Anna

A kind of love

Anna: A Kind of Love story

Forward The following narrative may be looked upon as the latest in a long line of

solutions to an old mystery, albeit a highly original one, that has already been dissected and dismissed by the sceptics as its forebears have been. Although the author of this memoir did not put his name to the manuscript, we now know him to be one Peter Brennen, born in 1962 in Huddersfield, Yorks. He attended the local grammar school before attending Manchester University as a music scholar. He dropped out after the first year, and little is known of him since then, apart from the reminiscences of people who saw him performing on the streets of nearly every town in Europe, just as he claims in his story. Before he died in La Coruna ten years ago at the age of 70, he had left these papers, together with sufficient funds, with a local firm of solicitors, and his instructions were that following his demise they were to be sent to the physics department of Cambridge university in England. However, notwithstanding other minor points, there is one singular difference to be taken into consideration regarding this particular manuscript. His instructions also mentioned a certain artifact, wrapped in a piece of leather that was to accompany the papers. We have the word of the solicitors involved that they did not unwrap or examine the artifact in any way, thus unfortunately depriving us of independent witnesses to what would have been a vital piece of evidence. As to the fact that both the papers and the object reached their appointed destination, we can be sure as they were sent by special delivery, but the complicated chain of events that finally led to this publishing house receiving the manuscript is properly the subject of another book. Of the mysterious artifact and its disappearance, to date, very little has so far come to light. We have the speculations of conspiracy theorists who are convinced that it was spirited away to some secret destination, and the not particularly reliable testimony of two former Cambridge physicists who claimed to have actually seen it before it disappeared. That testimony if it is to be believed, would elevate this manuscript from the category of a work of fiction, to a tantalizing and also, rather beautiful solution to an old mystery, and one that leaves its closest rivals far behind. . For the sceptics, the eminence of the two witnesses is outweighed by their association with the UFO fraternity, and as far as they are concerned, they are merely repeating the description taken from the accompanying manuscript, for they have been unable or unwilling to furnish any data from the tests that would surely have been carried out on such an object. As for myself, I tend favour the sceptics view, although with my publishers hat on, I have to admit that I enjoy a good story as much as the next person. Of course, you, the reader must judge for your selves, but notwithstanding the opinions of the critics, it is certainly a remarkable narrative in its own right and is considerably more original and entertaining than most of the previously published explanations advanced for one of the mysteries of our time. My personal feeling is that being what is essentially a love story, it is exempt from the need to be a true and scientific

account and can be enjoyed for what I believe it to be, ie a work of fantasy. John Rowlands, July 19th 2042

What follows is the complete and unabridged version of Peter Brenans manuscript. In this, the third edition of this book, the editor has added the footnotes and commentaries of Professor John Steward who holds the chair of contemporary studies at Bristol university.

Chapter One Santiago de Compostella, N.Spain November 2001 I wonder if, like me you have ever had reason to be curious about the phenomenon of coincidence. Some people feel that it may have a mystical significance and they prefer to call it synchronicity, whilst to others it is merely a word that is used for the patterns ascribed to random events. As human beings we dont take much comfort from the notion that everything happens to us by blind chance, and the search for meaning in sequences of apparently random events has a long tradition. Looking back over my life with the benefit of hindsight, I can now see where the turning points were, and how certain events that at the time, were without significance, turned out to be the beginnings of a dramatic change in direction for me. I have lived a pretty varied and interesting life, rarely having been tied down in one place for long enough to get bored, and I have never given much thought to any of the deeper meanings of life. I can enjoy a limited indulgence in the philosophers pastime, but I never really had the energy to involve myself in what seemed to me, to be futile attempts to know the unknowable. I have had friends of this type in the past and, frankly, they always got rather boring with their trivial new age beliefs For myself, I have a particular reason for starting this narrative by referring to the significance or otherwise of coincidence, and I can tell you now that I am a little more careful about the meaning of words like chance and random. Whether life is flowing according to some grand design, or is merely a series of random events, I cannot say, but without the crossing of certain paths, this story could not have been written. If I am to believe what I was told, then I will have to accept that these apparently random happenings are governed by laws that are as valid and mathematical as the ones that lie at the heart of our present understanding of the universe. It has been my task to write down everything just as it was told to me and I shall ask the reader to suspend his judgement until the end. If my instructions have been followed, a certain object will be in the possession of the Cambridge university physics department by the time this comes to print and this will leave no doubt in the readers mind that I really did meet and talk with Morgan Bennet for there is obviously no other way that could that it have come into my possession. I would also like to point out that I have never been particularly concerned with making money, being a sufficient unto the day thereof kind of person and so far, I have led an enjoyable life with out ever having had much of it. I mention this only to show that if I had wished to make money for myself,

then I would have had this account published in my lifetime,1 and together with the object that you are now no doubt familiar with, I would have been both rich and famous. The reason for keeping this story a secret is not a simple one but has something to do with my own peace of mind, and a sense of responsibility to the man whose amanuensis I was to become, as well as certain other things that I hope will become clear as this narrative progresses. If this is being read, then I, at least am now beyond the considerations of its acceptance or otherwise. Without the crucial piece evidence, I realize, of course, that this story will be written off as the work just of another sensation seeker who have claimed to have met Morgan Bennet. I have always been sceptical of such accounts, never having had much time for conspiracies and mysteries, but Morgans story as he told it to me had the compelling quality of first hand experience, and I hope I can go someway towards recreating that experience in the mind of the reader. Fortunately, I am one of a minority of people gifted with near total recall. Being a musician, it has enabled me to memorize long and complex pieces of music after only one hearing, and I have a similar capacity when it comes to the spoken word. There is no way that Morgan could have known this when he chose me as his confidante, so perhaps it was another of those strange coincidences that seem to be an essential part of this story. It seems that Morgan had no desire to set the record straight during his long and lonely exile, and I am not so sure why he would suddenly choose to reveal himself to a complete stranger. He never gave any indication that he trusted me to keep his secret, or even cared about what I might do with the information. He seemed to be careless of the fact that my exposure of him would have been so easy. I know that his own terminal illness must have been a factor in his decision to speak freely and in such great detail about his previous life, but all the time I was with him he never seemed concerned with his own mortality. I can tell you now that he died soon after our last meeting and by his own hand, unnoticed and unmourned except by me. He could so easily have taken his story with him, being as it was, such an intimate, and in the end tragic story, and I have felt reluctant to pass it on. Now that we are both beyond the morbid curiosity of the public that he so despised, perhaps the publishing of this story will do more to celebrate the life of an unknown man than to shed new light on an old enigma. Those readers who are expecting revelations of an alien science need read no further, for this story is essentially a love story in the purest sense of that word. That Morgan was involved in some way with the woman at the heart of this
Unless one accepts the hypothesis that Brennens narrative is a posthumous practical joke, it is difficult to explain why he would have kept it secret until his death. Of course, his supporters claim that as further evidence of the narratives veracity, whereas the sceptics refer to other known fake records that were released into the public domain only upon the authors demise. The motives for this kind of deception has been argued back and forth by a number of eminent psychologists. For further reading see Dr. David Gilmours Deceptions from beyond the grave
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mystery has never been in serious dispute. It is the nature of that involvement and his subsequent disappearance that has exercised the minds of both scientists and conspiracy theorists. The fact that Morgan was able to slip through the net and disappear without trace, whilst living a fairly normal life, is a fact to which I can testify. I learned that the womans name was Anna, or at least that was what Morgan called her, although it remains uncertain that she actually had a name or understood the concept of naming. In what sense he meant that to be taken I was unsure, but his descriptions of her fleshed out the few images that have survived on film. You will be as surprised as I was to learn that she was a musician, and that like me, she played the flute. During the course of his narrative, he brought the blurred image of her to life in a way that began to haunt me as surely as the memory of her must have haunted him. By now you will already know that the piece of evidence I provided with this manuscript is, of course, Annas flute.2 By now it will be common knowledge that it is no ordinary flute, and is composed of no ordinary material . Of what it is made, I have no idea, and Morgan himself seemed unconcerned, though I am sure our physicists will discover its secrets soon enough, for good or for ill. Since I came into possession of it, shortly before Morgan died, Anna became a frequent visitor in my dreams, and I became certain that it was her true likeness. After his death this vision of her came to haunt me and I often wondered whether something similar had sustained Morgan during his long period of exile. As you have seen, the flute is a primitive affair, a simple pipe with a hole at one end that the performer blows across, and a curious absence of finger holes, so that, apart from the singular material used in its construction, it would excite no interest in the casual observer. My sole means of support down the years has been as a street performer, and I suppose I must have played in every town in Europe at one time or another. I can remember once, playing it in the street on an impulse. It was in Lyons in France, I seem to recall, but I cant remember it appearing to affect any one in the way Morgan described when Anna played it3. The life of a street musician is an easy, bohemian one and I know that I would have found it hard to settle and do anything else. My gift for memorizing gave me a huge repertoire, and I like to think that I gave a performance that was never unappreciated. Although as I stated earlier, my territory extended to most of the cities of Europe, I had an especial fondness for Santiago de Compostella in the north west of Spain. It has a city centre of antiquity, a focus for pilgrims from the world over, and it was here in its ancient streets that I met Morgan Bennet. It
Brennens later description of this material in no way differs from the material of the mysterious craft of which myriads of photographs are freely available today and would have been then. 3 There are independent accounts from witnesses that someone of the description of Brennen played on the streets of this city at various times but no information about the mysterious flute.
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has always been my favourite place and one to which I frequently return. The old, historical part of the city lies separate and self-contained at the centre of an urban sprawl, few evidences of modern life disturbing its ancient heritage. There is an air of tranquillity about the place that entices many first time visitors to return over and again. The atmosphere coupled with the lazy tempo of the Spanish lifestyle, and an abundance of a superior class of tourist, made it an ideal haunt for a street musician. Even the unpredictable climate of the north gave me an echo of my homeland, Santiago having the highest rainfall of any city in Spain. Here there was always a passing audience and a generous one at that. When I was there, I often used to play in the large square, facing the police station that was opposite the cathedral. Occasionally, I would venture into the Rua del Franco, with its multitude of bars that stretched from the cathedral to the park but usually, it was too noisy for a flute player even by Spanish standards. There is a casual acceptance of itinerants and vagabonds in Spain, more especially in such a city of pilgrims, and in a few days you would begin to recognize your regular customers as they stopped to listen and toss in a few coins. Some people tend to stand out in a crowd, whilst others pass more or less unnoticed, and Morgan Bennet certainly fitted the latter category, for I only remember seeing him when he stopped opposite me one day to listen. He later told me that he had often seen me there and used to listen from a few yards down the street. I suppose that air of anonymity was a useful characteristic for him in his position, and yet I never saw him give any hint of concern that he might be recognized at any time but I suppose that if he had avoided detection for so long he must have felt pretty invulnerable. When I first noticed him, he was standing opposite, leaning against the side of a shop window, and he stayed there for about three minutes, before wandering slowly away. In that first sight of him, I recall an old man of medium height, well, if rather casually dressed. His body was thin almost to the point of emaciation and the face behind his neat grey beard looked pale and ill. He wore a rather old fashioned looking pair of spectacles, and I remember thinking that he could be a retired schoolmaster.4 I certainly didnt think straight away that he was English, and later on I was to find that his Spanish was impeccable. He was there the following day and over the next few days, made a routine of standing for three, or four minutes before walking away. In my mercenary way, I noticed that he never threw in a coin but unremarkable though he was, he began to force himself upon my attention. I began to wonder if he was a resident or a perhaps even a pilgrim, though I felt pretty certain that he lived in the city. Probably, he lived alone for there was something of the recluse about him in his air of
Owing to the curious fact that no photographs of Morgan were ever found in his house, and that his few surviving relatives were unable to provide anything other than a picture of him as a young boy, we have had to rely upon descriptions of him furnished by members of his local community who knew him. Thus Brennens commonplace description hardly adds anything that we didnt already know from other sources.
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separation from the people passing by. Separate, yet undistinguished, the perfect disguise. One day, after a week of this routine, he walked over and dropped a coin in for the first time. As I lowered the flute he muttered something about enjoying the music, before lifting his eyes to mine and in a clear voice, inviting me to join him for coffee in a bar just down the street. He spoke fluently in Gallego , the local dialect of Galicia and without thinking I replied in Spanish that I would be pleased to and began to pack up the few tools of my trade. I knew the bar that he was referring to for it was situated on the corner of the little flower-strewn square that adjoins the Rua Del Franco. It was a little more expensive than some of the other nearby cafes, but it had a large terrazzo with a pleasant view of the fountains in the square. When we sat down I noticed that he ordered coffee for me but a glass of hot milk for himself. Now that I was closer to him I could clearly see that his appearance of old age was due more to the ravages of ill health than the passage of time. His hands were those of a younger man with the pale softness of the pedagogue, and my best guess at his age would have been of a man in his middle fifties. In perfect English he asked me my name, having first introduced himself as David, a retired schoolmaster, giving me the satisfaction of having made a correct guess. During this conversation and others like it that we had in this and other cafes, he never volunteered any further information about himself, not even to tell me whether he was Spanish or English and I was reluctant to press him. With the unconscious arrogance of the English I never thought that he might be Welsh. He was an interesting person even though his conversation was rather dry and formal. He had a strong sense of irony that appealed to me. He spoke in a way that was a little old fashioned, but with a gentle self mockery, lampooning both himself and others in an entertaining way. Like him, I was used to spending long hours, days even, in my own company, and I enjoyed the escape from solitude that his company afforded. As our meetings became more frequent, I began to realize that rather a different person lived behind the elaborate faade, and the gentle cynicism, yet I had no suspicion of the dark secret he was keeping from me even after our little get-togethers had become a regular occurrence. It became a pleasant routine, and we alternated between the various cafes in the vicinity of the square. At this time I had no idea where he lived or even suspected how close it was to where we sat, until one day, after entertaining me with one of his wry anecdotes, he surprised me by inviting me to his apartment, which he said was close by. He told me that he had something to show me that would be of great interest to me as a musician, but beyond that he refused to say anything more. He seemed rather amused at my reaction to his invitation as I had certainly not expected it, but I followed him across the square to one of the dark green doors of the pensions5 that had faced us
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The woman who rented the pension in question is no longer alive but her son recalled an elderly man living in one of

as we sat talking. He opened it with a key, and we went up three flights of stairs to a small, rather dingy room with a single bed and a chair. I remember thinking that his use of the word apartment had been a bit of an exaggeration. For some reason, I had assumed that he would live further out of town in something a bit more presentable. I scarcely need anything more than this, nowadays. he said, as if reading my mind. The stairs seemed to have tired him and he seated himself in a chair by the window while asking me to sit on the bed. He sat there for a few minutes while he got his breath back, looking at me with a look of amusement in his eyes. Just as his stare was beginning to make me feel uncomfortable, he spoke rather abruptly. You really have no idea who I am, have you? I looked across at him, surprised by the question and not at all sure how to answer it. For a moment I couldnt decide whether it was a statement or a question. What do you mean? I replied at last. Should I know who you are? He began to stare penetratingly into my eyes and the mood of amused condescension vanished from his face. For the record Peter, my name is not David, its actually Morgan Bennet For the moment, the words meant nothing to me. The context was all wrong, and I was not really concentrating. I remembered something about the name, but it seemed to have no connection with the time and place. I was in. I looked across at this frail looking old man sitting on a chair in a dingy little Spanish pension and suddenly I remembered. I stared across at him as I recalled the name of the worlds, at one time, most wanted man. You do realize that if he is not already dead, then somebody has to be him and as unlikely as it may seem to you, I happen to be that somebody. The tone of his voice was dry and mocking, and his eyes had regained some of their former good humour, as if he were playing some kind of game with me. For myself, I couldnt for the life of me think why he would have said something so bizarre . Why on earth would a rather interesting old man whose company I enjoyed and one whose sense of humour I had assumed to be verbal rather than practical, suddenly invite me to his room and claim to be Morgan Bennet? The sudden change had left me feeling a little off balance and I began to find the whole atmosphere of the room and its tawdry furnishings strangely depressing,
the rooms who fitted the description that Brennen gives here. He told researchers that as far as he knew, the man was Spanish and local as he spoke fluent Gallego. He also added that he was an extreme recluse and nobody really knew anything about him beyond the fact that he paid his rent regularly. According to the son this resident committed suicide It is possible that Brennen was describing a local inhabitant for the character of Morgan in his book. It should be mentioned that there are not many clues such as this in the manuscript, so it seems unlikely that Brennen was anticipating that researchers would analyse his writings in detail in search of such kinds of verification. The strongest evidence for the truth of the narrative is the flute, for although it seems to have disappeared the evidence that it really existed is hard to dispute. It seems hard to imagine that Brennen could have conspired with the firm of solicitors, or caused a registered parcel to go astray after it had reached its destination and all from beyond the grave! Of course, the sceptics point out that whatever it was that was in the package was something mundane and not the fanciful object described here, but notwithstanding that, others reply that if that were the case, why the mysterious disappearance? Surely the Physics department would have no reason to conceal anything, as the conspiracy theorists claim is the case.

