The Watchers (16 page)

“Look,” Tom shouted
.
“It’s not possible. How…?” The others followed the direction of his finger to the horizon on the other side of the vast underworld. On tilting rolling hillsides, row-upon-row of fruit trees lay in stripes upon the land. The orchards, perfectly lined and evenly spaced, resembled an army of soldiers on parade. Apple and plum trees, with tall slim trunks and bushy foliage, stood in rows, where in-between, grape vines with twisting roots, pushed the greenery to the same height as the fruit trees so that the leaves of each mingled with the next. The group watched with awe at the multitude feast of lush black grapes, red and green apples and purple plums running in candy stripes into the distance.

As the seven Watchers grouped around Tom, Mia, Keri and Jesus, together they all stood at the bottom of the stone palace towering above the cave dwellings like a great monument, high into the eaves of the underground cavern. As they all lingered on the gentle slope in the path, Tom swung his bag from his shoulder and placed it on the ground. He bent down, unfastened it and pulled out his camera to take some pictures of a view never before seen by man. All the while, in his mind he saw the photograph feature in National Geographic.

But then he felt a hand cover his. Jesus stood over him, shaking his head.
Not here, not now
. “Kudos, remember?” he whispered.

Tom felt guilt spread down his neck from his cheeks. He nodded with a solemn expression and put away his camera. The old man was right. That wasn’t the time. That place, the Angels; there was something about them that made him feel humble and protective.

Mia disturbed the moment and Tom was grateful for that. “You eat fruit!?” she asked Uriel.

“Yes, among other things,” he answered. “Come, we have refreshment prepared for you.”

They followed him and another Angel along the upward winding path. Five other Watchers trailed behind alert and focused, like loitering bodyguards.

The string of pearls continued to run along the edge of the path, bordering dwellings on the way up like tiny floor lights. Tom peered into one of the caves, but there was only blackness inside. To him, they looked empty, completely devoid of all light and life.

Up they went, moving past cave after cave, while the path wound in one direction, and then twisted back again in a distinct U-bend, going back on itself and then turning again. Above them turrets projected from the palatial structure, protruding to great heights in the centre of the catacomb homes.

Behind him, Tom could hear Jesus speak to Mia. “There are many tales attached to the fabled city of Caer Sidi. Caer means fort, fortress, or stronghold and the legend speaks of a spiral construction like the spiral terraces on the
Glastonbury Tor
.
”

Mia responded like an excited child. “So the labyrinth, which forms the shape of the Tor is the same as the path leading up to the palace here.”

“There does seem to be a similarity. It’s connected, somehow.”

Halfway up, dominating one level, a large entrance had been perfectly squared off within the stone structure, unlike the other entrances with roughly formed edges. The group came to a stop on a landing outside, bordered by a carved stone balustrade to protect viewers of the city below from falling to their deaths

As they all looked across the land to the sea and the mountains beyond, there were no words. No words could have described such magnificent and wondrous beauty. In human terms, the sight they saw before them was literally indescribable

In unison, the group turned towards the entrance to the room at the rear of the terrace. It occurred to Tom that they were all doing the same thing at the same time as if they were being operated by an invisible puppeteer. Perhaps it was the Watcher's minds directing them; making them do what they wanted them to do.

The entrance appeared black and void inside, just like the other cave dwellings, but it was Tom who stepped forward first. He was either being inordinately decisive, or all their movements were being orchestrated by the Angels. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he was able to make out a wall inside the recess made of cobalt blue granite with faint feathered veins running through it.

One of the Angels went past him and disappeared through the wall.
Whoa!
Another illusion.

Despite his fatigue, Tom's excitement returned. The wall was the same principle as the bark on the spirit tree; layers upon layers, only visible from the side, undetected if one stared at it face-on.

Tom stepped further inside and grinned as he sidled in-between the layers. It appeared as if the world had gone dark blue as if he was enclosed in a seashell. He heard the others follow him when he came out the other side and as he listened to their intrusive footsteps, he blinked as he gazed at the remarkable room on the other side of the wall. Mia came up behind him and touched his shoulder as she too stared in awe at that most wondrous of spaces.

It was enormous, so much so it defied logic. Tom thought if he had gazed upon it from the outer aspect, a room so large could never have been possible. It was like everything in that underworld. It broke all the rules and nothing could be measured or justified. Time, distance, cubic mass…here in the Watcher’s habitat, science simply didn’t exist.

The space was round and the floor was of the same cobalt blue as the wall in the entrance, with a dappling of sparkling specks on it, like a starry night sky. Threaded through, were rings of silvery white, looking as if they had been painted on, but they clearly had not. They were set within the floor as if the whole thing was one natural piece. The rings made a labyrinth, the same as the Cretan maze featuring on the wall of Jesus' van.

