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aneurinallday · 1 month ago

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Out There

If it weren’t for bad luck, I would never have met him. We would’ve passed each other by on that quiet stretch of Welsh road without a second glance. But as it was, happenstance (and his absent-mindedness behind the wheel) brought us together.

It was November 1974, and I was cycling home from work, having finished my shift at a small café that mostly served hikers and ramblers. The winding road snaked up and down and around the hills, leaving my legs burning and my back aching. I was counting down the days until I’d saved enough money to buy my first car, but in this economy, I’d be lucky if I could afford driving lessons.

The route was even emptier than normal - I couldn’t remember the last time I’d passed a vehicle. As I rode laboriously along, the road grew narrower, as many Welsh roads did. I was now flanked by broadleaf trees and dense, wild hedges which were impossible to see through. I put my head down, pedalling head, hugging the poorly maintained verge as I debated what to have for supper.

The sudden sound of an approaching engine made me jerk my head up. A white and brown campervan - which in that moment seemed like a monstrous metal behemoth - had turned the corner towards me, and was hogging the middle of the narrow road. There wasn’t enough room for us to pass each other, and I was moving too fast to brake. I attempted to mount the grassy verge that led up to the hedgerow, but it was too steep and filled with gnarly roots.

The van swerved at the last second - a delayed reaction which told me that the driver had only just noticed me - and clipped my handlebar, narrowly missing my hand.

“Fuck!”

I was flung to the ground, shielding my face with my arms, and rolled for a few feet along the asphalt. I sprawled on my back and lay gasping while the campervan screeched to a halt. The driver leaned out of the window - a man in his thirties with wild, tousled dark hair, and thick facial hair to match, his eyes hidden behind a pair of large sunglasses.

“You alright?” he shouted.

“You dickhead! You swiped me!”

He jumped out and hurried towards me as I sat up.

“Are you alright?” he repeated, “You’re not hurt, are you?

“Why were you speeding?” I demanded.

“You were speeding too!”

“You weren’t even looking at the road!”

“Neither were you!” I grabbed my fallen bicycle and tried to stand it upright. The front wheel was hopelessly bent. “Now I’m fucked. Thanks!”

“I’m sorry…Just wait there, will you?” He crouched down to examine the front of his van, fretting over the front tyres. Apart from a big scrape in the paint, his vehicle was unscathed. He sighed in relief. “Hop in, I can give you a lift.”

“No, thanks. You might hit someone else.” I began to walk away down the road, cursing under my breath, wheeling my misshapen bicycle alongside me as it squeaked pathetically.

“Wait - wait!” he called after me, “You can’t walk home like that. Where are you headed? Let me drop you off.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Come on, I can’t leave you stuck here.”

I slowed to a halt and looked around. We were in a sparsely populated area of rural Wales, and few drivers came this way. I was too tired for a long walk home, and I knew the night would be pitch-black.

“Fine,” I said, and wheeled towards him.

He opened the rear doors of the campervan and hoisted my bicycle inside. I caught a glimpse of the cramped interior, which was cluttered with cardboard boxes of papers and plastered with what looked like magazine clippings. It didn’t look like a serial killer’s setup.

“In you get.”

He went to open the passenger’s door for me, but I opened it myself and climbed in. I sat rubbing my sore elbow and grimacing as he climbed into the driver’s seat beside me. I could already feel the bruises starting to form.

“Right, let’s go,” he muttered, more to himself than to me.

He executed an awkward three-point turn between the hedges, and began to drive back the way he’d come, at a noticeably slower speed than before. I sat tense in the passenger’s seat while he concentrated on the road.

“Whereabouts should I drop you off?” he asked.

I dodged the question, not wanting to reveal where I lived to a stranger.

“Just follow the road, I’ll hop out,” I said.

“Okay.”

“What about you?” I asked, changing the subject, “Where were you headed?”

“Nowhere, really. This, uh…this van is my home, you see.”

“You were driving pretty fast for someone going nowhere.”

“Well, I thought I saw something.”

“Saw what?”

He didn’t answer.

Hearing kitchen utensils rattling in their holders, I glanced over my shoulder at the living space behind us. On one side was a compact kitchen - stove, sink, and cupboard - and on the other side was a small table which unfolded from the wall, with a narrow couch-bed next to it. Blankets and clothes were strewn about, and the cardboard boxes were stacked high. I began to suspect that this wasn’t just a holiday home, but his permanent residence.

