HECTOR Beeley used to call in on us quite often during the following months, but he had little to report. The scientists were still puzzling over the cot. I told him about the teddy-bear incident, and he was at first minded to dismiss this as perfectly commonplace—probably a rat, despite our doubts. Then I remem­bered the ‘snowball’ incident, on a later visit. June was out on her rounds, so it was just Hector and me. Could the snowball be relevant? I described the event to Hector.

“Have you spoken to anyone else about this?” he asked, suddenly looking quite concerned.

“No—not even to June. In fact, I’d almost forgotten about it.”

“And the teddy-bear incident: only June and you, and your neigh­bours, know about that one?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” said Hector, reassured. “Let’s keep it that way. Anything you learn about, anything you see for yourself, that might be in some way ‘supernatural’, you tell me first. The last thing we want is frightened gossip all round the village. Now, have you noticed something in common about all these events?”

“Errrmm…” I pondered this for a minute.

“Surely you’ve noticed that all of them happened very close to a Foundling. Or should we say, ‘Changeling’? The cot: young Gabriel was inside it when it happened, and crawled out through the hole, quite unhurt. And he made straight for his parents: he clearly wanted a cuddle from them. Could he have made the hole, himself, from the inside?

“Then we have the teddy-bear. So little Deborah was jealous of her brother’s larger bear, as you’ve told me. Could she have grabbed the bear, taken it to a corner, and then destroyed it in a burst of spite?

“This snowball—you may think it’s nothing, but I’m wondering. You said that little Mary was hit by bits from the first snowball and it upset her: did she notice the second snowball coming at her and ‘shoot it down’ by means of some unknown power?”

“Good God!” I exclaimed, thunderstruck. “You don’t mean—surely you don’t believe that the Foundlings—the Changelings—”

“—have some hidden ‘power’ that enables them to disintegrate nearby objects.” Hector completed the sentence for me. “In the absence of any rational explanation, that is the only inference I can draw at this time. It is clear that they are very unusual babies—even if we discount the extraordinary manner of their arrival! My feeling is that they are indeed non-human—extraterrestrial beings planted upon us by unknown visitors from space. How it comes about that they look exactly like human babies—apart from the skin colour—I can’t explain. But not a word of this around the village!”

“Christ! This is getting far too deep for me. Can we bring the Reverend Dibley in on this? It’s not the sort of secret I want to hold on my own.”

Hector thought about this for a while. “All right, give him a call. Of the people I can trust in this village, you, June, and the vicar are the most reliable.”

It was while I was phoning Reverend Dibley that June reappeared. Hector repeated to her his speculations, as he had told me. She took it rather more calmly than I had done.

“I was suspecting something like this, right from the beginning. But I was afraid to speak my thoughts out loud,” she remarked.

“Just as well,” said Hector. “All reports of these events are now Classified, and in a moment I’m going to ask both of you to sign the Official Secrets Act—if you haven’t already done so. Also the vicar when he comes. So no talking about this to anyone—not without my clearance first.”

“I suppose that’s why news of funny goings-on in Wistbourne hasn’t been splashed across all the papers—nor have we heard anything on the wireless,” I remarked.

“Correct. There’s a procedure called a ‘D-Notice’ which can be issued to editors to ask them not to cover certain stories in the interest of National Security. This set of events could pose a threat to National Security, could it not?”

We pondered that thought, in silence.

The Reverend Dibley showed up soon after, and he agreed at once to Hector’s requests. It turned out that he too had been having doubts about the human nature of the Foundlings—and he said so.

“How does that reconcile with your beliefs about God’s Creation,” I asked, wondering if I was sounding too sarcastic. “The doctrine that God created Man and Woman in His own image? Can there exist other intelligent beings on other worlds, consistent with those beliefs?”

I saw June trying to shush me up, but John Dibley answered me quite clearly, without any sign of being offended. “God exists in many forms and many shapes. When we speak of His own image, we are not talking of His physical shape, but of His mind and of His soul. He could indeed have created beings in another world who do not have the human form, and provided they have the soul in His image, they can equally be said to be the image of God. His true shape is beyond our comprehension.”

This was a version of theology that had not occurred to me. John Dibley was indeed an enlightened and progressive cleric! I thought about my own indoctrination in my schooldays. The prayers at Assembly; the ‘Divinity’ lessons and all that—which had served merely to alienate me from religious belief and drive me towards agnosticism—atheism even. If John had been my Divinity master back in those days, it might have turned out very different…

“Do you believe there are ‘people’ out there? On other worlds?” I ventured to ask.

“Oh yes. I’m sure of it,” replied the vicar. “Not in our own solar system, I don’t think. But there are billions of stars out there in our own Galaxy. Surely many of them have got planets orbiting around them: it seems inconceivable that God saw fit to create intelligent life only on this one. Whether we have now made contact with beings from another world—I can’t answer that for sure.”

“What about Mars?” asked June. “Could there really be Martians out there—who built the canals? Do our Changelings come from Mars?”

