“Ha. It’s the Vesica Piscis.”
She nodded with a grin on her face. “I told you it’s everywhere. Even Gucci and Chanel used it and did you know the Washington memorial stands in its centre? I mean that’s your country, isn’t it?”
He shrugged as he looked around him. The symbol was everywhere in the gardens. It formed the cover to the well and on the path inlaid with blue stones. He had to admit to being more than a little intrigued. He heard Maggie cough as she pointed to the pool they were sitting next to. It was formed out of two circles with cascading red water flowing to a little stream. “Hey,” Jay announced. That pool is in the shape of the Vesica Pisces.”
“You’re very quick!” she quipped.
Jay narrowed his eyes and glared at her in a playful way. “Okay, so the Tor is a Mandorla shape…What does that mean?” Jay asked.
Maggie didn't answer. Instead, she took a pen from her bag on the seat next to her. She took the aerial picture of the Tor onto her lap and she drew two large circles around the almond shape mound, creating the Vesica Pisces symbol.
“Will you look at that?” Jay said. “But what does it mean…in the scheme of things?”
“The Tor is the minimal space between this world and the other. It is fabled that Joseph of Arimathea emptied Christ’s blood into the well from the cup used at the last supper, which is why they say the water runs red.” She shrugged. “Really, the water runs red because of the iron minerals contained within the soil beneath the Tor, but you know what they say?”
Jay shook his head
"There's no smoke without fire…or in this case no water without blood." She laughed at her little pun. "Joseph is said to have buried the Holy Grail just below the Tor at the entrance to the Underworld. Shortly after that, a spring, now known as the Chalice Well, flowed forth with water bringing eternal youth to whoever drank it."
“You’re saying the actual Holy Grail is buried in Glastonbury.”
“It is widely believed that finding The Holy Grail was the purpose behind the quests of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.”
“Hold up?” Jay still wasn’t convinced. “The well and the springs here are indeed ancient, but the gardens aren’t.”
"No, but whoever created all of this…" she swept her hand through the air as if she was illustrating everything, not just the gardens, "the Celts, the pagans, someone not even from this plane…they knew what they were doing. They knew we would start exploring the mysteries of Avalon and they knew we would try to cash in on it. Whoever created Avalon had an intelligence that stretched way beyond the realms of our sorry piece of gristle that we call a brain. Maybe it was the Watchers themselves."
“The Watchers have only just arrived.”
"No, they haven't. They've been here for centuries."
“How…never mind. Carry on.”
Maggie smiled. “The minimal space, which is the Tor, might be the entrance to the otherworld. And that’s where Fran is.” She folded the map showing the Vesica Pisces symbol and placed it back in her bag. “So, if we’re clever enough, you and me, American boy, are going to find it. Today.”
End of Part Three
Part Four
So will it be resurrection of the dead.
Listen I tell you a mystery:
We will not all sleep, but we will all be
changed – in a flash…at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound,
the dead will be raised imperishable
and we will be changed.
For the perishable must clothe itself
with the imperishable
and the mortal with immortality…
The saying that is written will come true.”
The resurrection Body. Corinthians 1.15
Chapter 41
The gate deserved as much admiration as the low ceiling cavern and its princely stalagmite pillars. It looked as if it was straight out of a fabled ice palace, but on closer inspection, and with a brush of a hand, it became clear to all who touched it, it was covered in encrusted pearls. Mia recognised the design in its centre from the wall in the room where the crystal skulls were displayed; two intertwining circles surrounded by scrolls and twirls.
As Mia ran her hands across it, feeling the roughness of the sparkling pearls on her fingers, and contemplating its design on a gate leading to who-knew-where, Jesus stepped forward. "It's a Vesica Pisces," he said. "The shape is known to symbolise the interactions of opposing worlds and forces." He ran his hand along the middle where the two circles overlapped. "The middle is named the mandorla, for its shape of an almond." As an aside, he said, "Mandorla is Italian for Almond. I am guessing the Vesica Piscis here is symbolic of what we will find on the other side. And that this…" he turned about and scrutinised the room with the stalagmite pillars, "this is minimal space."
