The Green Stone

by Graham Phillips

  Still he could not shake off the feeling, and when he arrived at work it grew even stronger. He felt the evil, too, a sense of something dark, brooding and unseen. No sooner did he become aware of it than it was gone, and as he forgot about it and pushed it to the back of his mind it would suddenly recur, each time more powerfully.

  Later that morning one of the girls in the office looked at him strangely.

  ‘These people,’ she said, ‘the people you’re involved with. How well do you know them?’

  Alan looked at her. What was she talking about? Marion, Terry and the others perhaps? This was not possible; the girl knew nothing of his private life.

  ‘Who d’you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘You know damn well,’ she replied, staring him hard in the eyes. Suddenly her expression became more intense. ‘They’re evil. You must have nothing more to do with them.’

  He was surprised and frightened. She was staring straight at him, her eyes blank and expressionless. What did she mean? How could she know? He suddenly remembered the warning, and the feeling he had experienced earlier that morning. He knew she was being used.

  ‘No. I don’t believe that,’ he said defiantly.

  Still her eyes pierced him.

  ‘Who are you?’ he stammered.

  Her expression changed to a sardonic grin. She laughed. ‘You don’t think you will die yet, do you? Well, you will. You will die in a road accident.’

  He was terrified but said nothing.

  Suddenly it was gone. The girl stared around her, a puzzled expression on her face, as if she did not know where she was. She looked at Alan and smiled nervously, before returning to her work.

  He immediately telephoned Marion and told her what had happened. The opposition was far from beaten.

  ‘She was possessed. Marion, I’m scared. It’s going to kill us all.’

  Marion tried to calm him. Only that morning Gaynor had received a further psychic impression that no matter what happened they must remain calm. Evil fed on fear.

  ‘I thought we had destroyed it,’ he said.

  On Monday 5 November, Andy and Graham were at the Wolverhampton headquarters with Andy’s fellow investigator, Barry King, from London. He planned to stay overnight. A short time after midnight, Barry suddenly complained of feeling very cold. He kept looking around, certain there was something in the room. He pointed to the metal bookshelves in one corner, indicating that the presence was there. There was a sudden huge crash on the metal, as if someone had struck it with a heavy hammer. Moments later there was a second loud crash.

  Before the night was over, Barry had decided to pack his case and leave.

  A week or so later Terry and Alan had visited Marion, Gaynor and Fred to discuss their mounting fears and the strange sense of foreboding that had descended on the whole group. Something was about to happen, they could feel it slowly building in intensity.

  As they drove home through the night, Alan noticed something in his driving mirror. They turned and saw it, clear in the sky behind them. A strange light, far too large to be a star or planet. It was no aircraft. They drove on, losing sight of it.

  A few miles further on, they saw it again, a huge red- orange light pursuing them along the road. For miles it followed them, manoeuvring across the sky as they negotiated the dark bends along the deserted country road. At 1 am, there were no other cars on the road. No houses with comforting lights. They were alone. The light drew nearer. They were about to call in to a farmhouse and alert its occupants, when the light banked away and disappeared. It was gone. They drove home, afraid that the mysterious ball of light would again return and pursue them. But it did not.

  As winter progressed, everyone felt the dark feeling growing upon them. Something dreadful was about to happen. Nearly all the psychics involved had overpowering impressions that something evil would soon befall one or all of them.

  During the first week of December Terry and Alan visited Marion’s again. Maybe they could find a method of communicating with whatever it was that seemed to help them, and perhaps discover the purpose behind the force opposing them. For weeks there had been silence, no psychic messages or impressions. As they sat in Marion’s front room that night, Alan and Gaynor received simultaneous messages.

  Alan heard a voice, saying: ‘I am she that is with you.’ Then they all had a strong impression that an unseen presence had entered the room. Marion and Gaynor revealed that they had sensed the same presence all day but were at a loss to understand it.

  Alan seemed to be most in tune for he suddenly had a further impression of the words, ‘the key to time and life’, entering his mind when the others asked him about the Stone.

  Suddenly, a vivid image flashed through Gaynor’s mind. Quickly she drew what she had seen, a grassy hill with a single oak tree near the top. She was sure that this was where their answer lay.

  At that time, they thought that the presence they had felt and who had given Alan the message, ‘I am she that is with you’, was, in fact, Joanna. They were sure they had to find her.

  After several attempts, Graham was able to fall back into the trance state. Joanna again spoke, warning that the evil force was beginning to use further people, but she refused to say more about their quest or the history of the Stone. However, she did eventually tell them who she was: a woman living in Cornwall, someone Graham had known in his college days.

  Later, when he and Andy visited her at her home, she was very surprised, but consciously knew nothing of any messages that she had given them. However, she said to Andy that she felt she had seen him before.

  So what had spoken through Graham? Was it Joanna? They were forced to conclude that it was not, and that the intelligence that had led them to the Stone had simply used Joanna as a belief system that Graham’s mind could accept, although he did not know why. Obviously, it had no wish to reveal its true identity.

  So who was ‘She that is with you?’

