» The Dark

Missing Time and Alien Cleaners
First post after years, must be nearly a decade, of lurking, but 2 stories to tell and both 100% true…

Not much strange generally happens to me, I now work as a professional Engineer and am usually the one to come up with the logical explanation when strange things appear to be happening, to the extent I may almost be compared to a male, non-ginger, Scully... Anyway, back on topic:

There is a disused quarry quayside on a cliff on a hill called the Little Orme near Llandudno that is about 15 minutes walk from my mum’s house. Now this place is ultra picturesque in the sunlight, but becomes somewhat spooky in fog or in darkness. There are a scattering of signs warning that on average 1 person a year dies on there. If this wasn’t enough of a portent of doom, there is a late 19th Century memorial to some kid who fell off on a secluded part of the hill and a rock with strange writing painted on it on another part. ( I always used to put the rock down to kids messing about). It has a reputation as a suicide hotspot and just 10 days ago the police removed a body that I’ve heard couldn’t immediately be identified as male or female… Anyway, rewind near enough exactly 10 years…

I do a lot of fishing and the old quayside is a comfortable spot to try and catch some tea, it was Jul ’99 and around dusk (9.30ish) when I decided to have a snack and a drink. I can remember getting a coke and some crisps out of my tackle box and then…

Nothing

Next active event that I knew about was that it was dark, the time past 11pm and I had an empty can and packet of crisps next to me. Somehow I had lost 90 mins of time. The full moon now appearing above the cliffs above did not help the spooky feeling either… I started using logic on the situation and was trying to convince myself that I had merely dropped off to sleep and ‘sleep ate’ my snacks. As I was winding in one of my rods a piercing shriek penetrated the air that could only be described as the noise you would imagine someone would make if they were being ripped apart, alive. Logic departed, kit was packed up and I was hell bent on getting home, quickly.

My next problem was there are only 2 ways off the quayside and both of them involve climbing up 30ft of cliff bank onto where the old quarry had been, right where this shriek had come from. As I reached the brow of the bank I turned off my lamp and headlight ( a torch attached to a band around your head) and made off by the moonlight, 6” filleting knife grasped firmly in one hand. At this point I could see the rock with the weird writing was glowing a dull green colour, what was more concerning however was seeing the predator like movement of a sheep sized animal in the moonlit shadows 150m away.

There are 2 paths on that quarry that lead off the hill onto the estate, and they converge near the gate at the end, this animal was on the other one keeping abreast of me but gradually getting closer and closer as I headed for safety. It was within 10m of me when I put my headlight back on and shone the beam on it. I swear some of the light went straight through it and I was looking at a translucent grey, wolf like creature with the brightest green cats eyes you ever saw. At this it turned away and ran off and I ran in the other direction onto the nearby estate…

Next morning logic had returned and was telling me that I’d heard a vixen on heat (there are foxes about) and that in my spooked state I had actually been tracked by a wild fox or even a sheep and that my imagination did the rest. So I took my dog for a walk, no trace of anything untoward until I got the rock with the writing, my usually fearless dog wouldn’t go near it. I had a look and was chilled to find a fresh bunch of flowers laid, what looked like dried blood on the base of the rock and most scary of all a fresh bit of writing on the rock that looks very much like the symbol for Scorpio, my star sign…

Didn’t fish that area after darkness for a very long time after that…

Anyway, the following year I’m back at Uni and sharing a kitchen and dining room with 7 other people in Self Catered Halls in Liverpool. All was great, as was par for the course I was out down the pub with some course mates one Friday night, arriving back in the flat in a merrily drunk way about midnight to find my flatmates had all gone into town. Not possessing the money to go and find them I made myself a brew, went to my bedroom on the 1st floor, locked the door behind me, drank my tea and went to bed.

I woke up standing up in pitch darkness, one red LED light was the only illumination I had. A quick fumble around my surroundings made me realise that I was in a room approx 4’ by 4’ and that there was stuff on the floor. Just to make this sound even more like one of those old Spectrum text adventure games I was just wearing a pair of boxer shorts. Further feeling around of my environment found me a heavy metallic cylinder.

Logic kicked in, and it was scared…

It had remembered I’d gone to bed, it knew my window was security locked not to open out more than about 6”s and it knew I’d locked the door. I was now in a dark, confined room, with no obvious door. Logic knew that I couldn’t of been kidnapped (Not that anyone would of got more than a few tins of Tesco Value Baked Beans for me anyway) as I would’ve woken up if someone had broken into my room. Logic came to the very disturbing conclusion that the only rational explanation for my predicament was that I had been abducted by aliens who had teleported me out of my room and I was now on their ship away in the stars. This rather annoyed me as I was meant to be watching the football on Saturday.

Anyway, I decided not to accept whatever fate these extra-terrestrial beings had in store for me, anal probes definitely did not appeal. So I grabbed the metal cylinder and started hitting the walls with it. This I did, in pitch darkness, for a good 30 minutes until I heard footsteps getting closer and closer outside. I moved my metallic weapon ready to strike down whatever ungodly creature that had deemed to hold me captive. Slowly light appeared and the outline of a door appeared. I braced myself ready for an explosion of violence in my attempt to escape the alien menace, only to be greeted by the confused face of my American flatmate who I’d woken up by making a racket with a fire extinguisher whilst trapped in the cleaner’s cupboard at 4am in the morning.

Sleepwalking is a marvellous thing at times. I still can’t explain why I thought it necessary to go to the kitchen first, collect all the tea spoons and hide them under the vacuum cleaner before going back to normal sleep standing up in a cleaner’s cupboard…

Length… Well I can’t see both ends at once…
(Tue 28th Jul 2009, 10:08, More)