“You’ve got a lot of papers,” I said, “Are you a researcher?”

“...Yeah, something like that.” He sounded reluctant to answer. “I’m documenting strange phenomena in the area.”

“Strange phenomena? Like…spirits? Are you a ghost hunter?”

“Not exactly. It’s a lot broader than that. Unexplained sights, unusual noises, mysterious disappearances…anything out of the ordinary, really.”

“Well, you won’t find much of that around here. This is Wales.”

“You’d be surprised. Paranormal activity doesn’t care about borders.”

Now that the pain had subsided and my life was no longer flashing before my eyes, I felt calmer, and a little guilty for yelling. These narrow country roads were a nightmare to share with anything larger than a Mini, and I’d been almost as slow to react as him.

“Sorry I called you a dickhead,” I said, “The roads are shit around here…”

“No, it’s alright. Don’t apologise. I was going too fast.”

“We’re both dickheads. Let’s leave it there?”

“Sure.” Without taking his eyes off the road, he removed one hand from the steering wheel and reached out. I shook his hand with a snort of laughter.

We drove in silence until we passed through my village, where I told him to stop at the corner. I was a safe walking distance from home, but far enough that he wouldn’t know which street was mine. He helped me fetch my damaged bicycle from the back of the van.

“Thanks for the lift,” I said.

“No worries. Here,” he was fumbling in his pockets. He pulled out a tatty old wallet that was depressingly thin. “Here, take this. To help pay for your repairs.”

He handed me a one-pound note.

“There’s no need - ”

“Please. You need to get that thing fixed. Besides, this whole thing could’ve turned out a lot worse.”

Reluctantly, I took the note. It wouldn’t cover the cost, but it would certainly take the edge off.

“Thanks,” I said, but he was already driving away. I watched as he reversed up the narrow lane until he had space to turn around, then accelerated on his way. Whatever his mission was, he didn’t have time for long goodbyes.

The second time I saw him, I was cycling home from the local post office on my freshly repaired bicycle. It took me a moment to recognise the beat-up campervan parked by the side of the road, until I saw the dark-haired figure standing beside it, leaning into the driver’s seat. It was the scruffy stranger. I slowed to a stop, putting my feet down on the asphalt.

“Hello?” I said.

He withdrew his head from the van to glance up. His sunglasses were off, and he looked tired.

“Oh. Hello there.”

As I approached, I realised that there were dents in the van’s panels, and the windows had been smashed in. With a dustpan and brush, he was carefully sweeping big crumbs of broken glass off the front seats and out of the footwells.

“What happened?” I exclaimed.

“It’s nothing,” he sighed. “Just some boys.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yesterday I was driving around, asking questions. You know, the local history, if there are any records of supernatural activity, whether anyone’s seen anything strange lately. Some of the village lads didn’t take too kindly to an out-of-towner poking around. I was asleep when a brick came through the windshield.”

“Shit. Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. They just wanted to scare me off.” He emptied the contents of the dustpan onto the ground. “I see you got your wheel fixed.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I leaned my bicycle against the side of the van. “What can I do?”

“You don’t have to help…”

“I want to.”

“Well…I won’t say no.”

His wing mirrors were crooked, as if someone had tried to knock them off. We helped each other to tape them back into position. Then he grabbed the cardboard lids off a few of his boxes, and we flattened them and taped them over the smashed windows.

While I held the cardboard in place, I stole a sidelong glance at his face. His brow was furrowed and lips tensed with anxiety, but his eyes were a lovely shade of green, and his features were undeniably attractive. Even through his thick moustache and beard, I could tell that he was handsome.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“What - ? Oh - um, it’s Gethin.” He seemed taken aback by the question. “Gethin ap Daffyd.”

I waited for him to ask me my name, but he didn’t.

“Thanks for your help,” he said as we finished the job, his tone subdued.

I thought of his thin wallet, and all his worldly possessions crammed into the back of this tin-can. I felt suddenly terrible.

“How long are you going to stick around?” I asked.

“I don’t know. However long it takes me to find what I’m looking for.”

“Well, I’m getting paid at the end of the week. If you’re still here, I’ll lend you a fiver for the windows.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“It’s only fair. You helped fix my bike so I could keep going to work.”

