My software on my home pc seems to have screwed up. I am no-longer  
receiving your emails here at the camp. I just hope you're getting mine! 

Another disturbing night! 

We got our heads down real early - about 11.15 but we were woken  
abruptly shortly after 1.00 am. Something quite large came through our camp!  
Some of our belongings were scattered up to several tens of metres away. 

I think I was the first to wake up. There was a sound outside - difficult to 
describe but like a very loud rush of air - along with one or two very, very, 
loud popping noises. My ears went funny - you know the way they do when  
you travel by air! 

Larry was first out of the tent -.me immediately behind him. We were too 
late to clearly define the receding shape - but it was huge - as it disappeared  
very fast into the swirling mists which, even as we watched - seemed,  
themselves, to be sucked into its 'wake'. 

Everything went death quiet immediately after and within minutes our 
impressions of what happened slowly altered until we were able to rationalize 
the incident. We decided  it was a freak gush of wind - possibly amplified by the  
funnelling effect of the trees around the tent position. 

We were still spooked though. Larry had an ideal: we would set my camera up 
just inside the tent so that it poked out one of the small zip slits at the bottom 
next to the ground sheet. I have a PIR (passive infrared detector) with me 
which I often rig to the camera when filming animals outside. It can be  
configured to fire the digital swtich or the video one! 

We set everything up and went back to an uneasy sleep. I think in the  
back of all our minds was the fear that a large animal like a horse  
had stampeded through... although we didn't hear any hoof beats.  
We set the camera to emit the loudest synthesised click (it can make 
a camera shutter noise quite loudly) so should anything else come  
through the camp, we might get an earlier warning. 

The damn thing went off around 4.00 am. I woke up immediately but  
there was no loud noise like before. Larry flicked on a torch within a  
second of me  jumping up. We were both surprised to discover we 
were the only people in the tent. 

Vanessa was gone! 

Larry leapt outside struggling to put on his trousers and shirt. I went to 
follow but as I exited the tent, I realized he was already obscured from 
vision due to the thick mists. I could hear him shouting out Vanessa's 
name.  I thought (I'm no coward - you understand) it better if I remained 
at the tent  to act as a voice beacon to guide him back should he became 
disorientated. 

I shouted to him that I would remain. Even in his panic to find Vanessa -  
he was clear thinking enough to shout back and confirm I should stay put! 

I recovered the camera and played back the image. 

This might sound funny to you - but when I saw the image, I didn't know 
whether to laugh or cry. It showed Vanessa clearly walking off into the   
woods,  presumably half-asleep and dying for a wee... although it seemed 
odd that she didn't bother to put on a coat or something. It is cold as death 
here at night. 

I was about to check the previous images to see what Larry and Van had  
taken earlier, when I heard Larry screaming my name urgently outside.  
Camera still  in hand - I rushed out. 

I could see him just through the mist - arm waving frantically - "Quick Mol, 
come with me - hurry man - Van's in trouble... " - and I ran towards him as he  
darted off frantically. 

Sh*t... my laptop's beeping - the battery's about to go down.. sending now - 
I'll fill in later - when I've changed them out...    we're in one giant mess here 
this evening!! 

More soon! 

mol 

(continued) 

Day 4 -  Monday  - October 18th  1999 - 11.30 pm 
To friends.  
 

I have changed the batteries. I am in urgent need of company and friends. 
As I 'tap', 'tap', feverishly away - it is more now a need  than a whimsical 
desire to stay in contact.  

 Larry is missing! Vanessa lies asleep in the far corner of the tent - too 
 exhausted and 'damaged' to be disturbed  by my frantic activity to get this 
 email out. I am hopeful that Larry will return and that I will at any moment 
 hear his footsteps outside and his normal greeting of "Watch yer Mol, me 
old mate." 

 I must focus on my account - where was I ... oh yes:- 
 ------- inserted ---- 
 I could see him just through the mist - arm waving frantically - "Quick Mol,  
 come with me - hurry man - Van's in trouble... " - and I ran towards him as he   
 darted off frantically.  
 ----------------------- 

 I found Larry at the bank of the stream. It was as I drew close that the  
more  desperate cries of Vanessa led me to them. I think the only time 
I have heard  human voice in such pain and confusion was when I was  
present at a child-birth. 

There are some sounds that we, as humans make, that are programmed  
into our brain stems... they are primeval and demand immediate attention. 
Instinctively, I knew this sound. It was the utterance a member of one's  
own species makes to beg your help  and yet to warn you to stay away. 
It is the sound of prey confronted by, and made victim to -   the predator! 
 

