The Watchers (3 page)

They stepped backwards.

And revealed the void.

Upon the floor lay twelve cones of dust.

The Watchers moved outward like Greek dancers, their movements connected and fluid. In unison they kneeled down, pulled in their tight stomachs so that their chests protruded, and blew air from their lungs like the force of a small hurricane, scattering the ashes of the twelve cones over the floor of the clearing and into the air, like whirling dervishes.

The people who were once inside the void were gone, sent back to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Southwest England

Balancing on the tips of her toe
s
, straining her neck to see over the top,Mia Lake stood on th
e
bottom railing of the six-foot metal fence. It wasn’t easy. She was only five-feet-six and she was wearing crocks. Beyond the fence, around the perimeter of the site, a stretch of wild grass and newly established trees almost blocked her view from the road outside, but there was no mistaking what was going on; the oil company Chelron was about to start up their rig.

It had taken them three years to get the necessary planning but last week, to the detriment of the local people, permission had been granted for them to start drilling. The ruling was unprecedented for the energy sector in the Southwest and the petitioners had gone crazy with fury, saying that the government’s bold move was yet another slap in the face for the British people. A demonstration the day before had caused riots in the town of Devizes, Wiltshire. Several arrests had been made with eleven casualties, one a pregnant woman.

Still peering over the fence, Mia heard a car pull up along the side of the road. She stepped down and kicked off her shoes, abandoning them on the grass verge. She wore a dark grey tunic adorned with a blue sequined logo; ‘I’m Watching.’

“Hey, Mia,” her friend called.

She waved back as Suzi alighted from a vehicle packed with kids cruising the night. She walked towards them. “What are they doing here?” she said bitterly when she saw the boys.

Suzi laughed. “I asked them to drop me off, but they thought they’d stay to see a bit of the action.”

Mia grabbed her friend’s arm and pulled her towards the fence. The boys were whistling and whooping at a passing car filled with girls. “I told you this was a secret! Have you managed to tell everyone from school?”

Suzi chuckled once more. “What’s going on here is no secret, love.”

Mia wanted to slap her face. She may still do that. “No, but my theory of the Watchers turning up is.”

“Oh, chill, babe. You’ve gotta lighten up.”

“Lighten up? You know what it means to me to see the Watchers. Tom and I have made it our life’s work.”

“Life’s work!” Suzi guffawed. “Now you’ve seriously lost it.”

Mia felt her face redden. Okay, the statement about it being her life’s work was a bit over the top, but honestly, Suzi knew how important it was to her. Only the other night she’d confided in her friend about her constant inexplicable yearning to see the Angels. She couldn’t explain it, but the feeling of wanting to know everything about them was so overwhelming it was like living with a drug addiction. She told Suzi she’d never been so serious about anything before in her life.

That was when she’d formulated her plan; to stay at the drilling site all night until the Watchers showed up. Once again man was stripping the planet of its resources and her guess was, the Watchers would take that very seriously. Only a few years ago, Blackpool, in the north of England, suffered an earth tremor as a result of fracking. The week previous, drilling had begun, starting the process of fracturing the rock thousands of feet below ground to release gas trapped in a seam of shale running from Clitheroe to the coast. A week later, when the tremor came, the company denied accountability, claiming fracking was a safe process. The word on the street claimed the Angels had turned up, but that had been denied too.

Mia turned her back on Suzi and went once more to the fence. She cast a quick glance at her friend who was now chatting to the boys as they lit a cigarette and passed it around. Mia peered through the gap in the railings so that she could get another glimpse of the site.

Over the far side, near the entrance, crowds of demonstrators chanted and shouted their objections to the drilling. In the centre, a huge rig, like a giant mast, took prime position, surrounded by containers, porta cabins and vehicles parked randomly within the grounds. Men were wandering around doing their jobs, and behind a partition, hidden from the frantic crowds at the gate, two men with rifles paraded back and forth.

The sound of the drill starting up made Mia stop breathing. It sounded like a high pitched scream. “Why don’t you come?” she whispered, praying for the Watchers to prevent yet another assault on the earth. “Where are you?”

