By the time Archie had set the lines in his preferred spot, it was mid-afternoon, and the weather was getting colder; it was time for a brew. The warm cup of coffee was a welcome relief to his cold hands, and for a time, he just sat there holding it as he sipped at the hot liquid. Once he’d warmed up somewhat, he set up the tripods and cameras and set them to the side of the porch to the bivvy. The main reason for the photography equipment was to capture a few self-portraits of himself with any fish he might catch, and if he was lucky, he might be able to hit the record button on the video camera to get some footage of the fight as he reeled in the fish.
Happy with the camp set up, Archie sat down on the bedchair and almost immediately felt the effects of the lack of sleep as exhaustion started to take hold. It had taken him most of the day to set up, and darkness was already beginning to reach across the sky as night set upon the landscape. Looking above, he noticed that there wasn’t a single cloud to obscure his view of the stars, which were as bright as he had ever seen them. The lack of light pollution was doing its bit to allow more stars to be visible. That was one of the things he loved about being in the middle of nowhere. Both the view and the quiet was genuinely breathtaking. It was a memory worth keeping, that was enough to get him to set about taking some photos. By the time he had finished, the hands of the clock must have plodded on because he felt ravenously hungry and absolutely freezing cold. It was time to eat - on the menu tonight was chilli and rice, which he started cooking up in the porch of the bivvy.
During the cook, he felt compelled to look into the night sky, causing him to divert his eyes upward as he stirred the spicy mince. There, he saw what he thought were three new stars that he hadn’t noticed earlier. They seemed to be brighter than any of the other lights in the sky and Archie couldn’t seem to look away, he was transfixed. As he watched, he thought one of them moved, but he couldn’t be sure. The sound of the chilli bubbling in the pan pulled his attention back to the stove, looking away from the sky, he resumed stirring. Happy that his meal wasn’t burning, he looked back and was startled to realise the three brighter stars had moved position significantly. Initially, he thought they might have been balloons that were tethered together, but after a moment, he felt his heart rate quicken as he watched them move around each other in a circular motion before zipping around in the darkness of the night sky.
With this display, and the kind of movement he was seeing, it became apparent that the objects weren’t simply balloons. He realised he was watching a UFO event and he scrambled to get the photography equipment pointed upward in the hope of catching some footage for later review. The first thing he did was to set the video camera to the sky and start recording before grabbing the stills camera and snapping as many pictures as he could. The event continued for around five minutes before the lights all blinked out simultaneously.
For a moment or two, Archie could only sit there in stunned silence as he recalled the display of aerial acrobatics he’d just witnessed before he remembered the chilli and rice were still cooking. This pulled him out of the immediate bewilderment, and he set about serving up his dinner, his mind continuing to race. After pouring the chilli over the rice, he sprinkled a bit of grated cheese over the top and started scoffing down the grub. He was hungrier than he initially thought.
As he leaned forward to put the bowl down, he heard the unmistakable whomping of helicopter rota blades. At first, he didn’t think much of it until he realised they were getting closer. Getting out of the bivvy and turning towards the approaching noise, he saw that there were at least three of the flying machines heading directly toward him, or towards the lake, at least. Archie instantly felt panic creep through his body as he realised they were all blacked out; the only reason he could actually see them at all was that the moonlight was glinting off of the windows. Black helicopters were commonly associated with nefarious activities around UFO encounters. His intuition was screaming at him to hide, to not let them find him. There was confusion in his mind as he thought back to the UFO sighting; craft that he felt, no, knew were alien in origin, from another world. During which he felt elation and wellbeing, but now with his own kind in helicopters, he felt fear and dread. Shouldn’t that be the other way around? He thought to himself. NO, trust your feelings – HIDE! He immediately realised he had to sort out some way to hide himself, but what could he do? He had about two minutes before they would be overhead.
The first thing he did was to turn off the heater and tried to get as much heat outside as possible by fully opening the bivvy door flaps. That wouldn’t be enough to hide the heat signature alone. What else could he do? His mind was racing as he tried to think of something and in a moment of inspiration or maybe madness, it came to him… SPACE BLANKETS! The survival pack contained several space blankets – the type that marathon runners used after the race. They had no thermal properties other than to reflect heat, meaning that they didn’t generate heat, they merely rebounded the users heat back at them. Hopefully, they would reflect the heat back into the tent while reflecting the cold outwards. He didn’t know if it would work, but he had no other cards to play.
Frantically, he ran around one side of the bivvy and unhooked the rain cover that sat over the top of the main tent and pulled it over to the other side. Ripping open the three space blankets, he laid them over the roof and replaced the rain cover over the lot. Jumping inside and shutting the door flaps, he hoped that his hiding spot looked like a bush from the air. Fortunately, the tent was sat at the bottom of a twelve-foot bank that led up to the road, and he’d had to park the van in the designated parking area, which as luck would have it, was under a large clump of trees. He hoped that those factors combined would provide a bit more cover.
