The Terror of Talgarth Lighthouse.

A previously unknown Uncanny episode.

If you have missed them, read Parts One and Two. Part One Part Two

Part Three.

The Lighthouse.

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‘Ah’ll poot the kettle on.’ Rudi took the kettle over to the sink while the crew settled around the table in the kitchen which obviously also served as the main living room. It looked lived in, very lived in. Empty biltong wrappers lay in dark corners, and a lonely tin of Windhoek Lager stood half empty and forgotten on the windowsill.

‘What part of Wales are you from?’ Danny was desperate to strike up some sort of conversation with their host, even if he couldn’t understand a word the man said.

‘Ahm originally frum Johannesburg.’

‘Isn’t that South Africa?’

‘Mah femily moooved tuh Suth Efrica, but originally they was from Wells.’

Danny’s ear was getting tuned into the lingo, so he felt a bit more confident. ‘When did they move there?’

‘Huh, back in the suvuntees.’

‘You must have been quite young then.’

‘Huh, thus was before ah was born.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Danny didn’t see at all, it just seemed the right thing to say. ‘I suppose they moved there for work.’

‘Nah, it was the Boer War.’

‘The Boer War?’ Danny was now totally confused. ‘But wasn’t that…’

‘Huh, the first Boer War, eighteen suvuntees.’ He put the kettle onto a gas ring. ‘Rooibos tea okay for you guys?’

‘Ooh, could I have a coffee please?’ Danny asked, his caffeine levels now catastrophically low.

‘Nah, dun have no coffee. Rooibos tea or wortah.’

‘Tea will be lovely thanks,’ Evelyn cut in as she saw Danny approaching some sort of meltdown.

‘Argus you guys mussby ruddy teet?’

‘Sorry?’ Danny said.

‘Yuh hungry?’

‘Oh yes please,’ Ciarán piped up, suddenly wide awake and having no trouble understanding that offer.

‘Ah guessed you might be hungry arfter the droive so ah hed something ruddy.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Ciarán said, mildly salivating, having had nothing to eat since their last stop an hour and twenty minutes ago.

‘Which part of Wales did your family come from?’ Danny asked, determined to get to the bottom of this man’s Welsh origins, and why he had seemed so angry when Danny said he was South African?

‘Lustre.’

‘Leicester,’ Danny said, ‘but surely that’s…ow!’

Evelyn kicked him hard in the shin under the table. It was a secret sign language they used, and a kick to the shin, hard enough to cause excruciating pain, translated to, we’ve got a right fruitcake here, don’t make him angry.

‘Mah gret gret gandmutha was from Lustre. Huh name was Ovens.’

‘Ovens?’ Danny winced as Evelyn kicked him again.

‘Evans,’ Evelyn translated.

‘Thet’s what ah said. Ovens. It’s a Welsh name you see?’ Rudi flashed an angry look at Danny, daring him to challenge his undoubted but very doubtful claim to Welsh ancestry.

‘But your name is Pretorius,’ Danny persisted, failing miserably to read the room, ‘so I am guessing there is at least a little bit of Afrikaans in the mix somewhere too?’

‘Yuh, all of thum.’ Rudi carried on crashing things around on the cooker.

‘So what paranormal things have you been experiencing here?’ Evelyn asked to steer the conversation to why they were here, and away from their host’s ancestry. ‘Why did you email Uncanny about it?’

‘Ah dun normally lark tooo listen to such rubbish as Uncanny,’ he said, plonking plates onto the table,’ but you hed that story about the farm in Wells.’

‘Heol Fanog?’ Evelyn said.

‘Yuh, the pussed penter and his family with orrl that bissniss with the parr supply and some old woman.’

Danny prodded the strange object on his plate that resembled something an irresponsible dog owner had failed to scoop off the pavement. The owner of a very large dog.

Rudi noticed his expression. ‘That’s Boerewors,’ he explained. ‘Try it. Ah get them specially sent ovah.’

‘And is this some sort of mashed potato?’ Danny prodded the mound of insipid looking mush next to the scatological specimen on his plate.

‘That’s pap.’

You can say that again, Danny thought to himself.

‘Its porridge made from maize,’ Rudi explained, settling himself at the table.

‘Sausage and porridge,’ Danny prodded it with his fork again. ‘An unusual combination, but it is somehow poetic.’

‘That’s a traditional dish where ah come from.’

‘Which is…’

Evelyn kicked Danny again. ‘It’s lovely, thank you,’ she said diplomatically. ‘So you were telling us about the things that have been happening here, and I understand it involves cricket bats?’

