The Watchers Read online

  ‘This way, boy.’

  I followed him into the narrow hallway, where the lingering animal odour was even stronger, the carpet hard and brown, and the wallpaper so cloudy yellow you could almost taste the cigarette smoke. Hanging next to the front door, a camera and a brown leather binocular case, and leaning very near this, in the corner, a double-barrelled shotgun.

  Grandfather’s eyes fastened on me. ‘You’re not to touch that. Not ever!’

  His face had turned stony. He watched carefully as I shuffled down the hall and peered into the small front room, where an enormous bookcase was filled with musty tomes. His study.

  I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the stale air. I was intrigued by the newspaper clippings that plastered the walls, partly because I had never seen such a thing before, mostly because of the many black headlines screaming about ‘mysteries in the sky’. And that wasn’t all. A great picture hung over the mantelpiece, da Vinci’s St John the Baptist, immersed in shadow. An enigmatic smile touched the great saint’s lips as his right hand pointed skyward.

  I gasped as a dark shape suddenly sprang from the shadows towards me. But it was only a spirited black Labrador, alert and lovable as he pushed his nose against my leg, tail beating furiously.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Jasper.’

  ‘Can I take him out, Grandfather?’

  ‘Not now . . . It’ll be dark soon.’ His hooded gaze shifted to the window and the purple sky beyond. ‘Upstairs now. Unpack.’

  Waiting for me in the shadows that lingered strangely at the bottom of the rickety staircase was the small trunk my parents had given me the previous Christmas. Packed inside: history books and my new school uniform but none of the toy guns and army uniforms I used to play with. My childhood dream to be a soldier had died with my father.

  ‘Hurry up, boy!’

  I did as Grandfather instructed.

  God help me, I went upstairs.

  *

  That evening, as I lay on the steel-framed bed under woollen blankets that made my skin itch, I longed for sleep while unfamiliar sounds kept me from my rest: creepy, insistent, croaking rhythms that might have been frogs in the pond, high-pitched shrieks that might have been the cries of prowling foxes and, just to the side of the house, another sound, riding on the piti­less wind – creak-squeak creak-squeak.

  Perhaps Mum had come to hate the farm where she grew up. She had certainly never mentioned it, and whenever I had asked her about her childhood her answer was always the same: Better left in the past. The memories brought stinging tears to my eyes and churned my stomach. These days I’d often wake up crying, and I had been dreaming a lot about my parents and all the things we’d never do.

  My knees were tucked up to my belly as I stared at the ceiling, at the rough wooden crucifix nailed over my bed. Downstairs, I could hear Grandfather moving about, singing a hymn to himself, pleading for the souls of ‘unbelievers’. I closed my eyes and felt myself hardening against him. Against the undeniable fact that this man was all I had left in the world.

  *

  I woke to the birds’ dawn chorus chirpily greeting a new day and the distant rumble of a tractor. Grandfather was in the kitchen, leaning over an enormous Aga.

  ‘We’re going for a walk this morning,’ he said without turning. His attention seemed divided between the latest edition of the Church Times and the sizzling bacon in the blackened pan. ‘Down to the coastal path. I want to show you something.’

  I had been hoping he might ask me how I was, how I had slept.

  The truth was I’d slept badly. Since my parents’ deaths I’d been haunted by the same strange dream about a dark-haired girl with an oval face and a lighthouse throwing its yellow beam across the sea. Pulsing. I’d woken shivering with fear, too scared even to try to sleep again. But now, in the light, it all seemed very distant.

  After breakfast we set off with Jasper down a muddy rutted track across the fields which surrounded us for miles. I sighed, wondering why I already felt a closer bond with the dog than I did with my own blood relative. But the truth was Jasper calmed me in a way that Grandfather did not. I would grow to love that dog, really love him. On a desolate farm far from anywhere, Jasper was one of the greatest gifts that a lonely little boy could hope for.

  I could smell the sharp salt of the tide. As we reached the lower fields, near the cliffs, Grandfather quickened his pace, regularly glancing over his shoulder as if to check we weren’t being followed. Or watched.