Looking through a small spy hole in the flaps that formed the bivvy doors, Archie watched as the helicopters circled around the lake and local area for the next half an hour or so before they finally left in the same direction from which they had come. Breathing a big sigh of relief, he turned the heater back on. A few minutes later he got out of the tent with the Thermal Imaging Camera and moved towards the water’s edge, turning back, he checked to see how effective his little heat hiding house was. To his total surprise, it was hidden quite well – even with the heater on…not perfect of course, but it was definitely better than a kick in the nuts. As he thought about it, he decided that if the choppers came back, he would repeat what he did the first time and turn everything off and stay out of sight. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt like the occupants of those helicopters would do him harm if they got hold of him. Maybe he was just paranoid, maybe he’d seen too many science fiction movies or perhaps he was right to be concerned.
Archie spent the rest of the waking night in and out of the bivvy, checking out the sky or reviewing the photos and video footage. He couldn’t believe what had happened and still felt agitated about the helicopters. He decided to have a meditation session to try and find his centre and settle himself down. Hopefully, his guiding light might have something to say on the matter. Whenever he posed the question of the helicopters being dangerous, the light shone so brightly, it was as though there was a torch pointed at his face - they were dangerous alright. By the time he’d finished, Archie realised that the session had lasted a lot longer than intended. Archie thought he had been meditating for about an hour but was shocked to find he’d been at it for two. He had lost all concept of time during the sitting, but the upside at least was that he found himself more relaxed. Eventually, he fell asleep around 01.30 am, a lot later than he would have liked, he was knackered.
3
Fishing Lake
West Midlands
England
Archie was woken at around 9 am by the buzzing of a bite alarm and a screaming reel… fish on! Jumping off the bed chair, he fell flat on his face – he was still wrapped up in the sleeping bag. After scrambling out of the binds and getting to the rod, he engaged the drag, and lifted into the fish, laughing at his misfortune of smacki
ng his face in the dirt as he did so.
The fish tore line from the reel like nothing he had ever experienced, he just couldn’t seem to get a handle of it. The drag was set to full, but the line was peeling away as if it was in free spool. Within seconds it was down to the backing line. BANG! The rod was ripped from his hands and started skipping across the water. He stood there, frozen in disbelief as he watched it go.
“What the fuck was that?” he asked himself, helplessly watching his £400 rod disappear. He was absolutely dumbfounded. He was there to fish for predators, but that meant the Northern Pike, not a Great White fucking shark! Archie didn’t know what it was, but what he did know was that the violence involved in taking the rod out of his hands in that manner just couldn’t be done by a pike.
After a few minutes of feeling sorry for himself, Archie remembered that he had stuffed the rod butts with buoyancy foam, causing them to float if he ever dropped them into the water. That meant he might actually find it. Looking around the bay, he saw a tree with very few leaves and plenty of low hanging branches, it appeared to be reasonably climbable. Making his way up, he stopped after reaching a height of about twenty-five feet and got himself stable enough to start scanning the lake through binoculars. Initially, he couldn’t see anything but open water, although he did find an old rowboat in the next swim. That might come in handy – if I ever find my bloody rod, he thought to himself.
He spent the next ten minutes looking around the lake before finally spotting something poking out of the water. It was the butt of the rod, approximately 200 yards out, and to the right of the bay. As it bobbed up and down, Archie lined the rod up with a focal point on the far bank, so that he’d have a fair idea of what direction to go once he started making his way out to it. Now that he knew roughly where he was heading, he started making his way down from the tree, which to his surprise, was a lot harder than going up. Eventually, after falling the last ten feet, he was on the ground with a bruise on his arse to match the one on his face. Cursing as he got to his feet, he just hoped the boat was usable. A lot of lakes in the U.K have small rowboats on the water so that an angler could use it to aid them in landing a particularly big or snagged fish. It just happened to be a stroke of luck that this fishery had one. But with the way his morning had started, Archie wouldn’t be surprised if he sank halfway across the lake.
Limping, he made his way to the next swim to check out the wooden vessel. He was thankful that the thing was in pretty good order. At about eight foot long, it had oars and even a little makeshift anchor in the form of a large brick attached to a fair amount of rope. And as an added bonus, there was very little water in the bottom. Thank heavens for small mercies, he thought as he started getting ready for the row out to his rod. Just as he was about to get in, he had the sudden realisation that if for some reason, he ended up in the water, the thick winter clothing he was wearing would be a severe hindrance. With that in mind, he opted to strip down to his underpants. He didn’t want to fall at all, but if he did, being fully clothed would probably mean he wouldn’t come out again. As soon as he was ready, Archie sat in the boats only seat, taking his fish knife with him. He started rowing in the general direction of the landmark he had spotted while he was in the tree.
As he made his way across the lake, Archie was going over what had happened in his mind. What could have pulled the rod from his hands like that? After all, he was on a lake in Britain, not fishing on the Zambezi river. He was trying to think what kind of fish could have done that and as far as he was aware, the biggest freshwater predators in the U.K were the Northern Pike and the Wells Catfish. Neither of those grew to the size that could strip line from a fully engage drag and pull the rod from the anglers hands that violently. Although the European Wells Catfish did grow to enormous proportions, the British species didn’t come to anywhere near the size of their European brethren. All of a sudden, another, more horrible thought popped into his head – he was predator fishing, which meant that whatever it was, it took a sizeable dead bait. Therefore, it must have been a predator, and it was big enough to literally tear the rod from his hands. That made him wonder if the fish could eat him if he fell in. Fuck it – I should have kept my clothes on so that I could drown before being eaten! As the thought come to him, he started laughing – that scenario would be just his luck today.
