by Neil Spring
‘I wonder if you could help us, please? I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for your husband.’
‘Howell?’ She shook her head hopelessly and I felt a jagged jolt of shock. ‘Howell is dead.’
‘What! How? When?’ I gasped out.
‘You’ll have to . . . excuse me.’ She swallowed back tears. ‘Such a shock. You see, he took his own life,’ she managed to say. ‘They found him last night.’
‘I’m . . . God, I’m so sorry! Where did this happen?’
‘On the coastal path.’ She shook her head.
‘And the police have confirmed it was suicide?’ Randall asked.
‘He was . . . I’m sorry. He was hanging from a tree. No note. No explanation.’
And I had no words.
*
An eerie twilight had crept across the day by the time we got back to Little Haven. Randall stopped the car near the slipway, next to the beginning of Giant’s Point, and stared past me at the door into the Ram Inn. There was a look on his face that could have been sadness. Or hope.
‘We’ve both had a great shock. Fancy a pint, boy?’
I almost said yes, but the answer stuck in my throat. An old memory, surfacing. Someone knocking at Ravenstone Farm. Randall standing before me, his shotgun raised and pointing at the front door.
‘Well, what do you say?’
I felt conflicted because a part of me needed a drink. The rest of me hated Randall for whatever obscure knowledge about these events, and my own past, he was still concealing.
‘Thank you but I need some time alone,’ I said eventually. ‘I need to process what’s happening.’
Randall accepted my rebuff immediately, which made me feel guilty. Shitty, actually. For someone who had lost so much I suppose it was pretty staggering that I should push away my only remaining relative. My only consolation was knowing that he had once done the same to me.
I was also thinking about the admiral. I needed his advice. During the crazy events of the last few days I had almost forgotten why I was there in the first place. Now my original brief surfaced in my mind – find out about the sightings and how they might be linked to military operations – but it seemed distant and almost childlike in its simplicity. So very much had happened since I first came to the Havens.
‘Robert.’ Randall broke in on my thoughts. ‘I said I would convince you that there’s something terrible afoot. Did I succeed? You saw the state of Dylan Jones. You’ve seen how they operate, how insidious they are, how dangerous they can be.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me before? How can I trust anything you say?’ I said sharply. Instantly he straightened in his seat. Thinking back to my dream, I remembered again the day my parents died, the way they had argued. In the darkest part of my mind a question was forming. ‘You hide so many things. For example, there’s something about Mum and Dad you never told me, isn’t there?’
Silence.
‘You keep telling me I shouldn’t have come back. You called Dad a monster.’
Then Randall did look me in the eye.
I swallowed. ‘And what about the Jacksons. Why didn’t you say you were a suspect?’
‘When I said you should leave for your own sake, I meant it, boy. But I must remain here and do what I can for the village. The children.’
‘I just don’t know what to think any more. I have to go.’
‘Robert, wait.’ He shook his head from side to side as the car door on my side swung open. ‘If you are determined to stay, you must try to let me help you.’
I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say no either.
As his battered old Hillman drove away, out of habit I glanced up at the Haven Hotel brooding on the cliff. The place was in darkness, whereas all the other lights in the village were on. Another power cut. But why only there?
Frobisher, the admiral – everyone had said that Randall had initially provoked the hysteria. But that wasn’t quite true, I mused. After all, the very first sightings had actually involved Araceli. And Tessa. And now I had learned of their possible connection to Stack Rocks. Too much of this revolved around them.
I decided to return to my room and call her to check whether she was OK and to ask if there was any change in Tessa’s condition, but I’d barely taken a step inside the inn when the landlord informed me that Araceli had called three times that afternoon and left messages. I tried calling from the phone in the bar. No reply.
I went immediately up to my room, opened the door and froze. Someone had been in there. It wasn’t imagination or paranoia, no way. Paranoia hadn’t emptied my drawers all over the floor. Gone were my notepads and bundles of newspaper clippings. My head throbbed as anxiety snaked through me. Outside an enormous silver car was parked across the street, empty. My eyes swept the deserted street for any signs of life and found none. But I could hear the engine running.
I ran for the door, wrestled with the lock and then plunged downstairs, through the bar and out into the narrow road. The car was gone.
Back inside the Ram, Roger Daley was drying a glass and eyeing me. I thought about asking him to call the police, to report the break-in and . . . what? A car?
The landlord put down the glass. ‘Are you all right, Mr Wilding?’ His tone suggested he knew the answer was no. And the hint of a smile forming on his lips suggested this pleased him very much indeed.
‘Fine,’ I told him.
I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, I told myself with each step up the stairs.
And suddenly the landlord was behind me at the bottom of the stairs. I knew it before I even turned round. His expression was distressing because it was so strange, not just angry but full of rage and quiet malevolence. For a moment I thought his eyes flashed red again, and my heart raced. Daley laughed, revealing his stained yellow teeth. Then he gave me an obscene leer and his voice sounded in my head. I literally heard what he was thinking: Robert Wilding, your time is running out.
