The Watchers

by Neil Spring

  ‘Wait. What the hell is this?’ I had noticed something on the rough stone and peered hard at it. ‘There’s something here in chalk.’

  A symbol, a five-pointed star, pointing down. Beneath it a chiselled inscription.

  Bydd giât y cythraul

  yn agor a bydd y frwydr

  o bridd yn dechrau

  ‘That’s always been there. I don’t know what it means,’ Araceli said. ‘Can you read it?’

  I had never learned Welsh. So I had Araceli hold the torch as I scribbled it down. Then I saw a row of symbols to the right of the inscription. They looked familiar. I copied them down too.

  Otherwise, the cellar was empty. No clue as to where the smell was coming from.

  ‘Now, please, let’s go,’ Araceli said.

  When we were back in the hall, I demanded she tell me about the Jacksons.

  ‘I told the police everything I know, OK?’

  It was very far from OK. ‘What were they up to? They were local, so why stay here?’

  ‘They’d been coming here for years. Long-time friends of my parents. All that time we’ve had . . . disturbances here. Objects disappearing, reappearing. It got worse recently.’ She told me what had happened since she had seen the disc dive into the rocks. Doors opened and closed on their own, lights in empty rooms, unexplained banging, objects moving and furniture being overturned.

  First UFOs, now poltergeists? It was too much. Still, there was no doubting Araceli’s distress or the awful atmosphere that permeated the hotel’s hall.

  ‘How’s Tessa?’

  ‘I had to put her to bed. Her hair’s falling out, and her eyes are red and swollen with conjunctivitis.’

  I thought back to my conversation with Randall and Dr Caxton. ‘Araceli, tell me. Was Tessa baptized?’

  ‘Is that important?’

  ‘I don’t yet know how, but yes, I think it could be.’

  Araceli shook her head warily. There were other emotions in her eyes. Guilt? Suspicion? Alarm?

  ‘Right, let’s get her and leave. You can’t stay here tonight.’

  As I said this, I wasn’t just thinking about Araceli and her daughter; I was remembering the bizarre phone call at the inn, the metallic taunting voice.

  We got as far as the stairs when the lights blinked on.

  ‘Power’s back,’ said Araceli, sounding relieved but only a little, I thought. The scent of sulphur was definitely growing stronger again on the first-floor landing, and by the time we reached Tessa’s bedroom door, it was almost overpowering. I was about to mention it again when a scream ripped through the hotel.

  Tessa.

  ‘The door, it’s locked!’ Araceli shouted.

  The scream came again from behind the door as Araceli fumbled with the lock.

  ‘Hurry, hurry!’ I said, my hands on hers, trying to help.

  The lock clicked. And as the bedroom door swung inward my stomach gave a sickening lurch. The room was empty.

  Tessa? Tessa?’

  Araceli’s eyes were wild with panic as she hurtled around the room, throwing open the wardrobe and diving to the floor to look under the bed.

  ‘We’ll find her.’ But even as I said it, scanning the dolls that lay scattered on the floor, I was seized with uncertainty. How could a child get out of a locked room?

  ‘My God,’ Araceli whispered.

  Her eyes were fixed not on the French windows but something beyond – a white nightdress fluttering in the wind.

  Tessa was outside.

  I grabbed the handle. ‘It won’t open!’

  ‘It doesn’t open! How the hell did she get out there?’

  I hurled a chair at the windows. The glass smashed, spraying out onto the flat roof beyond and crunching under my shoes as I stepped out.

  The roof was spongy underfoot, cracked and blackened, a raindrop away from collapse.

  ‘Tessa,’ I said, reaching out a hand, ‘Come to me. Come away from the edge.’

  But the girl seemed not to hear. Her back to me, she was walking with purpose across that roof with an awful stop-motion slowness.

  She’s going to throw herself off the roof. The thought hit me so clearly I didn’t pause to doubt it.

  I knew what was beyond the edge of this roof. A sheer drop off the cliff.

