by Ken Webster
‘Still clutching tightly in his hand whatever he had been carving he motioned for me to sit down. I sat on the low bench which was against the wall to the left of the fireplace and asked him what he had been carving. He frowned and said, “’Tis namatir.” Slightly hurt and made curious by such a negative response, I pushed for an answer. “Show me, pray, or I shall sorrow and think I have offended dear Tomas.”
‘Tomas, still frowning, moved slowly across the room and sat next to me. At one time his closeness had bothered me but not now. With his head lower than was natural he looked intensely at his clenched hand, seeming to will its opening, then reluctantly his grasp released and slowly and solemnly he spoke. “‘Twell n’worke.”
‘In his hand was a carefully carved replica of the Fountain Pentel which we had often left for his use when he wrote. I replied, witholding a smile, “I do not suppose it will!”
‘Thomas’s face showed great disappointment and some embarrassment – he seemed sensitive enough to pick up that I was witholding a laugh. Quickly I added the comment that he had done well to make such a replica from memory. He wanted to know how it made the ink and I had to put him right by telling him that the ink was made elsewhere and only a limited amount was stored in the pen itself. He was surprised at this, since he had believed it would magically last forever – I am not sure why, perhaps I had not made its mechanics too clear when talking about it with him in the past.
‘Tomas stood up suddenly, placing the carving on his wooden shelves with some sort of impatience. He did not want to dwell on the subject. “A man is to come for my fowl, pray help me to box the wretched beasts.”
‘He left me no time to answer. I followed him through the barrels room and out into the yard. This was the third occasion that I had strayed beyond his kitchen and the second time I had ever been outside. On the previous occasion I had annoyed him by asking why his garden was so disorganized, since I would have thought that this would have made access to the plants and herbs awkward. He had been very defensive, if not rather sharp, in his reply. Every thing was carefully placed, he said. He then started to lecture me rather rudely saying that this herb was placed there because that plant next to it repels the mites that are harmless to the herbs but that feed on the mites that are not harmless. In some cases it was simply that “this herb does n’favour the company of that herb”, and so forth.
‘Obviously farming was more complicated and far more specialized than I gave credit for. Why have we changed? It seemed to work well enough for him.
‘To Tomas’s annoyance and to my great entertainment we found that the hens disliked my presence immensely. This naturally made hen-catching difficult for Tomas so he indicated that I should take a walk around the outside of the house. Interestingly enough, Tomas’s new cook had no sense at all of my presence, just as Katherine had not.
‘Whilst Tomas continued to struggle with the hens I took the opportunity to try and locate myself relative to the cottage in 1985. It was impossible. There were no real landmarks, at least none that I recognized! This was not the Dodleston I knew but very beautiful all the same. I took in the whole landscape through every sense. Thousands of little flowers scattered the land with colours ranging from mauves to yellows. Hedges and small woods seemed randomly placed in clumps and straggles. Even the houses seemed to follow a similar randomness as if they too had grown organically out of the land. The air was sweet and its lightness filled my head. It was so overpowering that I felt myself moved almost to cry, and more so when I thought that I was really in another world. I thought about the vivid, uniform, unnatural green of the fields now. Look what they have done to the land! How could all this be so changed?
‘I saw a horse and cart winding its way up to the path and with some panic I called to Tomas, “Tomas, you have a visitor!”
‘Tomas came up to me carrying several small, round baskets. He had squeezed the poor hens into these, they were packed tightly and this really annoyed me but Tomas made a leap ahead of my words and said that I shouldn’t go but stay and see what happened. Another of Tomas’s experiments, huh? I said nothing but stood behind him and waited. As the stranger approached, his horse stiffened and then reared slightly. The man stared straight through me; he could not see me, but he looked around slightly, puzzled by his horse’s reaction. It knew I was there.
‘Tomas grasped the horse by its bit and spoke some soft words which seemed to calm the animal down. Then he spoke to the stranger but not in a way I could understand. He seemed to be criticizing the man’s horsemanship. This made me giggle. Tomas turned round fleetingly and gave a knowing grin …’
Although the cottage was fairly quiet throughout that November, with the computer packed away in its box in a corner, poltergeist activity would still occasionally occur – a simple stacking usually, or objects relocated a few inches, sometimes more. The only event of significance I record here is the chalking on the pillar in the kitchen on Thursday 14 November. It occurred sometime during the night and was gone without trace on 15 November. I reproduce it as received. Although it only existed briefly we were quite geared up by now to making a note of things as soon as they were seen.
The month passed quickly. I sold the Jaguar to a Chinese doctor and bought an old diesel Opel estate car. Money was still tight. Debbie’s kind ‘Aunty M’ helped us out by letting us have a large oak tree from her garden for firewood. Peter continued with his research into Tomas’s language and contacted the local press.
