A strange object is seen floating in the air by the police......

What is this weird manifestation ?  

From where has it come ? 

Is it like crop circles ? 

A student prank ? 

A hoax ?

The miltary are summoned.... As the situation unfolds it becomes clear that this is no prank.

 And as more is learned about this peculiar and unprecedented occurrence, there are far more deadly implications...

                                           AND

                                                                     A sneak peek into The Visit

Bill, my Sergeant, looked up at the sky.

“Can’t see anything,’’  he said.

I looked up. There were plenty of stars all bright and twinkling, some little wisps of cloud, and not much else. I pulled my coat collar up around my ears and shivered. Every time someone spoke you could see their breath in the cold air.

“Nope,”  I agreed.  “Must be a college rag.”

The two policemen reached us.

“Morning,”  I said. “Where’s this Sphere, then?”

The taller one of the two, who turned out to be the driver, coughed.

“Sorry, fellahs, it disappeared.”

“Hell!”  I said.

I couldn’t have cared less where the damn thing was. All I could think was that I’d been dragged out into a freezing cold night on a wild goose chase. The other policeman spoke.

“Bloody good job if you ask me!”

“You’d better give me the whole story,” I said resignedly.

The driver pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes and offered them round.

“Well, we noticed this funny blue thing up in the sky, see, and we started to follow it, ‘cause it looked a bit weird. It kept to the road, which we thought was most obligin’ , and about a mile back it sort of rose up and down quickly, three times, like as if it was going over three big bumps.”

I puffed my cigarette.

“What did you do?”

“Flashed me lights at him,” said the driver.

Bill McGuffy had been listening to this without comment, muffled up in his coat like some great beetle, and now he turned to me with a bored expression.

“Come on, Dave. Let’s go home. It’s just a massive hoax.”

“Seems that way,” I agreed.

We all looked up and round again to satisfy ourselves that it was just a massive hoax. The clear night sky was quite empty.

“Okay,” said the driver dubiously. “I’d better have your names for my report.”

“Oh.”  I pointed to Bill. “That’s Sergeant Bill McGuffy.”

Bill pointed to me.

“And that’s Major David Armstrong.”

The driver scribbled this information down in his inevitable notebook.

“Thanks,” he said. “Well, we’re off. I’ve got a wife keeping my bed warm, and Christ, am I cold!”  He grinned, and they both turned and walked towards their car.

Bill hopped into the driving seat of the jeep and I stepped up onto the running board. No longer feeling so tolerant towards the tiny twinkling stars, and wishing I was back in my bed, I glanced up for a final look round.

And suddenly I felt very ill.

High up in the night sky, I could see a perfect sphere, glowing blue. 

It didn’t move, and no sound came from it. It just hung there, for all the world like a bloody great blue eye, watching us broodingly. 

I grabbed McGuffy’s arm.

“Look!” I said quietly.

Bill looked up. 

“Clever,” he murmured.

I turned round and called the policemen.

“Is that it?”

The policemen whipped round and stared upwards. The driver gaped at it.

“Cripes !”

The little one took one glance and dashed for the car, shouting,  “I’ll tell the Chief !”

Review of The Visit

Railstorm wrote - "I was just reading The Visit and am really enjoying it."