‘Thus raht,’ Rudi said, ‘and the voices. The voices are worse than the bets.’

‘Bets?’

Evelyn kicked Danny again. ‘Tell us about the bets, I mean bats.’

‘Ah dun lark tooo mess with the bets. Thuy don’t bother me if ah leave them alun. If ah touch them, they floy about lahk crezy so ah leave them alun. It’s the voices. Drarvin me insane’

‘What do the voices say?’ Evelyn asked, tucking into her sausage.

‘Ah dun lark tooo guess. It’s a language ah don’t understand.’

‘Could it be Welsh?’ Danny asked.

Evelyn gave him another kick.

‘That was delicious,’ Ciarán said, ignoring Danny’s cry of pain, his plate already cleared.

‘Would you lark some more?’

‘Oh yes please.’ Ciarán looked as happy as a puppy with several tails.

‘And me please.’ Lucy pushed her plate across the table, the rowing and sea air having given her an appetite.

Rudi took their plates to the cooker and took an enormous coil of brown sausage from the oven, hacking off two large chunks and adding a dollop of pap to each plate. ‘Anybody else?’ he asked. Danny and Evelyn declined his kind offer, still struggling with the unappetising objects in front of them. Rudi dropped a large chunk of sausage to his own plate and sat back down.

‘You were telling us about the voices,’ Evelyn reminded him.

‘Ah, yus. The voices.’ He let out a deep rumbling belch that would have set several of Ciarán’s meters into the critical zone. ‘Better aht than in,’ he said with no hint of embarrassment. Eighteen years of living alone on an island had eroded his manners somewhat.

‘Ah dun lark tooo guess what they are saying, but ah can guess they is nut happy. Sarnds like doors benging and tooo guys sharting.’

‘Now that’s interesting.’ Evelyn sensed there could be more to this than a mad Bokke who had spent too long living by himself on a rocky island with nobody to talk to except seagulls and gannets.

‘Two lighthouse keepers who were stationed here in the 1950s simply vanished, and no trace of them was ever found,’ Evelyn continued.

‘When do you hear these voices?’ Danny asked, giving up on food and wondering if maybe there was an old forgotten jar of coffee hidden away in the back of one of the cupboards?

‘Any tarm, day or nart. The boggers can go on for arse. Ah know its tooo men becorse ah’ve sin them.’

‘You’ve sin them?’ Evelyn repeated. ‘I mean seen them?’

‘Yah. Ah dun lark tooo hang ararnd when they get lard, but I’ve sin them many tarms.’

‘Now this really is interesting,’ Evelyn said, meaning Rudi’s story, not the pap that she was prodding with her fork. ‘What do they look like?’

‘Ah dunno. When we see each other, ah always ran orff one way, and they ran orff the other way.’

‘It could be mould,’ Ciarán suggested between forkfuls of his enormous sausage. ‘A damp environment like this creates the perfect conditions for aspergillus, and we know the hallucinogenic effects of mould spores can be very pronounced.’

‘Could we not just find out what the story is first Ciarán before you write it off as hallucination or sleep paralysis?’ Evelyn said. ‘You just tuck into your bangers and mash and we’ll do the investigating first.’

‘Shouldn’t we be recording this?’ Danny asked.

‘Lunch break,’ Lucy replied as she finished licking her plate. ‘And you didn’t tell me you were going to start.’

‘Well, normally you would start recording before we even got to the door.’

‘That was travel time.’ She picked up her microphone and put on headphones before tapping something on her phone. ‘Right, you’ve got two hours, then I get a tea break.’

‘Are all sound recordists this bolshie?’ Danny whispered to Evelyn. ‘She’s worse than Mike.’

‘At least she turned up,’ Evelyn reminded him. ‘Anyway, they can blag the intro back in the studio. It’s amazing what Ai can do these days.’

‘So Rudi,’ Danny asked, trying to get the programme back on track. ‘Apart from the cricket bats and voices, is there anything else?’

‘There’s the flars.’

‘Flars?’ It was Evelyn’s turn to look puzzled.

‘Pentings of flars on the doors.’

‘Flowers?’ Evelyn guessed.

‘Yes, flars. Somebody said they were rowsies, but ah dun think so. If they’re supposed to be rowsies, they’re pretty shit rowsies.’

‘What about the roses?’ Danny asked, now getting the hang of the Afrikaans accent.

‘Well, several tarms they was sended orff and pented owvuh bot they com beck.’

Danny gave up again. Perhaps going visual rather than audio might help. ‘Can you show us?’