  I took a step. The roof creaked under my weight.

  ‘Tessa, sweetie, just don’t move,’ I called, amazed at how calm I sounded.

  Another step. Another.

  Araceli screamed again.

  The wind pulled at me.

  Tessa was at the edge now. Still. Arms raised. Head tilting back. One foot stepping out into nothing . . .

  My hand found the back of her nightdress, grabbed it and yanked her back against me. She was rigid for a moment and then melted into me, and I clasped her in my arms. Held her tight. Felt the relief rush from my hands, up my arms and into me.

  I glanced down long enough to glimpse the sea smashing into the rocks and then crept back across the roof to Araceli’s outstretched arms. She ripped her daughter from me, staggered back inside and collapsed to the floor.

  Tessa lay limp in her mother’s lap, eyes closed. But there was a pulse. Strong and regular.

  ‘Sleeping,’ I told Araceli. ‘She’s sleeping.’

  Tears were streaming down Araceli’s face and her body was shuddering. She looked up at me with pleading eyes and I cupped her cheek with my hand. I wanted to reassure her. To tell her the child had simply been sleepwalking. That she must have opened the window somehow. But lying wouldn’t erase the terror from this mother’s eyes.

  ‘You need help,’ I told her.

  We needed help.

  III

  Sky Watch

  ‘What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?’

  Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 28 July 1952

  From The Mind Possessed: A Personal Investigation into the Broad Haven Triangle

  by Dr R. Caxton (Clementine Press, 1980) p.100

  The hours that led to the sky watch, that tragic event, were packed with events that skewed my interpretation of what it means to be human, indeed what it means to be me. They were hours that cast the longest shadow of doubt across my science, and they were hours I would give anything to forget.

  Perhaps it’s because I knew that strange things seen in the sky were once interpreted as religious signs and wonders that I came away from the Joneses’ house hoping for a rational explanation for the shocking behaviour exhibited by young Isaac, but hope was all I could do as I drove away from Rose Cottage.

  Deep down I knew that Randall Llewellyn Pritchard was right. There had been too many UFO reports at ancient sites and along ley lines, too many sightings that coincided with natural disasters. And too many witnesses with horrific physical side-effects.

  The UFO experiences in the Broad Haven Triangle were not the result of local superstition and folklore. It wasn’t folklore that made Isaac bite his mother’s arm, and it wasn’t folklore that induced Tessa Romero to try to throw herself off the roof of the Haven Hotel. Both events were symptomatic of an occult condition known as demonomania, an affliction that drives individuals to harm themselves or others, a weakening of the soul that can lead to possession.

  Was this a real condition? I’d always assumed most cases had psychological explanations. But now? Increasingly I felt I had to do more to help Randall and his grandson. I had to check all of the children. Were they also exhibiting symptoms of demonomania? If so, God help them.

  – 39 –

  Monday 14 February 1977, twenty-four hours until the sky watch . . .

  It was gone nine o’clock.

  As the road uncoiled from the biting blackness I became aware of the blood pulsing behind my eyes. I was scared a
nd with good reason. Because we were close now and I had nothing but bad feelings for Ravenstone Farm.

  So what makes you think Araceli and Tessa will be safe here?Perhaps it will be different for them, I wondered. Hoped. Because my decision to bring them here came purely from the desire to alleviate their fear. To make them safe. And yet it was hardly the work of some noble saviour. Rather, I felt I had lost my grip on the world – my best friend dead, my job forgotten, my sanity . . .? Some part of me knew that returning to Ravenstone Farm wasn’t just a way of helping Araceli and Tessa, it was a last, desperate attempt to help myself.

  I knew my grandfather thought that the Happenings were real and related to a religious cult operating in the village – members of the Rotary Club, by my guess. I also knew that whatever they were doing was creating a force so menacing, so powerful that it could influence people’s behaviour. Perhaps even control them. But how far could I trust Randall? After our conversations about my parents and about the Jacksons, it was clear he was still keeping many things hidden.