43
One tea-time, a Wednesday in early December, I sat across from Neil Bartlem, a young, unshaven reporter from the Chester Observer. Beneath two-volumes-and-free-magnifying glass of the Oxford English Dictionary at the other end of the room sat Peter. As we three talked or rather, as Peter led the way with his enthusiasm, it became clear that Neil wasn’t laughing at us or looking furtively at his watch out of embarrassment. We both knew Neil, he was a former pupil. I knew he could be polite and apply a middle-class gloss despite his generally radical outlook. Intuitively, I knew something had struck him as worthy of interest. To me, irrationally insecure, a little wary, this interest was a measure of success. I didn’t like letting the story into the local paper, its first exposure to people who neither knew us nor cared. I dreaded having it fall foul of the usual half-witted hack, to whom it would be a diversion and a few laughs between the WI reports and the obituaries. It was an awful step, this thought was on a tape loop inside my head.
It was not even the whole story. At my insistence 2109 were excluded. Peter disagreed with this but since it touched me so closely the final decision had to be mine. Peter assumed that if we were being straightforward nothing untoward could be said about us that mattered. I did not possess rhino hide for skin even if Peter thought he did. I scented blood! I saw us reduced to a laughing stock in moments at the slightest ill-judged word. Peter could be so naïve.
I was daydreaming. The conversation in the room became obscured. I was thinking all the time of the possible outcome rather than the business at hand.
About half an hour later Neil put his notebook away and was gone. Despite the fact that we knew Neil, he could still write us up as backwater eccentrics, stewed too long in a pettyfogging institution, or as a fine pair of dupes. Another daydream: imagine being back at Hawarden High School after Christmas, the sniggers and questions in and around the classroom, the odd looks. It made me shudder to think of it. Peter would have no escape. I was, in a funny way, sorry to have brought him these problems.
A week or more passed, and there was nothing from Neil. Perhaps he’d found Bucknall and, having spoken to him, had reconsidered his decision to submit a piece. Worse! The editor had thrown it out as rubbish.
Finally Neil rang on 21 December. The paper had ‘gone to bed’, he said, being deliberately journalistic. He outlined the problem with the article; he’d been having trouble keeping it off the front page! I gave a silent prayer of thanks that he had succeeded.
‘When is it out?’ I
asked, not realizing the relevance of the term ‘gone to bed’.
‘It’s on the streets tomorrow,’ he chuckled.
We obtained an early edition by taking the car to the newsagent’s in Bridge Street. Next day we knew the village would be full of it. I presumed that, in the British tradition, they wouldn’t have the bad taste to approach us directly about it. It was because of this that we didn’t prepare for any reaction, but there were signs that they knew all right. Frank Cummins, called into Mr Hughes’s shop for a paper that first morning and someone chipped in, ‘It’s on page seven. We’re all reading it!’
The article covered most of a full page, which was quite something considering that the paper was not a tabloid at that time. The piece itself was not unkind.
Neil had been able to contact John Bucknall and it is the sections concerning him that are reproduced below. They’re rather special as they form the last commentary on the subject that we ever received from John.
The case has been investigated by the respected academic body, The Society for Psychical Research, who are satisfied that ‘human agencies’ are responsible …
On the ten-question test:
‘We did not get a specific answer,’ said Mr Bucknall. ‘We got instead generalized commentary accusing us of not believing in what was going on. We got waffle …’
On the culprit:
… having established to its satisfaction that human agencies were responsible it was not the job of the Society to point the finger. Mr Bucknall was convinced that nothing paranormal is occurring, ‘something or somebody is doing it,’ he said.
On the content of the messages:
The society has not analysed the computer print-outs for linguistic or historical accuracy. Mr Bucknall points out they could establish nothing which could not be shown to be within the realm of available scholarship and therefore would prove nothing.
‘Oh, John,’ I spoke in a whisper. ‘Stop playing games … all this bland nonsense.’ I put the paper aside and spoke up. ‘Well, Debs me ol’ girl? What say you? Is he being honest?’
‘You know what I believe. He said he always solved his cases and filed a report. We will wait for that.’
‘But he always, he said, told the people involved the truth as he saw it. He’s not been near us for six weeks.’
‘We’ll wait for his report before we tackle him.’
John Bucknall never filed a report on the case and left the Society in 1986. He has been impossible to contact since.
44
15 January 1986
The time was near to begin again, and Debbie unpacked the computer like a flower-seller setting up the stall she had known and worked from for twenty years. A warm familiarity prevailed. When the system was up and running she typed in a short greeting in a manner reminiscent of that first contact. How readily these little rituals became established. We kept it semi-serious.