Tom stepped in. “Dude, how do you even know this stuff?”
He merely shrugged. “It’s been my life’s work.”
“Okay, Stoney?” Mia snapped. Mia watched him put his hands up in mock surrender. He looked hurt, but there was no time to worry about that. Besides, he brought it on himself half the time.
One of them opened the gate. Mia couldn’t remember who, and if she should ever have occasion one day to look back at that event, she doubted if the person who opened the gate would be the most important point, because what they saw behind it, catapulted all logic and reason into orbit, and for that there were no words.
Keri gasped when they allentered the vast underworld, equal in size to the one the Watchers inhabited. It held another ocean of the darkest greens and blues, and above, a sun burned, like the last, as if it was shared between the two worlds. But, unlike the other side, a beach of fine white sand met extraordinary woodland trees, offering colours of orange and greens, yellow and reds, as if autumn had touched their leaves and never left.
The trees were skyscraper tall. The branches were wide and strong and in them, as if they were part of the tree, nestled small houses. They were dwellings of wood and leaves and branches, with doors and windows and roofs, and walkways between them made of twisted vines.
And there, among them all, resting in their treetop houses, walking on the beach or fishing in small boats on the sea, were maidens, fair and pure, looking as if they had been created from an image of perfection. Long hair trailed about their shoulders and their gowns were made of shimmering gauze. Flowers were weaved through their hair and silver rings adorned their toes. And among them, children played; girls and boys.
There was a hush among the group as the four of them contemplated the scene beyond the gate, as if they were viewing paradise, maybe even Eden itself. And just as they all stood and stared, a scream expired from Keri’s lungs and pierced the ears of everyone.
As the sound echoed around the land, the long-haired maidens stopped and gazed upon the motley crew waiting at the gate, at the entrance to their world.
A child called out. She was about twelve-years-old, looking like the rest, but with skin pinker than the others, less pure and unblemished. She was running towards the group, across the sand on the beach and over the grass of the woodland.
“Mum…” she called. “Mummy!”
Keri wanted to fall to her knees and praise God. Instead, with sobs escaping her mouth like the fire of an automatic rifle she took off in a frantic sprint, running towards the child.
When they crashed together and Keri felt the flesh and the bones of her beloved daughter, she dragged Elizabeth to the ground as her knees no longer held her. Elizabeth was crying, trembling in her mother’s arms. Keri smelled her hair and kissed her face with random pecks. She couldn’t get enough of the feel of her. She wanted to lock her inside her arms and never let her go.
“Baby,” Keri sobbed, “my baby.”
Mia fell next to the pair holding onto each other so desperately. “Keri. What’s going on?” she shouted. “What is it, Keri? Who is this child?”
Keri pulled
away, just a little, without taking her eyes off the girl in her arms. “She’s mine,” she shouted as if she wanted the world to know. She pulled Elizabeth back into the folds of her body and rocked her as she once rocked her as a baby, and through her sobs, she continued the story she had begun before they were all carried away by the Watchers from Stonehenge.
Keri told the group, now standing above her, how she had been taken from her when she was just nine-years-old. How she and Harry couldn’t pay the ransom the kidnappers had demanded and how she, Elizabeth had never been returned.
Mia reached over and stroked the girl’s sand-coloured hair as Keri kept holding her and rocking her as if she would never stop. Her hair was shoulder length and she wore a homespun tunic over bare legs. “How did you get here, Elizabeth?” Mia asked when she finally opened her eyes.