New York

Tom kept his finge
r
pressed hard on the intercom to Jay Pullman’s apartment. His loft wasn’t far from Tom’s place where he lived with his mom, four blocks away on the Lower East Side.

He heard a voice come through the intercom. “Get your finger off that bell before I come down there and break every stupid bone in your body.”

“It’s only me!” Tom responded as his fringe fell across his face. Long hair for men was the fashion, which made Tom, just by accident, very fashionable indeed.

“Who’s me?”

“Tom. Tom Stone. We met last night.”

“Oh god!”

A buzzer sounded and the front door clicked open. Tom pushed his way in. He checked the mail boxes in the public area and saw J. Pullman. Apt. 5, a fifth box from the left. When he alighted from the elevator on the fifth floor, the door to Jay's loft was already ajar. It was the only apartment on that floor, so Tom had no reservations about walking straight in. He closed it behind him and wondered whether to fix all the locks into place. There were at least six. He made the decision to leave the door unguarded. Jay could put them back on if he felt the need, although no one kept their apartments unlocked anymore. Most of the places, from the tenements downtown, to the elite residences of Manhattan were as impenetrable as Fort Knox.

Unlike Tom's mother's apartment, Jay's was interesting. It was an open space bare brick loft, once desirable on the property market, but not anymore. Now, it just looked like the owner of the building couldn't afford to put plaster on the walls. Still…Tom liked it. The spaces were divided by bookcases and screens; some Japanese, some French, and some just curious, like the one filled with old photographs of female nudes, a collage of exquisite nudity in art form; not porn. Tom scrutinised them with a self-proclaimed expert eye. The photographs were good, but they weren't the work of Jay Pullman's.

Tom could hear water running behind a wall fashioned from several old glass doors with peeling paint. Since Jay was in the shower, Tom decided to make himself comfortable. In the far corner was Jay’s bed; the base a foot off the floor held up by stacks of old coffee table books. A black sheet was twisted into a knot in the middle of the mattress next to a single black pillow while the other three lay on the floor along with discarded jeans, a crumpled T-shirt and some black sneakers. In the far corner, a seating area displaying an old leather couch and two unmatched easy chairs. A brand new 60" wide flat screen TV dominated the centre (rightly so) and a scratched nineties coffee table held a game's console, two empty Budweiser bottles, a wallet, a cell phone and a set of keys. Tom threw himself onto the couch and picked up the remote to turn on the TV. He placed his feet on the coffee table and surfed the channels while he recalled the night before when they had seen the Watchers in action. Today, it all seemed so surreal, as if it had never happened.

The Angels were stunning specimens. They were immeasurably strong but Tom thought they also had an unthreatening and serene quality about them too, which wouldn't have been the opinion of the people inside the void. Even though they had destroyed human life they seemed to know who was dangerous and who was not. The dark skinned youth, saved from certain death, had shuffled along the dirt floor when one of the Angels had turned to him, crouched down on his haunches and released the wires from around his wrists as if they were threads of cotton. The rope around his neck took one touch for it to melt away, allowing the boy to rise to his feet and flee.

Tom and Jay had watched it all. The whole thing had been mesmerising and while he had remained transfixed on the events going on in the clearing, he'd abandoned his natural instincts to aim his camera and click. Instead, he had not one photograph -
nada
- not one shot to mark an event that could have potentially changed his life. Not one shot! A paparazzi nightmare!

When it was all over, the one who seemed in charge had looked across the clearing to where Tom and Jay had been hiding behind a tree, as if he knew they were there. Then the seven Angels expanded their wings and like great birds taking flight, they rose up into the sky and disappeared into the night. The scene had been spectacular on every level. Tom considered it to be a monumental life experience, and Tom was all about life experiences.

“Hey, kid.” Jay was walking out of the bathroom through one of the doors. He was freshly showered, wearing a towel around his waist and rubbing his short hair dry so that it stuck up in points over his scalp. He was clean shaven now, unlike his appearance the night before when his five o’clock shadow threatened to grow wild at midnight.