‘Huh, yeah. Everybody finished?’ Ciarán and Lucy both looked longingly at the oven but nothing was said, so Rudi began to clear the table. ‘Greb yer stuffs and follow me.’

A door from the kitchen led into a wide, bare corridor with windows on one side looking towards the way they had come, and doors on the opposite side. Danny hurried down to the far end where two cricket bats leaned against the end wall.

‘These must be the bats.’ He went to pick one up.

‘Ah really wouldn’t dooo that if ah wuh yooo.’

Danny took his hand away quickly as if they contained the plague and looked at the end door instead. ‘Oh, and is this one of the flowers?’

‘Yah. The doors was pented a few years ago. The decorators sended them orff, but over the next few days they com beck. Lark somebody was penting them when ah wasn’t looking. So they sended them orff and pented them over again, but every tarm they com beck.’

‘Facinating.’ Danny was into the groove now. A real story was coming together at last, and they could get this episode of Uncanny moving. ‘What do you make of that Evelyn?’

‘Well obviously, Wales is an ancient land that dates back to Neolithic times, with its Celtic origins and a history of witches. There are also ley lines connecting ritual sites, and many reports of mysterious plane crashes.’

‘That’s fascinating Evelyn,’ Danny said, wondering how any of that could possibly be relevant? ‘What are your initial thoughts Ciarán?’

‘We have to remember that behind every reported phenomenon there is a perfectly rational explanation. As I have already mentioned, there could be mould in a building as damp as this which is known to cause hallucinations.’

‘So we could be hallucinating right now,’ Danny suggested, ‘and these rowsies, I mean roses, are not even here?’

‘Exactly,’ Ciarán agreed.

‘Of corrse they’re bleddy here.’ Rudi rubbed his finger across one of the flowers. ‘Ah can bleddy feel it. Are you saying I’ve gone sorft in the head or something?’

‘No, but we have to remain open to all possibilities. Hypnagogia could also explain it.’

‘Ooh, that’s a good word,’ Danny said. ‘What’s that really good one, something to do with smells?’

‘Oh, you mean phantosmia? Well, yes, that is a good word too, and another possibility. Rudi could simply have been imagining the smell of fresh paint. It could be nothing more than a triggered memory.’

‘Nah, ah don’t think so. Ah think they used wortah based acrylic. Doesn’t have no smell.’

‘Cryptomnesia is also an excellent word,’ Ciarán added.

‘That’s the red rose of Yorkshire isn’t it?’ Danny said, taking a closer look.

‘And glossolalia is a positively fantastic word,’ Ciarán said.

The building shook with a violent tremor.

‘What was that?’ Danny asked, looking around as if the answer would somehow be visible.

‘Ah dunno. It does that sometarms, usually when the voices are really engry.’

‘It could be natural infrasound,’ Ciaran said, rummaging around in his holdall full of meters, ‘or maybe there is an underground railway nearby?’

‘We’re two hundred and fifty miles from London,’ Evelyn said. ‘I think it’s unlikely to be maintenance on the Jubilee Line.’

‘Oh, there’s one on this door too,’ Danny pointed at the next door along. ‘This one’s white, so could that be the other one? Lancashire?’

The building shook again. A rumbling sense that was felt through the feet rather than heard.

‘Ah, now that is interesting,’ Evelyn said, peering closely at the painted white flower before turning to Danny. ‘Each time you mentioned the roses, the building shook. That was a definite correlation. Have you noticed that before, Rudi?’

‘Nah, but ah’ve never had nobody to talk tooo so why wud ah?’

‘We don’t know it was a correlation,’ Ciarán thought aloud, ignoring whatever it was Rudi had just said. ‘It could be explained by coincidence, or sleep paralysis.’

‘Sleep paralysis?’ Evelyn looked at Ciarán as she would look at a performing monkey. ‘May I point out that we are all wide awake.’

‘Well, you might be, but after a heavy lunch, I’m halfway to a siesta already.’

‘Try it again Danny,’ Evelyn said.

‘Try what?’

‘Well, say something about the roses.’

‘Like what?’

‘You could say hyperaesthesia,’ Ciarán suggested. ‘That’s another excellent word.’

‘I don’t know,’ Evelyn said, ignoring Ciarán. ‘What was it you said about that red one first? That it’s something to do with Yorkshire? It’s actually called the Yorkshire Rose, isn’t it?’

‘Oh now that’s interesting,’ Ciarán said as the building tremored again.

It wasn’t the tremor that everybody noticed however. They followed where Ciarán was watching to see one of the cricket bats rise into the air and move towards Evelyn.

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Next.

Part Four, the final gripping instalment.

Exodus.

Read it HERE.