alien to my mood. I wanted this queer charade to end so that I could be out in the fresh air again. He broke the silence, speaking slowly and quietly this time and quite without a trace of humour. You know, this would all be childish foolishness, if it were not for one thing. I am sorry to see that I have disturbed your peace of mind, but I can assure that I am neither mad nor playing some kind of game with you and eventually you will see that I had no choice he paused for breath and I found his sudden change of demeanour even more unsettling. You see that box on top of the wardrobe there? Fetch it over, theres a good chap. I got to my feet and took down what looked like an old shoe box and passed it over to him. He took it onto his lap and lifted the lid. From where I stood I could see something inside, something wrapped in what looked like a piece of soft leather. He took it out and handed to me. I think you will know what this is he said, asking me to unwrap its leather covering and take it out. Inside was a metal pipe, with a hole close to one end, and he was right; I immediately recognized it as some kind of transverse flute and a pretty unsophisticated one at that, for not only did it have no key system as mine did but it had no finger holes, and would only be capable of playing two or three notes at the most. I can see that you recognize it as a flute, my friend. he said, but perhaps you would like to examine the cross section and tell me what you think. Something in the tone of his voice should have warned me, but my mind felt sluggish at that moment and I had not fully grasped what I was looking at. As I turned the thing round so that I could look down the bore, I saw that it was made of a material that was no thicker than the film of a soap bubble. Yet it weighed in my hand as if it were made of brass or some such metal, At that moment a beam of sunlight reflected from an opening window across the square caught the surface of the flute and it coruscated with rainbow lights as if it were alive. It had a familiarity that I could not for the moment, place. Then from the depths of my memory I remembered some old magazine articles from 20 years back of a mysterious object. In my heart I knew with out a doubt that the material of this flute and that object were one and the same. I looked up at him, stunned. You really are him, arent you? Yes. he replied simply. I am afraid I am I felt an unreal kind of calm, and any questions I might have had, faded from my mind. I am afraid that I wont be able to answer many of your questions today His voice came almost apologetically. But I am going to tell you my story over the next few days. You may have already guessed it, but I am dying. The words were calm and measured. You wont know yet why I chose you, in fact I hardly know my self, but In spite of that, I know that the time is right. I would like you to leave now and I shall meet you out side in the square tomorrow at eleven. He seemed to draw in upon himself, looking tired and ill and without a

word I turned and made my way downstairs and out into the glare of the sunfilled street. I was in a sombre mood in sharp contrast to the bright sunlight of that square, and for the first time I felt disturbed by the routine noise of the street. Feeling a strong desire for some peace and quiet, I made my way to the Caballeira de Santa Susana6 to be alone in the solitude of its peaceful surroundings. The following morning, while waiting for Morgan, I sat on a bench by one of the flower beds in the square watching the passers by and turning yesterdays revelations over in my mind. The familiar crowds of elegantly dressed shoppers, gregarious family groups and the ubiquitous tourists faded from my attention as I began to think about our coming meeting. Naturally, I wondered what kind of a story he would tell, and why he had decided to tell it now, after all this time, and why to me of all people? By the time of my meeting with Morgan, all those things had happened more than twenty-five years ago. An event like that, however can scarcely be expected to fade from the public interest altogether, and like other lesser mysteries, it was the subject of recurring documentaries although most of them, in the absence of any new evidence were rehashed versions of what went before. I was only five years old at the time, and all my knowledge of it came from documentaries like these. The fact that such a well documented visitation could have ended in such a bizarre manner, leaving nothing but unanswered questions was a fitting irony especially for those who had either dreaded or welcomed the idea that we might not be alone. The thought that I might soon have some of these questions answered, seemed distant and unreal, especially when contrasted with my present surroundings, that were, in themselves, the very essence of normality. As I looked up, two elderly priests walked by, looking well fed and content, as if to confirm the irrelevance of such thoughts in this, the real world. As they reached the end of the square, I saw the door opposite me open and Morgan emerge blinking into the sunlight. The rich Spanish light contrasted sharply with his pallid features, making him look even more frail and old. He looked to the right and left, before walking slowly across and sitting down beside me. As he did so, a bedraggled looking dog began routing through the litter surrounding the bin at the end of the bench, and I saw that, as usual, the bin was practically empty. I was reminded of one of Morgans observations regarding the Spaniards sublime indifference to rubbish, especially in the bars where the floors would be strewn with every kind of refuse; half eaten food, crab shells, cigarette ends, sugar wrappers, and so on. For myself, I had
He is referring here to one of main parks of Santiago that was situated just outside the perimeter of the old city, probably not more than ten minutes walk from Morgans pension by the cathedral.
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long since ceased to notice it: just another minor cultural difference that was of little account, but for some reason Morgan never seemed to have become accustomed to it. My thoughts on the subject were interrupted after a few moments when he spoke to me. Perhaps we should go to the park. he suggested, A bar would be a little too noisy and I dont particularly want to be overheard That was probably the only indication he ever gave me that he had any concerns about the security of his secret. I agreed with him and without waiting, we set off in a leisurely manner down the bustling Rua Del Franco. It did not seem long before we reached the main road and crossed over into the shady environs of the Caballeira de Santa Susana. Neither of us had spoken and the silence continued as we walked along the wide sandy path. After some minutes, Morgan stopped by a bench under an enormous and very old eucalyptus tree and sat down, motioning me to join him. The fallen leaves beneath the spreading branches filled the air with a resinous perfume where they had been crushed by our feet, and the spring sunshine was warming the air. The relative silence of the park contrasted sharply with the noise of the city that we had left behind, and the formal, unobtrusive surroundings and the atmosphere of everyday began to give me second thoughts about the identity of the man sitting beside me. I lit a cigarette and stretched out my feet savouring the warmth of the morning sunshine that filtered down through the shade of the over hanging branches while I waited for him to speak. Eventually he broke the silence; You know, there is nothing particularly sensational about my story, in spite of what you may have read. In the absence of hard facts, the public imagination tends to take flight and that is always encouraged by the media. I probably found it amusing at first, but now I have ceased to have any interest in it A flock of noisy sparrows fell quarrelling from the sky, and continued their squabbling on the ground, chasing each other round and round the nearby litter bin. Morgan watched them with interest until they flew off as if their activities were of far more importance than what he had to say. After a few moments of silence he continued. I am going to tell you my story over the next few days just as it happened to me. If you would indulge me, please do not ask any questions until I have finished. Thank you. And that was all he had to say by way of introduction. He sat in silence for perhaps five minutes before beginning his narrative with a studied delivery as if he were reading from a book. What follows is, to the best of my abilities the story of Morgan Bennet as he told it to me in that beautiful park all those many years ago.

CHAPTER 2

I shall pass over any biographical details as the various documentaries have covered them pretty thoroughly, and from what I have seen of them, they are accurate enough. I will start, if I may, from a time shortly before the event in question took place. I had spent the night at a hotel in Hay-on-wye7, a town that is some ten miles from my house situated on the common between Talgarth and the black mountains. The reasons for the night in a hotel so close to my own home are not important, but the fact that I decided to walk home across the Black Mountains, is. If I had had my car, then there would be no story. It was very early in the morning and dawn was just breaking as I headed up on to the Hay bluff, from where I proposed to follow the ridge across the mountain, and on down to the site of Castell Dinas. I suppose that the sun had been up for about an hour or so when I crested the Gader Fawr8 and wandered a little way down the escarpment, As looked across the valley that was when I first saw it. A tiny iridescent bubble on a patch of green over on the far side of the valley. It was unusual enough to make me decide to take a closer look. It took me a little time to climb down and find a place to cross the stream that glittered in the bottom of the valley, and as I came up on the other side, I lost sight of it for a while. Then as I climbed up over the rough tussocks of grass, I came upon it again, and this time I was close enough to see that it was something quite extraordinary. The juxtaposition of the unusual and the commonplace was heightened by the figure of a woman who was standing perhaps thirty feet or so to one side of it. From afar she appeared to be looking straight at me, but when I took out my binoculars to take a closer look. I discovered that she was not looking at me, but at something in the far distance behind me. Involuntarily I glanced round expecting to see the object of her gaze, but there was nothing but the rough grass rolling down to the valley bottom, and the empty mountain beyond. Through the glasses, I had seen her quite clearly. She wore a short black dress, with short sleeves and her face was as fat and round as her body.9 I guessed at her height as being not much over five feet. Her face was utterly without expression and I began to wonder who on earth she was, and what she could possibly be doing here in such unsuitable clothes at such an early hour. Most of all, what on earth was the curious object
An interesting point can be made here as, following the publication of this manuscript, researchers have indeed found out that Morgan spent the night in question at the Swan hotel in Hay-on-wye, and it is not immediately clear how Brennen could have been aware of this fact. 8 In the beginning of Morgans narrative we are treated to a very specific detailing of the names of local Welsh landmarks and areas. Some have argued that these could have been taken straight off an ordinance survey map of the area to lend an air of authenticity whereas others have pointed out that there are accounts of Morgans pedantic knowledge of the geography and history of that area, in fact it was in the public record that Morgan was working on a local history manuscript before he disappeared. 9 This description fits the few surviving cctv images and tallies more or less with the descriptions of those locals that saw her. The best of these being from Sergeant Glyn Price who called at Morgans house in the late afternoon following his encounter with the sphere.
7

that was so close to her. Unlike me, she appeared to have no interest in it whatsoever. The object itself was perfectly spherical, and iridescent, just like a giant soap bubble. It was absolutely motionless although it seemed to be resting on the grass as if it were virtually weightless. As I began to walk towards it, the woman turned away from me and ran swiftly in the same direction. Even at this distance I could see that despite her body shape, she moved with the grace and speed of an athlete, and covered the distance between her and the sphere in the time it took me to take three steps. As she reached the sphere, an extraordinary thing happened for she seemed to disappear through the walls of it with out a sound and with the same ease that one might pass ones hand through a hologram. For the first time since entering the valley, I felt my sense of curiosity replaced by a feeling of deep unease, and as if in sympathy, the sun disappeared behind a small cloud, revealing the coldness of the spring morning air. I am familiar with mans appetite for the mysterious, and his preference for the supernatural explanation as opposed to the rational, and I have to confess that in that moment, I, too felt the stirrings of an ancient fear in the face of the unknown. I stood immobilized among those familiar surroundings; the notes of a skylarks song suddenly ascending against the distant murmur of the stream, the sound of a sheeps cough drifting on the cool morning air. As I stood there, searching for some explanation for what I had seen, the sun returned abruptly, warming my face. As I watched, its rays lit up the surface of the sphere, kindling it into an object of dazzling beauty. That surface now coruscated with a myriad reflections, like a magical vision from some childhood fantasy. I stood transfixed by the spectacle, half expecting it to float away, but it remained motionless. Suddenly I found myself once more walking towards it, this time without any sense of fear and soon I came within a foot or so of it. Without thinking, I put my hand out and touched it. It was solid and not an hallucination, for it was utterly unyielding, and when I exerted pressure against it I might as well have been pushing against the side of the mountain for all the impression I could make. I walked all around it but without finding any markings or sign of an entrance and just as I was beginning to wonder if I had imagined the woman and her strange disappearance, she re-appeared, this time from behind the sphere as if she had been hiding in its shadow, and that I had somehow failed to notice her. I saw that she was now holding something in her hand, something wrapped in a cloth of some sort. It struck me then that she could have kept opposite me as I circumnavigated the sphere and so remained concealed, and that I had been mistaken when I fancied that she had disappeared into it. This was followed by the thought that satisfying though this explanation was, it did little to explain the existence of the sphere itself. Such thoughts were fleeting in duration for she walked up to me and stared full into my eyes as though searching for something, giving me the opportunity

to observe her more closely. I saw now that the pupils of her eyes were the most extraordinary shade of pale, dove- grey that contrasted sharply with the smooth ivory colour of her skin and the thick, dark brown curls of her hair that brushed against her shoulders. Her dress seemed to be made of knitted black wool of some kind and was quite plain, being devoid of any style or decorative stitching, a mere sack with holes for the neck and arms and cut off at about six inches below the knee. Whether she found what she was looking for, I was unable to say but just as her gaze was beginning to unnerve me, she turned away and set off up the slope of the mountain that rose behind the sphere. I found myself following her, and as I did so I began to feel confused and disoriented. I found myself stumbling along uncomprehendingly behind the little black clad figure as she tripped nimbly over the rough grass. She took the route that I would have taken to get back to my house and which took us up onto the ridge that overlooked the wye valley. Looking up I saw that she had gained the summit and was staring out at the spectacular view, but if it interested her in any way she showed no sign of it. In a few moments I came up beside her and stood there breathing heavily. She showed no signs of exertion, although she had climbed with great rapidity, and as she turned round she gave a glance in my direction before beginning her descent of the ridge. Her face was still devoid of all expression and it appeared to me at that moment that the blunt, immobile features were like those of an idiot child in a womans body. As she continued on her way, I followed without enthusiasm or comprehension, as if motivated by something beyond my control. My sense of confusion and unease began to increase by the minute and a journey that would normally have been a great delight held little interest for me. I was unable to register fully the strangeness of the present situation. It was like being in a dream from which one was unable to awaken as I followed mechanically behind this enigmatic woman who had seemingly emerged from an impossible sphere in the heart of the Welsh mountains. This fact seemed to carry no weight, and all I could really think about was the imagined sanctuary of reaching home. This seemed to be her intention also although how she could possibly have known where I lived was a thought did not seem to occur to me at the time. Like one of the walking dead, I followed behind her as we headed across to the ridge that would take us down the mountain and on to the common. It was one of the strangest homecomings I was ever to experience. We passed by the various familiar landmarks in silence. Past the old cairns, we followed the footpath across the blackened desolate area that marked the boundaries of an old peat fire, to where we could skirt round the valley. After that, we crossed over the Y Grib towards upper Blaina, where we would be able to pick up the path to Rhos Fach. It was not the familiarity that blinded me to the beauty of the scenery, for in my confusion I was beginning to see what was happening to me and I desperately

needed an explanation. The feeling became so urgent that I cried out to her to stop. Hardly had the echoes of my voice faded when she stood stock-still and turned to face me. Once more she approached and stared into my eyes, though hers seemed to focus through me and onto the distant ridge behind. Her unformed features and her tiny mouth were perfectly symmetrical like a porcelain doll, and despite the blankness of her expression, I was keenly aware that she was quite beautiful. Then, as if in a dream, I heard her speak. The sound was artless and beguiling, and the words were spoken softly and sweetly in a language that was liquid yet utterly alien to me. The rolling phrases echoed in my mind like the after tones of a distant bell and I felt something struggle to awaken at the back of my mind. She pointed behind me and as I began to turn my head to look, she unwrapped the cloth she was carrying and drew out a metal pipe, which she put to her lips in the manner of a flute. As I looked back towards the ridge she began to play. The notes paraded ceaselessly, without separation or pause and she played with a hypnotic insistence that began to make me feel giddy. I saw two buzzards circling over the ridge surrounded by a flock of mobbing crows that peeled away one by one as I watched and headed down the mountainside towards us. As they passed above our heads, they turned forming a circle with the woman at the centre, so close that I could hear the rhythmic beating of their wings above the sound of the flute. As they flew round and round, the music too, seemed circular and without end. But it was not only the music and the perpetual motion of the birds that made me feel giddy and light headed. Too many changes of direction in one day had left me utterly disoriented. A dreadful angst began to take hold of me and in a desperate longing for normality, I tried to cry out. With a supreme effort I tore my eyes away from the maddening, wheeling of the birds, and in an instant the music ceased, the echoes fading into the beating of their wings. I saw her drop the flute into the grass and step towards me. This time, her face had the ghost of an expression; one of faint puzzlement as she once more searched my eyes. She spoke only one word, drawing the syllables out as though she was unsure of what they meant and was trying to puzzle out their meaning. She put her hands on my shoulders, pulling my face close to hers and I could feel her breath, thick and warm against my skin. As the sound of beating wings grew fainter, she looked away towards the mountain, and turning my head to follow the line of her gaze, I saw the birds flying in formation along the path that we must take if we were to reach the common. She bent down swiftly and picked up the flute and without a further word, walked off in the direction taken by the birds. She walked easily, with the same natural grace as she had done on the mountain leaving me to follow on mechanically behind her. I was feeling extremely tired by now and I was still having difficulty focusing my mind on what was happening to me. In a

daze, we crossed the common and finally reached the sanctuary of my cottage. I remember thinking it rather curious that throughout the whole journey we had not encountered a single other person. As I pushed open the door, the familiar surroundings seemed so at odds with the events of the past few hours that I felt even more disoriented. The woman followed me into the room and calmly sat down in one of the armchairs as if she were perfectly at home in my house. Unthinkingly, I sat in the chair opposite looking vacantly across at her, my thoughts vague and incoherent. I remember feeling incredibly tired as I sat there, the woman remaining motionless, as though lost in some inner world like some autistic child, while I drifted wearily in and out of sleep. I dont know how long I sat there before my mind began to clear a little and I was able to take more of an interest in her. She seemed unaware of my scrutinizing gaze as she sat there while I examined her quite closely for the first time. Apart from the striking colour of her eyes, her round face was totally devoid of expression. She had a small, button nose and a small mouth while her face was framed by thick, dark curly hair, and the perfect symmetry of her otherwise bland features gave her a childlike prettiness that gave her an innocent appeal. She sat slumped in a lazy posture that accentuated the fat, roundness of her body. The black dress looked as though it was made of finely woven wool and was a very simple affair, peasant like with a round neckline and short sleeves. Now that she was seated, the hem ended just above her knees, and on her unstockinged feet were a pair of old-fashioned canvas plimsolls. Her eyes were still focused elsewhere, but as I continued to look at her she suddenly became aware of my interest and began to stare back at me. The pupils of her eyes were larger and softer than they had seemed outside and as she continued to gaze at me, I felt a cold ripple pass through my stomach as something in her stirred into life. In a graceful and liquid movement, she rose to her feet and came over seating herself on the arm of the chair beside me. She leant over me, putting her hands on either side of my head, her arms bent at the elbows and she was so close that I could see the faint black hairs on her upper lip. I could smell the scent of her body, a warm, heavy odour of sweat as though she had just finished some hard physical work as opposed to reclining in a chair. It was a heady and somehow rather appealing smell with a tantalizing familiarity about it, and once more she began searching my eyes intently as if expecting to find the answer to some question there. As she had done on the mountain, she began to repeat the same word with the same drawn out sound to the first syllable, opening her mouth at the end of each repeated phrase so that I could feel her warm breath soft and moist on my face. As I breathed in these exhalations, the sound of her voice seemed to come from far away and my body began to feel increasingly heavy. As my eyes began to close, my head seemed to be filling with the sound of her breath and for a moment I had the clear impression of being in

the bedroom of my childhood home in Caermarthen. I was a child again, tired out by the exertions of the day, and I was being gently undressed by my mother. She lifted me into the bed and as she placed the pillow beneath my head, I fell immediately into a dreamless sleep. After a timeless interval, I was floating upwards towards the light and sound from a realm of darkness and silence, and when I opened my eyes I was blinded by the afternoon sun that was flooding through the bedroom window. I became aware at the same time of the muffled roar of heavy trucks from outside on the common, combining with the noise of a helicopter passing overhead. From further away I heard the wail of a police siren. I jumped out of bed to investigate and found that for some reason I had gone to bed without my pyjamas. The realization that I was naked triggered a remembrance of the previous days events as though they were some curious dream that I had recently awakened from. The noise beyond the garden was insistent and unsettling and my heart began to pound as I realized all too clearly the implications of those sounds in relation to the remembered events of yesterday. Concealing myself behind one of the curtains, I looked out of the window already afraid of what I would see. It looked like a full-scale military operation; trucks and armoured vehicles were everywhere while soldiers in full battledress stood about in groups. It was an extraordinary sight to see in a national park, and I knew now, without a doubt that yesterdays events had not been a dream. Someone else had also come across the mysterious sphere and this was the response to that discovery. The actuality of the previous days events and what they implied now struck me with a stunning force as though I had previously been isolated in a state of shock. I thought of the woman and I knew without a doubt that she had come from inside that sphere and now she was here with me, though why and for what purpose I could not begin to imagine. The proximity of all this military activity left me feeling vulnerable and exposed, although in my mind I had already realized that it was unlikely that a connection would be made between the woman and the sphere assuming that I had been the sole witness to her appearance. I could hardly imagine anyone less likely to be associated with such a mysterious object. I knew then with a curious mixture of elation and foreboding that I was going to keep that information to myself at all costs. As I thought of her I became aware that I was not alone and, turning my head I saw that she was standing beside me staring impassively out of the window. The nearness of her and my own unaccustomed nakedness made me feel acutely embarrassed and I made an undignified lunge for the back of the bedroom door to get my dressing gown. She seemed utterly unaware of my confusion and continued to stare out of the window for several minutes before turning away. For the first time she smiled and her whole face came to life, suddenly vibrant and full of good humour. She stood in front of me for a few

moments, her eyes now self assured, provocative, and spoke to me in a low, gentle voice. The tone I fancied was slightly mocking. She repeated several times two syllables that sounded for all the world like An na, and for ever after I linked this sound to her as a name although I had no real justification for such an assumption. Then, in one continuous movement she stepped forward, pulling my head down to her level, and pressed her soft lips against my forehead before slipping silently out of the door. I stood staring out of the window; the faint musky odour of her body hanging in the air and with the tingling sensation of that deftly aimed kiss fading slowly from my skin. Something faint and half recognized stirred in the pit of my stomach, a premonition of something that I was unwilling to think about. I began to dress slowly and carefully but I found it difficult to think clearly against the insistent background of that noise from the common. Just as I had finished lacing my shoes, I heard the front door knocker, loud and official, and remembering Anna, as I now began to think of her, I rushed downstairs to make sure that I got to the door first. It was Glyn, one of the local policemen whom I knew slightly. He was usually pleasant and easy going but now he looked tired and harassed. He had called to tell me that the entire northern end of the black mountains was a prohibited area to civilians and he gave me a local pass so that I could cross the common and get through the checkpoints. It was from him that I learned that Emrys, a local alcoholic hill farmer had been the second person to find the sphere but had taken sometime to report it to the police. Glyn had been on his own at the little station in Hay and had had to call in the national park warden to take a look. Of course, once they had seen it, it was only a matter of hours before the military and police were swarming everywhere. The only information he had was that it was a crashed satellite, and that there was supposed to be no particular danger to people in the vicinity. He did say that Evans up at Blaina had been moved out of his farm, and that the local farmers as a whole were not too pleased at all the restrictions being imposed on them. As he was talking I became aware that Anna was standing beside me and as I looked at her I could see that she was staring blankly out at the common. An icy chill invaded the pit of my stomach and I realized that I was going to have to explain her presence in the house of a well known local bachelor recluse, but scarcely had I thought of it than I heard myself explaining to him that she was the severely autistic daughter of my sister who was in hospital and that she would be staying with me for a while. I knew that with the local mental hospital at Talgarth, the locals would be familiar with this scenario and that she would easily pass for an ex -patient. As I spoke, she turned abruptly and went back into the house. Glyn gave me a professional look of sympathy before shrugging his shoulders and making his departure.10 This brief contact with a fellow human being and the
10