  As the days passed the various psychics still felt that something was about to happen that might well destroy the group. The tension grew as days turned into weeks. It was the headquarters that appeared to be the focal point of the malevolence. Everyone who visited the flat felt a strange depression, a heavy, stifling feeling. Terry and Alan sensed it so greatly that they became increasingly reluctant to visit.

  It was not long before light bulbs began to implode, one after the other, and the malaise continued to grow. No explanation was found.

  Chapter 12

  Imbolc - Festival of Fear

  Tuesday, 29 January 1980

  During the week leading up to Friday 1 February, the Oaks Crescent flat became the focus of some of the strangest paranormal phenomena in the history of psychic research. It began with the strange electrical anomalies that had been occurring for some time becoming even more dangerous.

  On a number of occasions, both Andy and Graham received electric shocks from the cooker and the fridge. They were unable to account for these even after investigation.

  Andy Collins in the front office at 19 Oaks Crescent in 1979

  Wednesday, 30 January

  In the morning, they examined the wiring in the kitchen, double checking for a fault or exposed wire that might account for the phenomena. They found nothing.

  Later that day, they were working on the precis for a proposed TV documentary on the paranormal. Andy was in the main office and Graham was in the kitchen.

  It was just before 5.30 pm when the doorbell rang. Andy went to answer it, but the drive was empty. No one was in sight. He ran quickly to the end of the drive, searching for children who might be playing a prank on them. Still no one. Most of the crescent can be seen from the driveway and it would therefore have been impossible for anyone to ring the bell and escape without being seen. He walked along the crescent, still half expecting to see the cheeky face of a small child peering at him from behind a wall. But the road was deserted. He returned to his work, still puzzled. Perhaps the wiring in the bell was
faulty. He would need to check it.

  A little later, he joined Graham in the kitchen and over coffee they discussed their progress. Andy made to go back to the office, but as he opened the kitchen door into the hallway a mass of thick smoke billowed into the kitchen. He stepped back in shock.

  ‘The place is on fire!’ Graham shouted.

  The two men edged into the hallway. The long corridor was thick with dense smoke, but the smell was strange, something like a heavy, musty incense. They moved round the flat; all the rooms were full of the mysterious smoke. But there was no fire. Entering the front room, they could hardly see from one end to the other but found nothing to account for the phenomenon. The fireplace had not been used for days and there were no half-kindled ashes in the grate. Even after opening all the windows, it still took half an hour to clear. Then they telephoned Terry to tell him what had happened and to hurry over.

  He arrived at 6.30 pm and the three of them spent the next two and a half hours attempting to find a natural explanation for the smoke. At around 9 pm Terry was about to leave. Then, as they opened the front door, they saw an incredible sight. Stuck into the wood surround of the doorstep was a huge metal dagger.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Terry, recoiling in horror. The blade was at least ten inches long, and the dark brown wooden handle was bound with leather thongs topped by a metal cap.

  Graham quickly scanned the dark crescent. There was no one in sight. He knelt down and touched the hilt. Without a second thought, he grasped it firmly and tugged. It was stuck firm. He tugged again, harder. The heavy-handled weapon came away in his hand. Quickly, he withdrew into the office, but Andy ran into the drive, any second expecting to see a dark shadow loom up before him. But the crescent was empty except for one person, a young man delivering leaflets from door to door.

  Andy called him over and questioned him. He had been to the house next door only ten minutes earlier and had seen the dagger in their step. So it had been there for at least ten minutes; whoever was responsible must now be well clear.

  Terry telephoned Marion, but before he had a chance to utter a word Marion had seen it. In her mind’s eye, she saw the ugly dark-grey blade about ten inches long, with a thong-bound handle and metal support.

  ‘Don’t touch it, whatever you do,’ she said.

  ‘It’s too late,’ said Terry, ‘Graham and Andy already have.’

  ‘Then you must bury it in salt. Quickly. Away from the house.’

  ‘Why?’ said Terry.

  ‘Do it!’ pleaded Marion. ‘Now!’

  Terry told Andy, who hurried to the kitchen to find the salt. He traced the dagger and measured it. The blade was ten and a half inches long. He grabbed his trowel and ran across the road into the dark shrubland opposite the crescent. Although in the town, one side of the crescent is a large wooded area, the ground surrounding what is now the local Water Authority headquarters. Andy dug. The trees swayed in the cold wind as he knelt on the wet soil. Every small sound jolted him. The wind in the trees. Small creatures scurrying through the undergrowth, snapping the dead branches and twigs beneath. He finished the hole and poured it full of salt, and with a last glance at the cold steel of the blade he placed it carefully on to the salt bed. He piled back the soil, thumping it down with the trowel and then his feet. With a last heavy stamp, he had finished.

  Marion was convinced it was a witchcraft dagger. The weapon was certainly hand-made, but was she correct? Was it really intended as a curse, or could it possibly have been a prank in bad taste? Andy decided that the best course was to telephone an acquaintance in London who was an authority on the occult. He would describe the dagger and see what the man made of it.

