239: Upward

From a few clicks back it looks at first like a stone circle. My voice crackles over the radio: “I didn’t know Lincolnshire had stone circles!” The monoliths are tall and spindly, crooked; flying in closer I see they are actually tree trunks, some long dead, some are hosting newer growth with younger trees sprouting from the dark husks of lumber. A voice buzzes in my headset: “it’s the witches cove, a hell a lot of witching happened there in the old days, lol”. The circle of trees surrounds a raised mound of lighter, younger grass. Is this a burial mound, or landing pad? Or both?

Above looms the overhang of the western concourse — planes backed tightly together right up to the edge. The tail-planes jutting out against the parched pale sky like fishtails breaching a swelling net hanging above. The whole edifice casts welcome shadows over the sprawling patchwork of scrap metal, tarpaulin and tents. Coils of razor wire festoon the triple-pointed palisade fence, more for the optics than — no real buffer, either against a suicidally determined upward effort, or from the wretched death that assail the camp should a taxiing pilot misjudge or an earthquake upset the neat row of jets.

A search party combs the golf course, collecting discarded bomber jackets as they trudge towards the 16th hole. Edward Burr still sits in the golf cart, overturned in the teeing area, presenting his verdict to himself. They’ll find themselves a fantasy. And they deserve it. The way they stare at me when I go pineapple for too long. Rotund in a bulging ribbed waistcoat and crimson bow tie, Burr flings his sailor’s cap into the lake. Gently sobbing, he gazes eastward, hoping for a Wrexham sunrise. Which will never come because he’s 145 miles west of Wrexham.

At the aquarium, the discfish tank has been installed above the jellyfish’s, in case one of the discfish escapes, the aquarium worker explains. Just on queue, a discfish spins itself out of the surface of the water and plops quivering onto the supporting shelf before sloping off into the jellyfish tank with a light splash where it is immediately wrapped in tentacles, sucked into the translucent body where it is quickly dissolved and excreted as a sharp burst of gas that bubbles out of the water in a grey cloud that momentarily resembles the creature of its devouring, before it diffuses into the dank and humid air.