This was Sergeant Glyn Price, no longer alive unfortunately as his testimony would surely be some kind of

confirmation that this was not just something that was happening to me, made me feel a little better, and I belatedly realised that as I was the only person who knew that the strange object had an occupant, there was really no danger that anyone would make a connection. Looking back, I realise that I had already accepted it as a fact that she had emerged from the sphere although the reality of the matter was that I had not actually seen that happen. Like me, she could have just been there on a morning walk and have no connection with the strange object what ever its origins might be. Perhaps the explanation I had given so glibly to Glyn was the right one, and if so, she may very well have come from the Mid Wales hospital, it being common at that time to see some of the less disturbed patients wandering around Talgarth. With my customary scepticism beginning to reassert itself I now felt hungry for the first time since that eventful morning. Still turning it over in my mind, I made my way out to the kitchen. The back door was open, and as I looked out through the window I could see Anna lying on her stomach on the lawn running her fingers through the grass. I watched her for a few minutes with mixed feelings. Part of me felt afraid, and the burden of being mixed up with someone who might be suffering some kind of psychotic break and whom I neither wanted nor understood, gave me a brief urge to call Glyn and tell him that I had found her wandering on the mountain and suspected that she was a mental patient from the hospital, and so be rid of the whole thing. It also occurred to me that if she was a patient then she may very well be recognised by one of the locals and I would scarcely have a reasonable excuse for having her in my house. I could just imagine the kind of story about Morgan the recluse that that would make. Another part of me, however seemed to be curiously unconcerned and was in fact rather stimulated by the situation. I looked at her again, sprawled on the grass with a casual indolence while she rested her weight on one elbow, and I realised that either because of, or in spite of her strange manner, I was already deeply fascinated by her. The feeling that I had had shortly after waking, of being trapped in an unacceptable situation faded into the background as I continued to stare at her through the window and as I recalled the incident with the flute and the birds the theory of her presence as a wandering patient suddenly seemed a rather feeble explanation and I realised then that I knew very well where she had come from and was curiously unaffected by that knowledge even though I had no idea why she was here. After a few minutes, I turned away and sat down to eat, feeling such a sense of normality and well being that even the muffled noise from the common reminding me of Annas possible mysterious origins failed to cause me any concern. When I had finished eating, I sat on at the
confirmation as to the accuracy of this account and the reported conversation. We do have the record of his son who claimed later that his father had remarked on the curious grey colour of her eyes although none of the official reports of Prices statements mention this.

table enjoying the relaxation of doing nothing, but it was not to be for long. Hearing soft footsteps, I looked up at the open back door as Anna walked in. I rose to my feet, stunned. She stood in the middle of the floor, coated from head to foot with black, shining mud. Her woollen dress was clotted with it and hung heavily from her round shoulders. Little rivulets of dirty water were forming a pool at her feet. I immediately thought of the stagnant pond at the bottom of the garden and assumed that she must have fallen in although, in retrospect the sheer quantity of mud and the fact that she did not seem in the least bit concerned about her condition made this assumption unlikely for she must have deliberately coated herself with the stuff. She stared blankly at me tilting her head slightly, before throwing it back and opening her mouth. I froze with horror when I saw that her mouth was completely clogged with black mud. As I watched she vomited quantities of it, the muscles of her abdomen bunching as it poured in a black shining cascade down over her chest and legs. I stood aghast at this alien apparition; my mood of tranquillity vanishing away as I stared at her, the balance of my mind shifting so that everything I saw began to take on a dream like quality. I found myself walking to the bathroom and mechanically turning on the taps, staring down as the level of water slowly crept up the sides. I stood there vacantly until the bath was half full before turning to Anna who had followed me in. Her mouth was now closed and her eyes were eerie and alien, grey stones set in the aboriginal mask of her face. After a few moments she bent down, unlacing her plimsolls while I stood watching her, unable to move. When she had taken off her shoes, she grasped the hem of her dress and in a single fluid movement pulled it over her head and dropped it heavily onto the floor. I had a glimpse of her rounded mud streaked body as she slipped over the side of the bath and disappeared beneath the darkening water, leaving only a tiny part of her face showing above it. As I stared down at her, I could see the pale mass of her breasts floating dimly beneath the water like two sea anemones. The sight of her body, faintly luminous beneath the water disturbed me somehow and I felt my skin begin to prickle. Turning away in confusion, I picked up the sodden woollen dress, mechanically dropping it in the sink before leaving the room and gently closing the door behind me. The dreamlike feeling persisted as I sat down in front of the television that I had automatically switched on but I was too preoccupied to watch it. I closed my eyes as trying to gather my vagrant thoughts but patches of colour behind them resolved themselves into hypnagogic images of Anna's face dissolving in a soundless mud-filled cry. As that image faded out it was replaced by the disturbing memory of her pale body floating beneath the water like the upturned belly of a dolphin. The hallucination of Anna's face with her mouth open and blocked with mud, Anna spewing black vomit like some Hollywood demon returned, dissolving into a confusion of other images as I

drifted into a fitful sleep. When I awoke, I was surprised to see that several hours had passed, but I felt much better. I turned off the television set and sat in silence for several minutes wondering what to do about Anna. I felt anxious for I sensed somehow that she would still be in the bath, yet I felt reluctant to go and look. I tried without success not to think about the image of her as she stood in the kitchen and then the mysterious and seductive shape of her body beneath the water. Eventually, after deciding that I would have to do something, I went out and tapped hesitantly on the bathroom door. There was no sound at all from within and feeling rather foolish I pushed it open a crack and looked in. She lay as I had left her although most of the mud had washed from her face and hair, leaving it patched and streaky and her eyes were still closed. She lay there so motionless that I became alarmed and opening the door wide, I walked over to the bath. The grey film of mud in the cold light of the room highlighted the deathly pallor of her skin and a bolt of fear struck me as I saw no sign of her breathing in the mirrored stillness of the water. As I stood staring down at her unable to think, her eyes slid half open like a sleepy cat and she gazed at me languidly while the corners of her mouth moved in a hint of a smile. This minimal change in her expression communicated the feeling of a powerful energy that was lying dormant in her body while she watched me knowingly like some fat, sleek animal. Something stirred within me and once again my skin began to prickle. Then, with her eyes still fixed on mine, she rose slowly and effortlessly out of the water into a kneeling position, the blackened water cascading noisily over her bare flesh. She raised her arms above her head, clasping her hands together as she stretched her body making her heavy breasts swell beneath their thin coating of mud. Although she was extraordinarily fat, her body was sleek and rounded like a seal; its proportions beautifully arranged suggesting that beneath the surface softness was something muscular and powerful. Like a living creature, something uncoiled in my stomach and a hot flush of desire spread throughout my body. The tingling in my skin increased and I felt the blood pounding in my ears as she slowly drew herself over the side of the bath and came towards me. Her eyes were calm now, searching, scanning my face, but my whole attention was focused on her glistening body as she approached. My eyes hypnotically followed the rolling curves of her body and the roundness of her breasts and swollen belly. The plump creases where the contours of her body came together changed voluptuously as she moved producing a physical agitation in me that was beyond any previous experience of mine. As she approached me her movements were balanced and precise, a fluent and poetic expression of sexuality, a body language that she was obviously a master of. As she reached me, she gently encircled my chest with her arms pinning mine to my side. Bracing her legs, she placed one

hand on my buttocks and the other in the small of my back while she pulled me close against her soft body. The cloying smell of mud mixed with her sweat enveloped me, a powerful essence that increased my physical intoxication as I breathed it in. Through my clothes I could feel the tensioned curves of her belly and breasts pressing against me with increasing pressure as she drew me inexorably closer. Her strength was enormous and I felt the muscles ripple beneath the flesh of her swollen body as her grip tightened. Almost immediately, I orgasmed, gasping for breath in an agonized rictus of consummation. I felt the softness of her body through my clothes as she relaxed her grip letting me slide gently down through her arms until I lay with my legs stretched out and my head resting against the wall. My mind was empty and unconcerned as she lent over me, watching me with tranquil grey eyes, her body now finely beaded with sweat. Her face was round and replete, and as she leant closer to me, the scent of her was still thick and powerful once again awakening half remembered associations in the back of my mind. As she had done before, she breathed slowly and rhythmically into my nose and mouth and a pleasing warmth, followed by a curious numbness spread through my head. After a few moments, she closed her mouth and lifted her head and as she pressed her cool lips against my forehead, my eyes closed in sleep. When I awoke, it was dark and I found myself lying naked on top of the bedclothes in my room upstairs. The air was warm and balmy and through the window drifted the muffled sound of voices against the distant roar of powerful generators. The curtains were pulled back and I could see the trees at the end of the front garden bathed in the eerie glow of arc lights. I got off the bed and drew the curtains before switching on the bedside light. As I turned I saw Anna lying naked on her back on the rug in front of the fireplace, her arms spread out horizontally from her shoulders and her legs crossed at the ankles as though she had been crucified. As I looked at her there came, like a half-remembered dream, a series of kaleidoscopic images of her naked body as I had seen it in the bathroom. With a mixture of shame and curiosity I crossed over to her and knelt by her side feeling uncomfortable in my role as a voyeur. She slept on, her breasts rising and falling in a steady rhythm. Her body seemed neutral in sleep, no longer possessed by the wild spirit that had so enslaved me, yet the balanced proportions of her naked form gave her a beauty that made me catch my breath. Her skin was pale and smooth, washed clean of the film of mud that had greased her body in such a primitive fashion the day before. In the shaded glow of the electric light, the round curves of her bare flesh had the perfection of carved and polished ivory. I reached out my hand to touch her half expecting to feel the unresisting coldness of such a material, but her skin was cool and soft, smooth and plump like a ripe plum. Unthinkingly my hand passed down over the bulge of

her belly and over her thighs and back up to her heavy breasts that swelled voluptuously on either side. I could see the faint patches of hair under her arms, and my eyes followed the delicate curves of her forearms down to where they met with her tiny, plump hands. As I knelt there looking down at her I thought of how little I knew about her, while something in me accepted the extraordinariness of it all without question, delighting in the challenge that she had brought to my isolated existence. Somehow I knew that her stay was to be limited and that thought brought an unaccustomed insight into my own loneliness. A desire for comfort stirred within me and I leaned over her sleeping form hoping that she might awaken. As I put my face close to hers, her eyes remained closed in sleep but I felt the touch of her hand in the small of my back and its gentle pressure pulling me towards her. As I lay down on top of her, resting my head on her soft breasts, I felt the tips of her fingers pressing into the back of my neck just below the base of the skull. I heard her draw a long breath and felt the swelling of her body against mine, her soft flesh hardening as she held it in before exhaling slowly and deliberately, allowing her tense flesh to relax in a softening wave that passed upwards from her groin. I felt its passage as a slow ripple of peristalsis moving beneath my body like a warm snake uncoiling. As it passed over her, her breasts and stomach softened and relaxed, drawing me closer in to the comfort of her body. The sibilance of her breathing grew fainter as my thoughts faded from my mind and before long; I slid into a dreamless sleep. The sun was filtering through a small gap in the curtains when I awoke and for a moment, due to its unfamiliar position. I had no idea where I was. It was only when I became aware of Annas body beneath me that I remembered. She was still sleeping and did not awake as I got carefully to my feet. In the half-light of the curtained room, I could see the marks on her body where I had lain, the skin flushed and faintly glossed with sweat. I took the coverlet off the bed and laid it over her before putting my hand on her forehead and smoothing back the dark curls of her hair. She slept on and I felt no desire to waken her so I took some fresh clothes and went downstairs to bathe. The bathroom was clean and tidy with no visible evidence to support my memory of the mud-streaked form of Anna climbing so voluptuously out of the bath, save for the muddied rag of her dress that still lay in the sink where I had left it. The fact that she had removed all traces of our encounter except for this one seemed odd and for a moment I wondered whether to leave it there, but in the end I took it into the kitchen and placed it in the washing machine hoping that it would be dry before she awoke. After a quick bath, I breakfasted before getting dressed and hanging Annas dress out on the line. I was feeling fresh and relaxed by this time and taking a book I sat outside, taking advantage of the perfect weather. By now I was beginning to get used to the distant but insistent noise of vehicles on the common. It was about an

hour later that I heard the sound of the French windows opening and looking up, I saw Anna come out onto the lawn. She had taken a bath but had not dried herself so that her white, naked body glistened with little droplets of water. She took the black dress down from the line and pulled it over her head before turning to look at me. After gazing at me for a moment she turned around and disappeared into the house. Instinctively I arose and followed her. When I entered she was standing in the middle of the room facing me with a far away look in her eyes. Something in her expression made me stop just inside the room and I stood there watching her as she remained motionless for several minuets. Then as if reacting to some unknown cue she slowly raised her arms above her head and advanced towards me. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, parting her lips and tensing her body making it swell beneath the black dress. She came to within a few inches of me and I could see that her face was flushed by her exertions. A fine sweat broke out on her face and arms and immediately I was enveloped in the scent of her body. It was so powerful that it was almost tangible. I found myself struggling to remember its half familiar origin but, tantalizingly it eluded me as I began breathing it in, filling myself with it. I had the strange thought that if only I could breathe enough of it in then I would remember something very important. The figure of Anna remained motionless and faded from my senses as my lungs pursued the elusive quality of this fragrance that was so achingly familiar and all consuming. It was like the approach of an olfactory orgasm, climbing plateau after plateau until something in me remembered and combined with the aroma of her body in a climax of release and recognition. I had closed my eyes in ecstasy as a kind of white light of recollection filled me with a nameless joy, but the moment faded and with it went the recognition of whatever it was I had been trying to remember. When I opened them Anna was standing looking at me, the colour slowly fading from her face and arms. She was drenched in sweat and even the black wool of her dress looked slick and glossy. Once again, she made the strange alien sound of two syllables, drawing them out in a kind of liquid fluting. This time I fancied that she was trying to pronounce my name.. Mooorghhan. though how she could possibly have known it I have no idea. She repeated the attempt, if thats what it was, several times, a kind of puzzled expression in her eyes. She turned and walked into the kitchen, returning immediately with a towel that she handed to me. She pulled off her dress and without any words passing between us, I knew that she wanted me to dry her. There was nothing sexual in this invitation and as I fumbled with the towel a detached part of me wondered why she had not gone to the bathroom and done it herself. She had planted her feet apart and she never moved from this position as she directed me to every part of her body, even the most intimate parts, and when I came to dry in between the cheeks of her buttocks, she crouched without

moving the position of her feet. It was a curious ritual and I wondered why being so intimate with her body now did not excite me in the way it had done before. Her soft yet elastic flesh felt pleasant through the towel but nothing more and the scent of her body close to my face was neutral. Only when I had finished did she move her feet. Picking her dress up off the floor she crossed over to the sink and rinsed it before taking it out into the garden to hang on the line. I stood watching her through the window, rather thankful that the garden was surrounded by a screen of trees and bushes that shielded it from the inquisitive eyes of any passing ramblers. I could imagine only too well the kind of rumours that would circulate locally if any one were to see Anna standing naked in my garden. As she turned to come back I noticed her flute lying on the coffee table and I had the idea that I would put on some music. Looking through the little rack of CDs I pulled out a recording of some of Bachs unaccompanied violin sonatas. The first strains of the adagio greeted Anna on her return through the French windows and the first thing that she did was to take up her flute and begin playing along with it. She seemed totally unselfconscious although wearing only her plimsolls. Her fat, muscular body reminded me of a life sized cherub from a Ruebens painting She wove a second part amongst the moving threads of the music and to my unprofessional ears, she played with a stunning mastery. Apart from the incident with the birds, this was the first time that I had really heard her play in a setting where I could pay attention to the music. Her artistry was complete and went beyond anything I had heard before. She stood in the middle of the room with her short legs planted firmly apart. Her head was bent forward and she hunched her shoulders making her pectoral muscles bulge above the curve of her breasts. The posture made her look squat and powerful, and unlike most musicians she did not move her body to the music. Her stomach was inflated and tense as if she were forcibly expelling the notes from the flute. When the recording finished, she continued to play on improvising on the pieces that she seemed to have memorized in their entirety. Gradually the flavour of Bach receded and the music became her own. Her virtuosity was breathtaking. At one point she gave the perfect illusion of playing two separate parts, one in the high register and one in the low, so quickly could she dance between them. As she played faster, the notes merged into a flickering pattern so intricate that my mind refused to follow it and I began to feel dazed by the relentless force of the music. Finally she ended the performance with two complex scales that peeled downward and upward from a central point until they disappeared below and above the threshold of audibility, producing a painful tension in my ears. Taking the pipe from her lips, she threw back her head and raised her arms standing motionless. For a moment she was like the living embodiment of some pagan goddess sculpted in ivory until she slowly lowered her arms and relaxed her muscles. Walking over to the table she

placed the flute casually on it before lying face down on the sofa with her legs closed and her arms straight out alongside her body. She seemed to fall asleep immediately. I left her to rest and took a book out in to the garden but I found it difficult to concentrate on the words as fragments of Annas music kept insinuating themselves between me and them. At length I put the book down and sat watching the sunlight catching the leaves of the oak tree at the end of the garden. Something pleased me about it and the movements of the leaves seemed to be related to the fleeting melodies that were running through my mind. My mind began to follow the subtle movements of other things in the garden, faint waves as a gentle breeze rippled through the grass, or a swaying flower. Everywhere I looked things seemed to be moving in a meaningful rhythm, yet I had the sense that the very enquiry into that meaning was somehow robbing it of something, and as my thoughts subsided there seemed to be nothing else in the universe except that movement. I have no idea how long I sat there as all concept of time seemed to have vanished away. My absorption was interrupted only when Anna came out into the garden to fetch her dress which she put on immediately. When she went indoors again, I followed behind and we sat in silence in the armchairs facing each other. She was quiet and composed and sat motionless and withdrawn, her face once more childlike and without expression. The evening drew on and it was now relatively tranquil now that the site of the sphere had been sealed off and the common open to the public once more. I assumed that the actual site would be swarming with boffins and bigwigs and I wondered wether they would be able to damage the sphere in any way. Looking across at Anna and her total unconcern, I instinctively felt sure that whatever it was it would not yield its secrets to primitives such as we must be. We sat there throughout the evening, my thought patterns fragmentary and elusive, feeling unconcerned and pleasantly indolent as the hours drifted past unnoticed. Eventually Anna got up and crossed over to the sofa, lying down on her back, a movement that made the thought of my own bed seem particularly attractive. Not long after reaching it fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. For the next few days, Anna was in a quiet docile mood. We would eat in silence and between these times she would sit in the garden staring at the trees and flowers with absorption. Occasionally a flock of birds would fly high over head and she would lie on the grass on her back gazing up into the sky and carefully following their movements. During this time I worked on the manuscript of a local history that I was writing, or did some light reading. Although I occasionally put on some music Anna showed no apparent interest in it and did not play her flute again. I remember feeling curiously detached from events in the outside world although I did catch a few things on the news when I

