The Watchers (15 page)

“
This is impossible,” Keri said
.
“I’m dreaming.” No one responded, least of all Tom. They all remained in stunned silence, gaping at the landscape, trying to digest the scene and the details within the scene. It was more than any of them were prepared for, more wondrous and exotic than any of them could have imagined. As far as Tom was concerned, the fabric of the world, which lay out before them was simply inexplicable.

A white cloud was coming towards them in the distance. The air-spirits were back. Their weightless forms mingling with the air above the quiet sea, as dark blue as a fresh water lagoon.

Tom and the others watched as two of the maidens separated and flew down towards the terrace they were standing on. They were heading straight for him. His hair and his clothes blew about when they got closer as if he was caught-up in a wind-tunnel. The two maidens reached out their gentle arms and wrapped their whole spirited bodies around his. Then, as he screamed, they lifted him from the ground as if he was a feather floating on a gentle breeze.

The scream escaped his lips like a high-pitched squeal. The height of his carriage over the sea was vast and terrifying and he felt that any minute now they would realise he was too heavy and they would release him into the depths of the ocean where he would surely break his neck. But, as he orientated himself, he saw their faces smiling their reassurances, allowing him to put his trust in them as they glided with unfaltering grace across the water towards land.

They played with him for a while. They swooped like gulls and rose again as they laughed at the noises involuntarily escaping his lips. They were teasing him until he had no choice but to pray they would soon realise that now wasn't the time for kidding around. He took a peek over his shoulder and saw Keri being carried away in the same fashion by another two nymphs. She looked stricken with terror and as her hair lashed her eyes, she closed them tightly, comforted by her temporary blindness.

Behind her, another two spirits had gathered up Mia as she held onto Charlie like a mother and her baby. They swept them up into the sky.

Jesus was the only one left on the ledge with a lone maiden hovering over his head like a ghostly halo. He appeared abandoned as he watched the spectacle of his human companions flying over the underworld’s landscape, wrapped in, what looked like from a distance, a gust of air blown in by Neptune himself.

Tom was finally released onto the shoreline, where the two spirits left him to go back for Jesus. His land-legs gave out, and he fell to his knees while his body trembled as if it would never stop. He was on a beach made of the finest sand he had ever seen and as he raked his fingers over it, it cascaded through them like the delicate sands of time. He did it again, enjoying the texture of it caressing his skin. Then, as it sieved back onto the beach, a single white stone was left in the palm of his hand. He knew what it was. It was a diamond; lusterless and priceless. He dragged his fingers through the sand once more and found another. They were everywhere; raw, uncut diamonds, scattered like common pebbles on a beach.

In the arms of the air spirit
s
, Mia felt herself gliding to the shore where Tom and Keri were now standing. She landed on the white sand as Tom took hold of her to anchor her to the ground. They all stayed to watch Jesus make his descent. He was laughing, looking as if he was remembering a time when he was a boy and what it was like to ride a wave.

When he was released upon the shore, a voice addressed them all. “They like to give you fun on your first flight.”

Mia spun around and saw Uriel standing on the shore behind them, alongside six Angels. She took a tentative step forward. “Is it you?” she asked.

“Of course,” he answered without moving his lips.

“It was you who brought us here?”

“Yes.”

"Is it because you were answering my prayers?" She suddenly felt childlike, as if she was like a little girl unsure of what to say to strangers. Not because of her small size against his formidable stature, but because she felt blessed to be on their territory as if she was a newcomer to heaven itself.

“You can leave your dog, here. He will be cared for.”

"Well, I…" Mia didn't want to let Charlie go until she saw him chasing a crab along the beach.

“We have matters to discuss, but we don’t have much time.” He waved his hand for them to follow. “Come,” he said.

Keri Rains was thinking about Harr
y
, wishing he was there. She was out of her depth, weak and vulnerable, and pretty much useless down there in that strange world. The others seemed to understand what was going on, but she didn’t. She didn’t understand it at all.

They were the Watchers; she could see that. She had seen some illustrations in the newspaper even though they really did no justice to the real thing. No, the illustrations did nothing for the strength of their bodies nor their great beauty…and their magnificent wings.

And the underworld place! She had no idea how they would ever find their way back to civilisation. If what they were saying about the Kudos was true, that they were the chosen ones, then why was she there? She'd never seen a Watcher, nor spoken to one and if their criteria were for people who were true of heart, she most of all, could never satisfy that requirement, not after the evil thoughts she'd pondered over time and time again, condemning the men who took her child.

Now, as she followed the group across the beach, she looked back one last time to the terrace protruding from the sheer cliff of the mountain, and she wondered that if she wanted to, could she go back?