“They brought me here…the Angels.” She looked into Keri’s eyes. “They destroyed the men who took me, Mummy.” She stared at Keri’s grief-stricken face. “They were going to kill me, those men, but the Angels saved me. They wouldn’t let me see what they did, but I heard the men crying and shouting, begging them to let them go. But they didn’t. The Watchers surrounded them until they stopped crying.” She wiped her hands over her eyes.
Keri saw her innocent face looking more mature now as she spoke about her abductors, as if she was alone again, without her mother there to protect and comfort her. Now, she was a young woman, relating a tale to strangers. “The Angels brought me here, so that they could care for me. And when I asked them to let me go, to go back to you and daddy, they said it wasn’t safe. They said that I would be kept out of harm’s way here in their world and that one day they would bring my mother so that we could be together again.”
“It’s incredible, Keri,” Mia said.
Keri felt fury build up in the pit of her stomach; fury against the Watchers who had held her daughter there for no obvious reason. The wasted years, the breakup of her marriage, all of it was the Watchers fault. “I’m taking you home.” Keri pulled Elizabeth to her feet.
“No, Mum,” she cried. “You don’t understand. I can’t leave here now.” She was clutching Keri’s hand to her chest. “Mummy…I can never go back.”
Before Keri had time to react, a maiden came out of the forest. She was astride a white horse and she was even more beautiful and majestic than the other maidens roaming the beach. She was dressed in a white and silver robe clinging to her perfect form, and in her hair, she wore a crown of leaves and crystals. Six pure white horses with garlands of flowers weaved through their manes came out of the trees behind her, and upon them, six long haired beauties rode, as if they were handmaidens to the one in front. They each resembled the leader, but their beauty was not so potent, nor so striking.
The seven horses and their riders walked slowly across the grass bordering the forest and then they stopped as they reached the group of strangers from the world above. They remained mounted as the one in the front looked down at them and spoke in velvet tones. “My name is Rhiannon. You will come with us now and we will take you to our home.” She reached out her delicate hand. “Come,” she said, indicating for Keri to mount the steed behind her. But Keri clung to Elizabeth, not wanting to let her go.
“It’s all right, mum. I will follow,” Elizabeth said with unfamiliar maturity.
Keri felt different now. She had strength in her soul and body. Her back was straighter and her head was held higher, and as she pulled her shoulders back, she reached out her hand to the maiden on the horse behind the leader, Rhiannon. She placed her two feet upon a boulder and kicked out her leg, jumping astride the white steed while holding onto the girl whose hair cascaded down her back.
Elizabeth mounted the next horse and then Mia and Jesus and finally Tom. They all clung to the waists of the maidens steering the horses, and then they trotted slowly into the forest.
Chapter 42
“Where are we going now?” Jay asked Maggie as she guided him away from the Challis Well Gardens. They were walking down a back street, past some strange looking shops selling pagan souvenirs.
“Now that you’ve got a feel of things, I’m going to take you back to my flat.”
“Ah, I get it. Your john is the way to Avalon.”
He chuckled and Maggie guffawed back, nudging him with her elbow. “You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
“Well, I’ve been known to raise a few laughs in my time…”
“I bet you have.”
They arrived at her apartment and she went straight to the kitchen, motioning for him to follow. “Come on.”
The previous night’s dishes were soaking in a bowl of cold water and the little room reeked of food smells; coffee and garlic, overripe apples, foreign spices and damp. At the end was a door next to a chipped metal container marked bread. Maggie took off the lid and put her hand inside, pulling out a large rusted key, using it to unlock the door. She reached inside and flicked a switch which turned on an exposed light bulb dangling above her head. An old staircase once painted red and now distressed with black scratches, ran upwards to another storey.
Maggie remained silent as she began to climb as her heavy artificial foot banged loudly on the tread. Jay followed, wondering what they would find up there, and despite his better judgement, realised he was enjoying himself.
It was stuffy and dark at the top, but as Maggie switched on another light, Jay saw everything.