“But - ”

“Besides, this van is your home, isn’t it?”

He looked at his beat-up vehicle, and his shoulders sank in defeat.

“Alright,” he said. He took a breath and tried to buoy himself up. He slapped the dented white hood with a strained smile. “You can come back any time. I’ll be…well, I’ll be in the van.”

“Maybe I will,” I teased, and cycled off, resisting the urge to glance over my shoulder to see if he was watching me.

Little by little, meeting by meeting, we became friends. Sometimes I would see him cruising around the valleys, and we would wave hello to each other as we passed, or we would stop to have a chat through his window.

“Seen anything paranormal lately?” I would ask.

“Not yet!”

He seemed cheerful at first, optimistic - but as the days turned into weeks and his search continued to prove fruitless, I could sense his mood darkening. He smiled less, and nodded his head curtly instead of waving at me. Finally, I decided he needed cheering up.

I found him parked in his usual spot overlooking the valley, sitting on a small folding chair, scribbling furiously in a notebook. He looked up when he heard my wheels creaking towards him.

“Morning,” he said, “How are you?”

“Not too bad. Got time for a bite?”

I held up what I’d brought - a stick of butter and a small loaf of sweet, spiced bread studded with tea-soaked raisins. A smile crossed his face.

“Bara brith?” he exclaimed.

“Fresh from the bakery. I thought you could do with a pick-me-up.”

“You shouldn’t have. Let’s share it - want some tea?”

“Oh, go on then.”

“I’ll put the kettle on.” He jumped up from his flimsy chair. “Come in, come in.”

He disappeared into the back of the van, and I followed at a cautious distance.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said as he frantically cleared a space on the couch-bed for me to sit. “I keep meaning to tidy up, but…”

“It’s okay.” I perched on the edge of the mattress. “I’ve always thought it’d be nice to live in a campervan. You could go to sleep in a different place every night, wake up to a different view every morning…Seems exciting”

“I thought so too. Reality turned out a little different.”

He put the kettle on to boil. I watched as he cut the loaf into slices and slathered them with butter. It was clear from his fumbling hands that he wasn’t used to company.

“So! What do you do…”

I was about to say ‘for a living’, but stopped myself. This didn’t look like the home of someone who was consistently employed. I cleared my throat and started again.

“So, what do you do exactly? I mean, the whole ‘researching strange phenomena’ thing. What exactly does that entail?”

“Well, I…” he hesitated, then squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. “I’m a full-time UFO chaser.”

“UFOs? I thought those only happened in America.”

“Oh, far from it! There have been sightings all over the world - Peru, Brazil, France, Scotland. We’re just the latest ones on the list. I’ll show you.”

Dropping what he was doing, he crouched down to rifle through one of his boxes. I stared at the top of his head - at his dark, thick hair that curled in every direction. For the first time, I noticed how soft it looked. I felt a sudden, inappropriate urge to reach out and touch it, which I quickly suppressed. I knew neither of us would ever recover from the embarrassment.

“Here!”

He pulled out a thick notebook which bulged with a mess of newspaper clippings, and began flipping through it. From my angle, I could see the pages he was turning - old headlines dating back to the 1940s, sensationalist magazine articles, blurry photographs of lights hovering over treetops, artists’ impressions of extraterrestrials. I began to realise that this wasn’t just a man with a hobby, but a man with an obsession.

“Look. Look at this,” he said, turning the notebook towards me so that I could see a cut-out newspaper article. It was dated January 23rd 1974, less than a year ago. “Read what it says. Multiple residents of the village of Llandrillo, in Merionethshire, reported seeing strange lights over Berwyn Mountain and nearby Bronwen Mountain.”

“I heard of that. Didn’t it turn out to be a meteor?”

“It was multiple lights, moving in multiple directions. And they heard noises too. What kind of meteor behaves like that?”

“Well…” I said doubtfully, “I don’t know…People do all sorts of things for a laugh, or to get in the local newspaper. Maybe aliens are real, and maybe they have visited Earth, but isn’t it more likely that people are just having a laugh?”

“It’s not just aliens, you know,” he said, “These entities could be anything. Interdimensional beings that manifest as lights. Demons from another plane of existence. Some kind of Soviet spy technology. Our future selves, come to visit their primitive ancestors.”

“You mean, like time travellers?”