Back in my room – door locked, window fastened – the phone rang. It didn’t matter how many times I answered it, there was no one at the other end, just distorted mechanical beeping sounds. I was about to unplug it from the wall when I had a different idea. I dialled the MoD. When an operator answered, I said, ‘Lord Hill Bartlett’s office, please.’
A moment later I heard a secretary’s voice: ‘The Admiral of the Fleet’s office.’
‘I want to speak to him.’
‘I’m sorry, the admiral is not avail—’
‘Tell him it’s Robert Wilding and I’m in trouble.’
‘Just a moment, please.’ There was a brief pause before the secretary buzzed me through and my mentor came on the line.
‘Someone knows what I’m doing here,’ I said to the admiral. Then I told him about the break-in.
I heard him cough before he answered. ‘You think they were after your notes?’
‘Not just mine. Selina’s notes. They’re all gone.’ There was a further bout of coughing. He sounded dreadful. ‘Admiral, are you— ’
‘Never mind about me. Go on.’
‘She wrote about something called the Parsons Report. I sent you a note. Do you know anything about this document?’
‘I had hoped to spare you this, old chap.’ There was a brief silence. I wondered if he was thinking or stifling another spasm of coughing. ‘We’ve known about the Parsons Report for some time now.’
‘We?’
‘The National Security Council.’
I didn’t tell him then how furious I was at hearing he had kept this from me, but only because I couldn’t find the words to express that anger. ‘Tell me now, Admiral. What is it?’
‘The Parsons Report was written during the ’60s by a British citizen, an expert with an intense interest in UFO phenomena. It warned of the threat that flying saucers pose to this country and indeed t
he world. Our intelligence suggests it was leaked to those at the very top of the British Establishment.’
‘Who?’ I whispered into the phone. ‘The prime minister?’
‘MPs, peers of the realm, top officials, certain factions of the military.’
I glanced out of the window up at the Haven Hotel. The light in Araceli’s bedroom had blinked on. ‘Admiral, is this really why you sent me here? To find this report.’
‘Not at all. But clearly someone else wants it now. The Soviets perhaps.’
That made me think of the peculiar silver car I had seen parked outside.
He produced another hacking cough that sounded so painful I actually winced. ‘Your grandfather may have the Parsons Report. I want you to find it, old chap.’
I was not a religious man but I offered up a silent prayer then, a prayer that Randall had nothing to do with the animal mutilations or with Jack Parsons, the rocket scientist and occultist who had come to west Wales after the war. He died in an explosion at home. The files on his death are still classified.
I thought of Randall and his suggestion that a cult was at work in the Havens. A secretive, tightly knit group of people. That description could fit the whole community. It could also describe a body like the Rotary Club with members like Howell Cooper and Roger Daley. Couldn’t it? I thought so. And that suspicion conjured up icy fingertips that stroked my neck.
I told the admiral what I was thinking. ‘Parsons was an occultist, dabbled in rocket technology. Experiments. Right here in the Havens. But now the headmaster’s dead and I think there’s a group of people here up to something sinister. I need to know if Parsons had anything to do with this group – if he might have been the first member.’
It was a very tenuous possibility at this point, but if true it could explain why there was a cult in the Havens, where it had come from and even what it was up to. But I needed to find some evidence that the link was there.
I took a deep breath. My next request felt like a big deal and I at once felt guilty making it. ‘I know you’re busy, I know you’re unwell, but can you get down here? I don’t know if I can do this alone.’
Silence.
‘I feel out of my depth. Please come. If you can manage it.’
I felt like I was twelve again, vying for Randall’s attention. Except this was different. The admiral understood me in a way that Randall never had.
‘What would that achieve, Robert?’
I couldn’t say, not immediately, but I felt deeply moved by an obscure foreboding. I remembered why I had returned here, and it felt like so long ago. I had come here to investigate the weapons at the RAF base and to try to make some sense of my parents’ deaths. That had been overshadowed by the Happenings, and yet I had a terrible sense that it might all be connected.
‘Admiral, I feel as though we’re building to something here . . . something dreadful. I’m doing the best I can but I still don’t know how the military is involved, or even if they are, and things are getting more and more complicated. I would feel better knowing someone here was in charge, was able to go to the places I haven’t been able to.’
‘All right.’
I breathed a deep sigh of relief. ‘Thank you.’
‘Where are you?’
‘The Ram Inn, Little Haven.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow evening.’
As I hung up I thought again about the documents that had been stolen from my room and glanced out of the window at the hotel. I had got distracted by the missing documents and still hadn’t returned Araceli’s calls. It was clear she was at the centre of this somehow, and I knew that the first step to understanding it all would be to figure out how and why.
I dialled her number immediately.
‘Robert, thank God.’
Fear in her voice. I sat bolt upright. ‘Araceli, what’s wrong?’
‘You won’t believe what’s happened this afternoon. The hotel’s a mess. Things aren’t right here. Either I’m seeing and hearing things, or—’
‘All right, calm down, speak slowly.’
