Tomorrow's Ghosts Read Online Free PDF Page B

built in Denburgh, the hill was a sacred ritual site and that two Neolithic standing stones were subsequently incorporated into the fabric of the church tower. Neither of us are sure if this was just Mediaeval stone masons being thrifty with their building materials or else covering their bets (and their souls) by backing both the Old Religion as well as the new.
    “Finally it starts to grow dark, though with this being high summer, it is not until well past eleven o’clock that the skies are black enough for astronomy. You gaze through the telescope then suddenly exclaim ‘Bloody hell! The planets really are aligning along the plane of the ecliptic, just as the ancient prophesies foretold. And look at the Moon, it’s turning blood-red in colour!’
    “You ask me the time. I look at my watch and then lean over the parapet of the tower to check the church’s clockface. ‘In the real world,’ I reply, ‘it is 15 minutes to midnight but here in Denburgh it’s still only 25 minutes past eleven.’ Then we look at each other and realise the only sound we can hear is the slow, deep, repetitive tock, tock, tock coming from the clock mechanism lurking in the chamber beneath our feet.”
    Ursula pauses briefly in the telling of her tale and once more I see that far away look in her eyes.
    “The seconds become minutes,” she says “I check my watch again. And again and again. The countdown to midnight is underway. Five minutes to go. Four minutes. Three minutes. Two minutes. One minute. Midnight. Then... nothing.
    “Nothing for about 40 seconds but then we hear a deafening, earth-rendering roar begin to rumble and roll all around us. I see trees in the distance violently shaking. Lights in nearby houses flicker on and off before being extinguished forever. The surrounding hillsides ripple as they are convulsed by earthquake-like forces. Yet where we are, bizarrely, all is calm and still, with the church tower not moving, not even shaking, while all around us the cataclysm rages.
    “Perhaps another minute of chaos ensues before the entire valley lying in front of the church erupts into a wall of fire and flying debris.
    “Then you shout out ‘Since when did Norfolk become a volcano zone?’ You are right. The only way to describe the inferno surrounding us is that it’s as if we’ve been pitched into the caldera of an active volcano. Where minutes ago there were the green rolling hills of arable farmland, there is now the cherry-red glow of flowing lava, while pyroclastic clouds envelop the water-meadows that this morning were still the haunt of dragonflies.
    “But, once again, there is the glaring anomaly of our own location. The fumes, the heat, the flying ash, the lava flows. None of this reaches us on our hilltop. Neither the church nor the rectory are affected by the volcanic activity. In fact our perch at the top of the church tower is growing decidedly chilly as the cool, damp air of a typical English summer night swirls around us.
    “More time passes. In the sky I can see huge pieces of white-hot rock plummeting down towards the Earth and in the distance enormous plumes of impact debris being thrown up high into the atmosphere. Falling meteors? Perhaps the fragments of an asteroid or meteor the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs?
    “Above us the sky, jet black with no trace of the Moon. Below us, the ground has been ripped apart, the terrain unrecognisable as deep canyons, filled with swirling magma, buckle and fold around our hilltop.
    “To the west, the entire night sky is momentarily illuminated by the brilliant flash of white light that seconds later transforms into a giant mushroom cloud. ‘Ah,’ you say, ‘That’ll be the arsenal of nuclear weapons, that officially aren’t stockpiled in this country, detonating at the Mildenhall and Lakenheath air force bases,’ before returning to watch the carnage unfold around us.
    “Then I see something flying high above our heads, the light of