Haven drenched in an eerie light. Something told me it wasn’t the light of the blood moon.

  I’ve been led here, I’ve been used as bait.

  And the admiral’s knife came down.

  I rolled, heard the strike of the blade on stone. Heard the admiral’s frustrated cry.

  He came at me again. I swept my leg into his, flooring him. Scrambled to my feet.

  ‘I came willingly,’ I cried, looking down at him. He started coughing so badly I wondered if he would be able to breathe. ‘But not for this. I came for justice and peace.’ I glanced at Araceli, who was now still and quiet next to the altar. ‘I came in the name of this woman’s protection.’

  ‘Look at her eyes!’ the admiral said, his voice full of rage. ‘She can’t hear you.’

  The Watcher flickered again, and this time a sickly green glow traced its shape.

  I reached for Araceli with the part of my mind that had been lighting up these past few days, the part of my mind that saw the future and had dismissed the Watcher at the window, but there was nothing. All trace of the woman I had once thought warm, attractive, had burned away.

  ‘Stop this!’ A hoarse voice bellowed around the seething space of that chamber.

  Who could have come at this crucial moment? Who could have made it across the rough sea at the heart of the storm?

  I wheeled around and relief swept through me.

  Grandfather. His face was dirty and drawn, his greatcoat muddy and black.

  ‘How the hell did you get here?’ I asked.

  No answer.

  Something bothered me about his appearance, but I couldn’t pin it down.

  ‘Randall Llewellyn Pritchard,’ the admiral snarled. He was on his feet now and looked both surprised and furious. ‘You are a welcome addition to this sabbat.’

  ‘You think I’m afraid?’ Grandfather rasped. His head shook as he faltered forward – a weary soldier. ‘What else have I to lose? You took my life when you took my daughter.’

  ‘You should be afraid,’ the admiral said. ‘Actions have consequences and must be reconciled with them. Not in the manner of a Christian. Not by turning the other cheek or by making excuses for the offender. Actions that are wrong must be reconciled by the way of the Watchers.’

  The admiral came for me then, quick as a dog, seized me and raised his knife.

  How is he so strong?

  The Watcher was towering before us, its putrid stench in my nostrils.

  The admiral addressed it with reverence: ‘My Lawless One, Beast of the Apocalypse, Duke of the Thirteenth Gate, accept this man as testament to our loyalty, an original moon child, who came of his own free will. I demand you claim his soul!’

  The eyes of the Watcher flashed.

  ‘You demand it?’

  Hard and commanding, the voice did not come from anywhere around me, nor press against my ears; it arrived directly in my head.

  ‘Who else?’ the admiral said to the Watcher. ‘I am your brethren. I have led the others in worship of you. And with obedience and will, it is I who have summoned you here.’

  ‘Why now?’

  ‘To fulfil your plan as it is foretold.’

  A distant siren wailed from the shores of Little Haven.

  ‘Just listen! The masses will live in misery, in fear of the skies. They will feel the emancipation of the Lawless One. Take what is offered. Grant to me what is promised.’

  Grandfather said grittily, ‘You can’t control their thoughts.’

  ‘Who is this?’ the Watcher demanded. It shifted but again failed to break the circle.

  Grandfather seemed to understand. ‘It can’t break your mental force,’ he muttered to me, before raising his eyes defiantly and addressing the Watcher.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you, oh, a long long time.’ He shook his head with deliberate purpose. ‘Demonic entities masquerading as aliens, using wicked humans to run the new world order. But you need a moon child to do it. Or someone who has sinned.’

  The sky roared. Jagged shafts of light penetrated the casemates as the air vibrated.

  ‘I offer knowledge. Secrets,’ cried Randall.

  ‘Speak then. Offer.’

  ‘First let the moon child go.’

  ‘No!’ the admiral shouted. ‘My Lord, this man is disruptive and clever. You must destroy him.’

  ‘I decide who lives who dies.’

  The admiral’s grip on me slackened for a moment. I scrambled away to Grandfather’s side and immediately noticed the old man’s shoulders were shaking.

  ‘You all right, boy?’

  ‘I am now,’ I managed.

  His eyes met mine. I saw him draw a breath, saw his bottom lip tremble.

  ‘What’s happening?’<
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  Grandfather took my hands. There was little strength in his grip, and his calloused hands were icy. ‘It’s the end, boy. It’s falling apart out there.’

  ‘No. You know what to do. We’re going to be OK. Aren’t we?’

  ‘You will be fine. Tell the story. Warn people.’ I saw the shimmer of tears in his eyes. ‘Signs and lying wonders, boy – that’s all they are. Like your doubts and fears that never went away but taught you to fight. This ends now. But before it does, there’s something I want you to know.’

  ‘Grandfather, there’s no—’

  ‘I love you, boy. I love you dearly. And I always did.’

  He turned to face the Watcher and the admiral. Even though the world seemed to shake, I saw a controlled calm come into his face.

  ‘It is I who warned of the sky spectres,’ Grandfather announced. ‘I am the reason Jack Parsons and the others who revered his work came here to the Havens.’

  The Watcher twisted its head towards me.

  ‘An original moon child. He can unleash the powers of hell upon this world if his soul is given unto you,’ said Randall.

  Apparently revitalized, the admiral came for me again, and I felt his cold knife against my throat. He shouted at Grandfather, ‘Choose, Randall! You will die tonight. But if you want your grandson to live, bow down before the Lawless One.’

  ‘Grandfather,’ I whispered, ‘I have faith in you.’

  That was when the Watcher released a horrific sound that reverberated around the gun chamber. But still it didn’t break the circle. Something’s holding it back.

  ‘Your grandfather has failed,’ the admiral said to me. I felt his knife draw blood. It was trickling down my neck. ‘The sky spectres have been released!’ he then declared to the room. ‘Seal the portal, swear the Oath of the Abyss.’

  Suddenly I understood. I looked far into my own mind and made a decision to release the hate I had felt for Grandfather for so long. To let it go and believe in him totally.

  ‘Bow down in the name of the Lawless One if you want your boy to live.’