  Then, suddenly, he stopped.

  ‘Grandfather?’

  His lead-coloured eyes were fixed on a large rocky outcrop half a mile offshore.

  ‘Stack Rocks,’ he whispered. ‘This is the nearest point. You’re not to come down here, not ever.’

  ‘But why?’

  I felt his reproachful eyes on me. Something else was there too. Was it fear? Why should he be afraid?

  ‘Stack Rocks,’ he said again. ‘Sometimes the kids in the village ask the fishermen to take them out. But you must never go there – you stay away!’

  My gaze followed his. The outcrop was barren except for a ruined fort on its highest point. Grandfather told me that in the last century the squat structure had been built to defend the shore. Later it had been abandoned and left to decay.

  ‘It is a dangerous place, boy. You understand?’

  I didn’t, but I nodded anyway, and an uncomfortable shudder crept over me as I watched him, for his eyes were now prominent and strained. Hunching forward to drop a hand on my shoulder, he continued speaking in a voice not much more than a whisper. ‘Our planet is haunted. And there are those who would do us harm.’

  Suddenly, a distant memory – burning rubber. A yellow beam cutting through the darkness.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean?’ I said. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘The forces of darkness are forever present. You must not hunt them or seek them. Understand? You must never invite them in!’

  He was standing close. So close I felt suddenly overwhelmed by his presence, by his fierce and rapturous face. ‘Please, I want Mum and Dad.’

  ‘Your father?’ His tone turned bitter. ‘The mistakes he made will cost us dearly.’

  ‘But . . . but he was my dad!’

  ‘He was a monster!’

  My heart was pounding. I wanted to strike him for talking about my father like that, but I didn’t dare.

  ‘The Book of Revelation tells us that fallen angels would strike thrice between the eyes and cause great suffering.’ He looked broodingly across the fields, the sea, and at Stack Rocks, then gave me a look so dark it made me shiver. ‘You must be protected, boy.’

  Protected from what? From whom? We weren’t likely to have visitors at Ravenstone Farm – it was too isolated. I hadn’t even heard the telephone ring.

  ‘From the forces of darkness and the tricks of the Lawless One,’ he shouted above the rising wind. ‘From the fires in the sky and from the heat below.’

  The cold seemed to rise from the sea and strike at my face.

  Someone help me, I thought. He’s gone mad.

  Suddenly, as if in answer to my plea, a figure passed into view on the coastal path. A man in farmer’s clothes. He raised a hand in a gesture of hello.

  Grandfather’s eyes held my gaze for a moment or two, then, ignoring the walker, he crossed himself, turned sharply and strode back towards the farmhouse.

  I’m pretty certain it was at this precise moment that I decided I couldn’t trust my grandfather, couldn’t trust anything he told me.

  The months dragged by. I enrolled at the secondary school in Haverfordwest but made few friends. I felt different to the other children. Not only were they oblivious to what life had dealt me, I also knew that none of them would be welcome at the farm and I would be ashamed to tak
e them there. Grandfather never fixed anything or cleaned, so the farmhouse fell ever further into neglect, until even the television gave up the ghost. After school and at the weekends I was forced to create my own entertainment. So I began to explore. And what child isn’t intrigued by what is out of bounds?

  I quickly found a favourite spot: down to the lowest field, through the barbed-wire fence and into the tangled bracken overlooking Stack Rocks, the best viewpoint over the Atlantic Ocean and RAF Brawdy.

  I was scared of what Grandfather would do if he knew I went down there, but curiously not scared of the place. On the contrary, I felt strangely drawn to the spot. Connected somehow.

  Stack Rocks Island pulled my gaze. Held it. Rising from the waters in three humps, the large outcrop resembled a mythical creature. None of the fishing boats went near, nor any birds. None I ever saw. Sometimes it seemed as though even the rain itself didn’t touch those rocks. And there was something odd about Ravenstone Farm itself, I had come to realize. Not the isolation of the place, but the way it felt, the way the air, even on the coldest days, warmed the skin, the way it pricked and crackled and made the hairs stand on end.