When I broke through the mist at the bank, my mind was filled with dread. 
I have often thought that it is ignorance which feeds fear. To know something, 
to obtain that last residue of detail, that missing fact preceding the unknown... 
often dispels all fear like a morning breeze dispels the dark negative  
thoughts of a waking mind. 

Nothing could have been further from the truth as I broke through the 
mist and beheld my friends not more than 20 yards away.  

I was struck with bewilderment and confusion. Vanessa was there,   
grotesquely bent, and fighting something which assailed and assaulted  
her - shapeless - a darkness - huge and formless in the mist. I could see  
her clearly - her head bowed back, her mouth a prolonged and intensive  
scream - a gaping mouth  like that of one who vomits - driven - uncontrolled.  
Hers spewed forth - not the contents of her belly but the invisible cold life 
that now filled her -  a desperate attempt at evacuation of the womb and 
the evil torrent filling it! 

And as I watched - mesmerized - I saw a transformation... her face appeared 
to change, slowly at first until it was her no-more... but another woman... 
face rapture... a face I had seen before: The Chelsham Witch! 
 

Of the assailant - there was no trace - except for the space left by the 
trailing tendrils of forest mist as it curled and swirled round its massive  
pounding and fervour! 

I could see Larry, my dearest friend impotent to grasp and grapple at  
whatever now pinned his loved one, like an inanimate toy, against the  
bough which held her body from breaking. Suddenly, the air was a living thing 
- a swirling dense fabric which stifled breath and rushed into the ears as if to  
rip through to the brain with unrelenting pressure. In that moment, the  
shape that was nothing,  for a moment, was gone. In its place - there... 
upon Vanessa... a solid beast... 

...something before the day of science. Something 
old. Something which the modern world would fail to understand or  
acknowledge! 

Have you ever known fear?  
    

It is the thing which floods through veins, turning strong muscle  
to damp cloth... 'crusading thoughts' to rabbit-farts. It displaces all   
academic posturing with the gut-feel of beast-instinct and  
survival-action.  

I learnt today that my reaction to complete and overwhelming fear   
is 'paralysis'.   

Where I should have intervened: I did nothing!  

My only action was to raise that infernal camera - like a western   
photo-journalist would raise his lens to record the complete  
annihilation of an entire third world village by murder - and think  
himself not a part.. nor involved... with such atrocity; like a microscopist  
would when murdering an 'insignificant' living form - so minute that  
its pain and suffering is inconsequential to the importance of the study;  
like a pornography photographer would capture the 'meat' and 'heat' of  
'reproduction'...  instead of the passion and fervour of a species  
reliant upon atmosphere and  magic to blur the fact that we are all still   
animals...   

With the same easily discarded but obscene guilt - I raised my camera   
towards my friends in the mist - not more than 20 yards away - and    
watched as Vanessa was assaulted cruelly and inhumanly by the beast,   
and my strong and normally omni-present friend, Larry, was reduced to  
a man clutching mist and shadows in his impotent attempts to deny   
such mental and physical pain to his loved-one!  

My only thought..?  

I hoped the camera made me invisible!  

I can't continue now.. I'm sorry! I must sleep. I don't know yet what  
confronts us tomorrow... or worse:  tonight.  

Since that time in the early hours of today - much debate and rationale  
has been applied to these events. I have learnt much from Larry's diary   
and from what both of them have now told me but kept from me earlier.  

Have you heard of the term Incubus?  Maybe not.. nor I before this day! 

This is no 'have-a-break-mol' camping holiday.. it is a trip into ones  
worst nightmares. For you, maybe it is just mol - good old creative  
mol - tapping in another yarn in the comfort of his armchair... 'the boy who  
cried wolf' stems to mind. For me - it is a dark night - nigh on alone -   
in a place of shadows, demons, and the darkness that prevailed in  
a world before science.  

I am tempted for three reasons to destroy the image I took today: one -  
the modern world is ill-equipped to understand the events transpiring  
here: one cannot witness them through the eye and mind, but through   
the heart, gut, and soul.  

More than this,  I would like to destroy it because of my guilt:  I  
did nothing to help my friends!  
    

Overwhelmingly - I should destroy it for a single reason. I have   
recorded here - something nameless... a beast... an obscenity to the  
natural world.   
    

I sense it knows.  
    

I fear it might come for me!  
    

mol