13th September – Judgement Day
The BBC news reporter stood in front of the Dog and Ferret. Rod and Crystal Dowsing, and Tony stood beside him.
The reporter spoke to the camera: ‘It appears that the craft that may have been responsible for the destruction of Northchester Cathedral flew directly to the quiet Hampshire village of Waterford. It seems to have then become engaged in a battle between two unidentified groups.
‘Unconfirmed reports indicate that five bodies have been found in or near the woods behind the village.
‘Two residents from the village, who have been away for some months, were said to have reappeared this morning in the company of strangers.
‘At just after noon today, those people arrived at the local pub – the Dog and Ferret. The landlord of the pub, Tony Prichard, is with me here.’ The reporter turned to Tony. ‘Can you tell us what happened next, Mr. Prichard?’
‘Well, it was really odd,’ Tony began. ‘They rushed into the pub and insisted on immediately ordering food – as if their lives depended on it. When they’d finished ordering, a woman arrived and led them all to that spacecraft thing, and then they just flew away. It’s the oddest thing I’ve ever seen in my twenty-five years as a pub landlord.’
The reporter turned to Rod. ‘We also have here Rod and Crystal Dowsing who are national UFO investigators. Mr. Dowsing,’ the reporter continued, ‘I believe you might have an explanation for today’s strange events.’
Rod looked earnestly at the reporter. His brain immediately switched into a familiar mode in which he could weave a story around any unusual event in order to implicate a UFO from a far off galaxy – all without engaging any critical reasoning faculty that his brain might still possess. ‘It’s clear that Northchester Cathedral was blocking some vital energy source for the extraterrestrials,’ Rod began. ‘The cathedral lies on a ley line and could easily have been interrupting psychic forces. Blowing up the cathedral would be seen by the aliens as a form of acupuncture on a macro scale.’
‘What about the events here in Waterford?’ the reporter asked.
‘There’s no doubt that there must be a previously undetected ley line that runs from Northchester to here. We have ley line detection equipment in the van,’ Rod paused to proudly indicate the logo on his vehicle, ‘and we will be testing for these as soon as we can pass the police and army cordons.’
‘What about the people who were taken away in the UFO?’ the reporter continued.
‘It’s certain that they were shape shifting aliens – I gather that two of them were disguised as former residents of Waterford.’
‘Finally,’ asked the reporter, ‘why would they order lunch at the Dog and Ferret and then leave without eating it?’
On that point, even Rod’s in-depth UFO and extraterrestrial expertise was found wanting.
He was fortunately saved from embarrassment at that moment by a flash of light in the sky which, even though it was daytime, made it seem, for about two minutes, as if the Earth had just gained a second sun.