  Trees arched together overhead. As we approached the farm down the narrow rutted track I heard the scrape of branches on the car doors and roof and pictured myself coming here for the first time, all those years ago, in the back seat of Randall’s truck, huddled under a blanket, frightened and grief-stricken, watching the crucifix dangling from his rear-view mirror.

  I brought the car to a stop, killed the engine.

  ‘Welcome to the end of the world,’ I said. We were three hundred miles from London. Araceli looked at me silently. I looked back for a moment, until my gaze drifted and settled on the house to which I had hoped never to return.

  ‘You’re sure it’s OK for us to be here, Robert?’

  ‘Sure. Just give me a moment.’ Just keeping my voice steady was an effort, and she must have noticed me trembling – her eyes were wide and wondering as she touched my hand. The contact gave me gooseflesh. I was filled with a sudden longing to abandon this responsibility I felt for Araceli, for Tessa, but resisted. I made myself get out of the car and look around me.

  The place stank of manure, but that wasn’t the first thing I noticed. Randall had never taken much pride in the upkeep of the place. But whereas such details were hazy in my memory, the emotions that swept through me were not: a powerful mixture of grief mixed with anger and fear made me lean for support on the front of the car.

  ‘This place still feels unnatural,’ I whispered to myself. And it did. It felt like nowhere else on earth. A slight but undeniable disturbance suffused the air, an electric charge that prickled the skin and filled me with the deepest conviction that at Ravenstone Farm the fabric of the world was so thin you could believe it touched another.

  Araceli was staring at me through the windscreen, and from the back seat of the car so was Tessa. The child’s face was still tear-stained and exhausted.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ I muttered.

  I could hear my breathing – rough and dry – as I walked towards the farmhouse. Squat and sullen. A monument to everything I hated in life. I focused on the small window with iron bars just above the porch. The glass was rattling in the sea wind. The wave of memory that rolled through me was so intense I couldn’t help but shiver, and in jagged white flashes I remembered what had happened to me here: Randall forcing me to kneel and pray on the hard floor of his study; Randall training his shotgun on the front door as the thuds had shaken the house. But what had happened after that?

  No, a voice in my head said. We forget because we must.

  The car alarm went off. I jumped and spun round.

  ‘We didn’t touch anything!’ Araceli shouted as she helped Tessa out of the back. Her face was panicked. ‘You’ve got the keys!’

  She was right; I could feel them in the pocket of my jeans.

  The car’s headlights burst into life, projecting two powerful beams at the farmhouse. I turned to look. A black space had replaced where the front door had been. And framed within it was Randall, unshaven and in his dressing gown.

  He surveyed the scene before him: the shrieking car, the flashing headlamps, Araceli holding a sobbing Tessa in her arms, backing away from the car. Finally, he looked at me.

  ‘Welcome home, boy.’

  From The Mind Possessed: A Personal Investigation into the Broad Haven Triangle

  by Dr R. Caxton (Clementine Press, 1980) p.120

  Randall Llewellyn Pritchard was born and raised in Egryn, a scattered hamlet on the coast of Merionethshire between Barmouth and Harlech in north Wales. As far as I can tell, his early life was spent at the bleak farmhouse owned by his mother, Mrs Pauline Pritchard, a religious mystic who had endured many personal tragedies, most notably the death of three infants in childbirth. In 1904, the year of Randall’s birth, Mrs Pritchard was at the heart of a religious revival that was bringing whole congregations to their knees.

  In the opinion of this psychologist the spectacular incidents surrounding Mrs Pritchard’s mission make up one of the most astonishing accounts of paranormal events in British history. At the dilapidated roadside chapel in Egryn the Welsh Seeress (as she became known) would lead scores of people to Christ, making reference to signs in the heavens, telling how she had seen each night a fire rise before her from the marshy shore, a rapidly vibrating light, ‘as though full of eyes’.