“Exactly. They could be anything. We just don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”

I looked at the sky outside - the same sleepy Welsh sky I’d looked up at my whole life - and tried to imagine a flying saucer blotting out the sun. The very idea seemed preposterous.

“Why would they come here, though?” I wondered, “Why Wales? All we’ve got is hills and some old ruins.”

“Who knows? They could be researchers too, studying our environment, our biology, our behaviour. Maybe they’re as curious about humans as we are about them.”

His excitement was growing. There wasn’t enough room to pace up and down the van, so he stood in one spot and gesticulated wildly.

“That’s the problem with people! Most people just wake up, go to work, sit in front of the telly for an hour, and go to bed. They don’t care to ask questions, they don’t care to dream. They have no imagination, no curiosity about the world around them.”

He pointed emphatically to the window.

“There’s something out there! I know there is! Sooner or later, someone is going to learn the truth. Whether it’s me or some fellow in Texas, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we find proof. The universe has countless mysteries, and if we can unravel just one of them, it’ll be worth all the mockery.”

He must’ve seen the scepticism on my face, because he stopped and sighed, lowering his head.

“Maybe there is something out there,” I conceded, “But still, that doesn’t mean every story is true.”

“Of course,” he sighed, “Half of these UFO sightings are just pranks or acid trips or rare atmospheric phenomena, I know that much. But the rest…”

“Have you ever seen one?”

“No,” he admitted, “But I will. I know I will.”

The kettle began to whistle on the stove, putting an end to our disagreement. He made two cups of tea, sweetened with a thick dribble of condensed milk from an already open can.

“Here you go,” he smiled as he handed one cup to me.

“Thanks.”

He stood opposite me, leaning his back against the kitchen counter. For a while we were silent, sipping tea and eating buttered slices of bara brith from chipped saucers.

“So how long have you believed in UFOs?” I asked, hoping to envoke some happy childhood memories.

“As long as I can remember. I was just a little boy when I found out about the foo fighters.”

“The what?”

“The foo fighters. Strange lights seen by Allied pilots during the war. They would appear out of nowhere and chase after Allied aircraft, almost like they were toying with them. But they never caused any harm, and they moved in a way that defied all laws of aerophysics.”

“That must’ve been a sight to see. It sounds insane.”

“My parents said the same thing,” he chuckled regretfully, “Living in postwar Wales, well…they didn’t take kindly to the idea that they were being watched from above. They were from Cardiff, you see, and they had to endure two-thousand bombs falling on their city. All my wild ideas about alien aircraft and disembodied lights flying over their heads…They didn’t have patience for that kind of talk. They tried to beat it out of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m on my own now.” He awkwardly downed the rest of his tea and finished his last bite of bara brith. “The future! That’s all that matters.”

He deposited his empty cup and saucer into the tiny sink and began to wash them. His movements slowed, and he stood hesitating, before turning off the water and facing me.

“Listen, are you busy in the evenings?” he asked.

“Um…not really. When I get home from work, I just read a book or watch some telly until bedtime.”

“Then you should join me one of these days! We could search for the answers to life’s great mysteries.”

I started to laugh, but his expression was deadly serious. My smile faded.

“Me? But I’m not…Look, I don’t know anything about UFOs. And all I know about aliens is that film with the spores and the pod people.”

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t have prior experience. I’ve been driving around in this stupid van for years, staying up every night with a camera and a pair of binoculars, and so far I’ve got nothing to show for it. I need a second pair of eyes. And the fact you’re a newcomer means you might notice things that I overlook.”

“Oh. Um…”

“Besides, you’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s actually listened to me.”

“Well…” As I often did when uncomfortable, I sought refuge in humour. I straightened my back, squared my shoulders, and held out my hand officiously. “In that case, consider us colleagues, Mister Gethin.”

He shook my hand, and just like that, I was an honorary UFO chaser.

Against my better judgment, I began to accompany Gethin ap Daffyd on his quest to prove the existence of the non-existent. While other people were busy putting up Christmas decorations, we spent hours driving around the district, documenting strange rock formations or unusual markings on trees which he insisted were alien radiation burns. His passion seemed reinvigorated, but whether that was a positive or negative reaction to my presence, I wasn’t sure - either he felt bolstered by my friendship, or he felt a newfound desperation to prove himself.

