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Nik PerringTHAT LIGHT, THAT NIGHTThe flowers made me suspect it, gave me reason to suspect it, but the illnesses confirmed it. And I have to tell you, I’m a little worried; things haven’t been the same here since that light, that night. I think I’d like to blame it on the smoking ban. If that hadn’t been passed then I’d have known no different. It wouldn’t have stopped it happening but at least I wouldn’t know. Ignorance, bliss and all that? Summer 2007. August to be more accurate. I’ve tried to get an exact date for you but the sites that Google spews out are confusing and meant for people with a more scientific interest in these things than me, and meant for people with more brains. Sure, I’m a writer but that doesn’t mean I’m clever. On two small bushes were (I counted) at least fifty spiders So, at some point at the beginning of August 2007 I’d gone to the pub with my girlfriend. It’s a cosy little place at the top of our village, not all that far from the lights of Manchester which, on a clearish night, you can see from it. Behind the pub, up some steps, backing onto fields and hills, is the smoking area. There’s a wooden shelter there now, with lights and heaters, but then there was just grass, fences to keep the sheep out, and half a dozen benches. And one of those benches was where my girlfriend and I were sitting. It was dusk and we were just taking the tops off our first drinks.We could hear sirens wailing; there must have been some accident on the dual carriageway a mile or so down the road – and when we saw the light in the sky we assumed that it was in some way connected to it. It was an odd light, unusual and striking enough for me, when I saw it, to exclaim, “What the fuck is that?” I thought initially that we were looking at a helicopter’s search light, though a second later I knew that’s not what it was. It looked like a star. A little more orange than a typical star and much, much closer than one ought to be. It was certainly more mobile than any star I’d ever seen. And it was moving towards us, in a line as straight as if it had been guided by a laser. It was fast, it was purposeful and it passed straight over our heads. It was absolutely silent. And it was flying under the clouds. We watched it disappear beyond the hills and then we went inside, both feeling oddly unnerved. Of course, as would happen in a pub where you know people, you tell them what you’ve just seen. And when the barman said, “Meteor. It’ll have been a meteor. Meteor shower tonight, bud,” we felt relieved. Both me and my girlfriend had read about that. It was true. “It can’t have been a meteor,” my girlfriend said emphatically a few seconds later. “It was below the clouds.” I was less relieved on hearing that; the clouds that night were low and I knew that meteors barely tickled the fingertips of earth’s atmosphere. What followed were discussions of weather balloons, Roswell, tricks of light, optical illusions, shooting stars, aliens don’t exist, meteors and the like, and more of that odd, unnerved feeling before conversations moved on, back to jobs, football, TV and the weather. Until the barman went outside for a cigarette and saw it. He said it was just as we’d said it had been...  Later, when the sky was night-black, and I was outside smoking a cigarette, I saw it again. I rushed inside and ushered out a couple of witnesses. The light was on a slightly different course to the one it had been on when I’d first seen it, it was a few miles north though still travelling roughly west to east. It still looked more like a star than anything else, it was still tinged orange and it was still absolutely silent. Nobody knew what it could have been. And living not that far from Manchester Airport we’ve all seen plenty of flying things.Although no-one else saw it again that night, the story does not end there. The following week, on the bar and on every ledge and sill in the pub, vases filled with the most striking and unusual flowers had appeared. They were orange and fiery and round and strange and looked like shiny plastic baubles. I asked, with a view to buying some for my girlfriend, where they were from. “Some bloke,” said the landlady with her chewy Manchester lilt, “never seen him before. Just came in and dropped them off. All for free. Lovely, aren’t they?” The following week, while in my girlfriend’s garden, I noticed something else unusual and new. On two small bushes were (I counted) at least fifty spiders. (Seeing spiders in a garden is not unusual, living in the country; seeing that many is though.) They were not anything like the sorts of spiders I’d seen before. These were half as big again as garden spiders and had large jaws and those predatory front legs. The most striking thing about them, what made them stand out as being very different, was their colour; they were fiery orange and yellow. They remained in the bushes constantly for two weeks, and then, very suddenly, they were gone. -o0o- We’re now in October. Plenty of other unusual things have occurred since: reliable cars have become faulty, people have suffered odd month-long colds, strange sores have been found on the bellies of previously healthy family cats, the birds do not stop singing, the landlady’s husband has suffered a stroke and one man has had to have a toe removed. And do you know the worst thing about it? As I was driving home last night I think I saw it again. That fucking thing; that strange orange light. What next, I wonder. That Light, That Night is Nik Perring's first contribution to Unmadeup. 9:13 AM - 4/12/2007 - post comment
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