  According to one report from the time, ‘The chapel became bathed in mysterious light. After the meeting a professional gentleman returning homeward suddenly saw a gigantic figure rising over a hedgerow, with right arm extended over the road. Then a ball of fire appeared above, a long white ray descended and pierced the figure, which vanished . . .’

  We now know that it wasn’t just lights that Randall’s mother saw, but visions of the devil. In the years following the manifestations – Randall’s formative years – Mrs Pritchard became distant and ranted incessantly about a battle with Satan for human souls. By the time Randall was fifteen his mother had stopped speaking to him, stopped speaking to anyone. And by the time Randall was eighteen, she had been locked in an asylum.

  We now know, of course, that Randall would grow up to embrace his mother’s fascination with religion and the occult and would become the focus of intense media speculation and mass hysteria when the Broad Haven manifestations reached their climax.

  – 40 –

  Monday 14 February 1977, Ravenstone Farm

  ‘My God, what’s wrong with the lights?’ Araceli asked as the bulbs blinked on and off in the kitchen. Tessa was shaking and pale-faced on her lap at the imposing kitchen table.

  You’d better get used to it, I was thinking. Because anything electrical or mechanical has a habit of going wrong at Ravenstone Farm.

  I put my hand on Araceli’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. After what had happened at the hotel, I knew the monsters weren’t just in my head any more. They were in the village, in the sky and in the sea. Even in the phone lines.

  Randall had gone out to inspect my car. He came in, shaking his head and frowning. ‘Nothing wrong with it as far as I can see.’ He looked down at Araceli coldly.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she managed to say, stroking her daughter’s hair. ‘We’re OK, aren’t we, Tess?’

  The child nodded, yet her skin was the colour of gone-off milk and oddly shiny.

  The kettle whined as it came to the boil. ‘Coffee?’ Randall asked.

  Araceli nodded wearily and Randall got to work.

  ‘There’s a bed upstairs for the child, if you like.’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ Araceli answered. ‘She isn’t leaving my sight.’

  Randall handed her a mug, all the time keeping an uneasy gaze on Tessa, who was not just withdrawn now but sullen. ‘Do you remember your dreams, Tessa?’ he asked suddenly, surprisingly gentle.

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘And do you like dreaming?’

&
nbsp; ‘No,’ she replied.

  ‘Can you tell me what you see in your dreams, Tessa?’

  ‘The bad men.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Randall said, taking a seat at the table opposite mother and daughter. ‘When did you first see these bad men?’

  ‘The night before the football.’

  Araceli was watching Randall intently from under her lashes. ‘She means the light that chased our car. Before the thing at the school.’

  ‘There was a man in my bedroom,’ Tessa said. Then, with a little more prompting from Randall, ‘A big black shape. I knew he was bad. I hid under the blankets, and when I looked again he was gone.’

  ‘She had to sleep in with me,’Araceli said.

  Randall asked for a further description but Tessa only pursed her lips and shook her head.

  ‘You’ll remember what I told you, boy: the Black-Suited Men are the messengers of deception, the harbingers of death.’ He glanced at Araceli and added, ‘There are secrets buried in houses all over the Havens.’

  For a further ten minutes Randall asked us both more questions and listened in silent fascination as we told him about the unexplained knockings and poundings at the hotel and Tessa’s misadventure.

  ‘How on earth did you get onto the roof?’ Randall asked the girl.

  She shook her head.

  Then Randall began reciting from the Bible: ‘“Let there not be found among you anyone who immolates his son or daughter in the fire, not a fortune-teller, soothsayer, charmer, diviner, or caster of spells, nor one who consults ghosts and spirits or seeks oracles from the dead.”’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. We haven’t done anything like that!’ Araceli insisted. ‘We’re not consulting with the dead. Why would we do such a thing?’

  Randall looked suspicious.

  Araceli shook her head vigorously. ‘It’s true!”

  ‘Have you or your daughter brought any unusual items into the hotel recently? Gifts perhaps?’

  ‘No.’