‘You’ll think I’m crazy.’
‘What happened?’
‘I was in the bar earlier when I saw something over St Brides Bay. I thought it was a bird, the way it was wheeling through the sky. It was white and catching the light of the sun.’
‘Did you get a good look at it?’
‘It was some sort of disc. I don’t want to say it was a flying saucer, I don’t, but that’s exactly what it looked like to me.’
‘What was it doing?’
‘Just hurtling through the sky towards Giant’s Point. Then it stopped and hung in the air above Stack Rocks.’
‘Now you’re scaring me,’ I heard myself say.
‘I couldn’t believe my eyes, Robert.’ She drew in a sharp breath. ‘The bloody thing nosedived into the side of Stack Rocks!’
‘You mean it crashed?’
‘Well, sort of, except . . . I expected flames, an explosion – and I know how this is going to sound – but I thought I saw a door open in the rock face.’
‘Robert?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Impossible, right? A door! It opened, and the disc dived into it and vanished.’ She was gasping to get the words out. ‘I’m beginning to think I’m losing my mind. There can’t be a door in the rock, can there?’
You should know. ‘Is it true Stack Rocks Island belongs to your family?’
She hesitated. ‘It came with the estate.’
‘And now the locals, the Rotary Club, want to do up the abandoned fort on the island?’
‘You think that’s important?’
My mind went back to the conversations of that afternoon. ‘I don’t know what to make of this, Araceli. I’m coming over. Sit tight.’
I ended the call. The telephone rang again immediately. I lifted the receiver.
‘Hello?’
The line crackled and buzzed.
‘Hello, Mr Wilding.’
My breath caught. The voice had a stilted metallic quality, as if I wasn’t speaking to a person but a . . .
‘Will you give yourself too, Mr Wilding?’
My skin prickled. ‘Will I what? Who is this?’
‘Are you enjoying yourself, Mr Wilding? We are enjoying watching you ever so much.’
I was so furious, so scared, that I wanted to throw the phone down, smash it against the wall.
‘Tell me who you are!’
‘Robert, you will come to us. We are legion. And we are coming. Coming back.’
The line clicked dead.
– 38 –
Haven Hotel, Skyview Hill, Little Haven
I stumbled out of the car, ran to the great front door and pounded on it. ‘Araceli?’
I tried ringing the bell. No reply, no sign of life.
I looked around me wildly. The moon was hidden behind a bank of cloud. I felt like I was drowning in the dark.
Will you give yourself too, Mr Wilding?
I couldn’t get that voice on the telephone out of my head.
‘Araceli!’
A sound from within, bolts drawing back. The door opened. She looked dreadful. Her face was dead white, her eyes red and swollen. I gave in to the urge and pulled her to me. She let me hold her.
‘Since I saw that thing earlier, this place has gone mad,’ she whimpered. ‘It’s out of control. I don’t know how much more I can take.’
I looked past her and started with surprise. For a few seconds I was speechless. There were fresh paintings on the floor – paintings that had not been there when I had last visited – six or seven of them propped against the wall.
‘When did you find the time to do these?’ I asked.
A strange look crossed her face as if she was reaching for an answer b
ut couldn’t find one.
That lighthouse again – Stack Rocks clearly recognizable – projecting its sickly beam of yellow light across a turbulent sea. There was something about the image that filled me with an intolerable, uncertain dread. There was no lighthouse on Stack Rocks, and yet it was in every one of her pictures. It was purely a figment of her imagination. Or a memory of something else. Hidden.
‘I can’t explain why,’ she said falteringly, ‘but the lighthouse is important. I’m sure. The lighthouse is vital, Robert. To you and to me.’
Somewhere . . . we went somewhere.
We turned to go inside and the stench from the hall hit me. Jesus, what is that?’ I asked, too shocked to feel nauseous. ‘Sulphur?’
Her head shook with bewilderment. ‘It’s everywhere!’
I let go of her and went into the hall. Followed my nose. The odour grew stronger with each step, drawing me past the suit of armour towards a wooden door.
‘Where does this lead?’
‘The cellar.’
Suddenly Randall’s voice was in my head again. The sightings occur on historical points, ley lines. Frequently there is an underground connection. And Frobisher’s comment: You know they say it was built on ley lines.
‘Can I go down there?’ I asked, shivering and rubbing my arms.
When we had located a torch and the key to the cellar door, she led me down into the dusty dark, both of us clasping our hands over our noses and mouths.
At first there was just old furniture and boxes of foul-smelling candles piled in a corner. ‘Why do you have so many of these?’
‘Mother always worried about the lights going out,’ she said in a curt tone that suggested this wasn’t something she wanted to discuss.
I reached into a box of candles anyway and pulled some out. They were black. The Jacksons. They were found with black candles.
‘Did the Jacksons come here?’ I asked. ‘Did they stay here before their murder? Is that why Selina asked for that particular room?’
Araceli blinked, then nodded, her eyes rolling back to look reluctantly about. Her face turned towards the wall.
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me, Araceli?’
Silence.