COME IN 2109
DEB
For two whole days the message stayed there, the cursor flashing continually in readiness hour after hour after hour. Still nothing. Then very late on 17 January:
KEN DEB PETER
HELLO
DO YOU FEEL THAT YOU ARE READY TO CONTINUE COMMUNICATIONS?
HEARD ANYTHING FROM THE MEDIA?
[not signed]
The miserable Opel was giving problems which, together with starting the new job, meant that I for one was not ready. Deb agreed, and suggested to 2109 that a fortnight’s delay would be appropriate. We also put in a bid for a little guidance on the choice of a new researcher, or more particularly who to avoid. The very nature of the experience was bound to attract every wayward dabbler it touched. It had already reached the ears of one very dodgy-sounding ‘researcher’ who specialized in recycling other people’s stories for profit.
There was a reply next day at 7.00 P.M. As expected it was heavily seasoned with obscure references and/or bullshit, depending on your attitude at the time.
YES, WE CAN DELAY TH FURTHER, SAY ANOTHER MONTH IF YOU LIKE, AS YOU WILL HAVE VERY LITTLE TIME WITH HIM WHEN HE DOES RETURN. IT IS IMPORTANT TO POINT OUT THAT IF YOU INVITE ANYONE TO RESEARCH THE COMMUNICATIONS THEN ONCE THEY HAVE STARTED YOU CAN NOT DECIDE THEY ARE OF NO IMPORTANCE, AND, ALSO, YOU MUST REALIZE THAT THEY HAVE ONLY ONE OF TWO CONCLUSIONS THEY CAN REACH!!. OUR OWN COMMUNICATION WITH YOU HAS LITTLE IMPORTANCE THEREFOR WE SHALL BE AROUND FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYES ONLY TO ANSEWER ANY MORE OF YOUR QUESTIONS THEN SHALL AWAIT THs RETURN.
YOU NEED EVERYONE AND NO ONE, THAT IS TO SAY THAT PEOPLE WILL COME AND PEOPLE WILL STAY AWAY FOR THE BENEFIT IS TO BEGANED BY ALL WHOM YOU MEET AND ALL WHOM YOU DISAPOINT!!
2109
A day or two later Peter, rather surprisingly, had suggested over coffee at The Dingle that I might be telepathically creating the messages on the screen. He’d read that some people have been recorded as affecting computer equipment.
‘Affecting is a long way from generating whole pages of script,’ I said, but I was taken aback by this suggestion. Still puzzled, I put it to 2109.
2109
I HOPE YOU CAN FINISH THE COMM ABOVE … TO THIS DAY I CAN’T SEE WHY SPR WERE INVOLVE … PETER CONSIDERS THAT I TELEPATHICALLY CREATE THESE WORDS KEN
They replied:
THEN ASK PETER WHY EVERYTHING WHICH APPEARS ON THE SCREEN DOES NOT PLEASE KEN
2109 gave the impression these days of being a helpful, counselling agency … a bit like a telephone agony aunt. I suspected that they were manoeuvring once more.
They then returned to our problems over research and verification, and assured me that:
YOU ARE NOT LIKELY TO MAKE TOO MANY SERIOUS MISTAKES WITHOUT OUR INTERVENTION WE CAN NOT ASSURE YOU THAT THIS IS ALL GOING TO BE ONE GREAT ‘THE DANSANT’ WITH CRUMPETS THROWN IN. SO IN ORDER THAT YOU MAY PAY A LITTLE MORE ATTENTION TO OUR NEEDS WE ASK YOU TO DO THE FOLLOWING: THERE IS A BRILLIANT RESEARCHER (UFOLOGIST … WE KNOW YOU DONT LIKE THE WORD!) HIS NAME IS GARY M ROWE, HIS IDEAS DIFFER SOMEWHAT TO YOURS BUT NEVERTHELESS HE CAN HELP YOU WITH A COUPLE OF YOUR PROBLEMS.
Luckily I was well aware of 2109’s tendency to sound like a cheap seaside comic and instead of complaining I latched on to the hard information which followed:
YOU MAY PHONE HIM AT THE NO BELOW AND INVITE HIM TO TALK WITH YOU, WHEN HE COMES SHOW HIM THIS AND ASK HIM WHAT HE MAKES OF IT … PETER MUST DO THE TELEPHONING RHYL ***** TELL HIM THAT YOU GOT THE TELEPHONE NO FROM A UFO ENTHUSIAST. 2109.
OK. So we had to ring someone we didn’t know, who had researched into UFOs (which we are not very interested in) and who had to be told some corny message from nowhere. This was ridiculous. I was glad that Peter was given the job. I’d rather try and sell double glazing any day.
