We had been dawdling round Wiltshire for nearly a month, ever since leaving Shinglesea Beach after Gray and Misty had disappeared. ‘We’ being me and Jason. It had been great to have this freedom, even if money was a constant issue, and we had visited some interesting places and met some interesting people, but our old mates were never far from our thoughts. Al kept in touch with us by phone and text, telling us what was happening at ’Barnacles’. But of Gray and Misty there was no news whatsoever.
“There’s no need to worry really”, said Jason, sounding worried “Gray would never do anything to harm Misty, I’m pretty certain of that”.
“No”, I said “But even so, he was acting really odd before he left. I think that depression of his was more severe than we realised”.
It didn’t help that some things that happened to us we would have found useful to talk to him about. These days I was getting every bit as much a conspiracy theorist as Jason was, fuelled by the strange atmosphere we found when we visited the small town where the Cold War bunkers were supposed to be located. I won’t tell you the name of the town, but I can’t imagine you’ll have any trouble finding out what it is, just do a bit of Googling. It didn’t help that it was a heavy, overcast day when we went there, which gave everything an oppressive feel. We drove along the road leading into the town, where a lorry-driver was said to have had a terrifying encounter with a skull-faced phantom in the middle of the night several years ago. We drove past the church where one woman fainted after seeing an evil goblin-type creature sitting on one of the gravestones. Jason wanted to stop and have a look, but I threw all my toys out of the pram and said I had had enough of this town already, and let’s go and find a pub (NOT in the town) where we could go and have something to eat.
“You seemed to almost have a sort of psychic reaction to that place”, said Jason.
I was feeling a bit better after a drink and a decent ploughman’s lunch, so I agreed to drive round the area with him, on condition that we absolutely, for no reason whatsoever, STOPPED. I hadn’t felt this nervous about a place since I went to Foxley with Duncan a couple of years ago, and I don’t think even that place had repelled me as much as this one did. It didn’t help matters, and I kid you not here, that I swear we were followed. Some big, plush car with tinted windows trailed us through the roads round the outskirts of the town, and we didn’t shake it off until we hit the big main road that runs up to Avebury. It reminded me a bit of the one that had followed us up to Ghyll House in Scotland last Summer.
We agreed that we would pitch camp for the night at the stones in Avebury, and first had to find out that we could do so. According to a notice in the car-park we could do this on condition that if we decided to light any fires to carry out any rituals, we weren’t to burn anything harmful to the environment. As we had no intention of carrying out any rituals, this wasn’t a problem. That evening we went out to an old pub near Silbury Hill, which was used so often by crop-circle enthusiasts that it had been unofficially re-named The Crop-Circlers’ Arms!
I got talking to an off-duty nurse there, who told me she worked at an RAF base some miles away. When she found out that we were a couple of conspiracy geeks, she said that there was a lot more going on in the world than meets the eye, and that she had seen - when working late at the base - men in shackles being led into a building. She said she knew she wasn’t supposed to have seen any of this, and that what was going on wasn’t right.
“I daren’t go public about it though”, she said “I think they would kill me if they knew I knew”.
The fact that she had just told all this to me, a complete stranger, made her understandably nervous, and she refused to say anymore. All I could do was agree that it wasn’t right, and that she should be careful. Remember what happened to Dr David Kelly and all that.
God knows how but we managed to walk back to Avebury, and get out tent up. It was raining quite hard by now, and I was really pissed off with living life in the great outdoors. After we had bedded down for the night, Jason began speculating about where we should go next. Jason has a an annoying habit of starting up a conversation just when you want to go to sleep, and this one annoyed me in particular because he suggested we go all the way down to Clag Heath in Cornwall, and try and see what had spooked Al so much about the place.
“Perhaps later some time”, I said “To be honest with you, Jace, I really want to concentrate on finding Gray and Misty at the moment”.
“Easier said than done”, he said “They could be anywhere, they might not even be in this country”.
“It doesn’t feel like that”, I said “I’ve just got a feeling in my bones that they’re not that far away”.