  *

  My mother and father were arguing again in our house on the base. Screaming at one another as I sat hunched at the top of the stairs wishing they would just STOP!

  The perspective changed, and suddenly I was cold. Freezing cold and hunched in darkness, screaming to get away. But get away from what?

  Suddenly, in the distance, across the rough sea, a pulse of yellow light: flashing, flashing.

  A lighthouse.

  I woke with a jolt. The first thing I heard was the window rattling against its bars. And when my eyes adjusted to the early dark, the first thing I saw was the wooden crucifix above my bed.

  An uncertainty flowed through me for a moment, irresistible and overpowering, and then hardened into a single concern: the front door – was it locked? Grandfather always locked it; he locked all the doors when we came in. But perhaps he’d forgotten. I would go and check for him.

  I had one foot on the rough bare floorboards when a low earthy drone filled the air. The hairs on the back of my neck shot up and blood pulsed in my ears. At that instant I heard it: thud thud thud. A visitor at this time in the morning? I knew something was wrong the instant I creeped downstairs into the shadow-haunted hall. Something was amiss in Grandfather’s study.

  I went in, flicked on the light.

  ‘Hello?’ I whispered. ‘Anyone there?’

  No one I could see. And yet clearly someone had been there because the thick brown rug that should have been in the centre of the floor was rolled to the side, all the way back to the enormous bookcase packed with ancient texts. Yet the furniture that rested on the rug – the wide desk, the rickety armchair – remained in its proper place. Then I noticed the picture over the mantelpiece, the one of St John the Baptist pointing enigmatically at the sky. It had been turned on its nail, one hundred and eighty degrees, so that it was hanging upside down.

  Again: thud, thud, thud. It was coming from the front door.

  I went back quickly into the hall. Fumbled with the lock chain, opened the door.

  ‘Hello, young man. Are your parents at home?’

  I was looking up at a tall, spindly man in a black suit, probably in his late twenties. My stomach tightened with fear.

  ‘Umm, I think my grandfather is here . . . He’s asleep.’

  The stranger looked at me steadily. ‘Not your parents?’

  His square black glasses gave him a studious air and an easy authority. But there was nothing sincere in his sharp smile and nothing genuine in his pointed, gaunt face. And why, I wondered, would such a young man colour his hair that brilliant shade of white?

  ‘They’re not here.’ My right hand went instinctively to my wristwatch, fumbled with it. ‘They’re . . . they’re dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ His head tilted slowly, and when he spoke again it was without a trace of sympathy. ‘How inconsiderate of them to leave you behind. Alone.’

  Those words were like a knife in me. Yet I felt a sudden strong impulse to invite him in. I felt dazed by his eyes . . . eyes that remembered midnight. And his skin . . . waxy white, smooth like a child’s, though there was nothing childish about him. A shiver ran up my spine.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,’ I answered, watching my words turn to frost on the air and suddenly wondering why his did not. ‘I ought to get Grandfather.’

  The Black-Suited Man’s face hardened. ‘Your grandfather won’t thank you for waking him.’ He leaned forward. ‘Please, let me in.’

  As I was about to step aside, the stamp of feet above made me swing round. A shock of relief shot through me as Grandfather, in his dressing gown, launched himself down the staircase.

  ‘Well, hello again,’ the visitor said. His lips pulled back over his teeth. ‘I’ve come to collect. Where is it?’

  ‘Oh God!’ rasped Grandfather, still in motion. He grabbed my shoulder roughly. ‘Get back, Robert!’

  To see my grandfather, always strong, so desperate at the sight of this man with plastic skin, wasn’t just surprising, it was terrifying.

  He slammed the door on the visitor and shot the chain.

  ‘The Black-Suited Men, messengers of deception, harbingers of death,’ he whispered. He sounded afraid, he sounded insane.