Whatever the reason, his energy was infectious, and I couldn’t deny that I got caught up in it. There was a certain romance to the idea of another world existing beyond ours, and despite myself, part of me wished I could share his enthusiasm. I might not have believed in UFOs, but the idea of being the first person to capture credible, indisputable evidence of one held a certain appeal. To be part of a discovery that was historic, mind-blowing, possibly world-altering…who wouldn’t feel tempted?

But truth be told, that wasn’t why I spent all those hours sitting in his campervan, listening to him talk. It wasn’t the search that interested me, but the searcher. I couldn’t help watching Gethin’s hands as they moved animatedly, his strong forearms when his black sleeves were rolled up, the way he subconsciously rubbed his beard as if to soothe himself. I found myself thinking of him when I was at work, cycling home faster than normal so that we had more time to spend together, and missing the sound of his voice when I was eating alone in front of the television.

My visits grew longer and longer, until finally, we arranged to spend the bank holiday weekend staking out an auspicious spot in a forested patch of hillside, high above the valley. I cycled to our usual meeting place on Friday evening, bringing some camping supplie, a change of clothes, and a copy of The Magic Valley Travellers, and then he drove us up into the trees. Arriving at the roadside clearing which he’d scouted out, we went to work, setting up his camera equipment and testing his modified radios, which he claimed could pick up signals of extraterrestrial origin.

The three-day weekend passed as I expected it would: uneventfully. Gethin spent the days scanning the skies with his binoculars or fiddling with his equipment, while I sat in the van and read my book. To him, it was his life’s work, but to me, it was a very peculiar camping trip. Not my cup of tea, but certainly better than spending the festive season alone.

We spent the nights sitting by the campfire, wrapped in blankets, heating cans of soup on a portable stove while he told his stories. As our tiredness grew, our conversations faded away, and we sat in comfortable silence before retreating into our respective nests - me on the van’s narrow bunk, him in a sleeping bag by the fire.

On Monday morning, I woke to the sound of kitchen utensils clattering and Gethin humming under his breath. He was bustling around the tiny kitchen, rummaging through the chaos of tin-cans and vacuum-packed jerky. The window was open to admit a gentle breeze.

“Morning,” I yawned.

“Good morning,” he said as he heated up a frying pan on the stove.

“Did you stay up all night?”

“I tried to. I nodded off, though. I went through our time-lapse footage when I woke up, but we didn’t miss anything.”

He peeled open a tin of Spam, turned it upside-down, and smacked it until the block of processed pork fell out with a gentle thud. He cut it into slices and began to fry them. The air filled with the delicious, salty smell of cooking ham.

“Thanks for coming with me,” he said without looking up, “I know you don’t believe in any of this stuff. But I appreciate the company. I don’t really get to talk to people a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” I said uncertainly. “I know I’m not exactly the ideal UFO-hunting assistant…”

“No, no, I like to be challenged. It helps me remember why I’m out here. Stops me thinking in circles, just going crazy…”

The slices of meat sizzled in the pan. He turned them over with tongs to brown the other side. I went out into the bushes, freshened up, and returned to find that the table had been set, and he was pouring two cups of the blackest coffee I’d ever seen.

“Last chance saloon,” he said, “Come on, eat up. Today is going to be a big day, I can feel it.”

We sat down and picked up our mismatched cutlery. Gethin wolfed his breakfast at alarming speed, eager to get to work, while I sipped my coffee and savoured my Spam. He waited for me to finish, his leg jiggling impatiently. It wasn’t long before he filled the silence the only way he knew how: by regaling me with UFO tales.

Over the course of our relationship, he’d told me countless stories of alien abductions; of people being chased home by glowing orbs; of wreckage-strewn crash-sites and subsequent government cover-ups; of beaches where mysterious patterns had been drawn in the sand. I enjoyed listening to them the same way I enjoyed listening to any well-told story: as a work of fiction to be appreciated, but not to be believed.

“Isn’t it funny how they always look the same?” I said as he leaned back in his seat, “Always a flying disc and a big beam of light…always a little man, grey or green, with a big head and big eyes…It’s almost like people absorb each other’s stories and repeat them. Consciously or not.”

“Or maybe all the descriptions match because they all saw the same thing.”

“And the abductions? The medical experiments? The…probing? You don’t think one person got famous for telling a story, and then everyone else realised they could get famous too?”