Above the windowless room, a mural on the ceiling depicted man in the field, working and toiling the land. Women in long robes carried baskets laden with oats, and children laughed as they ran through the long grass. Trees lined the outer circling parameter, blowing inwards like a wild breeze was forcing them to lean in. The mural reminded Tom of the work of Constable, painted onto the ceiling, just as Michelangelo had created his art on the Sistine chapel.

Dominating the room was an enormous round table made of onyx with colours splattered over it, looking as if a paintbrush had been flicked above it many times with colours of orange, yellow and green. Twelve chairs sat around the table made of twisted bark, fashioned from the stems of the vines from the Watcher's orchards. Around the walls were symbols and signs, which Tom couldn't recognise, but the most startling of features was an altar at the back of the room made of ordinary rock with flattened tops and stacked in tiers. Its roughness looked out-of-place in a room so rich and fine, but upon it, making the perspective of it seem well aligned, were seven crystal skulls. Their hollowed eyes stared at the group staring back at them, as they watched the light making them sparkle like polished glass in the sun.

An Angel appeared out of nowhere. It seemed as if he had been inside all along. “Here is my father,” Uriel announced. “He is Varquis. A trusted elder in the colony”

Uriel’s father looked upon the crystal skulls displayed above the altar. “They are our ancestors,” he said. “Your people have thirteen like these, found mainly in South America, but they do not know what they are. The sceptics think they were fashioned from pieces of crystal, but others say if man had chiselled them they would have been impossible to create artificially. Most of your people do not see what’s in front of their faces.”

“Remarkable,” Mia said. “But how…?”

“We lived many millennia before, but we were destroyed when the Lord vented his anger upon us. All life was wiped out by fire and storm. Our ancestors and all the creatures roaming the earth perished. The skulls recovered by your people, and these here,” he proffered his hand, “are the remnants of that time when our people were sent back to the earth from whence they came. Mother earth turned them into crystal so that we may be reminded of our purity.”

Varquis indicated the seats around the round table. “Please, sit.”

They each took a chair of vines and sat down, keeping their hands folded in their laps. Tom watched Mia run her palm over the table. He did the same. It was smooth like glass, with the lines running through it like veins. “What is this?”

Varquis mimicked the stroke of her hand. "This is life," he said affectingly. "These lines and explosions of colour are illustrations of the workings of our brain. They are our intelligence. You would see the same if you looked through a microscope. They are what your scientists call neurons, except ours, are slightly different to yours."

“How different?” Jesus asked.

“Well, we use ours to full capacity. Man does not. The mother has been giving you many clues to help you develop your intelligence. She has written across the surface of the Earth in her own hand, but you do not see.”

“We have had clues?” Tom asked.

“Yes. There is a place not far from here. It is a place you call Avebury.”

Mia was suddenly excited. “I know Avebury. I live near there.”

“Yes, Lakey.”

“My name’s not…”

Varquis continued. “Avebury is a very special place and soon you will see why it is there. The two circles, which were once defined by sacred stones, have now been destroyed by man’s own hand. It is an entrance to our world and even though it has been there since time began, you still have not deciphered the code.”

“Code?” Tom was absorbing all the information as if his own brain had expanded. He just couldn’t get enough of the Watcher’s revelations.

Varquis spoke. “The myths and legends your people nurture have all been based on something. It is how you say, ‘no smoke without fire.’”

“I knew it,” Jesus announced, as he turned to Mia for affirmation. She smiled back with her eyes glazed with unshed tears.

Varquis continued as he leaned his shoulders against the twisted vines of the back of the chair. “Beyond the Nazca plains, in Peru is a place where more of God’s Angels dwell. It is another world beneath the earth’s crust, where the Watchers live alongside Kudos. It is the Kudos there who have campaigned to protect our earth from man and it is they who have instigated our rebellion.”

Mia was becoming excited again. “So, we can tell them about you. We can save them with the truth.”

“Perhaps. But it may be too late.”

Three watchers entered the roo
m
through the entrance. One approached the table and set down a bowl of fruit with an array of grapes and apples and plums. Another placed flat rounds of bread on the table and a large platter of oysters piled high on a stone coloured plate. One placed four clay cups on the table and filled them with red wine from a pitcher. It was a veritable feast, one which none of them had the stomach for.

“You must eat. It will give you strength,” Uriel said.

Mia was the first to taste the food. She tore away a piece of bread and put it in her mouth. It tasted salty and it was still warm from the oven. Just with one morsel, she was suddenly ravenous. She sipped the wine. She didn’t care for it when she’d tried it once at a family wedding, but this tasted different. It had a calming effect on her, not overbearing.