“No, quite impossible,” replied the vicar. “Yes: I know a lot of people still believe in the ‘Martians’, and point to the ‘canals’ as evidence of artificial structures they have built. But almost all astronomers nowadays accept that the canals do not exist: that what Schiaparelli and Lowell thought they had observed were mere optical illusions. Besides, Schiaparelli named them ‘canali’ in Italian, which translates as ‘channels’, not ‘canals’. We now know that there is little or no oxygen in Mars’s atmosphere, which would make advanced life there impossible. We shan’t know more until we can send a rocket to the planet—but my guess is, that’s still many years ahead.”

“You are very well-informed on astronomy, Reverend Dibley,” put in Hector, who had been listening to this account with some interest.

“Oh yes—I at one time thought I would take up astronomy as a career, before I took my vows and entered into my living in the Church. As you realise from what I’ve been saying, I do not find the two interests incompatible. I keep a small telescope at the Vicarage, and I still take it out on dark nights.”

There was no more to discuss, except how we were to keep our watch on the village. I was not in the best position to observe, but both June, on her rounds as District nurse, and John Dibley, as vicar, were better placed to make discreet enquiries about the toddlers’ behaviour and find out about any ‘accidents’.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

So things continued with only a few isolated incidents, none of which could be definitely attributed to the Changelings. There was a mirror which had inexplicably dissolved, not into shards of glass as one might have expected, but into a pile of white sand-like material—evidently ground glass. There was a privet hedge in which a large hole suddenly appeared, accompanied by a mulch of finely-chopped greenery covering the ground beneath. We duly reported these events to Hector, and he merely asked us to continue our watch. After all, while a nuisance, these events weren’t actually a danger to anyone.

At least—not yet.

It was the late summer of 1953. There had been some changes in the village. The Howells, who had refused to formally adopt little Theodore and merely continued to foster him, had decided that they could no longer keep him: they passed him on to another couple who were already looking after a Changeling. They sent their elder daughter Phyllis, just turned 13, off to boarding school and moved out of the village. No-one had yet taken up residence in their rented cottage. The Changelings were now over three years old, and romping about gleefully—indeed proving quite a handful, but no more so than any normal three-year-old. It was being debated whether to set up a nursery school to accommodate them…when…

We were once again disturbed by a phone call while we were having dinner. The woman’s voice on the line sounded hysterical, and there were sounds of screaming and groaning behind it: it was Norma Freeman, a villager who lived only a few doors away from us.

“It’s Barry! He’s been hurt—badly! Please help us!”

Barry was Norma’s husband, who had a reputation of violent drunkenness at times. I didn’t know the couple very well. I quickly passed the phone to June, but listened in on the extension. “How exactly has he been hurt?” she was asking.

“He’s lost an arm! Part of it. Oh please come quickly!”

“Good heavens! Is he conscious? Is he breathing?”

“Yes, he’s breathing. He’s passing in and out of consciousness and groaning at times. His arm’s bleeding a lot: I’m trying to put on a tourniquet, but I don’t know how.”

“Don’t try a tourniquet. Grab a towel or something and use it to apply pressure directly to the wound. Also squeeze his upper arm with your other hand as tightly as you can. Should slow the bleeding. I’ll be round as soon as I can. Gavin, you know what to do.” And in a moment she was gone.

As soon as I’d phoned for an ambulance I followed June to the Freemans’ house. It was indeed a gruesome sight. Barry’s arm had been severed about midway down the forearm. There was no sign of the severed portion anywhere, but there was a mass of blood and tissue, including small chunks of bone, lying spread out on the floor. Norma was clutching their Changeling daughter, Ruth, trying to calm her down. June had applied a tourniquet: most of the bleeding had stopped and she was cleaning and dressing the wound. She had also administered some morphine. Barry was now more or less unconscious, which was just as well—the pain must have been excruciating.

There was no more we could do except keep a watch on Barry: June was constantly checking his pulse and breathing, until the ambulance arrived. June insisted on accompanying him to hospital; Norma of course wanted to go too, but the ambulance men didn’t have room to take both her and the child. So I promised I’d take her and Ruth to the hospital in my car.

Norma had, of course, to collect up some of Barry’s belongings, so she asked me to look after Ruth for a little while, and I duly obliged. As I was picking up the child, I noticed a spreading bruise on her cheek…

Once we reached the hospital, I took June to one side and asked her to discreetly enquire: had Barry been drinking? I was afraid to raise the topic with Norma. Barry had lost a lot of blood but the prognosis was good: he’d been given a transfusion and more pain-killers. They would have to amputate the arm higher up, above the elbow, but then the wound should heal up nicely. But he’d be without his right hand for the rest of his days…

It was only when we were back home that I broached the subject with June. There did not seem to be any object in the Freemans’ house that could possibly inflict such a frightful injury. Only then did I mention the bruise I’d seen on little Ruth. So could it be…?

