‘I’ve been checking out the Cambrian News archives about the night they raided the Coliseum cinema.’
‘Found anything interesting?’
‘Loads. There were three perps: two brothers called Richards from Llanfarian, and Iestyn. There was a lot of bad feeling about the case; a cop got run over in the chase. They pinned that on Iestyn. The Richards brothers each got twenty-five. I’m still trying to find out what became of them.’
‘What about the hangman? If we are investigating the claim that a hanged man might still be alive, he would be a good place to start.’
‘Died ten years ago, but I’ve found the doctor who presided at executions; he lives at the top of town in Laura Place.’
‘We’ll have to pay him a visit. Ask him if he might have made a mistake about the hanged man being dead.’
‘Stop making fun!’ said Calamity. ‘Here’s something else. The cop who arrested them turns out to be our old friend Preseli Watkins, the mayor.’ She let her gaze linger on me for a second. She knew this was significant.
‘So the mayor claims to have a premonition that I will be poking my nose into his business and chops up my desk to teach me a lesson. The very same day a man walks in with a case involving Iestyn and two crooks who robbed a cinema twenty-five years ago. The cop who arrested them just happens to be the mayor. Sounds like he has a good soothsayer. Or he knew Raspiwtin was coming to see us.’
‘Isn’t that the same thing?’
I formed my hand into a mock pistol and shot her. She grinned, then smiled shyly and said in a small voice, ‘There’s something else. Something you . . . you won’t like.’ She placed the palm of her hand down on a cutting and twisted it round. The headline read, ‘MORE STRANGE LIGHTS IN CARDIGANSHIRE SKIES’.
‘Don’t get angry.’
‘I won’t get angry.’
‘It’s the Ystrad Meurig incident – the Welsh Roswell. Just like Raspiwtin said.’
‘I told him Roswell was just a crashed weather balloon.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘It’s what the US Air Force said.’
Calamity rolled her eyes. ‘What do you expect them to say?’ Her tone suggested that she expected better of me than to fall for the official narrative. ‘They performed autopsies on three aliens; that was some weather balloon.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘We do! I’ve seen the footage.’
‘So have I – on a documentary once. But I don’t understand – how come the footage is so shaky and grainy?’
‘Because they . . . they’re shooting covertly.’
‘But the cameraman must have been in the same room as the medics. You can’t hide in an autopsy room, so why not just use a proper camera and a tripod and shoot a proper film?’
‘I don’t know . . . loads of reasons.’
Calamity’s spirits began to sink under the weight of my obtuse refusal to see the dark truths of this world. I backed off.
‘Tell me about the Welsh Roswell.’
‘It took place the same week as the raid on the Coliseum cinema; it happened in a wood outside Ystrad Meurig. There had been a number of flying-saucer sightings in the days leading up to it, and then, so the story goes, a saucer crashed and the military sealed off the area. They found wreckage and dead aliens in silver suits. Some say there were three, others five. Some say they were still alive.’ She looked at me, not crestfallen but fully expecting the eventuality. ‘I know you don’t believe this stuff.’
‘I don’t want to be a killjoy, but aliens in silver suits? Looking humanoid? Why would they look like us if they were from a different star system?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe they just disguise themselves to look like us so as not to frighten us, the same way people who shoot ducks have whistles that sound like duck calls.’
‘Don’t you think it’s odd, though, that these super-advanced beings from another star system keep crashing their saucers?’
She began to lose patience with me. ‘They don’t keep crashing –’
‘Yes, they do! It seems to happen a lot. How can they master the intricacies of inter-stellar flight and then hit a tree?’
‘You’re making assumptions.’
‘Yes, I’m assuming there is probably a simpler explanation located in the realm of human psychology. People have been seeing strange visions throughout history; once upon a time they attributed it to the Devil or his works; now we live in a more rational scientific age and people are embarrassed to profess belief in the Devil –’
‘Not in Ystrad Meurig, they aren’t.’
‘Most people are, so they find a more scientific explanation. I’m not saying they are lying; I’m sure they genuinely experience the hallucination and their mind provides an interpretation with which they can feel comfortable.’
‘You could be right, but there’s one sure-fire way to find out, isn’t there?’
There was a pause. I gave her a quizzical stare. ‘Is there?’
‘Of course. Men in Black.’
‘Who are they?’
Calamity pulled a library book from under the pile of clippings. ‘I’ve been looking through Project Blue Book, the official US Air Force investigation into the flying-saucer phenomenon in the ’50s. Judging from the newspaper report, it sounds like the aliens from the Ystrad Meurig incident were Nordics, whereas the ones from Roswell were Greys. Greys are malign and are known to say the thing which is not.’
‘Not what?’
‘Just “not”. They say it, whereas the Nordics are more spiritually advanced. Some people call them Pleiadeans because they come from the Pleiades star cluster.’
‘How do you know the difference between a Nordic and a Grey, apart from saying the thing which is not?’
‘Nordics are very attractive and look like Scandinavians. They are tall and statuesque and have pale skin and blonde or white hair. They admire the human race.’
‘Are you sure? That sounds like the thing which is not.’
Calamity ignored the jocular tone and continued with earnest mien. ‘Nordics never say the thing which is not. Maybe “admire” is the wrong word. They take a close interest in our spiritual development.’
‘And what about Greys?’
‘They are short and stumpy and grey. They have big almond-shaped, slanted eyes that go round the sides of their heads, like a praying mantis. They also have no irises or . . .’ – she consulted her notes – ‘Sclerae.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know; I think it means the white of the eye. They mean us harm.’
‘They are not great admirers of the human race, then?’
‘No, they are malign.’
‘So is it just those two races?’
‘Of course not! There are loads of exobiological entities visiting us.’ She counted them off on the fingers of her hand: ‘Reptilians, Sirians, Tall Whites, Hairy Dwarfs, the Hopkinsville Goblin, Dropa, Andromedans and the Flatwoods Monster. But the interesting thing is this: in all the celebrated cases, the contactees received visits shortly after from mysterious strangers dressed all in black. The first was the Maury Island incident. Harold A. Dahl was scavenging with his dog for some logs on Puget Sound in Washington State in 1947. He saw six flying doughnut-shaped craft and one of them seemed to be in trouble; it started ejecting debris which fell on his dog and killed it. A few days later he got a visit from the Men in Black; they seemed to know everything about what had happened and told him not to talk about it. Men in Black always turn up in a black ’47 Buick. They claim to be from the Government, usually the Air Force, and give names and stuff, but when their IDs are checked it turns out that either they don’t exist or are the names of dead people. Men in Black act strange; sometimes they giggle and seem unfamiliar with Earth customs.’