Tom stared at the wonder
s
of that place underground, wonders he was finding difficult to comprehend. He had his hand upon his camera case. It was strapped to his back and it dangled behind his arm as a constant reminder that it was there. And like an addict yearning for a fix, he wished he could take a few shots to mark their arrival in that blessed place. He put his hand on the button to release the cover on his pack.

Just a couple of shots….

He could see Mia walking in front of him, at the side of the Angel called Uriel. Tom remembered how cross she had been in the past few days when he’d tried shooting everything in sight. Now, he took his hand away from his bag and hitched it onto his shoulder. Maybe later, he thought. Maybe later.

Jesus had removed his shoe
s
, walking across the sand with his bare feet. He could see the tattoos on his toes, which he had etched himself in the seventies with blue ink and blood. LOVE was scribed on the right, and HATE on the left, with the H on his big toe under a sprig of wild grey hair.

His toes gripped the sand as he paced behind Mia, feeling like he was walking on sifted flour. The sensation made him feel euphoric, as if every step he took, his old tired feet were being caressed by the healing power of the sand.

Jesus was in Heaven there in that strange land. Somehow he had always known that was where his destiny lay. His future was there in that place underground, with those perfect beings and the scenery of indescribable beauty. As far as he was concerned, he never wanted to leave that place now, and if they’d have him, he meant to stay, forever!

The Watchers led them down path
s
of random size stones patterned with sea shells. It was the only unnatural feature Mia had seen so far. The rest of the world seemed as if it had always existed, even before time began. Clearly, the Watchers had created the winding paths, just as a human would plant a garden and adorn it with decorative slabs.

Mia stopped walking and crouched down so that she could see the detail. Embedded in the stones and bordering the shells, were shimmering pearls, looking like an eternal precious necklace. The questions that Mia had running through her head were making her lose concentration. She was tired, exhausted even, as if she had been drained of all energy. She stood up and looked at Uriel as he walked on ahead. “How long have you lived in this place?” she said. The group stopped and waited for his reply and Mia could see Tom up ahead using the toe of his shoe to inspect the pearls along the path.

“We have always inhabited Caer Sidi. Mother Earth created it for us, a very long time ago. We needed somewhere to place ourselves while here on earth. Many underground worlds have been created for us across the planet. Some have even been discovered by man, but they don’t know what they were before they intruded. They call them lost cities.”

Mia went closer so that she could see his expression. "I'm surprised it's so bright here, so light and…airy."

“It is our life-source. We could never survive in darkness. We are creatures of light.

“Then why do you only appear at night up there?” Her eyes went up towards the vast cavernous ceiling.

“We have to be protected by the cover of darkness, but we can’t tolerate it for very long. We are reinvigorated in our own habitat.”

They continued moving along the path until they came upon some cave-dwellings, each one fixed to the next and stacked one above the other and side-by-side, unsystematic and varied in shape and size. The entrances, void of doors, were startlingly random. They looked as if they had been made with a sledgehammer, forcefully smashed like broken egg shells. The primitive apartments stretched over hills at the edge of the chequered fields towards the back rock wall of that incredibly mammoth cavern. There were no lights inside, only blackness. Everything she saw seemed to contradict all that was said about the place the Angels resided.

In the distance not far from the dwellings, Mia could see a waterfall cascading into a lagoon. The white frothing water charged over a giant face looking as it had been carved into the rock, but when she looked again, she saw it was a natural feature, resembling a human face. She recalled the mask on the door of Jesus’ van and equated the two. She called out to him as he trailed behind. “Jesus, look.” She pointed to the rock and Jesus stopped dead in his tracks. His expression turned into a grimace as he fell to the ground on his knees. She ran back and knelt beside him. “What is it? Are you ill, Jesus? What’s wrong?” She knew then what he meant to her, that without him there at her side, she would be utterly lost.

She could see his hands shaking as he ran them over his wrinkled eyelids. “No, I’m alright. I’m sorry…It’s all too much.” He looked again towards the rock and the waterfall rushing over the face. Around it, green tufts of grass and other foliage decorated the features like hair. “Everyone says the green man is a fable. I didn’t expect to see anything like that here. It’s too much at once!”

She kneeled beside him. "But this is what you've been working towards. You've been praying you'd visit the Watcher's world and you said yourself it was inevitable we would find the answers to myths and legends here. You said that was how folklore started; from something real."

He nodded as he averted his eyes to the backs of his hands. His fingernails were yellow and black, from years of smoking and his skin was covered in permanent lines. “Yes, and now I am simply overwhelmed. This is like heaven to me.”

Tom returned from his place in the lead. He was now standing next to Jesus as he crouched on the floor with Mia. He leaned down and placed his hand under Jesus' arm and pulled him to his feet. "Come on," he said with a tenderness Mia didn't recognise from him.