“I doubt anyone wants to be remembered as the fellow who got snatched by a little grey man.”

“I’m not so sure…You’d be amazed the things people come up with.”

“So everybody is a liar?”

“I didn’t say that. Some people are liars, and some people see what they want to see. If you’re staying in a house that people keep telling you is haunted, well, you’re going to start looking at the shadows a lot differently.”

“Alright.” He sat down opposite me, resting his elbows on the table, clasping his hands together. His green eyes bore into mine. “When was the first recorded sighting of a flying saucer?”

“I don’t know. The fifties?”

“1878. Almost a hundred years ago. A farmer in Texas named John Martin saw a saucer-shaped object flying at - quote - ‘a wonderful speed’. And before that, in 1803, some Japanese fishermen found a hollow, saucer-shaped boat drifting off the coast. The entity inside presented itself as a young woman, who spoke to them in an alien language before floating away. So what do you think is more likely? That people in different countries and different cultures have been telling the exact same lie for nearly two centuries, or that we’ve been visited by other life-forms?”

“Well, I choose the third option: that sometimes the sky does strange things, and sometimes the human brain does strange things, and sometimes those strange things meet in the middle. If the right person sees the right thing at the right time, then boom, extraterrestrials exist.”

“Then what about the mass sightings in Europe in the 1560s? The hours-long dogfight between flying cylinders and flying orbs in Bavaria in 1561? None of those people had ever been exposed to the idea of an aircraft, let alone an aerial battle.”

“I mean, if hundreds of people in Strasbourg can have the uncontrollable urge to dance until their feet bleed, I think hundreds of people in Nuremberg can be convinced that a solar flare is a battle between angels and demons. Especially if they stare at the sun for long enough.”

Gethin sighed, leaned back, and chugged his now-cold coffee.

“I know it all sounds bizarre,” he said, “But can’t something bizarre be true? Think of all the things which used to be considered fairy-tales, or blasphemy, or lies. The shape of the earth, the concept of human flight, the health benefits of hand-washing. All of those things have been proven not just possible, but real.”

“But back then, we were looking at the truth from a place of ignorance. We’re not ignorant any more. Now, we’re looking for extraordinary answers to ordinary questions, because we want the world to be more interesting than it actually is. Sometimes the correct answer is the most boring one.”

“Well,” Gethin said, “You might be happy to live in a boring world, but I’m not.”

Silence fell, and I sensed that a line had been crossed. Our normally friendly arguments had, for the first time, turned hostile. Unsure how to salvage the conversation, I concentrated on polishing off my plate.

“Thanks for the Spam,” I said.

“No problem. Anyway!” he slapped his thighs, trying to perk himself up. “Ready to change the world?”

“Yep.”

The day passed in much the same manner as the two days before it, with camera checks and conspiracy theories and not a single UFO in sight. That night, disappointed but not discouraged, we began to pack up our equipment, ready to return to civilisation in the morning. As I struggled to collapse a telescopic tripod that seemed to weigh twenty pounds, I heard Gethin’s voice behind me say:

“Come look at this.”

I turned to see him lying flat on his back on the ground, staring straight up. I followed his gaze, but could see nothing except the night sky.

“What is it?”

“You can’t see it standing up. Come down here.”

I gingerly lowered myself onto the ground beside him, folding my hands behind my head so the soil wouldn’t get in my hair, and lay staring upwards.

“Where am I meant to look?” I asked.

“Everywhere. Just…everywhere.”

It was a clear night with only a few wispy clouds, and in the blackness sparkled a multitude of tiny white dots.

“I often do this to clear my head,” Gethin said quietly, “And every single time, I wonder if there’s someone out there, looking back at me, asking themselves if I exist. I wonder if they search their skies for answers, just the same as I do. And the possibility that the answer is no…that’s what breaks my heart.”

“Why?”

“Because this view is the most wonderful thing that’s ever existed. And if we’re alone in the universe…if we’re a freak accident, just floating on this blue anomaly of a rock until we die…that means we’re the only ones who can see it. And once we’re all gone, no animal will ever look up in awe. No living thing will ever worship the sun or sing songs about the moon. Trillions of stars will just keep existing, unseen, unloved, until the last gasp of the final photon decays into nothing. That’s why we can’t be alone. That’s why aliens have to be real. I need them to be real. Am I making any sense?”