  Slowly his head swivelled towards the open door to his study. He saw the carpet rolled back, saw St John the Baptist hanging upside down. He lunged for me, dragged me after him into the study. There, still clutching me, he stared into my eyes. I would not disobey him, he insisted. For my safety and for his, I would do as he said, and the good Lord would keep us safe. But I didn’t feel safe; I just felt confused and scared to death as he righted the painting, then yelled at me to get down on my knees and pray before it.

  ‘Grandfather, no—’

  Something struck the back of my head, and I pitched forward, stunned. The shock was worse than the pain, shock as I realized that he had actually thrown his Bible at me, shock that now he was towering over me, crossing himself.

  ‘Hear, Holy Father . . .’

  After what felt like an eternity he got off his knees and looked warily at his desk lamp. It was flashing on and off, on and off.

  ‘You’ve been down to the lower fields. Haven’t you, boy?’

  I wanted to explain that from there I could see the hangars at RAF Brawdy across St Brides Bay, to see where we used to live, to see the watchtower that Dad used to love. But I was too frightened to say anything, so I just nodded with a slowness that felt exaggerated.

  ‘I told you to stay away from the cliffs,’ he said after a long moment. The naked lightbulb on his desk was flickering harsh light across his expression. ‘Do you know why?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘There are giants in the ground there. Watchers.’

  It seemed such a peculiar remark for a serious, intelligent man. But I could tell that he believed what he said and was keen that I believe it too. ‘Their existence flickers on the edge of this world. Mischievous, dangerous beings.’

  ‘Why are they dangerous?’ I asked, wide-eyed. ‘What do they want?’

  ‘To open the mind of man . . . and flood it with horror.’ When he continued he spoke softly, as if he feared being overheard. With every word, my heart pounded harder. ‘The Watchers were judged by God and bound for seventy generations. Their faces are made of shadows, and those who look upon them shall die.’

  I kept thinking, He believes this, he actually believes this. Is that why Mum never mentioned her childhood, why she never brought me here to Ravenstone? Had Grandfather scared her away with such stories?

  ‘You trust me, don’t you, boy?’ A keen Atlantic wind rattled the window, and as I looked upon his saturnine
face, my eyes pulled to that angry scar, a shiver ran through me.

  ‘Because one day, boy, the giants will return. Doesn’t the Lord’s good book tell us so?’ He nodded with the fervour of a fanatic. ‘And there will be wars and rumours of wars between nations . . . signs in the heavens—’

  ‘That man at the door,’ I interrupted, ‘who was he?’

  But the question I really wanted to ask was, What had he come to collect?

  Suddenly, the desk lamp, still flashing, exploded with a shower of glass.

  And again came the knocking. Not knocking, pounding. A terrible noise that shook the house – shook us.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  ‘Grandfather, what’s happening?’ I was trembling all over.

  From outside a hum of voices. Trampling feet crunching over ice and gravel.

  That was when I saw them through the parted curtains: five or six men swaddled in thick dark coats, cameras and binoculars looped around their necks. One man carried a map. Another a shotgun.

  Grandfather ignored the men outside, his whisper so low I could barely hear him. ‘The Watchers appear at times of change. At times of danger. They are returning, boy. And we must be ready.’

  – 2 –

  Friday 4 February 1977, Westminster, London

  It was just gone six thirty in the morning when the jangling telephone in the hall dragged me from the depths of sleep.

  ‘Get that, would you, Robert?’ Selina called sleepily from her bedroom across the hall.

  Only half awake, I saw in my mind my hand reaching for the phone. I had a vague idea who it was, that this call was important.

  My eyes snapped fully open. I sat upright, rubbed the nightmares from my eyes. This was it – the penultimate day of the select committee evidence sessions. My stomach twisted with anxiety as I thought of the shit storm that was coming.

  ‘We’re going to be fine,’ Bestford had said the night before as we were leaving his office in Parliament.

  But I knew my boss was wrong. No amount of preparation could be enough because the future of the British government depended on what happened today.