finally put the television on. The distant image of the sphere surrounded by temporary huts and various pieces of equipment as it appeared on the screen seemed to have no bearing on the life I was leading with Anna. We could have been living on another planet as far as I was concerned. I gathered from the reporter who was on the scene that there had been several unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the object but that it had remained enigmatic and immovable, oblivious to any activities that the scientists on site had devised. After several days of relative idleness, I felt and urge to leave the house and took the risk of leaving Anna on her own. I followed the same route that me and Anna had taken when she first came to the house and after walking along the pleasant lane and enjoying the richness of the spring hedgerows, I came to the sharp corner where a rough track leads to the remains of Castell Dinas. It was here that Anna had called the birds from the sky in my first encounter with her strange behaviour. I remembered the first sounds she made as she looked into my eyes, That curious fluting sound of her voice and in retrospect it seemed to me now that she had been trying to pronounce my name. Now that I was away from the house and her presence no longer had its hypnotic effect on me, thoughts that had lain dormant for the past week began to take shape in my mind. The fact that Anna had appeared from God knows where in the middle of the Black mountains and was now living in my house had somehow been of little consequence to me. I had accepted it as a kind of fait accompli and I knew now that it was something about her that had prevented my mind from asking any of the questions that now seemed to flood into my mind. For a few moments I had the notion that I was suffering some kind of psychotic break and had hallucinated the entire episode, but I knew that that was not true. The sense of detachment I had felt in the presence of Anna was far from dreamlike and in fact had a reality that seemed sharper and clearer that my so called everyday reality. A reality that had made my everyday life seem somewhat inconsequential and pointless. Now, away from the house that inconsequential reality began to assert itself, as if emerging from some area of my mind where it had been relegated to subservience. The questions came unbidden one following upon the other. Who was she/ Where did she come from? Why on earth was she with me? Was I in some kind of danger? Why did she never say anything? What kind of being could appear in such a bizarre object as the sphere? As I stood puzzling over these questions and more that surged up from the depths of my mind, the sun went in and the air became chilled. I looked up and saw the dark grey banks of a storm cloud cresting the ridge of the mountain. A sharp gust of wind tugged at my shirt reminding me that I had not come suitably dressed for being caught out in the rain, and turning swiftly I began to head back towards the house. The wind came in sudden squalls and the trees swished and swayed and an intense awareness of the natural forces that were

dancing around me drove my errant thought back to their lairs and with that singular detachment again, I allowed the storm front to drive me home to where I belonged. No rain had begun to fall yet and as I pulled open the front door, the wind gusted briefly in before soaring out to join the tops of the trees in their melancholy sibilations. I went into the living room where I saw Anna standing at the open French windows. The wind was tugging at the curtains making them billow up like fantastic creatures dancing for the goddess of the storm as she gazed upon her handiwork. Such was the image I retained in my mind fanciful as it might be, but then everything associated with Anna was more than just weird: Her actions always seemed to be part of whatever was happening around her in some way that I am quite unable to explain. I went and stood beside her. She was staring at the sky, her body tense and motionless with her hands clasped tightly across her breasts. Something made me call her name but there was no reply and after a few moments I moved away and sat down. She stayed in the doorway for several minutes while the curtains danced and cavorted like mad things, whipping and plucking at her motionless form. Above the noise of the wind I heard the sound of the first rain begin to fall. It increased rapidly to a torrent and through the open door the noise filled the room. Abruptly Anna closed the windows and turning away joined me in the other armchair. The room had become quite dark although it was lit intermittently by flashes of lightning. The thunder followed close on its heels and the room echoed with the rolling boom and crash of it. Annas face was illuminated periodically in the electric glare and I saw that her mouth was half open like a childs when it is concentrating on producing an accurate line with a paintbrush. As is not uncommon in these parts, the storm passed fairly quickly and then periodically return as if it were trapped between the valley and the mountains. This persisted late into the night as I got up to go to bed, I could still here the odd rumble of thunder and the distant flicker of blue white through the window. Now as I lay in bed the rain returned, beating insistently at the window, reminding me of that comforting childhood feeling of being in a warm bed whilst the bad weather is safely excluded. With such a sensation I drifted easily into sleep. After a timeless interval I was awakened by a crash of thunder so loud that it made me sit up in bed with a pounding heart. Above the noise of the rain I could here the sound of the French windows banging in the wind . I threw on a dressing gown and made my way downstairs hoping that the carpet had not got soaked. When I switched on the light, I saw that the sofa was empty and the carpet in front of the windows was dark with rain. With a lurch of fear, I ran to the doors and looked out into the rain. Picked out in the light from the room behind me I could see the white form of Anna kneeling on the lawn facing me. Her arms were outstretched and her head was tilted right back. She was naked. Except for the fact that she was kneeling,

she had much the same posture as she had when she finished her musical performance. The rain was exploding off her naked body and her upturned mouth was wide open and pointed at the sky. I rushed out into the rain clutching my dressing gown around me and as I did so I trod on something soft. Looking down I saw the crumpled, sodden shape of her dress lying in the grass. I crossed the lawn and knelt down in front of her, although I had really no idea about what I could do to get her inside. I called out her name but she made no answer. She closed her mouth and lowered her head slowly until she was looking straight at me. Her eyes were wide and staring and as she stared she opened her mouth and a cascade of freezing rainwater spewed forth striking me full in the face. I was stunned by the unexpectedness of this act, more than anything she had done so far and it was as though the douche of icy water had sobered me in some inexplicable way, as if my previous existence had been some kind of confused delirium from which I was now awakened. Without thinking I placed my hands on her shoulders and as I did so she lowered her arms and gripped me by the wrists. Her eyes stared into mine, but they were sightless and inscrutable like the eyes of a jungle cat. Suddenly she gave a harsh growl and pulled my hands forcefully down over her breasts. She held me in an iron grip as she dragged them over the taut flesh with such violence that it seemed as if she would injure herself. Finally, as my hands were ripped past and over her belly, the imprisoned flesh of her bosom burst free like released springs. She held my hands hard against her thighs while her belly contracted in a wave that travelled upwards swelling her breasts as though some living thing were moving silently beneath her flesh. It was eerie and for a moment a primitive fear gripped me and I felt the coldness of the rain against me. Anna lifted my hands and crushed them to her breasts, squeezing my fingers against her wet and slippery flesh with an implacable ferocity. At this point I felt no desire, only fear and I tried desperately to pull my hands from her grasp, but she held on increasing the pressure. A bluewhite flare of lightning threw her face into sharp relief and her eyes looked demonic Her face was swollen and suffused with the tension in her muscles as she gripped me, her breath coming in short harsh gasps. I called out loudly over the noise of the thunder and rain but she seemed like a thing possessed. Then, with a rasping exhalation of breath she dragged my hands down over her slippery breasts, the elastic flesh bouncing away from its imprisonment. She forced them down over her belly jamming them savagely between her legs. I was caught off balance and was struck a stunning blow to the head as she drew up her knees. Releasing one of my hands she grasped the other by the wrist crushing my fist against her pubic bone with ferocious strength. As I lay on the waterlogged grass she fell back arching her bell in a titanic convulsion pulling my hand against her with such force that I could feel the skin of my wrist tearing. Suddenly my hand

punched through her body with a bruising ferocity and her convulsions increased. Her legs thrashed powerfully and dangerously on either side of me as she crashed them down into the grass. By now my fear had been replaced by that curious sense of detached involvement that I had experienced before. She gave a long drawn out animal scream as though at the climax of childbirth before her vice like grip relaxed and her legs slipped to the ground. I lay shaken and cold and the rain continued without ceasing. I could hear the sound of it drumming on Annas naked and motionless body. For a few moments I was too abstracted to think, then I slowly withdrew my hand from her inert body and climbed unsteadily to my feet. I stood looking down at her, my heart still pounding and my skin beginning to rebel against the cold. She lay outstretched and unmoving with her eyes open and staring up at the driving rain, her expression calm and unconcerned. As I stood there feeling remote and cold she suddenly rose effortlessly to her feet. Taking me by the hand she led me back into the house as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She took off my sodden dressing gown that had somehow miraculously remained on me during the bizarre encounter in the garden and taking a towel from the kitchen began to dry me with the same thoroughness that I had dried her before. She had a practised expertise. Her movements with the towel were precise and coordinated. She had folded it into a pad about the size of a flannel and she drew it downwards over me in a kind of ritualistic way, pausing every so often to look into my eyes as if she expected to see something there. As she continued, my body began to shake less and when she had finished she made me sit on the sofa while she dried herself in the normal way. Although I was now dry, I still felt deeply chilled and a little concussed and I watched her without interest. I am sure that at another time it might have been pleasantly erotic watching her dry herself but not now. When she had finished she came over and lifted me to my feet. I would have preferred to have remained where I was but I was in no condition to resist her. In a series of swift and certain actions, she pushed me down, bending my knees between her legs and lowering herself until her face was a few inches above mine. Gripping me with one arm she pinched my nostrils together with the fingers of the other hand before closing her mouth over mine. I felt her muscular tongue pushed between my lips, forcing my mouth open. Her tongue slid over mine, pressing it down while she breathed powerfully into my lungs like a kiss of life. As she did so she used her free hand to crush me against her while she inflated me against the pressure of her squeezing. For a moment the pain was excruciating, stabbing into my lungs and then I felt only the pressure. Suddenly she snatched her hand and mouth away and with both arms she expelled the air from me in a single gasp. She released me immediately and carried me over to the sofa laying me down on my back. Leaning over me she put her fingers in my mouth pushing my tongue

down and lowering her face close to mine, breathed a long single breath into my mouth. Immediately I began to feel warm and comfortable and my body began to relax. She withdrew her fingers and crossing over to the table, picked up her flute. She knelt down in the middle of the floor and stretched her arms above her head, drawing in a long breath and arching her breasts forward. She held the posture for a few minutes and then relaxed her muscles making her limp body droop forward a little. She raided the flute to her lips and began to play. The music was of a totally different kind from the time before when she had played along with the recording. The pitch was impossibly low for such a small instrument, sounding something like classical Indian music played on a double bass The compass of the melody was small, perhaps five or six notes. The music was abstract but profound, the deep notes groaning and protesting as they were bent from one interval to another. I was reminded of a time in India when I had listened to a performer singing in the ancient style of Dhrupad. As before there was very little movement in her body as she played except for a slight lifting of the shoulders when she bent a note upwards. The storm had passed away and there was no other sound save that of Annas flute. As I lay there I closed my eyes and the strange music became the sound of the wind moaning mysteriously in some deep chimney. As it did so I knew with complete certainty that, abstract though the music was, it was an evocation of the storm, a powerful hymn to the essence of the violent act that had taken place between us. She played on unceasingly and the music wound its way into my head filling my mind with unknown images and feelings that I somehow knew were primal and rich with meaning although the next day they were beyond recall. The music took over completely and at some point I fell asleep for when I awoke I was still in the same position on the sofa and it was halfway through the following morning. During the days that followed, the child like quality that had been apparent during the early days with Anna now predominated and it became difficult to recall some of the stranger encounters that had taken place. Her eyes were soft and unenquiring and she no longer gave me those quizzical, searching looks that had always disturbed something deep within me. I felt contented and unencumbered by her presence as she moved through the house and garden or sat in quiet meditation. She seemed to have a softness and innocence, an air of tranquillity that gave no hint of her physical powers. She would bathe perhaps three times a week but she never seemed to wash her dress, and it seemed as though she kept the sight of her naked body from me with an unfamiliar display of modesty. Sometimes she looked so girlish and appealing that I felt drawn to touch her. She would let me take her hand and caress it gently for a few moments, but she made no response and after a minute or two she would walk quietly away giving me a little pang of regret. I couldnt help but notice that my feelings for her were growing but I knew in my

heart that she was far beyond my reach. Morgan Bennett had been leaning forward, staring down at the path as he finished speaking and now as he looked up, I could see that his thoughts were elsewhere. I looked away over the grass towards the railings that separated the park from the road. Two young children were playing with a mechanical bird and the rapid fluttering sound of its wings could be clearly heard in the still air. I had a picture of Anna in my mind. Morgans descriptions and narrative were vivid and detailed and I tried to picture him as he must have been then, sharing his life with this enigmatic creature from who knew where. I began to wonder how far he had been able to come to terms with it. It all seemed so strange. The bizarre occurrences, the lack of any verbal communication and wondered whether it bothered him as much as it would have done me. Did you ever try to find out where she came from or what she was doing in that ship, if thats what it was? I asked at last. He passed a hand over his forehead and gave a weary smile. A perfectly reasonable question my boy, but at that time she appeared to have no knowledge of or inclination to use the spoken word or at least to speak in my language. He paused and stared in the direction of the two children listening patiently to the sound of the bird until it died away . She was an enigma, yet one that at the time I felt no or at least, very little inclination to unravel I sat quietly for a moment before saying she seemed to be very creative. Do you suppose that she was some kind of idiot savant? The little bird had taken to the air once more and Morgan watched it silently until its short flight had ended and silence descended upon us once more. You see he began at length we are obsessed with knowing certain things, the idea that somehow a certain knowledge will bring peace of mind or understanding. We never really come to terms with the fact that there is an infinite amount of stuff out there that we never shall, never can, know about. Take those scientists out on the mountain struggling with the enigma of that object. They hoped through knowledge to understand something of its mechanism and thereby bring it into their realm of thought, as if that would somehow bring understanding into their lives. Anna herself, as far as I could tell, knew nothing of me or where she was, the difference being that it made no difference to her actions. It seemed to me that they were always the result of some esoteric interaction with her surroundings and nothing to do with any pre-ordered knowledge of those surroundings. I suppose what I am talking about is true spontaneity, the ultimate freedom from the curse of knowledge such as we know it. After all in the final result all our collective knowledge is limited and finite and has a very limited function. There is surely vastly more to life than that? During my time with

Anna, I came to experience something of the other life even though my thoughts constantly brought me back to our petty little world. He fell silent and the sombre import of his words seemed to diminish something in me. I saw that Morgan was staring once more at the two children as they chased after their bird and intuitively I understood for a moment that that inconsequential occurrence was no more or less important than anything else. As I looked at him, I could see that he was now looking frail and tired. He used a lot of energy while telling his story, seeming to draw strength from the memories, but know he was exhausted. I knew that he would not say anything further until tomorrow, but I sat with him until he gathered the strength to leave. Eventually and without further words he got to his feet and painfully and slowly made his way back along the path. I remained where I was, enjoying the shade of the tree in the noonday sun, turning things over in my mind. I wondered what else he had found out about Anna for I knew that he was far to good a story teller to jump ahead and reveal things before their time. Morgans story had by now taken root in my mind and I knew that I would be hard put to it filling in the time until our next meeting. I would have to be patient and let him take his own time.

The following morning we met outside his pension before taking the long walk to the park. It seemed an interminable wait until we were seated in the shade of the eucalyptus tree and I could once more find myself taking this remarkable journey into the past of my companion. After some days, this way of life with her changed. It was during the night. I am not sure how long I had been asleep when I was awakened by the bedside light being turned on. Blinking my eyes against the light, I saw Anna standing by the bed looking down at me. As my eyes recovered from the glare could see that she was looking straight at me. Her gaze was soft and dreamy and her eyes held mine with an expression of affection. Slowly and gracefully she pulled her dress over her head in a single fluid movement and pulling back the covers to the foot of the bed she lay down beside me on her back. Putting her arms above her head, she stretched her body luxuriantly like a contented cat. Her movements were sinuous and supple and she sighed dreamily. She half rolled on her side, placing her hands behind her head and turned her eyes to face mine. They were moist and shining, openly affectionate and held a clear invitation. They held me spellbound and in an automatic response my hand reached out to touch one of her breasts.

The flesh was soft and warm under the palm of my hand as I drew it slowly down over the contours. She relaxed onto her back in feline indolence, closing her eyes and half opening her mouth. I raised myself up and knelt beside her, my hands stroking her body with a hypnotic insistence, as if they, too were intoxicated with the silken flesh that lay beneath them. My desire to feel her and to go on feeling her moved beyond my control and I felt transformed by the power of it . Her arms were now flung back and beneath the creamy fat of her body the flesh was muscular and elastic. The movements of her body had a continuous flow, languid and serpentine, as they followed and complemented the movements of my hands in a captivating and voluptuous ripple. The thick, musky scent of her was stronger than ever and she was sweating profusely as my hands slid over her undulating body. I was possessed, driven. Caught on a plateau of desire yet unable to stop the movements of my hands and consummate that desire. My fingers roved upwards through her hair and down over her face, probing into her open mouth and kneading her tongue. They slid down over the slick resistance of her fat breasts, following the rolling wave of her belly to delve into the slippery depths of her concealment. Yet they found no peace, no place in which to rest. An irresistible hunger drove them on as if by some act of will they could gather the essence of her body into one place, one centre of consummation. Down over the flesh of her thighs and knees as her rounded calves rose to meet them halfway. Squeezing her feet my fingers threaded between her toes before travelling upwards once more. The flesh of her shoulders slid like warm velvet under my fingers while my thumbs kneaded the thick, glossy hair of her underarms. I knelt astride her running my hands up her arms and caressing the upturned palms of her hands while her stomach churned voluptuously beneath me. Suddenly she opened her eyes wide and, releasing her hands placed them one on either side of my face. The pupils of her eyes were widely dilated, dark enigmatic pools as they gazed into mine. I felt paralysed in the midst of an insatiable hunger, frozen on a plateau of physical expectation as my body filled with a primal force. Gently, she lowered my face close to hers and held my eyes with hers. Opening her mouth she breath heavily into my mouth and nose with long exhalations. Her breath was hot and moist, strangely scented. The effect was extraordinary. It was as though my desire for her had been crystallised and was no longer seeking an outlet. It was contained, invigorating and powerful, a feeling of enormous potential. I felt suspended at a point of balance. Anna closed her mouth and gazed into my eyes, the pupils of her eyes enormous like those of an owl. Gently she lowered my head onto her breast and involuntarily I straightened my legs. I felt her drawing up her knees on either side of me as her hands lightly gripped my upper arms. I lay there inert, feeling like a battery waiting to be discharged. We lay there unmoving for a few moments and I could hear the soft intake of her breath. Suddenly and expertly

she slid me down over her slippery body and then drew me swiftly up and into her. Her arms wrapped around me and she methodically began to press my body against hers. Once more I felt that eerie wave of something that seemed to be travelling beneath the flesh beneath me, but this time it seemed exquisitely familiar and my body responded to its passing. As if it had been waiting for just such a signal, the crystalline prison of my desires shattered, exploding outwards from a centre. My body stiffened in her muscular grip as she drew me ever more tightly towards her and I blazed like a rocket burning its fuel with reckless abandon to gain orbital altitude before falling back to earth. My body had remained motionless and the release was automatic. Annas body became rigid, the muscles locked in a spasm that seemed endless. An orgasm with centre. Something ancient, that we had in common had fused within us. As if from far away I felt Annas body relax and soften and it was as if my body, too, were softening, as though her flesh was outside of my flesh. In the next instant I was asleep. It was morning when I awoke and a half light was filtering in through the closed curtains. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling without recollection until I suddenly remembered Anna. Turning on my side, I saw that she was sleeping beside me. She was so close that in a moment of affection and familiarity I pressed my body against hers, encircling her with my arm. The cool softness of her buttocks cushioned against me as I slid my hand gently under her into the crease between her breasts. When I pressed my lips against the nape of her neck she stirred in her sleep and turned slowly onto her back. She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at me. They were warm and deep and with a look of something timeless and knowing and I had the feeling that at some level unknown to me, she understood what was happening between us. It made me painfully aware of the immaturity of my feelings for her, the childish expectations that I still clung to in the face of the unknown. I could feel the fear at the back of my mind. The fear of letting go lest everything that I knew and was certain of were engulfed, swallowed up by that unknown. The feeling of being lost in a world that was beyond my conscious understanding invaded my mind and as if in response, her eyes softened. I felt her hand pass slowly over my stomach and touch me lightly. I felt no desire as she probed delicately with her fingers. As with all her movements, there was a curious pattern to it and the motions of her fingers were soothing and not arousing.. With her dove grey eyes watching over me as if I were a child, she leaned over across and began gently drawing her breasts over my lips from side to side in a tranquillizing rhythm . Her gesture was devoid of sexuality and her skin had only a faint milky perfume. I closed my eyes and lay there in an infantile enjoyment of her caressing. Her rounded body and the fullness of her breasts were the very essence of security. I felt her arms easing