The journey took about eight minutes, save for a few minutes it took to find the exact spot. The physical exertion had actually kept him warm, but as he got to the rod butt and stopped, the cold hit him immediately, and it hit hard. It was absolutely freezing. Hesitantly, Archie reached over the side and gently gripped the rod, he didn’t want to rush in case the fish was still attached to the hook and bolted away, pulling him into the lake, and eating him before he had time to drown. With one hand gripping the butt, he reached beneath the surface with his other hand and gently pulled on the line to see if there was any tension, which would indicate that the fish was still on. The line was still attached to the reel, but there didn’t seem to be any weight there. Good, he thought as he got both hands on to the butt and gently started to lift it out of the water, all the time feeling for any tightening of the line. So far so good, he thought as he got his fish knife and forced the blade into the side of the boat – he wanted it to hand and ready to cut the line if anything untoward happened.
Once he was ready, with the rod in his right hand, he took the reel handle in his left and slowly started to rewind the line on to the spool. After winding a significant amount of line back onto the reel and checking that it was still slack, Archie decided that the fish must have spat the hook and was gone. He started winding harder. That was a mistake. The rod bent double, and a heavy weight began to pull the line off of the reel again, causing the boat to shift as it was dragged across the water.
“FUCK THIS!” Archie shouted as the bow of the boat started dipping under the surface. Struggling, he reached out for the knife and cut the line, the sudden release of tension, causing him to fall backward, into the bottom of the boat.
“Time to go,” he said to himself as he picked up the oars and frantically started rowing toward the bay. He wasn’t about to mess around. The amount of force he had exerted to just try to hold the rod for those few seconds had been immense, and he was already out of breath. Whatever that thing was, Archie didn’t want to play its game. Nothing in British freshwater angling should be able to do what this thing had, and if he was honest, it scared the life out of him. He wanted to get off the water – sharpish. He didn’t think he had it in him, but he was like an Olympic rower as he got back to the bay in quick time.
No sooner had he grounded the rowboat, he got dressed and laid down on the beach to catch his breath. As he lay there, he decided that he would change his target fish. There was something in this water that he didn’t want to fuck with. Nope, he was definitely going to switch to a gentler bit of course fishing. Yeah, a few Roach, Rudd and maybe a Carp or two will be lovely, he thought as he lay there looking up at the sky. With that in mind, he jumped up and wound in the other pike rod and packed it away before whatever it was out there took that line as well. He wouldn’t need his predator gear anymore on this trip.
After he set up a course fishing rod, and with the adrenalin leaving his system, he realised how cold it was. He was freezing and felt like he had been chilled to the bone. Looking at the time, he had no idea how late it was, 2 pm already. He got a brew on, and as he sat there waiting for the water to boil, he realised that for the first time in his life, he was actually pissed off with fishing. So much so, that although he had just set up his rod, he didn’t bother to cast it out, he’d had enough for one day.
Every muscle in his body ached as he lay out on the bed chair. He picked up the cup of coffee and took a swig as he thought about what had happened over the past twenty-four hours and remembered the UFO sighting. Did I dream that, or did it actually happen? He wondered as he reached out for the video camera. He was so tired that he couldn’t quite remem
ber. Upon reviewing the footage, it all came back to him – it was no dream, it definitely happened! There was some great video footage of UFOs zipping around the night sky. Better still, there were some fantastic high-quality photos on the other camera. What a trip – an epic UFO event, falling out the bivvy, falling out of the tree, and nearly getting eaten by a monster fish! No-one was going to believe this – people would think this was just another one of those Fisherman’s tales, like; “The One That Got Away”. What was his life coming to?
Night had set upon the landscape by the time Archie had cleared away after eating. He decided he would just lay out on the bed and relax to some tunes. With the heater going full blast it wasn’t long before fatigue had him. He was woken by the sound of static that had somehow pushed its way over the music, pissing him off because he realised that the song that was playing was; “It came out of the sky”, and he loved that tune. After another minute or so the player cut out altogether and at the same time the bivvy lit up as though the sun had just risen right above him.
What now? He thought as he got up and stuck his head out of the door flap. Looking up, the light was absolutely blinding, he couldn’t make anything out through the brightness. He noticed that there was no noise, just what seemed to be an electrical charge in the air, causing the feeling that every hair on his body was standing up. After a few moments, the light shot up into the sky, and the camp was again in darkness. In the same instant, the music restarted before Archie quickly turned it off. As he put his head out of the bivvy again, he heard the sound of splashing coming from the lake. It sounded as though heavy rain was falling into the water. Using the video cameras crappy excuse for night vision setting, Archie looked towards the waterline and was startled to see hundreds of fish jumping out of the lake. Assuming that the bastard predator had come back and was chasing the prey fish around, he returned his attention to the sky.
Pleiadian Rescuer Page 4