Tom figured he was about thirty-five, but he could have been older considering the worry lines on his forehead. Judging by his apartment, he was single, with no wife, no kids, and no dog. He was medium height with a bit of a pot-belly, no doubt the result of many a midnight takeout and he had a tattoo on his upper arm with Carpe Diem etched onto a scroll.
Seize the day
. He also wore a gold wedding band on his pinky. Divorced, Tom deduced. “Your apartment is too cool, man,” Tom said.

“Thanks.” Jay went to the small makeshift kitchen next to the bathroom and its door walls. He was filling an oversized cup from the coffee pot when a buzzing noise reverberated around the loft. Tom watched him pad along the floor in his black leather mules and a black towel wrapped around his hips. He pressed a button next to the door and spoke into the intercom. “Yeah?”

“Honey, it’s me. Hurry up.”

He frowned as he pressed the button to release the door on the ground floor. He left the door ajar and Tom could hear the elevator ascending outside the apartment.

He went back to the kitchen. “What some coffee, kid? Soda?”

“Sure, thanks.”

Jay went to the refrigerator and pulled out a diet coke and tossed it to Tom before he joined him on the couch and picked up the remote.

When the woman entered Tom became mesmerised. She was beautiful with long blonde hair wild about her shoulders as if she’d just got out of bed and hadn’t brushed it. The strands fell across her breasts bulging beneath a white T-shirt and her ripped blue jeans were secured on her hips with a wide black leather belt. Tom thought she was the sexiest woman he had ever seen. Bar Mia!

He stood up as she closed the door and walked towards the kitchen. She was definitely familiar with the place. "It's so hot out there." She walked around the breakfast counter made from an upturned church pew and opened the refrigerator door. She spotted Tom just as she flicked the pull-ring on a can of sugar-free soda. "Who are you?"

He went towards her and held out his hand. “Um, Tom…Tom Stone.”

She laughed as she looked at his hand protruding. She didn’t reciprocate. “Yes, but who are you?”

“He’s a friend of mine,” Jay interrupted from the direction of the couch.

Her eyes didn’t flinch. She was still staring at Tom with a grin on her pretty face. “You haven’t got any friends.”

“We met last night,” Tom said. He couldn’t control his eyes moving to her breasts bulging beneath her white shirt. He took another swig of his soda. He suddenly felt very thirsty.

“Where?”

“Fran!” Jay interrupted without taking his eyes from the TV screen. “Is there something you want?”

Her musky smelling perfume still lingered in the kitchen when she nonchalantly moved into the area where the bed was. She sat down on the mattress and leaned back on her arm, crossing her legs while she drank her soda. “I’ve come to tell you I’m leaving.”

Tom’s gaze darted towards his new-found friend whose expression remained cool and uninterested.

“England?” Jay asked.

She ran her fingers through her hair. “That’s right.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

"How can you even afford that?" It was true. No one flew out anywhere anymore. For one thing, it was way too expensive, considering the cost of fuel, and for another, it was way too dangerous, considering the number of terrorist threats the airlines received each day.

“The agency is paying. Some people still have money you know.”

“How long?”

"Couple of months. Get away from this heat. With any luck, England will be cooler than this godforsaken climate. I'll be on location for a few weeks."

“Good for you.”

The beautiful woman looked momentarily hurt, but then she recovered and laughed. Tom recognised the bravado, even if Jay didn't.

“Yes, it is. And guess who I’m not going to miss when I’m gone?”

Jay offered her a wry grin as he leaned his head on the back of the couch. “Well, say howdy to the queen for me.”

Fran guffawed. “Idiot. She lives in London. I’m not going there.”

“What? She doesn’t move around, then? She stays in London and never sets her little royal foot outta it. Ever?”

Tom watched her drain the drink and toss the can into an already full basket at the side of the bed. She took her sunglasses from where they were hooked onto her belt and used them to pull back her hair from her face, before resting them on her head.

Walking across the wooden floor towards the door, she said, “For your information, I’m going to a little place called Glastonbury. Not that you care.” She turned and gave Tom a charming smile. “Tom, it’s been a pleasure.” She took one more glance at Jay draining his coffee cup. “Ta, ta!” she sang, and then she left, slamming the door behind her.