beneath me and she gathered my inert body to hers, gently enfolding me in its encompassing softness. My sense of self seemed to fade away and I became like a tiny child in the arms of its mother. I am not sure if I slept as it was more like a period of vacancy than true sleep, but when I came to myself I was lying face downwards and Anna was astride me with her knees resting on my calves. I felt her hands touch my shoulders and then she pulled me up into a kneeling position. She settled her body firmly against me gently crossing her arms over my chest. Her grip tightened pressing hard against me and I heard her draw a long breath. I felt her open mouth against the nape of my neck and then the heat of her breath as she exhaled. A pleasing warmth spread through my head and I felt my body completely relax. Suddenly , without warning she flung herself backwards arching her body and bending me like a bow. I heard the joints of my knees crack but I felt no pain or fear. She relentlessly increased the curve of her body with a power that was incredible from the position that she was in. My chest bowed outwards against the pressure but the feeling was pleasant rather like the prelude to a yawn. I felt that I wanted to be stretched more and more until I arrived at some point of resolution . When she reached the limit of her movement she held me rigidly and I could feel the iron hardness of her stomach muscles through the flesh. I felt expanded as though the parts of my body were separate entities that had only been joined together temporarily and could move apart if required. She held me in this position for a few moments before rising up with the ease of an acrobat and returned me to a kneeling position. She got off the backs of my legs and pushed me down, turning me over so that I was on my back. In my own mind I felt detached, as if I could not quite remember who I was or what I was doing there. Mechanically, I watched Anna kneel over me, the soft, lazy expression still on her face. As she had done before, she lowered her breasts making the same rocking motion against my face. Before it had been soothing but now it had a dreamlike quality as if I had forgotten who she was or what she was doing. I felt the soft bouncing rhythm from far away. After a while, she stopped and knelt up in a sudden movement thrusting her hands between her legs and crushing her thighs together with great intensity. After a few moments she withdrew them and leaned over me once more. She placed her hands, now slippery with her own moisture, on either side of my face and gently put her thumbs into the corners of my mouth. The smell of her was strong and musky, intensely female and as it filled my nostrils the feeling of self forgetfulness disappeared in an instant. Anna came sharply into focus. She took her thumbs out of my mouth and smeared her hands over my face. Her face was expressionless as she leant back, wiping her hands on her body before clasping them behind her neck. She knelt there motionless and her eyes stared coolly into mine as I lay there mesmerized. Her perfume surrounded me as she breathed in, swelling the contours of her body.

This movement overpowered the compelling quality of her gaze and my attention focussed itself on the rising and falling motion of her breasts. Slowly she tilted her head back revealing the smooth curve of her neck and the fixation of my attention on her body became complete. By some strange alchemy, the powerful scent of her body became inextricably mixed with the sublime curvature of her figure as she knelt up, stretching gently. I became intensely of the mathematical perfection of her pose as each curve flowed geometrically into the next imbuing the shape of her body with a beauty and inner power that was indescribable in its intensity. As she lowered her head I saw that her eyes were closed and the curve of her upper lip became the catalyst that added an almost unbearable sensuality to the living sculpture that she presented to me. I lay unable to move and yet rigid with desire, and as my senses seemed to combine in a mystic union with hers, I released myself with an unconscious abandon while we both remained motionless. I had closed my eyes as we became part of one another , although physically separate and when, after a timeless interval I opened them, she was gone although I had no memory of feeling her leave. As I lay there with my thoughts in abeyance, I heard the sound of her flute drifting up from the room below, a hollow keening melody that revolved upon itself in the manner of a canon. As I heard it a ripple of fear that something in me recognised as an unwelcome intruder on the tranquillity of the moment, passed lightly outwards from the pit of my stomach before subsiding into the silence of my mind. As if freed from some inner resistance, the plaintive notes of the melody filled the waiting emptiness and in the certainty of the moment I slept. When I finally awoke, I was feeling rather hungry and made my way down to the kitchen. Anna had prepared some kind of breakfast out of what was available and seemed to have been waiting for my arrival. After we had eaten she seemed to be in a skittish kind of a mood, and ran out into the garden where she rushed around jumping and climbing on things like some over grown kid. Finally she came into the house and picked up her flute then she grabbed me by the hand and led me out of the back gate and onto the common. Although I had taken her down to the village a few times since she had been here, mainly to check that my excuse for her being here had travelled and been noted, I was always a little wary about leaving the house with her. I was absolutely certain that no connection had been made between her and the sphere and there was no reason to suppose that anyone ever should, but it still gave me a prickle of unwelcome excitement every time we left the sanctuary of my home. Before I could stop her, she set off across the common and I had to run to keep up with her. She managed to keep just ahead of me ,never quite letting me catch up. It was like a game to her and every time she pulled away I could hear her high, fluting laughter. We had by now crossed the common and she took the road that would eventually lead to the

woods and the waterfall of pwll y wrach or the witches pool. As we reached a downward slope in the road, once again Anna broke into a skipping run, darting away from me like a young girl. Her movements were light and airy and carried an invitation to do likewise, and in a moment I found myself running after her again. She looked across at me as I drew level with her and without thinking I took her hand in mine. As the field ended and the woods began , the lane passed into the shadows and the world around us seemed to expand a little, the atmosphere becoming mysterious and exciting. Anna gave my hand a little squeeze, a gesture that was both intimate and conspiratorial and in a few moments we reached the little stile that crossed the fence bordering the woods. The rough path that leads to the river at the bottom of the dingle is quite steep and as we left the lane above and behind us the atmosphere deepened. The smell of leaf mould was rich in the air as our feet disturbed the ground. The sunlight slanted through the tall trees and the notes of birdsong dropped like liquid crystals of sound from high up in the canopy, giving an impression of vast space and solitude. The house on the common seemed far away as if we had gone back to a time before the advent of mankind in the world. It was our wood to do what we liked in and my senses were awakened by a surge of physical energy. I was still holding Annas hand and I drew her towards me and kissed her on the lips. She returned the kiss, pressing against me, her body taut and vital beneath her dress. It was not the embrace of desire, but the celebration of being alive in this place with a fellow human being. Anna suddenly tore herself free and ran off down the steep slope, the silver tones of her laughter rising in the stillness a gay counterpart to the song of the birds from above. With a feeling of exhilaration, I plunged after her as she careened down the side of the dingle. She ran swiftly and surely, never letting me close enough to catch her. When we reached the bottom, she darted out into the river, leaping from boulder to boulder, making her way upstream. The enclosing landscape was of prehistory. The roots of great trees bulged out over the water, crusted with brilliant green moss and ferns, forming dark and dripping grottoes. The rock strewn shallows of the river passed at times through narrow gorges before opening out on to viridian patches of grass, bright in the filtering sunlight that slanted down through the overhanging trees. To the right, the steeply shelving hillside was choked with Ramsons, a thick carpet of white and green filling the air with the cloying scent of garlic. As I made my way clumsily over the rocks Anna pulled away from me until I lost sight of her round a bend in the river. Above the murmur of the river I could hear her laughter fading into a deeper sound as I tried to catch up with her. As I rounded the next bend the distant roar of falling water became clearer, sounding suddenly close by. I leapt over the rocks to reach the path that led more directly to the falls and ran along it until I came in view of the

waterfall11. I saw Anna poised against the rail of the little wooden bridge that crosses the lower end of the pool. She was naked and her arms were raised above her head. As I approached, she looked back at me over her shoulder laughing her encouragement before leaping from the bridge and disappearing into the black depths of the water. I remember that I had no thoughts of unseen observers in this, our private world, as I pulled off my clothes and joined her in the icy water. She swam beneath the surface of the pool, her body green and luminous like a huge fish circling round, but always remaining out of reach. Furiously I tried to catch her, the thunder of the waterfall filling my ears and adding a powerful impetus to the game we were playing. Anna surface suddenly, livid against the blackness only to disappear once more in the greenish depths, her body a dim and silent undulation. I dived after her, the noise of the cataract vanishing suddenly into the mysterious silence of the underwater world. I saw Anna floating lazily sideways, her large breasts drifting and weightless, flowing with the languor of her movements. I caught hold of her as she passed but her flesh was slippery and elusive, dissolving in my grasp, and together we surfaced in the din of falling water. Anna darted away again heading under the fall where she stood in the shallows with the full weight of water boiling off her skin. She raised her right arm and pointed to the top of the waterfall and turning round, she began to climb up the slippery rock face against the full force of the cascading water. It was impossible to see how she could find a grip on the slick surface with such precision, her fingers and toes searching out tiny crevices . Her knees were widely splayed as she flattened herself against the rock looking like a giant tree frog as she slowly inched her way to the top. I felt no fear as I watched this desperately dangerous climb. I felt exhilarated , as if I too were participating in this celebration of athletic artistry in my role as observer. At the summit of the falls she drew herself over the rim and climbed to her feet, perching herself on a tiny spur of rock on the very edge that divided the fall into two streams. She raised her arms above her head arching her body in a symbol of exultation and conquest before pitching forward into a shallow dive and vanishing once more into the black depths of the pool. When she re-emerged, she swam to the side and climbed out of the water. Picking up her flute, she ran lightly up the rock steps
A curious anomaly is that the falls at pwll y wrach are considerably smaller in real life than those described in the story. In fact the actual witches pool is scarcely big enough to swim in. We have Brennens word in the epilogue to the story that he visited this part of Wales, especially Morgans cottage. He mentions the location of the falls as being on the way to the cottage, and requiring a detour, but no reference to any actual visit paid by him. It seems highly improbable that he would not have gone to see the falls. If he had done, surely he would have noticed the discrepancy between the actual falls and Morgans memory of it. If the story is fiction as the sceptics suppose, then surely he would have corrected the error to maintain the narratives veracity. If one accepts the timeline given by Brennen, then presumably he would have already written the account down either before or shortly after Morgans death. If, as the sceptics maintain, he visited Wales to research the area before writing the story, then the story must have been written after 2001 as his entry into the country was confirmed as March 3rd 2003 according to available passenger flight logs
11

that led to the upper level and disappeared from view. I ran after her, reaching the top of the steps in time to see her cross the river and begin climbing the bank on the other side. The bank rose to the edge of the wood which opened out onto a steeply sloping field of grass. As I crested the top of the bank I saw Anna sprinting through the grass towards a large and solitary oak tree that dominated the field. With an unaccustomed vitality, I race over the grass and caught her before she reached the sanctuary of the tree. We fell into the grass, rolling over and over like two children wrestling. Her body felt supple and strong as she fought me and her eyes were frank and mischievous as they stared at me out of a flushed face. I pinned her down, kneeling on her upper arms, excited by my own physical strength. She relaxed her body, her breasts heaving as she breathed in gasps of air. She searched my face with eyes that glinted expectantly. I felt a keen sense of the power of my position over her and I lowered my head filled with the desire to bury my lips in hers in an expression of violation of the vanquished, a celebration of my victory over her. At that moment however, she slipped out from underneath me in an incredible display of dexterity and made off across the grass. As I chased after her, she would stop and crouch. Letting me get to with a few feet of her before darting away again. Finally she crouched down facing me, balancing on her heels and curving her arms in front of her as though she were playing an imaginary flute. She stayed stock still as I ran towards her, but as I came close she held me with a powerful gaze that stopped me in my tracks. I stood watching her unable to move and I could see that her body was quivering under the tension of her muscles. Pivoting on he heels she slowly pitched forward and I thought for an instant that she was going to fall flat on her face but she did not. As she tilted forward she suddenly launched herself at me with all her strength, driving backwards with her feet and then drawing them up underneath her self in mid air. I had a glimpse of her flying towards me with her arms outstretched before she struck me full in the chest. As her heavy body slammed against me her legs wrapped around my back and her arms encircled me. I was propelled backwards, falling full length under her weight. I had no time for thought as her onslaught had been so sudden, but she skilfully broke my fall, her knees and arms absorbing the impact. She climbed to her feet and I lay there belatedly realizing that I seemed to be unharmed. Her body shone with a tangible vitality that she could hardly contain and she tossed her head from side to side as though trying to rid herself of the excess. A few drops of sweat fell from her and drawing her hands across her skin she rubbed them over my lips. I breathed in an aroma compounded of her body scent , the smell of grass and the earthy scent of leaf mould and woods that was borne across on the wind. Her eyes were the animal eyes that had stared back at me on the night of the thunder storm. Powerful and violent. As she had done that night she clasped my hands crushing

them to her breasts. This time I was not afraid. I felt the violence as she did and the urge to reciprocate was strong in me. I dug my fingers into her pushing with all my strength while she forced herself against me, lowering her face towards mine. Her eyes were glazed with fury and her face reddened as she breathed coarsely into my face. I pushed against her with a sudden strength sending her backwards so that her knees bent under her and her belly arched upwards. I pulled my hands down over her breasts and buried them in the pit of her stomach making her gasp. She glared at me through slitted eyes she tensed her abdominal muscles against the pressure of my hands. I bore down on her with all my weight seized with an overwhelming desire that she yield her strength to me and that I bury my fists into her unresisting flesh! It was a feeling both exhilarating and powerful, a feeling of abandonment in a shared act of violence. After a few moments of force meeting force in this way she exhaled in a long gasp and relaxed her muscles. I pitched forward driving my fists deep into the soft belly of her, but not for long. In a massive convulsion, she uncoiled her full strength rising bodily up in a wave of energy that sent me sprawling backwards with the ease of someone tossing aside a cat. She lunged at me, diving full length but I twisted sideways and she landed flat on her face, her heavy body smacking into the grass. Jumping up in an instant, I knelt on the backs of her legs catching hold of her arms and crossing them behind her neck. Stunned by the fall, she had not resisted and kneeling astride her I sat on her throat facing her feet. Once more I plunged my fists into her belly, leaning forward heavily and this time she gave no resistance. I drove into the pit of her, my wrists disappearing into the soft flesh and I heard her gasp as the breath left her. I leant further forward on my knees to gain more wait, determined to crush the last breath of air out of her, but in that instant she freed her hands. I felt her grasp my buttocks. Thrusting savagely, she sent me head over heels to land on my back and before I could blink she had sprang up and sat on my face. Dropping her hands she began driving her fists into my belly. Half smothered in her pubic hair, the pungent smell of her filling my nostrils, I could scarcely draw breath. As she continued pummelling me with her fists, she ground her buttocks and vagina into my face shutting off completely my access to the air. I struggled like a drowning man summoning every last ounce of strength to throw her off but she bore down remorselessly until I felt that I would be crushed under her weight. Just as I felt I would pass out, she sprang to her feet and stood over me as I lay on the grass drawing in lungfuls of air in great rasping gasps. I knew then that whilst I could share in the violence and abandon of her physical expressions, she was toying with me. She had more strength in one of her fingers that I had in my whole body. After a few moments she sat down facing me looking calm an unruffled, smiling gently at me as I recovered from our unequal contest of strength. I put a hand down to my stomach but I could feel no bruising

in spite of the force that she had used. She leant across moving my hand away and ran her fingers lightly down the centre of my chest and over my stomach giving me a pleasant prickling sensation on my skin. She repeated the motion sliding the palms of her hands down either side of my groin and onto the insides of my legs. I felt a wave of desire and as it passed over me she took me between her hands pressing down lightly on either side. I stiffened and very slowly she passed her thumbs over the tip. I felt a jolt of desire each time she repeated the process with the same dragging slowness bring me closer and closer to a release. Just when I thought I could bear the teasing of her thumb no longer, she put her hands on the pit of my stomach at the root of me and pressed down. As she did so I climaxed, oblivious to everything except the energy focussed on that expulsion. When I opened my eyes I saw that she was watching me with the same concentration as she had listened to the storm as we sat in the living room. She dipped her fingers in the stickiness and raising them to her face, she breathed in the scent of it while looking up at the sky. After a few moments she stood up and looked down at me without expression before walking off to pick up her flute. When she came back, I had drawn up my knees and was resting against the oak tree. She sat down leaning back against my knees and began to play. The tone of the flute was pure and clear, the melody plaintive and melancholy like an old folk song. I lay back and listened as the notes flowed effortlessly into the air, feeling the softness of her back against my legs. She felt very close at that moment and the song seemed to bind us together, a bond that linked us in some strange way that was beyond my rather petty expectations. I was the holder of expectations, and I knew that she had none, but sitting there listening to the music, absorbed in the sweet sounds of the flute, I experienced something of the immediacy of her existence. An unknown period of time elapsed before my normal consciousness returned and she finished playing. Getting to her feet she pulled my up after her and together we made our way down to the waterfall and our clothes. You may think it strange that I did not remark on the fact that we had not seen a soul during the entire episode, but I was soon to realise that that was to be a common occurrence when we ventured out into the outside world. I am sure it was not that she had any ability to control outside events in any way, more that she was able to move with them in such a way as to be in harmony with them. Thus somehow the time and place was always right, she always found instinctively the little oases of silence and solitude in a crowded world. I was slow to appreciate this but as I grew closer to her my needless paranoia about being discovered began to evaporate to be replaced by a growing confidence in the passage of events as they occurred. A period of quiet domesticity followed on from these exotic exploits and we barely left the house for the next two weeks save for brief trips to the village for supplies.