Jesus took a greying handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. Then he inhaled deeply and said. “Thank you, Tom. I am all right now.”

Up ahead, Uriel spoke as they continued walking along the path. “Prepare yourselves,” he said. “There is more, and you must be ready.”

Jay discarded the newspape
r
on the table and paid the bill in cash. Ten pounds for a cup of weak coffee and a rubber sandwich. That was…what, twenty-five bucks? Extortionate! He was beginning to wonder what on earth he’d been thinking, going off to England like that, trying to find a woman who clearly didn’t want to be found.

He tugged his jacket from the back of the chair, thinking all the while that maybe he should just forget about Fran Shriver…find a different girl, settle down, have kids…when, just behind him, to his left, he heard a voice.

“Are you the American looking for a girl called Fran?”

The woman was dressed in dark robes, like some sort of Celtic witch. She looked about fifty or more, shorter than he, maybe 5'6". She was putting all her weight on one side, leaning on a cane covered in metal badges, emblems and symbols. At the top, she clutched the horns of a gazelle between her fingers of her right hand. Her dark blue embroidered dress draped from a square neckline down to her feet, where one set of toes seemed to be adorned with silver rings. The other foot was bare under her brown sandal but it didn't look like the other, nor moved like the other. Then it occurred to him it was artificial. Jay couldn't help staring. A flesh coloured plastic foot with barely defined toes.

He looked up at her face and was momentarily embarrassed for staring at her feet. Coloured beads hung from her neck; her arms were covered in bangles; her hands were encrusted with bejewelled rings, and her ears held hoops of silver and studs of yellow and pink stones. Her long untamed black hair mixed with strands of grey was tied back with a purple fringed scarf, allowing the curls to cascade down the back of her neck. Her face was tanned and wrinkled from too much sun, and her teeth, all her own, were straight, but they were shaded yellow.

Jay thought she may have been quite a looker when she was younger. She still had attractive features under the aged skin of her face and her eyes were still a piercing green, made more striking against the darkness of her attire. “Excuse me,” he said. “You are?”

“Name’s Maggie.”

Jay slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He didn’t know what else to do with them. He still hadn’t got used to the strange people who roamed Glastonbury. It was like a Mecca for weirdoes. “You have some information about Fran?” He felt a tinge of optimism.

“No.”

He feigned a cough. “Well, okay then. Nice to meet you, I guess.”

“I am a seer,” she said.

“What’s that you said?”

“I’m a seer. I can help you find her.”

“Ah, I see…excuse the pun! You’re like a fortune teller, right? And how much would this cost an average American traveller like me?” He must have ‘sucker’ written across his forehead.

She pouted her painted red lips. “You can pay me what you want.”

“Thanks all the same.” He tried moving past her, but she wouldn’t get out of his way.

“Don’t you want to find this woman?” Her voice was a croak.

She had a point. What did he have to go on? Nothing! No leads, no way of finding her, nada. So if he paid the crazy lady twenty bucks, so what?

He wondered if his expression told her he was prepared to accept her terms; because right then she stepped forward whilst leaning on her stick, and linked her free arm through his. He couldn’t shake her off, as his hand got caught in his pocket.

“Silly boy,” Maggie chuckled. “Come on. I only live around the corner.”

Maggie’s home was a narro
w
two-story terrace house set on a hilly road within Glastonbury town centre. The building was 1900’s, with a dirty red brick front façade holding old wooden window frames covered in peeling blue paint.

Jay followed the crazy lady -as he’d now dubbed her-to the end of the building and to an old rusted iron gate. It squeaked on its hinges as she pushed her body through, making him wonder what on earth he’d let himself in for. For all he knew she could be an axe murderer, and yet he still followed her inside. The darkened alleyway at the other side of the gate held crumbling concrete steps leading up to a higher level. With a nod of her head, instructing him to tag along, Maggie began to climb, holding a broken and rusted handrail on one side and her walking stick on the other.

Slowly they rose towards the light at the top and Jay had to admit to a certain amount of impatience. It wasn’t like him. Ordinarily, he was nice to people who were physically challenged. It was his thing.

On the last two steps, pots of red geraniums sat like a welcome mat, saying, ‘Come out of the darkness and into the light'. And true enough, at the top, he was momentarily blinded by a pool of sunlight shining down upon a shrub-crowded roof terrace amassed with pots, plants, trees and herbs, and ornamental statues of angels of all sizes dotted everywhere. Trellis structures segregated areas, and on the far side, a brick wall had been whitewashed and painted with a strange drawing. On the back wall, a stone ornament of the fabled green man rested above a dried-up font. Jay recognised it from among Fran's collectables, although he had no idea what it meant.