Varquis voice was deep and distinct. It was a voice no one would disagree with because whatever he said, it was the absolute truth from a wise and intelligent elder. “

Keri spoke as she rubbed her hands across her face. “Why have you brought us here?” she asked.

Varquis stared right at her. “We need you.” He wasn’t just talking about them as a group.

“What?” Keri asked.

“You, Keri Rains. We need
you
.”

Maggie rose from the tabl
e
with a grimace on her face, as if she was in pain. She leaned on her walking stick and hobbled over to the dresser on the far wall. There, Jay watched as she opened a small cupboard door and took out a bottle of malt whisky and two small glasses. She carried them all in one hand, clutching them between her fingers as she hobbled back to the table. "I'm going to have to take it off," she said.

Jay lined up the two glasses in front of him. “Take what off?”

“My leg.” She limped across the room to the bathroom and closed the door.

Jay checked his watch. Six o’clock! He’d been there several hours now. Maggie was getting more and more intense and since he was starving, he decided he should make his excuses and leave. “I think I’ll get going now, sweetheart,” he called, hoping she’d hear him.

"Stay where you are," she hollered back. "I haven't finished yet." Jay shrugged and unscrewed the top on the whisky bottle. He recognised the brand. A Scottish malt. He poured a small measure into each glass. "Pour yourself a drink," she shouted.

He grinned. Maggie really was a funny old broad. She had told him things that made her sound like her brain was addled, but despite her intensity, she was pretty entertaining, if you liked that sort of thing.

Maggie had maintained that the Glastonbury Tor was the entrance to Caer Sidi, otherwise named Unnwn, a Celtic otherworld, where she claimed Fran had been taken by the faeries, no less! She’d gotten all defensive when he had a chuckle about that. She’d pushed an accusing finger into his arm and said he was insulting her by his lack of ability to be open-minded. “But, Maggie, come on, honey. Do you really expect me to believe all this garbage?”

With the intent of embarrassing him, -or so he’d claimed-Maggie told him about the Tor resembling the female genitalia. A stylized vulva, she called it. “It is the entrance to the womb of earth’s mother and that’s nothing to laugh at. And it’s not garbage either. In my mind anyone who thinks its garbage is a garbage person with no soul or intellect.”

She said the moulded shapes around the Tor followed the Cretan symbol, a labyrinth, or maze, where the curve runs back on itself like a U-bend. She said it was a popular ancient symbol, and that she was surprised he had never heard of it. “It is even found amongst the Hopi of Arizona as the Mother Earth symbol,” she added.

She told Jay how the lines around the Tor were believed to be paths or terraces for cattle, but she had a different theory. “They are terraces, but I believe that they were used for people, not for cattle.”

She embellished. "Have you ever heard of Ley lines?" She didn't wait for an answer, but frankly, Jay had never heard of them anyway. "They are electromagnetic lines of energy connecting places of spiritual or historical importance. They are everywhere, all over the world, in fact, …even in your country." Her quip was a deliberate challenge to his patriotism. "At a point in time, I believe the people of Glastonbury and neighbouring villages climbed the Tor, perhaps on the summer or winter solstice, to watch something marvellous occur. An event so spectacular that people all over Somerset had to rise to greater heights to witness it, to revere and worship it. There, in specific places, like the Tor, Cleyhill and Brent Knoll, people would create a beacon of light in the towers at the top."

“Welsh legend tells us that Caer Sidi means a spiral castle in the otherworld. They say one of the entrances to Caer Sidi is around Glastonbury and that a magic cauldron exists there. The cauldron, which belonged to the goddess Ceridwen is a factor in the making of the Grail story, did you know that? An early Welsh poem tells how King Arthur and his men went in quest of it. The quest involved threading the Tor maze to the summit.”

“So, have you ever tried it?” Jay asked.

She’d tapped her false foot with her stick. “Not with this thing.”

As the whisky began to filter through his veins and soothe him, he heard Maggie come out of the bathroom. She was wearing a long pink Egyptian Kaftan, covering the place where once long ago she had a leg, long and shapely. Under her arms, she balanced her body on old wooden crutches with home-taped padding on the part beneath her arms and the crossbar. She hopped back to the table and sat down, placing the crutches on the floor next to her.

"That's better." She picked up her glass and drained the whisky in one gulp. "I thought you Americans knew how to pour a shot. Get that bottle open and give me a decent measure." She banged the glass on the table.

Jay laughed. “Listen, Maggie. I’ll have to go soon. I must have overstayed my welcome here.”

“Nonsense. I’ll tell you when you’ve outstayed your welcome. It’s not up to you to decide that. Besides, we’ve got more to talk about. If you’re worried about your stomach, I’ll make us something in a minute.”

He chuckled. Crazy old broad, Jay thought. Crazy old broad.