A brief gust of wind rustled the leaves of the eucalyptus tree and a single seed pod fell to the ground in front of us. A sparrow perched on a nearby litter bin took umbrage at this interruption and flew rapidly away. Morgan paused in his narrative and followed the flight of the bird as it swooped and rose in a straight line until it reached the trees on the other side of the park. After a few moments of meditation he turned and looked at me, his expression cool and distant. I sat silently assuming that he had come to the end of todays instalment, but he was not quite finished. I applied myself once more to my manuscript although I would experience long periods of vacancy as I sat in front of the typewriter and the task in question now seemed rather trivial and unimportant. Quite a change from the days when it was the one thing that made me carry on. The thoughts of publication and some kind of pitiful academic recognition.how quaint and ridiculous it all seems now! Of course I achieved recognition in the end his voice became heavy with irony Not, of course, quite the recognition that I had assumed would be my due if you understand me! With this little postscript, he fell silent and as he had done before sat quietly for some time before getting up and walking slowly back to his rooms with out any further communication or acknowledgement of my existence. The sweet smell of resin, that evocative perfume of the eucalyptus tree filled the spring air as I sat on the bench under it, waiting for Morgan to make an appearance. It really was a pleasant escape from the bustle of the city now that the tourist season was beginning to gather momentum. Not that Santiago was the kind of place to ever be devoid of tourists as that was the nature of a place of such universal pilgrimage. Even the park had more visitors than usual although I had noticed that during our previous conversations there was a conspicuous absence of passers by. I began thinking of Morgans remarks about the fact that he ceased to worry about being seen with Anna as they always seemed to be alone especially when she was doing anything that would have most certainly drawn attention to them. I wondered if something of this faculty had rubbed off on him and enabled him to evade discovery for so long. Just as I was turning over in my mind the question of whether to ask him about it or let him come to it in his own good time, my eye caught the solitary figure of him walking slowly up the path. He seemed a little out of breath when he arrived at the bench and he remained silent for several minutes after sitting down. As if he had been reading my mind his first words were strangely appropriate. Have you noticed how little we are disturbed while I am recounting my

story to you? I relied that indeed I was aware of it but I had put it down to the slow start to the tourist season. I think that you will find that at any other time there would be a lot more people here. For us however, we have a little bit of space, a kind of rain shadow if you will. Or more aptly an isolated pool at the edge of a fast flowing river All around is in movement yet for the moment we are in calm waters. Dont ask me for an explanation for I really dont have one but without such occurrences I feel certain that I would never have got as far as getting to the airport, let alone making it all the way here. He paused and looked up at a dried leaf that was spiralling slowly down from one of the top branches and as was his custom, he waited until it had reached the ground before continuing. In the next part of my story I will be describing events that take the concept of coincidence, if in reality there is any such thing, to levels that would strain the credulity of most people. As I said last time, for a while it was a period of quiet domesticity and tranquillity. She was mostly in a pensive mood, lying out in the garden for hours on end staring at the trees and the sky while I pottered about in the house, listening to music and working fitfully on my manuscript. I too, however was finding it easy to just do nothing. Just sit and let the world go by. There seemed no particular reason to do anything else. We shared the same bed now though at this time our only intimacy was lying with our bodies touching yet in those days that seemed perfectly satisfying. I no longer felt so possessive and was content to let things just be for the moment. She seemed so ordinary now in spite of the complete lack of verbal communication and I suppose I became quite complacent about having her there in background, she was now so docile and calm. It all changed one morning. She had got up early and left me lying in the bed enjoying that morning entertainment of slipping in and out of dreams. Sometimes half awake and sometimes half asleep. I was half aware of her coming back into the room but I fully woke up when she yanked the covers unceremoniously of the bed. The docile dreamy look in her eyes had gone and she looked serious and business like. She sat down on the foot of the bed and bent over me examining my naked body closely. She put her hands on my stomach and began probing and kneading like a doctor conducting an examination to determine the nature of some internal disorder or other. Her fingers moved down into my pubic hair still probing and testing as if looking for some thing. The touch of her hands was clinical and to the point but even so I felt my flaccid penis begin to stir and a prickly sensation travelled up my legs and into my groin. She spotted the movement and took me in her fingers, pulling back the foreskin and examining the swelling head. Taking the shaft in her hand she encircled it, pressing down into my groin at the same time. Her eyes were searching mine with a dispassionate gaze as if gauging my reactions by some

analytical process or other. I grunted involuntarily as she squeezed me, the action making me almost painfully hard. Her eyes moved down to the inflamed, purple of the head that swelled visibly as she watched, a tiny bead of glistening fluid leaking from the tip. Suddenly she released her hold on me and knelt up throwing her arms high above her head clasping her hands together. She began to pant, drawing in and expelling long breaths as if she were trying to hyperventilate, her full breasts rising and falling. The dark patches of hair under her arms were bedewed with drops of moisture and soon her body was bathed in a fine sweat, her face suffused and crimson as if she were straining to lift some heavy object. Just as I was beginning to think that she must pass out from her exertions she lowered her arms and leant over me the damp tendrils of her hair brushing my face and drops of sweat falling from her glistening body onto my skin. The smell of her sweat was both overpowering and electrifying and in an instant I was like one possessed. Throwing her off me and rolling her onto her back I slid over her slippery flesh, finding her and entering her in one single movement. She lay still with the colour draining from her face and that blank childlike expression which somehow seemed to make me all the more determined to violate that pristine body like some animal bent on possessing its prey. She lay unmoving, her hand beside her as I wove my fingers in her hair and thrust myself into her with wild abandon. All action and thought was focussed on releasing myself as deeply as I could inside her jamming myself as hard as I could into her seemingly lifeless body. Finally all sensation except one disappeared and that was the desire to reach some kind of destination, I knew not what. I only knew that it involved all the energy I possessed and if only I could summon the last vestiges of it then the goal would be mine. Then, with one titanic effort I fell over the edge and everything exploded into white light. I had no sense of the passage of time and I have no idea how long it was before my senses returned, but I came to, to find myself still lying on top of Anna. The flesh of her body beneath me was deathly chilled as if she had just been swimming in an icy mountain pool. I climbed off her and saw that the colour of her skin was bone white, and her lips as pale mauve. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was so shallow as to be barely perceptible. I felt a jolt of panic and I realised I had no idea what to do . As I stood by the bed in indecision she slowly opened her eyes and lay gazing at the ceiling. After a few moments she turned her head and looked at me. Her grey eyes were calm and self possessed and by some kind of intuition I knew that she would come to no harm. As I looked down, her body shuddered and she drew an enormous breath, inflating her chest and belly before exhaling in a long drawn out hissing of air. As she did so the colour began to return imperceptibly to her face and body until the flesh was a pale rose pink all over. She gave a little secret smile to herself and sat up in the bed looking at me with a conspiratorial expression as if we had both

been involved in some kind of taboo escapade, except that I was at a loss to understand exactly what it was that had happened. The pink flush of her skin stayed for several days making her seem more human, more female in the accepted sense than the cold ivory that I was used to. The following morning I woke up to the pink Anna sleeping soundly next to me and without thinking I stroked her hair and ran my hands down over her shoulders. She made little noises in her sleep and snuggled her body into mine in a manner that was unfamiliarly affectionate compared to the dispassionate Anna that I had become used to. I found myself caressing her as I would a lover and she responded in kind, putting my hands on her soft breasts and languorously turning on her back. I was distinctly turned on but not in the same barbaric way as before, and her responses were gentle and affectionate displaying none of her usual turbulent behaviour. As we made love together, she clung to me, her breath in synchronisation with my movements. Her cries as she orgasmed were familiar and no longer alien. As I lay there afterwards, I kissed and hugged her and she wriggled her warm body close to mine. For the next few days She stayed close to me. She rarely wore her dress and she would come and sit by me if I was reading curling her naked body up and resting her head on my lap. The proximity of her body made it pretty hard to continue reading and I would find my free hand either fingering her hair or running along the curve of her shoulder. It always started like this and I felt reminded of an old science fiction story called the Hypnoglyph. In the story a man has returned from some kind of interstellar exploration with an alien artifact, a small curiously carved stone with a depression in it. As the story opens he is in conversation with someone that he presumably wishes to sell the artifact to, a collector of some kind. Having given the collector the hypnoglyph, he starts to tell of its origins. The collector begins to slide his thumb in and out of the depression and finds the motion curiously pleasing and addictive. The narrator unfolds a tale of a planet where the women are hugely obese, yet powerful and attractive. They are unable or unwilling to move around. And they lie on couches in a life of pampered indolence while the men who are poor skinny creatures tend to their every needs. The hypnoglyphs are used as traps, being placed in the forest where they are picked up by ape like creatures who find them irresistible, their thumbs drawn to the little depression much as the collectors has. Eventually fall into a trance where by they become easy prey for the inept male hunters. By this time the collector has a dreamy far away look in his eyes and the words of the traveller come from far away as he tells of the misfortune that befell the women. Some kind of illness decimated the male population and at the time of the travellers arrival things were pretty desperate. They would have to find replacements for the lost menfolk or their race would face extinction. His words rolled over the motionless head of the collector, whose

eyes were now glassy and unfocussed. Through the open doorway at the end of the room something moved in the dim shadows of the hallway, something round and large..The traveller paused before calling out into the darkness I think hes ready darling. It seemed to me when I recalled the story, that Annas body had much the same qualities as the hypnoglyph. As I ran my hand over the curve of her shoulder all pretence of being able to read faded away and I was drawn to continue the exploration as if in some kind of thrall to the mesmerising quality of her flesh. The very fatness of her body gave her an endless series of curves that metamorphosed into new forms as she moved yet always exquisitely appealing no matter how she lay or what part of her body one attended to. As it had been in the first sexual experience with her, My hands seemed incapable of remaining in one place. From the tips of her fingers they smoothed and roamed from curve to curve following the billowing rolls of flesh as she twisted and turned so that no part of her remained unattended to. Now it was more restrained without the wild mania that had possessed me the first time, and the hours would drift by in a kind of endless languorous dance, an exquisite ballet of hand and body that unfolded in a gentle erotic sequence that eventually played itself out, subsiding slowly and leaving our now motionless bodies intertwined and dozing. These were lazy days. Often we would barely get out of bed. As soon as I awake and she was there beside me, the merest placing of my hand on her sleeping body was enough to be bewitched and the symphony of caresses would begin anew. Sometimes I would lie on top of her as she lay on her back, sliding myself over that tantalisingly erotic flesh while she undulated in opposition to my movements. The swelling and contraction and the abundance of her body as she made her counterpoint to mine was indescribably erotic yet the wild desire for consummation that had gripped either one of us before was no longer apparent. And so this level of contented activity continued while the outside world seemed belong in some other dimension. If I could use the word, although I am not really sure of its traditional meaning, I was in love with her. It was love and yet one was not aware of it in the accepted sense for we were as one. If I were to say to myself I am in love with her it would imply that at some point wasnt and that now I was. Now, it seemed as if the author of those words was in some way relegated to a far corner of the mind as if the sense of self were being relegated to its rightful place as of little importance compared to the whole organism. Our bodies meshed and wove their arcane desires and the artistry of it was beyond understanding in the ordinary sense of the world. I had no real perception that my mind and body were acting in opposition to the dictates of everyday thought, for that mechanism seemed largely in abeyance most of time. Even the passage of time was measured by something else and it is only by recollection that I can try to piece together the duration of

particular incidents, but I really have no idea. An hour could be a few minutes or a minute be a day for all I knew. After this period of relative calm there were several incidents when the old Anna surfaced. The first occurred in the middle of the morning a few days later as we lay in bed, our legs intertwined. Anna had been lying there staring at the ceiling with a far way look in her eyes, but now she roused herself and squatted down in front of me with her legs crossed in a lotus like position. The far away look had been replaced by a cat-like stare from narrowed eyes and the pink had faded from her face and been replaced by the familiar cold ivory. She sat there breathing slowly in and out, her breasts rising and falling over her fat belly looking rather like a statue of a Chinese laughing god. As her breath came and went in a slow and steady rhythm, a fine mist of sweat appeared on her bare skin as if as the result of condensation rather than coming from her. I could feel the heat from her body from where I lay and yet her flesh was the colour of cold marble, the faint blue of delicate veins showing through its translucent sheen. As her eyes fastened on mine I felt once more the mesmerising spell of her and at the same moment became aware of the powerful fragrance of her awakening body. Rapidly it filled my head and my body responded with an unstoppable erection as though it were being controlled from some external device. She transferred her gaze to it, staring fixedly while the odour of her body became almost over whelming, The musky smell of her body mixed with the sweet piquancy from her as yet hidden cleft. I lay there my body trembling with desire but I could not move to save my life. Once more I was in thrall to this wild mistress, a not unwilling slave to her arcane desires. Unfolding her legs she climbed rapidly onto my stomach and impaled herself expertly on my hardness. She raised her arms above her head locking her hands together while she rocked backwards and forwards, taking me deep inside her. Her breasts bounced with elastic abandon in front of me adding to the already intensely erotic image of her. The curves of her arms sweeping down past the damp hair of her underarms, the poetry in motion of her rounded breasts as they danced above the swollen curve of her belly, and the delicious feel of her plump buttocks against my thighs all combined in a cataclysm of desire. Her eyes were blazing as she feverishly drove herself against me continuing for several minutes after I had emptied myself inside her. I lay there exhausted until, with a great sighing exhalation of breath she stopped and slumped forward her sweating breasts splaying out over my chest. She stayed like that for a few moments and then calmly climbed off. She picked up the ubiquitous black dress that lay in the corner of the room where she had flung it the night before. She pulled it over her head in one easy movement and headed off downstairs with out looking at me. A few moments later I heard the French windows open and close. I lay there for maybe ten minutes or more before

making my way to the bathroom for a shower. When I got downstairs, I looked out in the garden expecting to see Anna but there was no sign of her. I checked the downstairs rooms quickly but I had the feeling that she wouldnt be in the house. I wandered round the garden to make sure she was not hiding anywhere but it was soon apparent that she had gone off on her own somewhere. I experience a little twinge of alarm but by this time I was pretty certain that she would return in her own good time and that somehow she would not meet anybody of any consequence. This assumption proved to be correct, but she did not actually turn up until the last vestiges of twilight were darkening into night. She came in through the French windows and sat in the armchair just as she had on that first morning and she had much the same blank, childlike look on her pallid features. Something in the back of my mind was irked that we could not communicate and that I would never know where she had been or what she had been up to. Before, although we had lived in our own space a lot of the time, it had always been within the confines of the house and garden and now I wondered if there wasnt a little hint of jealousy in my attitude towards her disappearing act. It seemed rather absurd as I looked across at her but I couldnt deny the faint stirrings of disapproval that were disturbing the customary tranquillity of my mind. She sat on oblivious to the trivial things that seem to occupy so much of human thought and I felt slightly embarrassed to be a party to such notions after my association with such a genuine free spirit as Anna. I got up and put on the Bach Brandenburg concertos and we sat there listening to music most of the evening. She barely moved and the mask like immobility of her features gave her the appearance of a statue. I thought that perhaps she might play her flute but she showed no indication to do anything but sit motionless in the chair. As the evening wore on and the hours passed I felt. I got up and turned of the player, looking over at Anna who sat with deathlike stillness her eyes sightless and unfocussed. Knowing that she would follow in her own good time, I headed on up to bed and it was not long before I fell asleep. I was awakened in the small hours of the morning by the sound of the French windows closing, followed by Annas footsteps coming up the stairs. Can she have been out again wandering around in the dark I thought to myself? I heard the sound of her dress as it flopped into the corner and the next moment she slid under the covers. I could feel the chill of her body as she lay silently next to me. The scent of leaf mould, of green things and the smell of the night air emanated from her. I reached out a hand and laid it on her belly. She was icy cold, and I could feel that the skin was moist and clammy before she gently took my hand put it back beside me. After a few moments her breathing softened to a steady rise and fall while I lay there pondering this new development with very little ideas to go on. The more I though it about it the less I seemed to understand and after my thoughts had been chasing their tails for

what seemed an age, I finally fell asleep. She was already up and sitting on the grass in the garden when I finally roused my self and I could see that the pink period of Annas as I thought of it to myself, seemed for the moment to be in abeyance. As she had been yesterday, her pensive detached mood persisted late into the evening and I resolved to stay awake and attempt to follow her if she went out. I felt a little guilty about spying on her but the desire to find out what she was doing over rode any such etiquettes. Sure enough, at about one in the morning I heard the French windows open and I hurried downstairs as quietly as I could, just I time to see the dim figure of her slipping out through the gate onto the common. The night was a mixture of passing clouds and starlit sky and every so often the full moon would ride out from behind, illuminating the common in its pallid light. All I could see of Anna when the moon was hidden was the pale glimmer of her arms and legs as she made her way silently to the lane beyond. I followed behind keeping as much distance between as I could with out losing sight of her. When she reached the lane, she turned to the right heading down past the woods as if going to the village. Halfway down I was just in time to see her disappear over the stile that led into the woods. I could no longer see her by the time I had made it into the trees as it almost to dark to see where I was going, but I had premonition that she was heading for the waterfall. It took me quite a while to pick my way down the steep dingle and join the path that led to the falls and I was sure that she would have managed it much more quickly than I. At last, I could hear the faint roar of the water above the murmur of the river over the rocks and I began to wonder if my hunch had been right. As I rounded the last bend a shaft of moonlight slanted through the trees illuminating the white figure of Anna who was standing on the bridge with her arms raised. She was naked and I could hear the sound of her voice above the noise of the water. Gone was the fluting, liquid sound that I associated with her. Her voice was harsh and primitive, intoning some kind of alien chant that sent a thrill of fear through the pit of my stomach. I was suddenly afraid that I would be discovered and crouched down behind some rocks so that I might continue watching unobserved. She stood chanting for some time, turning to face the four points of the compass one after another. When she had finished, she lowered her arms and dived off the bridge into the icy waters. I could hear the sound of her coming to the surface every so often above the roar of the falls until I saw her emerge on to the bank and run swiftly up the steps to the top. I waited for her to get clear before following as I had a pretty shrewd idea that she would be making for the field with the oak tree. Gingerly I waded across the shallows of the river to the other bank and crept up through the clumps of Ramsons. The reek of garlic was already thick in the air from her passage through them. As I stood in the shadows at the edge of the wood I saw the dim shape of her bounding through the

grass towards the oak tree. Halfway across the clouds parted once more and she was picked out in the moon light. I saw that she had smeared her body all over with mud from the bank before running into the field and patches of white gleamed in eery patches through the black of the mud. She was next to the tree by now and clasped its trunk, wrapping her arms around it while she returned to the harsh chanting that she had made at the waterfall. After a few minutes of this she sprang away and began to run in wide circles round the tree, zig zagging out almost to the boundaries of the field. She ran like the wind itself, careening wildly in the moonlight that seemed to have banished the clouds for the moment. Eventually she ran directly at the place where I was standing, just inside the tree line. She stopped stock still in front of me. Reaching out her hand she dragged me out of my hiding place and to tell the truth I felt pretty scared as she looked completely wild, like some crazy amazon warrior. As if in confirmation of my thought, she threw back her head and screamed out a harsh, rasping, alien evocation to the stars that glittered in the sharp, clear sky. She grabbed me by the hair and pulled my face against her muddied breasts, sliding my head down over her slimy belly, till I was on my knees. Still holding my hair, she sat down spreading her legs either side of me and in the next instant she had lain down on her back and dragged my face into her pubic cleft, almost suffocating me. The reek of her was stronger than ever, mixed with the earthy smell of mud and leaf mould as she ground my mouth into the lubricious depths of her. She seemed wild with desire and it began to communicate itself to me through the layers of fear. I found myself sucking and biting at the hot mucid flesh of her pubis, the smell of her raising the demons from my subconscious as I endeavoured to devour her, to consume the intimate essence of this goddess of the wild. My only objective to this mud caked spirit of the woods in some as yet unguessed at apocalyptic culmination of desire. I was conscious only of the smell and taste of her wetness, her screams and cries a faint background as she writhed and twisted against me, her fingers still tightly enmeshed in my hair. Then the harshness of her anguished wailing finally penetrated as she butted herself into me in her climactic paroxysm, filling my mouth with her juices. An instant later she was up on her feet leaving me lying on the ground in my muddied clothes that I had had neither the time nor the inclination to remove. Springing away, she ran to the tree and to my amazement climbed rapidly into the branches with the agility of a monkey. Even in the bright moonlight it was impossible to see her amongst the leaves but I could follow her passage by their movements and sounds she made disturbing them, as she climbed steadily towards the top. When she reached the summit I could see the faint gleam of patches of white skin in the moonlight as the top half of her torso showed above the topmost leaves.. She began to make a strange keening cry long and drawn out, a melancholy sound that echoed in the night air