  The Kitchen at 19 Oaks Crescent

  When told, the man was very concerned. The dagger was a burin, a witchcraft knife used for carving effigies of potential victims. It appeared that the events they had been experiencing over the past few days, the exploding light- bulbs, unexplained electrical faults and incense-smelling smoke were a sure indication of what occultists call psychic attack, supernatural forces being deliberately brought to bear against an opponent. The dagger incident was almost certainly connected, although it seemed that this act was more of a threat than an essential part of the operation. An attempt to strike fear into the victim.

  Unless they were mistaken, there was now no doubt that their adversary was making his move. It had perhaps manipulated some new earthly emissaries to prove it, to send final physical proof of its intentions. The battle was on. What its purpose was they hardly dared contemplate.

  At around 10 pm Martin telephoned. Unlike Graham and Andy, who were able to work full-time on paranormal research, he had been unable to accompany them on their recent investigations, since he was employed by a civil engineering firm. He could hardly believe his ears.

  Andy next phoned John Avis, the UFO abductee from Aveley in Essex. Like Gaynor, John had also claimed to have maintained contact with the aliens who had abducted him and his family. He suggested that they should all concentrate their psychic energies to repel the psychic attack being made upon them.

  Terry had gone. Andy and Graham sat talking in the office. At 10.30 pm the smoke appeared again, but this time only in the hallway. They paced along it, searching for an answer, the smoke swirling about them as it slowly grew thicker. Still they could not discover from where it was coming. As it began to clear, they returned from the corridor to the office. Andy left the connecting door partially ajar. Suddenly there was a resounding crash and the door slammed heavily into its frame behind him. Something in the corridor had smashed into the door and closed it. Andy grabbed the handle and pushed the door. It would not move. Graham helped, and they shoved harder, finally opening it with considerable difficulty. The corridor was empty. Only the faint smell of the smoke remained.

  Behind the door was a bundle of magazines, the weight of which had blocked it as they had tried to open it. Halfway down the twenty-foot-long corridor were several stacks of magazines in heavy bundles. Some unseen force must have thrown one of these bundles against the door and slammed it shut. Whatever it was, it had thrown the magazines a distance of at least six feet. As Andy moved forward, the hallway light bulb imploded, leaving him in total darkness. The tension was growing. Poltergeist phenomena, yet another aspect of psychic attack. If this unseen hand could move a bundle of a hundred magazines weighing around thirty pounds, what might it throw next? More importantly, what else was it capable of doing?

  Thursday, 31 January

  Pig was a tabby cat, who demanded constant feeding. They did not know the real name of their next-door neighbour’s pet, but Pig was apt enough. He would often wander in and out of the open door of the office as they worked, waiting to be fed.

  That afternoon he jumped into the porchway as usual, his front paws on the step into the office. But something was wrong. His hackles lifted; his back arched as he stared into the front room. They were shocked. The cat stared fixedly at the middle of the room as it slowly backed away, its fur quivering, before turning quickly and dashing down the drive. They looked at one another. What had the cat seen in the room? Whatever it was, it had terrified him.

  Minutes later, the second of the neighbour’s cats approached, Mr Greedy. It, too, paused in the doorway, stared into the room and fled. Again, they looked at one another. Something was in the building.

  5.30 pm came. Andy arrived back from a visit to the town just before Graham. He opened the front door and entered the office. As he checked the stationery he had just purchased, a faint smell brushed through his nostrils. He glanced around. The room slowly began to grow misty; the smoke again, only this time he was determined to find where it was coming from. He searched the room as it thickened but was unable to locate the source. It was appearing uniformly throughout the office. He was scared. This time he was alone. He plucked up courage and searched the house, discovering that the smoke was only in the office.

  Graham arrived to find the smoke forming in the
office. He had arrived in time also to witness its strange mode of appearance, from no single point and uniformly throughout the room.

  Andy telephoned various people and told them what had occurred with the cats earlier that day. All day Martin, Marion and another girl, Anne Banks, who had recently visited the flat, all felt dizziness, nausea and experienced strange headaches. Marion was very worried. She was sure that the events were building up, leading inevitably to a major crisis.

  Friday, 1 February

  Imbolc: One of the four main pivot points of the Celtic calendar, one of four ancient fire festivals of the year and a day long believed to hold supernatural significance. February 1 was also one of the eight Grand Sabbats of the witch cult. The two men were concerned.

  Investigators of the paranormal rather than witnesses to it, both were aware that their credibility as objective paranormal researchers would be called into question by such claims. They therefore endeavoured to find further witnesses in case the smoke appeared again or there were other paranormal events. Their story was too fantastic, too incredible, they felt, to be believed by fellow investigators.

  That Friday afternoon, at 5.30 pm, five people stood witness to the mysterious smoke as it duly appeared in the front room of the flat. Andy and Graham were joined by Dawn Westwood, a woman in her early thirties from a flat nearby, and Lesley Connolly, the girl living in the flat above. The estate agent for the flats was also present. The latter made a hasty retreat at the first sight of the mysterious smoke. Once more they were unable to account for the smoke’s origin as it again flooded the room. The other witnesses watched dumbstruck.

  Martin arrived at 7 pm. Andy explained everything that had befallen them during that eventful week. Once more the three of them sought a logical explanation, but to no avail.