“Yes.”

He drew a ragged breath and sighed it out, but whether it was a sigh of relief or melancholy, I couldn’t tell.

We lay side-by-side in silence. As I stared up at the stars, as millions of my ancestors had before me, I began to feel a curious sense of weightlessness, of letting go. It was as if my body had forgotten that I was lying in the dirt outside a grubby old campervan in Wales, and all I could see was the night sky stretching for eternity in every direction. I felt like I was the size of an atom, floating calmly in an infinite black ocean speckled with distant worlds that no human in a billion years would ever reach.

It should’ve been frightening, but instead it was peaceful. I was a tiny and insignificant particle, just like everyone else who had ever existed, and that was okay.

I quickly snapped back to reality. The ground was hard, the night was cold, and the stars were just stars. I sat up, wincing.

“It’s getting chilly,” I said through chattering teeth, “Let’s go back inside.”

“Sure.”

We clambered back into our seats, wrapping ourselves in blankets, and huddled together until warmth returned to our extremities. The more comfortable we grew, the sleepier we became. Without meaning to, we began to doze.

It was light that woke me. A bright, pale light shining through my eyelids, making me grimace and avert my face. Was it morning already?

“Mmphf,” I grumbled, “Turn it off.”

The light intensified in response. I forced open my tired eyes, blinking and squinting in the brightness. Beside me, Gethin was likewise stirring, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, alert.

Hovering over the dark trees, directly above the hood of our van, was a bright light. A search-and-rescue helicopter, I thought, probably looking for some lost hiker - but there was no noise. All we could hear was the rustling leaves and our own breathing. What kind of helicopter was silent?

“My God,” Gethin breathed. “It’s there. It’s right there.”

Shielding my eyes with my hand, I tried to make out the shape behind the light, but it was too dazzling.

“What is it?” I whispered. “Can you see? All I can see is light…”

“I’m not…I’m not sure. I need a better view.”

We were afraid to raise our voices above the barest murmur, as if we might somehow startle the light into disappearing. Transfixed, all we could do was sit there and gaze up at it.

The light slowly moved, rising higher in the sky until it no longer filled our vision. Then it began to move away horizontally, drifting further down the road at an almost glacial pace. Without taking his eyes off it, Gethin slowly reached in the direction of his rucksack, groping blindly in the space behind his seat.

“My camera,” he murmured, “Help me get my camera.”

But before I could move, as if sensing what we were plotting, the light halted abruptly. For a moment, neither of us breathed, and even the forest seemed to have frozen in time. Then, like a startled animal fleeing into the undergrowth, the light darted away from us across the treetops. Its speed horrified me as much as it awed me.

“Shit,” said Gethin.

He turned the ignition key, and the campervan’s motor rumbled to life. Cursing at the inadequacy of his own vehicle, he gave chase, accelerating down the road. I scrambled to put my seatbelt on.

“Are you sure we should be chasing it?” I cried out, “It might not be friendly…”

“But what if it’s trying to lead us somewhere? I need to see where it’s going. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Um, abduction?”

The light began to swing from side to side - sometimes darting in sharp zigzags, sometimes swaying in lazy undulations. Something about its movements seemed playful. I began to suspect that the consciousness controlling it, whatever or whoever it was, wasn’t interested in outrunning us. Why else would it be following the road when it could easily lose us among the trees?

“How?” I blurted out, “How is this possible?”

“It knew we were searching for it. It knew. So it found us first.”

“But…how…I mean…” I stuttered. Words failed me. “Is this fucking real? How is this happening to us?”

“Grab my bag. Get my camera out.”

“Okay.” I groped for his rucksack, but a swerve of the van caused it to lurch out of my reach. “Shit - I can’t - I’m sorry - ”

“Get my camera out! Take a photo!”

“I can’t - ”

“Now!”

I could see the needle on his speedometer moving further and further to the right. A new fear gripped me.

“Gethin?” I said.

“What?” he snapped.

“Maybe we should slow down.”

“What are you talking about? There’s a fucking UFO in front of us! We’re experiencing a one-in-a-billion event and you want to slow down?”

We were driving too fast in the dark, the glare of our headlights only illuminating a few metres in front of us. The trees, thrown into stark relief, seemed to jump out at us like monsters, then disappear just as quickly.

I was scared.

