Ley Lines

The truth is out there

Ley Lines

“Alfred Watkins was right, you know.”

In hindsight, that’s how it started; my neighbour Joshua Smith and his crazy theories. There we were drinking beer from tinnies in his basement, staring at a map of the UK on a cork board. Lines of string attached by pins linked reference points like some kind of murder enquiry. It turned out that Watkins was an English antiquarian who, in the 1920s, put forward ideas about ley lines linking ancient monuments.

“Can you see it, see the pattern? And the epicentre?” Along with this declaration of discovery, his sweeping hands would give their own explanation, darting from one place on the map to the next. On a plastered wall was the poster of a flying saucer; the one from the X-Files series. The one Fox Mulder was fond of. “I Want to Believe”. Of course, I do. Next to it was a filing cabinet with drawers full of strange paraphernalia and a desk with a leather-backed chair slid underneath. That was, in all probability, the sliding doors moment. I could choose to either let myself get sucked in further or simply dismiss this latest theory as the ramblings of a madman. The third can of Stella had bundled me onto the edge of a rabbit hole; the Queen of Hearts was waiting for me somewhere.

Joshua had long been into conspiracy theories. He thought that the moon landing in 1969 was dubious. In this he wasn’t alone with reams of conjecture available online. He had analysed the assassination of JFK numerous times to try and work out who was behind it, the reasons why and what the aftermath was all about. He expounded the well-worn ideology of a faceless CIA running footloose in a government that had no control over its shady inner-machinery. Lee Harvey-Oswald was the ideal patsy as a communist sympathiser and when he had followed instructions, Jack Ruby had been there to make sure that the truth died with the unstable shooter. Russian dolls. There were plenty of other tenuous theories that Joshua wallowed in.

Those visits to my neighbour’s man cave had increased over time. It had started innocuously enough on one summer’s afternoon when we were talking over the fence that bordered our respective back gardens. I hadn’t been in my house long having moved from Slough. Joshua had lived in Northampton all his life. It wasn’t until I had shared his taste for the strange and curious a few times that, one night, he confided about his brother Tobias. When he was aged just eleven and out on a family picnic at Delapre Abbey, his younger sibling had run off towards the lake in play. Dusk was falling and mist rolled in off the water. As Joshua had broken through reeds looking for the seven-year-old boy, he recounted fearing that his brother had fallen in when he saw a beam of light from above. Inside it was the silhouette of a child being pulled up into the sky. That was the last anyone saw of Tobias.

Of course, nobody believed the story about a UFO. The search for the missing boy had gone on for several days before it was finally called off by the authorities. Speculation was rife as to the fate of young Tobias. Many people suspected he had been abducted by paedophiles; others thought it was some kind of in-house thing with the parents complicit. Without a body, it was all just rumour but that incident changed Joshua forever. He never stopped looking for his brother and became susceptible to any crackpot conspiracy theory doing the rounds. He was known as “Spooky Smith” at school, the other students branding him a weirdo. I am a sceptic myself but you sometimes wonder if there is some smoke coming from the metaphorical gun.

Today was about congruence. The lines in question appeared to link historical structures and prominent landmarks. In turn, these ley lines demarcate Earth energies whilst also forming visual guides for alien spacecraft. Yes, all part of a gravitational/centroid system. This was hardly a new theory but Joshua had taken it one step further by calculating that the whole thing culminated at the central point of England.  

“We have to go. I know where it is.”

That was five days ago.

We are now both sitting in my Audi parked up at the side of a field in Leicestershire; dust being blown up into the air from the earth. To our right are fields of corn, tall from cultivation. A dirt path leads into the crops, access replicated on all four sides. Joshua looks at me, his green eyes twinkling with excitement, his face pale from lack of sunlight, his chin stubbly from an absence of shaving. His mobile phone is clutched in his hand, ready to photograph anything of interest. He is wearing a black tee-shirt with Evil Dead written in blood red whilst his khaki shorts highlight his thin, scrawny and pallid legs.   

I am not sure what I am doing here other than humouring a mixed-up forty-something. There’s been no suggestion as to what we will find or what the significance is of this confluence of ley lines in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps we will be imbued with magical powers or a secret hole in the ground will open up leading to an undiscovered Narnia. On the drive up here, Joshua had reminisced about his brother. He had told me the story about how they used to watch movies together sat on a rug in the lounge. Tobias loved E.T. in particular; his eyes would light up at the scene with the bikes flying across the sky with the moon as a backdrop. I know my neighbour believes that he will be re-united with him one day; maybe today. 

It is a Saturday which usually means a trip to the football and/or a meal out at the pub with my wife. Maybe there will still be time for the latter. Sandra had laughed when I told her what I had planned for the day. She tolerates Joshua without really getting to know him. She thinks he is a bit strange but then most people do. Kooky Josh next door.  

I crane my head to see through the top of the car windscreen. Where sun shone before, a sheet of rolling clouds is filtering across the skies like an advancing army built of moisture. Shades of black and grey threaten rain. The wind is picking up, corn stalks beginning to wave in the breeze. We scurry out of car doors and scuttle in the direction of the makeshift trail. It’s a wordless pursuit punctured by the grunt and groan from the effort of walking on a warm day.

With each step taken, the weather closes in. Squalls of dust puff up and blow away on the breeze. I lean forward, bending into the gale. Joshua is right behind me, his words stolen away on the wind. I can hear him muttering but the sounds are muffled. We venture onwards, heading towards the very centre of the field where pathways intersect. I look up and note that the roiling clouds have threatening patches of black that look full of rain and possibly thunder and lightning. We press on. Twigs and plant debris rush passed our heads. The centre isn’t far now. I glance behind and Joshua is still there, his face straining with effort.

And we are there. It’s an anti-climax. At the heart of England is precisely nothing; no monument, no statue, no commemorative marker of any kind. I know there is in Meriden, Coventry which also claims to be the centre of the country. Maybe we chose the wrong option. The wind is blowing a hooley now. I can hardly stand. The canvas of clouds look like an endless stream of lumpy cotton covering the sky. The light is gloomy bordering on darkness. There’s a loud sound; a sort of horn noise from above. My eyes are screwed trying to pierce the gloom. I think I can see a blurred shape breaching the cloud cover in the gloaming. It looks like a ship overhead; a spaceship. There’s a large expanse of grey metal with tiny lights flashing from it. I am on my knees, hands covering my ears. The hailing sounds are deafening if that’s what they are. I feel overawed, terrified.

It feels like I am scrunched in a ball shape for what seems like hours. Only minutes pass. And then it’s over. The sky clears as quickly as it filled with storm clouds. The stalks of corn are protruding into the air as they should. I stand and spin, looking for Joshua. He’s nowhere to be seen. And then I remember; I remember seeing him rising into the dark skies.

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