Shaded from the glaring sun, under a rickety trellis covered in grapevine, sat a small wrought-iron table with two wooden kitchen chairs painted dark green and covered in faded floral print cushions. In the centre of the table, alongside a pot of nearly dead white daisies was an ashtray overloaded with roll-your-own butt-ends.

He watched Maggie take a bunch of keys from a frayed crochet bag. She inserted one into the lock and pulled open the double glass doors, securing them on the walls so that her living space inside became part of the garden.

“This is my flat,” she said.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light. The apartment was charming and surprisingly cool. The main room stretched from the back to the front of the building and the interior was crammed with so many things, Jay didn't know where to look first. He spotted a screen in one corner. He liked it himself. He had a thing for screens and this one was very special. It was hand painted with various scenes; the Glastonbury tor, Stonehenge, mystic symbols, and a mountain with a white horse etched upon it. He recognised that from one of Fran's brochures too. It was the white horse of
Salisbury Plain
.

Next to the screen, under the window, was a grand overstuffed, dark red velvet sofa, with cushions of varying designs scattered over it and a fringed Chinese shawl draped over the back. A standard lamp stood on the floor, and around the walls, bookcases were crammed with so many books and ornaments and curiosities, it would take months to inspect them all; if one had the inkling.

The centre of the room was dominated by a round table draped in a white lace cloth. In the centre was a crystal ball on an onyx stand, and suspended above was a light with a Tiffany shade. Rugs were strewn across the floor and stacks of books covered every available surface, apart from the table in the centre.

Maggie came out of the kitchen at the side of the room. She carried a tray with a teapot and china cups atop it. Jay rushed to her aid and took it from her as she motioned for him to place it on the table in the centre of the room. The bangles on her wrist rattled as she proffered her hand, instructing Jay to sit on the chair opposite hers. In turn, she lowered herself into the other seat with a grimace on her face and a soothing sigh. "Ah, that's better."

“How long have you been wearing an artificial leg, Maggie?”

“Hmm…this thing? Uh, let me see now…it was forty years ago. I was a missionary in Africa. I fell down a pit meant for game, crushing practically every bone in my poor old leg. I nearly bled to death one day after contracting gangrene in the hospital, so they had to cut it off to save my life.

“Hell, no!”

She nodded. “Ah, yes.” she chuckled. “But it was a long time ago and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I wrecked a trap and saved one poor animal’s skin.” She poured the tea into china cups. Jay watched the leaves fall through the spout inside the golden liquid. “Milk or lemon?”

“Lemon.”

“Sugar?” He shook his head. She nodded. “Very wise.”

She handed it to him on a matching saucer. “Go on, drink up and we’ll get down to it.”

He sipped the drink and was immediately taken with the taste of it. He didn’t normally drink tea, but this was refreshing and calming. Then it occurred to him she could have drugged him. Date rape! She was obviously a crazy old bird.

“Tell me about Fran,” she said as she held the cup to her lips and sipped.

“She’s…a friend. I came to England to find her, but she’s disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Maggie nodded. “Yes, that happens.”

“Excuse me?”

“Literally, ‘disappearing off the face of the earth’…it’s very common.”

“Is that right?”

“I was just being…never mind. So, this ‘friend’ Fran. Do you love her?”

“No, of course not. I’m just concerned about her, that’s all.”

Maggie smiled as she placed her spectacles over her nose. “I see. Okay then, give me your cup.”

He passed it across the table, but she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Drink it all.” She strummed her fingers on the table whilst she waited.

He drank some more and left a quarter-inch of liquid and tea-leaves at the bottom. She took the cup from him, tipped the excess into a bowl and then turned it upside down onto the saucer. She rotated it a few times and then peered inside, turning the cup all ways as she tried to read the tea-leaves clinging to its side.

“She is near, yet she is far...” Maggie coughed. “She is happy, yet she is not…” she coughed again. She took another sip of her tea and carried on. “She is with another…” Maggie looked up at Jay watching her from across the table. “But he is not you.”

“What does that…?”

She raised her hand to prevent him from talking. “She is calling you. She wants you to find her.”

“How? Where can I find her?”

“Not here. Not on this plane.”

“Not on this…?”

“Listen to me, son,” Maggie said in earnest. “She is not of this plane.”

“You mean she’s dead?” Suddenly he felt the back of his throat seize up and his stomach spasm. He was going to throw up.

"No," Maggie answered. "No, she is not dead. You must seek her in Caer Sidi."

“Where’s that?” Did he even believe all the shit she was telling him?

“It is the otherworld. It is the fabled land of the faeries.”

“The fabled land of…?” He wanted to laugh but he stopped himself.

Maggie looked offended. She knew what he was thinking. “You mustn’t doubt it. It exists, but only for the pure of heart and only for those who see.”

Jay nodded. Yeah right! He thought as he offered her a smile.
Crazy old broad!