The room was the attic of the house where Maggie’s apartment dominated the second floor. It was covered with floorboards, creaking as they walked and a ceiling panelled with plywood into the eaves. As he turned on the spot at the tallest part of the loft, he saw maps and pictures and photographs, and signs and shapes and symbols everywhere. They were on the walls, on the ceiling and even on the floor. Books were piled high among statues of Buddha’s, cherub angels and nymphs, all randomly placed around the perimeter.
“What is all this, girl?” Jay whispered.
“Just a little hobby of mine. I’ve been researching all this stuff for about thirty years now.”
Jay’s eyes were attracted to some text where he recognised the childlike drawing, as the one which adorned Maggie’s outside wall.
Maggie stood next to him. “That’s the Hopi Prophecy, translated by a Hopi elder.”
‘Arrival of another race foretold,’ Jay read. ‘The third event will depend on upon the Red Symbol, which will take command, setting the four forces of nature in motion for the benefit of the Sun. When the Great Spirit sets these forces in motion, the whole world will shake and turn red and turn against the people who are hindering the Hopi cultural life.'
Jay read a scribbled remark on the edge of the page, clearly penned by Maggie and written with a black marker. ‘Apocalypse - End of the world as we know it’ (Great Spirit – Watchers?).
‘To all these people Purification Day will come. Humble people will run to him in search of a new world, and the equality that has been denied them. He will come unmercifully. His people will cover the earth like red ants.’ ‘The Watchers’ – Maggie had penned.
‘We must not go outside to watch. We must stay in our houses. He will come and gather the wicked people who are hindering the red people who were here first. He will be looking for someone whom he will recognise by his way of life, or by his head or by the shape of his village and his dwellings. ‘The Fallout’ she wrote.
‘He is the only one who will purify us. The Purifier, with the help of the Sun and the Moha, will weed out the wicked who have disturbed the way of life of the Hopi, the true way of life on Earth. The wicked will be beheaded and will speak no more. This will be the Purification for all righteous people, the earth, and all living things on Earth. The ills of the earth will be cured. Mother Earth will bloom again and all people will unite into peace and harmony for a long time to come.’
‘After the apocalypse’, Maggie noted.
Jay ran his eyes over some symbols. They consisted of single or double or tre
ble lines with dots above them. Set in boxes, they were numbered zero to twenty-nine. “What are these?”
“Maya numbers. You know the Mayans who created the Mayan calendar? The ones who predicted the end of the world in 2012?”
Jay nodded. “Huh huh. Didn’t happen, hun!”
Nothing dissuaded Maggie. “To be exact; December 2012, at eleven minutes past eleven…on the twenty-first…In other words: 11-11-21-12-12.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he mocked. “Everyone maxed out their credit cards buying bottles of water and then nothing…nada…diddly squat.”
Maggie tutted. “Don’t you know nothing?”
“Enlighten me.”
“Not only did the Mayans predict the end of time, so did the bible. You know, ‘End of days’ an’ all that. I’m pretty sure that even though there was no great planetary event on the 21 December, twenty-twelve, something hugely relevant happened that day, which started the beginning of the ‘end of time’.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe an agreement was made by the world leaders that would affect all of us…maybe they made a decision that day to stage a nuclear strike.”
“They?”
"The powers that be, son. Look, they keep everything under wraps. The public won't be made privy to whatever they have planned. We're chicken shit in the big scheme of things."
“Chicken feed.”
“Huh?”
“Chicken feed, not chicken shit.”
She scowled. “Are you listening to me, Yankee boy?”
“Honey…Maggie, these conspiracy theories…you sound…well, you know, unhinged.”
She slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t get me started.”
To the side of the numbers, Jay looked at some images of the Vesica Piscis sacred symbol. One was of the pentagon in Washington, where the monument sat prominently within the Mandorla design. He recognised the map of the Challis Well Gardens and a Google earth image of the Glastonbury Tor with two huge circles, drawn by Maggie herself.
The Watchers Page 19