45
Settled into one of Peter’s leather armchairs was Gary M. Rowe, styled from the 1950s. He was about five feet eight inches tall, hair Brylcreemed back, well-dressed, shiny shoes, restless, intense yet extremely polite.
The story of events since December 1984 unfolded. He listened intently, interposing with care several very direct questions. He did not seem put out or embarrassed. From Peter he received a bundle of print-outs, notes and analysis concerned primarily with Tomas. It was all something of a jumble because there was so much of it. We’d take him on trust as requested. He promised two things. Firstly, that he’d come and monitor the cottage kitchen with a spectum of equipment – video, audio, computer-linked sensors, and he’d write a report to go with it. Secondly he’d use ‘other means’ of probing for the truth.
‘Meaning whether it is a hoax or not, I presume,’ said Peter. ‘I feel SPR have counted us out already. They have said as much.’
I looked at Peter in puzzlement but let it go. Gary M. Rowe said it would be improper to detail the nature of his investigation but that it would certainly get to the answer – at least to his own satisfaction. Peter was pleased, so long as Gary would reveal his method and conclusions to us eventually. This Gary agreed to do.
In Gary Rowe I saw a sharp, intellig
ent man obsessed with his ideas, and these ideas – as he started to talk about his interest in UFOs – were hardly ones I could share. 2109 had warned of this, I reasoned. But a vaguely ill-at-ease-feeling remained throughout the evening. I told myself to be fair to him.
2109 had cleared off, as they said they would, on 20 January, before the meeting with Gary Rowe. They were due back in about a month, which I interpreted loosely. We’d have the computer in the house in readiness.
They had been wrong about Tomas being ‘held’ or prevented from coming through. True there was nothing for the remainder of 1985 but on 23 January 1986 he wrote on a piece of paper in the kitchen quite unexpectedly, at about 7.30 P.M. From the start it was clear he was unaware of any delay or interruption, for he continued where he had left off with an example of his everyday handwriting, which Debbie had requested in early November. (We had been made aware that Tomas was writing carefully for us. Deb wanted to see something of the more natural style.)
This was the beginning-of-the-end sequence, the last week or so of Tomas’s communication. We restarted our routine, bought paper and laid it out, found ‘his’ Fountain Pentel* and so on. It all jostled once more with the chaos of a busy kitchen. At least now, mentally, we felt a little more able to cope and we were a touch more organized. But only just. This piece came in reply to questions about Bristol and Lukas Wainman, Tomas’s teacher. It filled two pieces of paper and was the longest piece he had written so far.
preye goodlie brothir
bydd mynselves yow to chese nat wryts myne illfacyound scryt lest us han idell talke/ yf yow prey to excusacyone yow axyth o myne teche lukas an bryghtstowe/ thyre art manie tale to tunge o thys an me nold were to blentch myne wordes of myn lyf bot telle me wyl o goodlie tomas an lukas/ wen me wert yr myn yowth a barn as hath good lukas seyn me dyddst lyve wyth myn fadyr an myn brothyr an sat by myne porte an waytyr/ theyn bothe wercken on myn grete kyngs schypps/ ofte me wald syght a man o grete lernyng pass wyth hys bokes an oune deye hem didd leve a boke hynd hym whych hym dyd rede by myne ryvre soe me dyd makes haste an retornd yt to hys hond/ hym did thanke me an axd wot favour would me han o hym but me seyn nay favore me nat for me dydst turn thy skyn o thys yowr boke an felt nedes to rede thy wordes tho theym seyn nothyn to myne understondyng/ preye forgyve myne selven me dyd not wysch to tak plesaunce wyth yowr possescyon/ hym dyd glee at myn affectyoun an seyn alle boken belongen to alle of lernyng an theym whome canst han rekconyng for thyse boken o wysdome for to rede myne boke dost nat soyle yt skyn bot doth makes mo men o lernyng that wryt moor bokes/ hym dydst forth talke bowts bokes an thyr lernyng for manie tornes o thy glas an also o hys lyf an knowyng o myne servyng to hear o hys scyense didd ofyr myn fardyr myn steye an fede yn hys howes for nought but that hym honoure yn myn schoolyn as me didst helpe litel wyth thy schypps/ an forth myn love dydst growe for lukas an hym bokes/ he did han manie bokes o hys owen but wen me didst rede theym al hym did takes theym frome thy kyngs courte an before hym went to thy pyt hym did gyv hys bokes for sylvre that me maye haps goe to Oxenforde an recalle hys love for good men an treweth/ mythynks hym would love myn brothyrs alsoe for yow to spekes o trewth an wysdom yf a man can speke trewth theyn hym be free but men whome doe lyv yn fere o thyr owne thrkyngs arn slaves to theyr yntentyouns pardye.