“Slow down,” I repeated, but Gethin couldn’t hear me. He was hunched over the wheel, peering up through the windshield.

“Erratic patterns…unpredictable movements…impossible speed,” he was muttering to himself, “No manmade aircraft could turn that fast without losing momentum.”

Then the forest ended, and we found ourselves speeding along a naked hillside. To our right, the hill rose so steeply that we were unable to see the top of it, and to our left, it fell away into a blackness so deep I couldn’t see the bottom. Realising I was mere inches from the edge, I instinctively recoiled, leaning away from my side-door and towards Gethin.

“Pull over!” I yelped, “Stop!”

“We’ve almost caught up with it! I’m not stopping now. I can’t!”

“Fuck the stupid UFO! Stop the van!”

“I can’t! We’re so close!”

“Gethin - !”

We both felt a stomach-dropping absence of ground underneath us. My blood ran cold, and then I let out an involuntary shriek as our front tyres hit the earth with a heavy thud, bringing us to a slamming halt. We both stayed frozen - him clutching the steering wheel with both hands, me bracing myself against the dashboard - while we waited for another impact, but it never came. I realised the van was resting at an angle, as if our rear was in the air.

The light was gone, and we were stuck in a ditch.

“Jesus,” I gasped. “Jesus, I almost had a heart attack.”

Gethin didn’t reply at first. His mouth opened and closed, and his green eyes were wide and unblinking.

“Fuck,” he suddenly said, “Fuck, are you alright? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. I just - I just need a minute. Just give me a minute.”

“Okay. Okay, hold tight.”

He tried in vain to reverse out of the ditch, but couldn’t find the purchase. As we swayed, a wave of nausea and dizziness washed over me; I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for it to pass.

“What if I get down there and push?” I said faintly.

“No, it’s not safe. You could get flattened.”

Finally, he gave up and turned off the engine - killing the headlights - and put his head in his hands.

“Fuck. I’m sorry,” he said, “This was my fault. I’m an idiot.”

I neither agreed nor disagreed.

We sat in silence and darkness, drawing deep breaths to steady ourselves, until we felt calm enough to climb out. The cold night air cleared my fuzzy head. Gethin fumbled in his rucksack for a torch, switched it on, and began to walk in desperate circles around the van, shining his light over the scene.

“Shit. We’re more stuck than I thought. Look, the rear tyres aren’t even touching the ground.”

I started to shiver. He approached me, aiming the torch at our feet so it wouldn’t dazzle us, and took off his black leather jacket and draped it around my shoulders. I held it close.

“Come on,” he said, “Let’s get off the road. Maybe someone else will come by.”

We made our way by torchlight to the grassy verge, where a low stone wall stood, and perched on it. I hunched forwards, pressing my cold hands into the folds of the jacket - I could still feel the drop in the pit of my stomach. We stared glumly at the dark shape of the crashed campervan.

“You’ll get it fixed up,” I assured him. “Don’t worry…”

“I’m an idiot,” he repeated. “I should’ve been thinking of our safety, but instead I was only…I was only thinking of the light. The stupid light.”

I could barely see his face, but I knew his expression was dejected.

“I’m okay, aren’t I?” I said.

“For a second, I thought - ” he hesitated, then rubbed his hands over his face, as if to try and clear his mind. “For a second I thought I’d got you killed.”

“Oh, please. I’ve ridden into bigger pot-holes.”

“I know. But the feeling…I’m so fucking sorry.”

I groped for his hand in the dark, and held it tight.

“Your hand’s cold,” I said.

“So is yours.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t get a photograph.”

“Forget the photograph. Forget the whole thing.”

As I sat and looked out across the dark hills and valleys, I realised we were going to be okay. I could see the distant twinkles of windows and Christmas trees and fairy-lights, probably a hundred people eating a late supper and watching television. People with cars and trucks and tractors who’d be willing to tow us out.

“Hey.” I nudged him with my elbow. “We found a UFO.”

“...Yeah. Yeah, we did.

“We should go get help.”

“We should.”

“And then we should head down to my local pub. We could both use a pint.”

“God, yeah.”

We rose unsteadily to our feet. Gripping his torch with one hand, and my hand with the other, Gethin led the way down the hill towards the lights of civilisation.

For @lordbettany

#aneurin barnard #fanfic #out there #simon ryninks #UFO chaser #Wales

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