and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. There was a new sound now, a rustling of wings that seemed to come from all around and soon the moonlit sky above was alive with the passage of birds12 that were streaming from their roosting places in the woods. It was an uncanny sight to see, a myriad shapes silhouetted against the pallid luminosity of the heavens, streaming from all directions in response to the siren call of the wild creature who summoned them. For what purpose, any guess of mine would be futile. As with most of her acts, although they had a kind of inner consistency, they usually had no connection to the kind of world I lived in, no connection with reality as I understood it. I dont doubt that for her, reality was an entirely different experience from mine. However, as far as I was concerned it was as far beyond my comprehension as the rarefied flights of higher mathematics would be to a child. I could see that the arcane rites that she performed, unlike some empty religious ceremonial that came from the consciousness of man and had no actual effect on the outside world save to entertain those who performed them and their followers, the ritualistic actions of Anna conspicuously affected both me and the outside world in a physical and observable way. As I picked my self up from the ground, my clothing damp and clammy in the cool night air, the last of the birds homed in on the tree and a deep silence prevailed. I could no longer see Anna and there was no sign nor sound of movement. I turned and headed back into the woods, away from something that I could neither understand nor participate in. The moon was higher in the sky now and the clouds had cleared completely and enough of the silvery light penetrated the woods to make the homeward journey easier than the earlier escapade. By the time I reached home I felt bone weary in both mind and body. Pausing only to strip off my damp clothes and dump them unceremoniously on the floor I sank into bed and slipped into a fitful sleep. Most of the time during my association with Anna, my sleep had been conspicuously profound and dreamless. Now however I was plagued by disconnected visions, phantasms that persisted for a few moment after the more extreme ones forced me from sleep in to a halfway state. One was of Anna, blue white and naked, standing in a clearing in some kind of forest that I did not recognise. The grass of the clearing was lush and tropical and the surrounding trees were absurdly tall, their trunks massive, dwarfing any redwood forest that I had ever seen. The whole image had an alien quality that was not of this world but it had a reality not normally associated with dream images. They were more like hypnagogic hallucinations, sharp and clear
Here we have another reference to birds. Such references occur frequently in the manuscript and the reader will recall the interest that Morgan displays in the park at Santiago during various incidents involving birds of both the animal and the mechanical kind. Anna is a keen observer of them early on in the story and of course, Morgans first experience with her on the walk to his cottage involved a singular encounter with birds. Sceptics have pointed to this curious departure from other contenders offering solutions to the mystery, and consider it a subtle way of introducing an eventual explanation for the riddle of the birds that were involved in the spheres disappearance.
12

and infinitely finely detailed. Her bare skin was covered in strange markings as though it had been delicately tattooed with the finest of lines and she was surrounded by all manner of animals and birds, some bizarre beyond all measure as though culled from the pages of some mediaeval bestiary. The image formed in front of me as though emerging from the patches of colour behind my closed eyes, as I lay on the very hinterland of sleep. Then I seemed to be falling into the image at the same time as falling into a doze. The image expanded around me into a full blown dream and I found myself sanding in the clearing facing Anna. I could clearly feel the soft fur of different animals as they moved around me, while Anna stood motionless in the centre. As I watched she raised her arms till they were stretched horizontally out on each side of her. There was a flurry of wings and in a moment her arms were covered in tiny perching birds. They appeared to be something like sparrows, their feathers a pale grey in the silver light that bathed the clearing. Moving slowly, she approached me until her body was less than a foot away. I looked at her face and saw that her eye were a bright yellow like those of a cat and that the pupils were tiny black slits in spite of the low intensity of the light. Now that she was so close I could feel an icy coldness emanating from her body. Looking down I saw for the first time in the dream that I too was naked. I shivered as the chill of her bit into my bare flesh but she seemed oblivious of my discomfort for she gently shook the little birds free of her arms and drew me tightly against her. I gasped as the bitter chill of her body sucked the heat from mine. After a few moments I was numb from head to foot, and quite unable to move. I tried to speak but my mouth was frozen. Then she stepped away, her skin transformed from ice blue into a warm pink. She clapped her hands and the little grey birds swarmed about her perching on her arms and shoulders. She threw back her head and a silvery peal of laughter echoed all around and some distant wind sounded in the infinitely far away tops of the trees. As I watched from my icy prison, the whole scene dissolved into patches of colour and I awoke suddenly in a cold sweat. It had been so real that for a moment I could feel the clutch of that icy embrace and I had to touch myself to discover that my temperature was normal. After several of these strange visions I felt sufficiently disturbed to put the light on and try to lose myself in a book. Before that, I went downstairs to make a hot drink to chase away the chill that my dream had engendered even if it were only an imagined cold.. I heard a faint sound as I went past the open door to the sitting room. Switching on the light and stepping inside I was met with a flurry of wings as perhaps ten or eleven sparrows flew up and round the room from wherever the light had disturbed them. I was at a loss to imagine how they could have got in to the house save by coming down the chimney and that hardly seemed possible for so many birds. Switching off the light so as not to agitate them further, I made my way over to the French windows

with the intention of letting them out. It was then that I saw Anna stretched out on the floor in front of them and I knew at once how the birds had got in. She lay flat on the floor, her naked body still streaked with mud, patches of which were already dry and flaking off on to the carpet. As I got close she opened her eyes and for a moment I thought with a shock that they were yellow but it was just a remembrance of the dream, and a combination of a shaft of moonlight that lit her face. With relief I saw that they were their usual pale grey. She stared up at me for a few moments before climbing to her feet and heading for the bathroom. I heard the sound of the shower running and thinking of the birds, I left the French windows ajar before going into the kitchen to fix that hot drink. On an impulse I fished out an ancient tin of cocoa that had been sat in the back of the cupboard for years and made myself a cup. As I boiled it up in the water in the prescribed old fashioned way ( no instant drink here) the smell of it brought back instant and vivid memories of a camp somewhere, possibly when I had been in the scouts as a boy; an image of returning to the camp in the gathering twilight and that mystical and evocative aroma of wood smoke and the smell cocoa being prepared on the grand scale, drifting in the evening air. The incongruity and the undeniable poignancy of the remembrance struck me as very strange after the vividness and outlandishness of the dreams I had recently experienced. I wondered if my mind was unearthing a memory of something that was so nostalgic and pleasant, as a kind of antidote to the weird and eerie happenings of the past few days. It was too hot to drink right away so I took it upstairs with me. Lying in the bed reading while waiting for it to cool, I could hear Anna coming out of the bathroom. A moment later I heard the French windows close and I remembered that I had left them open. I wondered idly if the birds had managed to escape or wether they were still roosting in the sitting room somewhere. The sound of Annas bare feet swished on the stair carpet and as I looked up from my book she came in to the room. Her wild woman persona had been washed away with the mud and there was the other Anna, her ample body rosy pink and voluptuously plump. With this welcome transformation, I was not at all put out when she uncharacteristically took my book away and climbed into bed. I half expected to feel her cold against me but she was warm and a cosy sensation spread over me, a sensation curiously linked to the faint aroma of cocoa that lingered in the air from my cooling drink on the bedside table. The memory of that smell and its association of homecoming and safety from the encroaching night combined with the comforting warmth of Annas body as she wriggled in close to me, bringing a sense of tranquillity as I drifted into a dreamless sleep. In the morning the sun was streaming in through the bedroom window that Anna must have opened. She was already up and sitting on the window seat, looking out at the garden below. Her bare skin was like porcelain in the morning light and looking at her hands I

saw that she was cradling a bird. It was nestled in the palm of her hand and she was gently and rhythmically stroking its feathers with her thumb In the bright sunlight I could clearly identify it as a sparrow and assumed that it was one of the ones from the night before. A movement in the corner of my eye revealed several more birds of the same species perched along the curtain rod. I sat watching for several minutes until she lifted up her hands and launched the little bird into the air through the open window. With a flurry of wings its companions swooped down from the rail and joined it, giddying above the lawn as they made their way to the tall oak tree at the bottom. I heard Anna give an uncharacteristic little sigh, and she looked at me pensively before coming and kneeling on the bed. I fancied that there was a sadness in her eyes but with Anna it was always hard to be sure what her expressions really represented. She put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes with that queer searching expression that was by now quite familiar though I was still none the wiser as to what she might be looking for. Apparently not finding what she was looking for, she put her hands over her belly and gave another strange little sigh. To my amazement, her eyes glistened and a solitary tear welled up in each and tracked across her cheeks, falling soundlessly onto her bare breasts. I felt a pang of pity and put my arms around her drawing her close, and pressing her wet cheek to mine. I felt her arms about me and she pressed her self close to my body. The tears fell steadily from her eyes although she made no sound and her face betrayed no reaction. She clung to me for some time in this condition before pulling away suddenly and climbing off the bed. She stood facing the window for a moment, the sunlight glistening on her tear bedewed breasts, then, turning on her heel she ran noiselessly from the room. A few seconds later the sound of her flute drifted up the stairs. The music was discordant and jagged and went on far longer than I would have liked. It was a relief when the last notes die away, and I felt able to go down stairs. She was sat in what I now thought of as her armchair, looking fairly composed after the episode in the bedroom. An idea came into my head from nowhere just then. I had been putting off going to Abergavenny to replenish my supplies of typing paper for sometime and for some reason it seemed like a good idea to go now and take Anna with me. Quite why I should have had such a notion, I dont know as, in spite of never having had any trouble, if possible, I usually avoided any contact with the outside world where Anna was concerned. Now it seemed to me to be the very thing she needed to bring her closer to the world I lived in. I handed her the black dress that I had brought down from the bedroom, and she put it on without protest. I had the feeling that she would follow me out to the car and she did, settling herself down in the passenger seat as if it were the most normal thing in the world. We set off across the common and joined the lane, turning right this time heading across the foot of the mountains. We stayed on the back road,

passing the gliding club and Pengenfordd farm before coming out onto the main road to Abergavenny. As the narrow road curved in and out Anna gazed at the mountains rising from our left an I wondered if she knew that the sphere was situated not more than a mile from the top of the ridge. From here, there was no sign that anything untoward was taking place behind that majestic escarpment, and by now the study group that was all that remained of the invasion by the authorities, had shrunk to a small but highly restricted site that enclosed the immediate area of the sphere, while anywhere that overlooked the site from the surroundings had been cordoned off. This much I had learned from my infrequent television watching. Thinking about it now, I wondered if she had ever planned to return to it, or whether she even knew anything of the situation concerning it. I had become so used to the days being a series of apparently unconnected events that I realised that I had never given much thought to any possible future scenarios concerning Anna, yet at the same time part of me was aware of the transient nature of our association. What thoughts occupied Anna as we drove, I cannot tell but she took a serious interest in the passing scenery, staring out of the window with a look of concentration on her face. It felt good to be away from the house for a change. We passed through the little village of Cwm Du uneventfully enough but next village of Tretower was a different story. As we came in site of the old ruins of the tower across the fields, Anna became agitated, and grabbed at my arms. I clung on to the wheel and pulled in to the side of the road before we had an accident. Hardly had I stopped and she was out of the car and bounding up the narrow lane that ran along the side of the house at right angles to road I was parked in. I could see where she was heading so I drove off down the road and turned right at the next turning. This led me back parallel to the road I had been on and headed up it, I saw Anna emerging from behind a little converted chapel. She ran straight across the road and with incredible agility, sprang into the air diving head first over the hedge, somersaulting onto her feet. Without a seconds pause, she sprinted across the field in the direction of the tower. I reversed back up the road into the nearest gateway and by the time I had got out of the car and climbed into the field she was already clambering over the stone wall surrounding the tower I followed across the field as fast as I could but by the time I had clumsily negotiated the wall she was inside the tower itself . I had to make my way round to the other side where a short flight of wooden steps led into the interior through a mighty gash in the masonry. I was out considerably out of breath by this time and had to lean against greenish coloured stonework of the tower walls until I had recovered sufficiently to take stock of the situation. Anna, much as I had feared, had already flung her dress into the corner and was standing with her legs apart and her arms raised. Her eyes were closed and the interior of the tower was beginning to reverberate with a low chanting that seemed to run

round the walls and spiral up to the circle of light at the top. Her voice had a strange, liquid, bubbling sound to it that rose and fell in a steady rhythm. I stared up at the bright disk of the sky that made the interior of the tower seem darker by contrast. As I looked up, the first birds began to arrive. Starlings, sparrows, chaffinches, thrushes, blackbirds. The came wheeling in from the top, circling round the walls, pouring in until the air was thick with the thrash of their wings. I could feel the wind in my face from their passage as they thrummed mechanically round with a mesmerising insistence. Anna had opened her eyes and now she came over and dragged me into the centre, directly under the sky. She began to tear at my clothes and surrendering to the situation I slipped out of them as quickly as I could. She put her arms round me and crushed me close to her heavy breasts breathing thickly into my mouth. The effect of that was to cause an instant erection that buried itself in the flesh of her belly as she pulled me ever closer. Now her lips were on mine and I felt her tongue slide into my mouth like a slippery serpent. It felt it eerily long and sinuous as it probed and explored like as if it were a separate living thing. The noise of the beating wings got louder as the birds flew closer and closer until we were the very centre of a living vortex of whirring feathers. Anna slid her long, prehensile tongue into my throat and I gagged in a reflex action as she pinned me to her. As I convulsed I felt my self spurting between her belly and mine each jet accompanied by a bodily spasm until I was finished.. A moment later and Ann withdrew her tongue and relaxed her grip on me and I could breathe again. After we had dressed and made our way back to the car, I knew that there would be no visit to Abergavenny that day as I felt physically drained and barely up to the drive home. I was never so glad to finally see the trees that surrounded my house coming into view. It was not many minutes before I was lying on the bed oblivious to the whereabouts of Anna, though she had come into the house with me. I remember thinking it strange that there had been not a soul about near the tower for it is a popular tourist attraction with a manor house was right next to it. I wondered if anyone had seen the birds and if so, what they had made of the phenomenon. My physical weariness finally overcame the lingering questions and I passed thankfully into sleep. The next morning I discovered that Anna had apparently spent the night in her chair for she was still there, sleeping peacefully when I came down stairs, and I made no move to wake her. Instead I went and stood in the garden to get some fresh air into my lungs and blow the cobwebs out of my head. Looking up at the sky I could see at least four buzzards swooping and circling, accompanied by a persistent flock of mobbing crows. Usually they would move away towards the mountains and the crows would desultorily pursue them until they considered that they had driven them off. Now they circled out as if with that intention but then came back in again so that they were always more or less above the house. Without knowing

why I was sure that it had something to do with Anna. After watching them for ten minutes or so I went back into the house and as Anna was still asleep I took a book upstairs to read on the window seat in the bedroom. To my surprise, Anna was still asleep when I came down several hours later and she continued to slumber the hours away late into the evening. I had already gone to bed when I heard her finally stirring and when she did she came straight up the stairs and got into bed next to me. She closed her eyes and fell asleep once more. I remember thinking that, surely, only a cat could enjoy so much sleep, and if there was one animal that reminded me of Anna, it would have to be a cat. During the next few days, she seemed to be very restless, pacing about in the garden and staring out at the mountain. She hardly seemed to notice me now and had an abstracted look in her eyes as she wandered in and out. I had been meaning to make a trip to Cardiff for some time now, to fulfil a long overdue appointment with my prospective publisher and I decided do this the following morning. I felt no particular qualms about leaving Anna on her own as I was sure that she would come to no harm I made an early start the next day as I planned to be home again by the afternoon. As I picked up my briefcase and headed for the door, Anna came up and took hold of my hand. For several minutes she performed that eerie searching ritual, peering into my eyes before pressing her lips briefly to my forehead She left the room immediately afterwards and I headed on out to the car. I made good time as the rods were fairly clear and by eleven oclock I was in the publishers office. The whole proceeding was a lot more drawn out and leisurely than. I had expected13 and it was not far off one oclock when I stopped off in a pub down the road for some lunch14 I was not particularly pleased that there was a television close to where I was eating with the volume considerably higher than I could have wished for. Naturally, this turned out to be a fortuitous occurrence as the first item on the one oclock news concerned the research area on the black mountains. Instantly my attention was focussed on the screen and I felt a premonition of some impending disaster. The report was short and to the point and it seemed pretty clear that there was scant information as to the details. It appeared that someone or something had entered the sphere and it had vanished. That was all they had to go on at the moment but they managed to pad it out with speculative discussions about the security of the site. As I sat there a news flash added that reports were coming in of injuries to two of the personal at the unit who had been involved in some kind of incident. I finished my lunch quickly as I had the clear feeling that I was on borrowed time. As I walked outside, something made me look in my brief case. Then I saw it, tucked away at the bottom,
The time and place here are accurate as the records of Meredith and Williams the Cardiff publishers confirm the time and date of the visit. Nothing that Brennen could not have obtained from public sources. 14 This has been identified as the Traders Tavern in bridge st.
13

wrapped in its original binding. Anna had put her flute in there. She had known I had no doubts now that it was she that had entered the sphere although I could not imagine how she had managed to gain access to the site15, let alone get close to the thing. I thought of all the cctv cameras that covered the area from all angles. I had a stark realisation that the balloon would go up very soon and that once the y had identified Anna, the powers that be would be beating a path to my door. My next stop was the bank where I drew out my entire worldly wealth in Euros. I was surprised at how smoothly the transaction went as everything proceeded without any awkward questions being asked. And within the hour I was on a flight to Amsterdam from Cardiff airport. I knew that I couldnt be for long in a place where I would have to show my passport so I booked on the next train to Spain as I knew that with my fluent Spanish, I could pass my self off as a native. There is not much more to tell after I arrived in Santiago as I was able to make it my home without encountering any problems and eventually the hue and cry died down without accomplishing anything Since all trace of the sphere had vanished, scientific interest in its origins died away and it was relegated to recurring cheap documentaries that were trotted out when there was little else about to be interested in. It crops up pretty regularly amongst the UFO fraternity so I believe. But seeing as I myself have absolutely no idea what it was or where it came from or where it went then we are all none the wiser. And there his story came to an end. He sat silently on the bench for a while while I waited to see if he would add anything further, but that was it. Eventually he got to his feet and wandered slowly away without looking back. That was the very last time I saw him alive.