Better phone Hector at once.

Hector arrived soon after, looking an extremely worried man, and with him were two lance-corporals from his unit. I’d held on to the keys to the Freemans’ cottage, and between us we made a thorough search. We could not find anything suspicious. There were some sharp tools including saws and an axe in a shed in the garden, but they could not be implicated. The dried blood and tissue on the floor was carefully scraped up and weighed: it did indeed match what was supposed to be the mass of tissue missing from Barry’s arm. It was as if he’d inadvertently plunged his arm into a meat-grinder—but there was no meat-grinder on the premises…

It was June who broke the silence, after we’d all stood for a long time, dumbstruck.

“We’ve had the cot, the teddy-bear, the snowball, and so on. We’ve got used to all that. But this!”

“I shall have to report this higher up, of course,” said Hector, cautiously. “Up till now we’ve come to accept that these Changelings, whoever they are, are ordinary and much-loved members of the local community. But that will have to change…”

Despite Hector’s, and our, efforts to keep this episode under wraps, it was inevitable that word got around the village. Resentment was surging; people were talking of ‘foreigners’; there was plenty of talk in the pub: ‘Worse than them Coloureds’ was a frequently-heard remark. As people who had been taught respect for folk of different races, June and I found this distressing—and the situation made June’s work more difficult.

Barry Freeman never returned to the village. Soon after he was hospitalised, Norma filed for divorce. It was more difficult, in those days, to obtain a divorce, but she was hopeful of succeeding on the grounds of cruelty. It emerged that Barry had been far from the model husband for years. Norma had known, possibly from little Ruth’s accounts, that Barry had been hitting the child. Barry had also been knocking Norma about at times, especially when he was in liquor. She had considered calling in the police once or twice: she had bruises to support her case, but in those days the police held domestic violence of little account. So she endured it.

In a not unexpected development, according to some of the villag­ers, Barry’s brother, Hugh, turned up soon after, and moved into the cottage with Norma. We did not make his acquaintance: June merely gave him a nod on her routine visits. Her disapproval was evident.

Eventually the authorities got busy. A judicial decision was made in the High Court, sitting in camera, to revoke all the adoption arrangements forthwith. Although parents had the right to appeal, they were warned that there would be no chance of their appeals succeeding. Indeed most of the parents were coming to accept that they’d have to give up the Changelings some time—and for many this was a relief…

There was a large Manor House that stood a little way outside the village, of which the owners were occupying only half the building. They were persuaded to let out the unoccupied part to become a sort of special school to house the Changelings. After a few months, during which some building and renovation work was carried out, the Changelings were moved into the building, with a couple of specialist Primary school teachers to supervise them.

And that was that. Or it should have been. June and I had already decided that we had to leave Wistbourne. I’d already obtained the emigration papers and we were preparing to sail for New Zealand in a few weeks’ time. With the Changelings out of the way, one might have thought the danger was past—but there was still ill-feeling amongst the villagers, and we were feeling not welcome once more.

It was just three days before we were due to sail that it happened. Once again there was a commotion in the village during the night, and we heard the jangling of bells from ambulances and police cars—but they did not come into the village itself: instead they seemed to be making for the Manor House. We wondered what was happen­ing, and started out for the Manor, but we were turned back by a policeman on the road. So all we could do was return home and wait…

Hector came to tell us the news the next morning. Hugh Freeman, Barry’s brother, had nursed a simmering resentment all along at his brother’s horrible injury, and had vowed to take revenge on the Changelings whom he held responsible. He had armed himself with a pump-action shotgun, broken into the Manor House, made his way to the Changelings’ dormitory, and shot each and every one of the fifteen children as they lay in their beds. Hugh had then offered no resistance as he was restrained by the two teachers and arrested when the police arrived. He was now in custody in Hereford, about to face multiple murder charges.

We could learn no more before we took ship. It was a few months later that Hector wrote to us. With all the children gone, he said, the operations in Wistbourne had been disbanded and he was about to be posted elsewhere. Hugh Freeman had undergone trial at Hereford Assizes, been found guilty on such evidence as could be made public, and sentenced to death. But, Hector told us, there had been an appeal held in camera at which the possible non-human nature of his victims was secretly discussed, and the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment—arousing a considerable amount of public anger, it seems. Hector understood that he would be quietly released after serving a few years.

And that was the last news we heard about the strange events in Wistbourne. We continued to exchange letters with Hector, but he steered clear of the subject. Much later on, when you were a little girl, Jacqueline, Hector often came to visit, though you may not remember him—but again he always steered clear of the subject. We also tried writing to John Dibley, but our letter was returned, with a note saying that he’d been appointed to a different living somewhere else in the country: the note didn’t say where. After that, we stopped trying to contact anyone in Wistbourne. The matter was closed.

And this, my dearest Jacqueline, is the end of my account of our experiences in Wistbourne. Make of them what you will. There may be more to the story than what I’ve told. Good luck!