I have reprinted in the appendix the accounts given by Pvte. Daniel Carter of the Royal Welsh fusiliers who was on security duty at the time, and Richard Maybury, a senior maintenance technician who was also on duty at the site They are of particular interest as it is part of a collection of government papers that have only recently been released into the public domain for, although in the story, Morgan remains unaware of exactly how the woman breached the security of the site, this document throws some light on other aspects of the story, notably the references to birds.
15

Epilogue After Morgan had died I felt the weight of solitude pressing heavily upon me and after a few months I made the decision to return to the country of my birth. Although I was used to living a fairly frugal lifestyle as I have mentioned before, I did have sufficient funds to make the trip and arrived in the old country on a wet October day. Still haunted by the story that Morgan had told me, I resolved to pay a visit to the part of Wales that had been his home as soon as I had found myself some kind of temporary employment. With this idea in mind I eventually found myself in a simple room on the outskirts of Worcester where I made a modest living teaching the flute and music in general to a select group of youngsters. It was rather tedious work and somewhat irksome after the freedom of the open road that I had enjoyed for so long. I still was not sure what had driven me from my adopted country and mode of life but there was no doubt that a new kind of restlessness had replaced the old and I only had some uncertain intuition that had brought me here. At various times I comforted myself with the notion of Annas approach to life, a go with the flow philosophy that seemed far above the rather trivial new age perceptions of such a concept. Was I going with the flow? What did it really mean? Was it all just nonsense and coincidence? I did not have the answer to any of these questions and yet I stayed in Worcester for six months strangely reluctant to venture further west in seek out the country where Morgan and Anna had played out their singular destiny. Eventually the day came on a blustery morning in March of the following year when something inside me whispered now! Packing a few things in a rucksack, along with the treasured flute, of course, I set off for the station where I intended to catch the next train to Hereford. There was no rail service to Talgarth, the choice either being Abergavenny or Llandrindod wells so I opted for the bus that wound slowly through the back roads to Hay before hitting the main road to Brecon. The scenery was fantastic and occupied most of the long journey as I watched the grey clouds scudding over the horizon the brooding gloom of the sky accentuating the green of the patchwork landscape. I had forgotten how beautiful Wales was, especially here in the border country and I now knew why Morgan had been so fond of it. Now that I was here I felt no hurry to be up and doing so I booked in at a little bed and breakfast and wandered around Talgarth seeing what sights were to be seen. It was rather a one horse town and had barely survived the

closure of the mental hospital that had provided most of the jobs in Morgans time here. Unlike Hay-on-wye which had been planted firmly on the international map by the entrepreneurial skills of Richard Booth, Talgarth had become something of a backwater. Its one claim to fame was as the site for an annual Harley Davidson rally, when the little town came to life for a brief weekend. All this I learned by socialising in the local pubs that evening. I had passed myself off as being on a walking tour and I had not mentioned my intentions of visiting the former cottage of Morgan Bennet although I have to admit that I was curious to know if there was still any stories about it that I hadnt heard. I did mention that my route lay across the common and over the mountain to Hay. I had hardly mentioned it when an old farmer in the corner piped up with, I should give old Bennets place a miss if I were you. I pretended at first not to know who they were talking about and let them remind me. Dont you know that was where that bloke lived? The one that went off with that girl in that flying saucer? He didnt go off with her you prat! He disappeared. Everyone knows that! There seemed to be several differences of opinion as to what had happened and after deciding to remember the incident I picked up quite a few interesting stories. A small percentage believed the whole thing was a conspiracy with the government testing some new device or a test that had gone wrong. Morgan was an agent and the whole thing was a cover up. Others were of the opinion that Morgan had been abducted before the girl left. An old farmer sitting in the corner who had remained silent while the animated conversation had been going on now broke in. What do you kids know about it? I knew him as much as any one did and he was just an old schoolteacher or Im not a sheep farmer. I seen her, too which is more than the lot of you can say. Big girl she was, short. They came in the shop, Gwynnes as it was then, when I happened to be getting some baccy. She just stood by his side and the look on her face never changedjust kind of blank. She didnt look no different to some of the patients from the ospital except for the eyes . I took a good look at her face believe me and they were red, glowing like coals His voice trailed off. Come off it Dickie Dido! Ow much cider ad you put away? interrupted a tall pimply youth. A gust of laughter greeted this aspersion on the sobriety of the witness. Bloody ell mun, Danny Lewis swears blind they was green as traffic lights an he only drinks coke! cried someone else. All the more reason not to trust him then! returned Dickie Dido, not to be upstaged. A middle aged man at the bar joined in with the discussion. I reckon its all bollocks! I mean weve only got their word for it that the thing was actually there ! Did any one see it apart from the government scientists and a few VIPs? Plenty of rotten pictures and movies of a giant soap bubble, just some fake stuff to divert people from what was really going on up there if you ask me. Well, Emrys saw it another chimed in. Emrys! scoffed the man at the bar Christ he made even

Dickie here look like a candidate for the salvation army! Hes dead now any road added the pimply youth inconsequentially. I suppose the government had him done away with so e couldnt blow the whistle on em after ed bin bribed to tell a yarn! Said one of the moderates. A voice echoed from the other end of the bar where an old man sat nursing a pint of Guinness. I knew Emrys better than any one else seeing as ow is farm is just down from mine. He may have been a bugger for the cider but he wernt no liar. Any road, he told me he was sober as anything that morning in spite of what that copper said. He was out after the sheep and even he wouldnt a been boozin at that hour. He told me he walked all round that thing and it was just like they said in the papers, thin as a bubble but couldnt shift it no way. He said e tried an it never budged a hair. Even whacked it with is stick so he said. Never made a sound. Felt the blow through the stick but no sound. I believed him. No bollocks about it, it was there right enough. Another one of those mysteries that will never be solved..I mean we cant expect to know everything in Gods world can we? After this the conversation petered out and I made my way back to the little boarding house. When I set off for the common the next day the wind was still blowing in gusts, lifting clouds of last years fallen leaves into the air as I headed past the church. It was a warm wind and rather invigorating in a pleasant kind of way. My thoughts strayed back to our conversation in the park in Santiago as the lane skirted the woods that concealed the waterfall at pwll y wrach and I was tempted to make a detour, but I wanted to see the cottage first. After a steady climb I crossed the cattle grid that marked the boundary of the common and set off across it in the direction that I had previously noted on the map, led to Morgans old cottage. Up ahead I could see the clump of tall trees that masked it from the surroundings. Suddenly, there it was. A gap had been torn in the high hedge and one could now see the cottage that in Morgans time would have been hidden from view. Fragments of thought skipped through my mind as I stood silent staring at the old stone cottage with its overgrown garden. It seemed to be empty and I wondered why nobody had moved in to such a desirable place. The whole house seemed to have an air of detachment as if it were sleeping the years away in some kind of retired seclusion. I couldnt resist climbing over the gap in the hedge to stand in the garden. With a queer feeling in my stomach I imagined Anna tripping down the path and onto the trim lawn, my imagination sweeping away the overgrown weeds and meadow like appearance of the garden as it was now. I tried to picture where she had played Goddess to the storm, but the area in front of the sightless French windows was now a riot of weeds and nettles. On an impulse I walked forward and pushed against them. To my surprise, they swung open and with some in trepidation I entered the house. It seemed so curious that most of the furnishings were intact much as Morgan had described them,

although the air was musty with that strange smell of the long undisturbed. I wondered once more why no one was living here. How could that be? Not even the signs of expected vandalism. I gently seated myself in one of the armchairs and apart from fluffing up a little dust it was comfortable enough. I wondered whether this was Morgans chair or hers, or did they not have a preference. Somehow I wanted it to be hers. Undoing my rucksack, I rummaged around and brought out the precious flute still wrapped in the leather like material just as Morgan had given it to me. I took it out and laid it on my lap puzzling over this very real link to a fantastic chain of events. Here I sat in Morgans old cottage the only person on earth to know the solution to this mystery, to be in possession of the evidence that proved it beyond doubt. And yet, what did it prove? What did I know? What did Morgan know, in truth, in reality? Was he or I any the wiser. The scientists might take this artifact and subject it to the rigours of their alchemy, break it down and investigate its mechanism for surely some other entities, human or similar if Anna was of them, were as familiar with it as we might be with a desk top pc. But what would they really know? There was a mystery here, a real mystery and the beauty of it was that it would remain a mystery for ever and a day. I had a sudden insight into the immensity of it as I sat there. The burgeoning quest of knowledge in its ceaseless demand to uncover the workings of existence expanding forever into the infinite mystery of the unknown. The wind made a deep and melancholy sound in the chimney as I sat there absorbed in my own thoughts. Eventually I drifted off to sleep and I dreamed of Anna in her black dress wandering in the sun drenched garden, the lawn green and well tended, the path weed free and the curtained windows catching the light that came over the tops of the trees. In the dream I walked over to her and she turned to look at me. Her face was old and wrinkled, only her eyes were cleara startling shade of dove grey. As I looked at her she began to cry soundlessly, the tears pouring unbidden from her eyes as she stared into mine. As I watched with a heavy heart she shrank down, smaller and smaller until she vanished without trace in the grass. With a start I awoke and already it was dusk. The wind had dropped and the air was calm as I made my way back across the common to the lane. After the disturbed weather of the day the calm was all encompassing, as if the world had gone to sleep. Not a sound of an animal or a vehicle broke the silence until I was back in the village. When I awoke the next morning I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was going back to Santiago. I had very little to do to wind up my affairs such as they were in Worcester and soon I was once again fancy free and captain of my destiny. It was pleasant to be back in the old city although the serious tourist season had not yet got under way. After a few weeks of being back in the old routine, Morgan and his story

began to recede into the back ground somewhat as everyday necessities made their demands. I became a little more sociable at this stage and was not averse to spending the evenings in a bar or two. Las Crechas was my particular favourite, a Celtic bar that always had a good selection of music and played host to visiting musicians as well as providing a venue for impromptu sessions. I joined in a few of these which made a break from my otherwise solitary existence and became quite friendly with a few of the musicians. I had to bow out when the Gaitas and panderetas took over as there was not much a mere flute could do to compete with them. As with many things in Spain there were things about the lifestyle that I particularly liked. They seemed relatively unconcerned about a class of people who in Britain would be regarded as feckless and beyond the pale. Whether it is due to the relative newness of Spains social institutions ort not, I am not sure but it was quite usual for beggars and gypsies to come into the bars selling trinkets or begging for money. In most cases they were tolerated with surprising restraint considering their nuisance value. I myself had always got on well with the local gypsies who at that time were mostly Portuguese. They were an indolent lot but extremely open and friendly and a few of them had become personal friends of mine. One evening I was sat in the bar at Las Crechas, listening to the sound of the pipes filtering up from downstairs where a session was in full swing. It was not so late in the night as to be crowded in the way it becomes after midnight, in fact the majority of the patrons were down below. This being the case I was practically the sole giver of largess in the bar when the beggars arrived. There were about three of them. Two were Portuguese gypsies but the third was Caucasian, with a pale ivory coloured skin. I would put his age at somewhere around twenty and he stood behind the other two and never spoke as they went through their sing song litany for extracting money from tourists. I spoke to them in Gallego and mentioned that I was a good friend of Miguel Martinez Escudero a gypsy of good standing in their community. When I said this they backed off a little and dropped the act, grinning sheepishly while I fished out my wallet. Whose your friend? I enquired gesturing at the pale youth. Es loco. Bueno pero loco. No puede hablar they replied. An idiot boy, a mute apparently. He seemed harmless enough but as I looked at him once more he raised his head and looked me in the eye. His eyes were a startling dove grey, something that I knew I had never seen before save in my frequent dreams of Anna. I was shaken by the strange coincidence although the rational part of me was considering the probabilities of such an eye colour occurring. After all, I was hardly an expert on such matters and out of millions of people it might not be that unusual. That plus the fact that I was primed by Morgans story to notice such a thing as unusual whereas

apparently, no one else had. I invited the trio to sit down for a beer although the pale boy would drink nothing that I offered and sat staring at the table while we talked. Dont mind him they said He cant understand a word of what we are saying. His mother is just as crazy, too His mother? I exclaimed Is she here too? Sure. Why not? they answered. I asked them to tell me something about the mother and the boy and after a few beers I managed to get the whole story if a little disjointed. Apparently the woman and her boy had turned up at the camp a few months back and one of the older gypsy women had recognised her as a bruja, a sorceress. They were a pretty superstitious lot and were of the opinion that if they did not take her in she would do something bad to them. They told me that she was pretty harmless most of the time although like the boy, she seemed unable to speak. She was a healer they said and a good one, so they didnt really mind if she stayed. No one knew where she came from. None of the other gypsies had ever seen her before. I had one last question. What colour were her eyes? They looked blank. I dont know, senor maybe blue, I never really looked one of them replied. The boys eyes I said Like that perhaps? Maybe, maybe, Who looks at that kind of thing? I was intrigued and as I sat there passing a convivial time with these itinerants, I made up my mind to visit the camp the very next day. I had a bit of a headache when I awoke, probably from a surfeit of San Miguel and cheap brandy but I was determined to follow up the curious case of the mother and her son. The gypsy camp was down on the fields below the cathedral and I made my way down to it at a leisurely pace. I knew that the men would probably not be about at that hour but the women usually were. A Portuguese gypsy camp is quite a sight. Mostly they live in small vans, smaller than a Volkswagen camper, so most of there time is spent outside with the vehicle more a means of transport and somewhere to store their possessions. I picked my way across the littered waste ground checking the scattered groups of women for any sign of a pale skinned one. I had assumed, without thinking that she would be of the same skin colour as the boy but now I began to have doubts. Maybe his colouring was some kind of recessive gene. As I was walking across, one of the women came over wanting to know who I was. As she got closer she recognised me for she knew that I was a friend of Miguels and I was invited over to one of the vans for morning coffee. After the usual formalities, I told her about meeting the strange boy the previous evening and made enquiries about his mother. She looked a little reticent and told me that the woman was a bruja and that I should not meet with her unless I had something particular that I wanted like a cure for instance. To gain her confidence I decided to tell that I thought I might know the woman from before and that if I did I could tell my hostess where she came from. The thought of having her curiosity satisfied overcame her reluctance to introduce

me and she led me over to a woman seated under a rough tarpaulin that had been strung out on two poles from the side of a small van to provide a little shade. She was dressed in the familiar gypsy garb of broken down flat heeled shoes and coloured stockings, a plaid skirt and a shawl. Her dark hair was braided in the traditional way. I cant remember what I thought, but I felt a sense of let down as I felt sure she was no one no one special, just another gypsy woman and the boys eyes were just an odd coincidence. The woman I was with called out sharply and the seated woman looked up. She looked across at me and then rose gracefully to her feet and came and stood in front of me. Careful, senor whispered my companion and stepped back a pace or two. The woman was short and very fat, but then many of these gypsy women are. As she drew close to me I could see that her skin was pale white and threaded with tiny wrinkles. To my mind the eyes were a startling dove grey and now they were searching mine with a peculiar intensity. I had a sudden recollection of my dream in Morgans cottage and with a shock I recognised her as the Anna of that dream. She put her hands on either side of my face and drew a long breath. putting her face close to mine she breathed out in a slow exhalation. I could hear the woman behind me draw in her breath sharply and I imagined her to be crossing herself. Her breath was warm and strangely scented like new mown hay and my thoughts seemed to fade into abeyance for the moment. I had the feeling that she was searching for something within me, something she had been looking for, for a long time. And now as in the dream she stepped back and the tears flowed from her eyes as she stared at me with a far away look. She stood there crying without a sound the tears leaking from her eyes like the teas from a weeping statue of the Madonna. I didnt know what to do, so I just stood there feeling at a complete loss. Suddenly she threw up her arms and uttered the most heart-rending cry of despair that I have ever heard or wish to hear again, before collapsing back onto her chair. Not wanting to intrude on such devastating grief, I turned to go and the other gypsy woman followed. What happened senor? she asked tremulously. I think she knows now that he is dead I replied. Dead? Who? she queried looking up at me. I paused for a moment before replying. The father of her child, as I believe As I said these words I walked away from the camp without looking back. As I reached the perimeter of the field I stopped and turned round for a moment before returning once more to the normality of the city. As I looked back I saw the Gypsy woman crossing herself and looking apprehensively across at Anna for I know felt certain beyond all doubt that it was she. My mind raced over the possible explanations but I knew that there was only one. She had been with child when she left Morgan and now, leaving it for some reason to this late hour she had finally come looking for him and, as fate would have it, was too late. There is not much more to tell after this. Her mind such as it was must have been turned

completely by the knowledge of Morgans death for she was admitted to the Sanatorium shortly after wards. She killed herself a few days later thus bringing to an end the whole tragic story. Of the boy I have no knowledge. The family that had taken them both in moved away with the boy and I have had no word of their whereabouts despite repeatedly questioning Miguel on the subject. Perhaps its my imagination but it seems to me that he is being rather evasive about the subject for some reason16.

Appendix
For researchers, this was one of the most promising leads in the manuscript as it did not take long to ascertain that Miguel Martinez Escudero was a real person much as Brennen portrayed him. The difficulties arose when trying to piece together a coherent account of the woman believed to be the Anna of Morgans story and, more interestingly, her son. It seems that there was such a woman and indeed, the records of the local sanatorium bear witness to the fact that a woman of unknown origin killed herself around the time that was mentioned. She was also listed as being Caucasian and not as a Romany. The stories recounted by Miguel Martinez who by this time must have been over 100 years old are fanciful in the extreme and whatever substance they contain must be assumed to have been wildly exaggerated over the years. Such stories about this bruja as they called her are prevalent amongst this particular tribe of Romanies. Some are of the opinion that such stories would be true if the woman was indeed the Anna of this manuscript, and that they amount to a substantial verification. Others are more inclined to the view that Brennen used his knowledge of and association with the Romanies, to weave one of their urban myths into his tale, knowing full well that it would add veracity to his account. Of the son who appears in the book there has been no trace and there has been a marked reticence among informants in the gypsy community to be any more forthcoming on the subject. It is hard to imagine how a mute Caucasian youth with dove grey eyes could disappear without trace in a community of gypsies.
16

The first hand account of the breach of the perimeter fence From Private Daniel Carter of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers Private Carter: On the day in question I was stationed outside the sentry hut just in front of the main gates into the site. It was not unusual to see walkers passing the perimeter fence that surrounded that site. Although the actual research facility was situated several hundred yards behind the fence and had its own security, the perimeter was there to prevent any unauthorized views of the sphere. It was early in the morning around eight oclock when I saw a figure rapidly approaching the fence. As it got closer I could see that it was a woman. She was a big woman, although quite short and she was wearing a plain black dress. I was rather taken aback by her sudden appearance so early and in such unsuitable clothes. I stood watching as she marched straight up to the fence and before I had time to blink she grabbed the mesh in both hands and tore a great gash in it as though it were made of paper. In a moment she was through the gap and marching off towards the site proper. It took me a few seconds before I shouted at her to stop, but it made no impression. I unslung my rifle and shouted again for her to stop or I would fire. I am not sure now whether I would ever have pulled that trigger but fortunately I was prevented from making the decision as, out of nowhere, I was suddenly attacked by a flock of birds. It was like something out of that old film, and pretty scary too as they went for me like a swarm of angry bees. I can tell you, they didnt mess about. I had about six stabs to the face in the time it took me to drop the rifle and sprint into the hut. I slammed the door shut but about six had got in with me and I had to physically smash the birds off and kill them before they gave up. It was a few moments before I could get to the phone and raise the alarm but by that time I guess they already knew The first hand account of Senior technician Richard Maybury I was seated in the main staff hut having a mug of tea when I heard the sounds of a disturbance up towards the main gate. The window was open and I stuck my head out to take a look. I could hear shouts and curses and about halfway towards the gate I could see several soldiers surrounded by a whirling flock of birds. I remember thinking that it looked like a kind of inverted tornado as they were in the formation of a tightly packed cone and the soldiers in the midst of it seemed to be having a pretty rough time of it. For a few moments I was more amused that anything else as it was such a bizarre phenomenon, and I gave no thought to the fact that small birds could be dangerous for it seemed so unlikely. Then I saw the woman and I as I knew all the personnel on the sight I realised at once that she

was an intruder. Although I was not on the security staff and I was a civilian, I ran out of the door and asked her where the Hell she thought she was going. She made no attempt to stop but ran across to the main compound where the sphere lay. It was heavily fenced off and protected with razor wire and all sorts so I wasnt particularly worried that she would be able to do anything, but that she might injure herself. Any way, she stopped when she got about thirty feet away and stood with her arms raised above her head. As I ran to wards her I could hear a gasp as she breathed in. The next moment she let out a deafening screech that seemed to echo round the hills and fairly took the top of my head off. It was enough to bring me to a halt in time to see the sphere expand maybe thirty or forty times its size, smashing everything in side the compound and tearing the fencing apart like tissue paper As I stood dumbfounded, it shrank back to its normal size. In an instant she had darted forward and disappeared straight through the walls of it. A couple of seconds later and it vanished, shrinking down to nothing with lightning speed. The noise and confusion had by this time brought officials and security people on the double, but all that was left was the wreckage of the unit. It was not until they went through the cctv footage that remained that they believed my account of what had happened. Most of the recording equipment surrounding the sphere in its compound had been wrecked.