Widdershins (audio story)

One night long ago, Iain tried to raise the Devil. He walked the wrong way round an ancient stone in the village graveyard. He didn't think anything would happen, not really.

But something did. Something far worse than the Devil came to Llandyth.

And now, many years later, Iain's trying to work out what really happened that night. Did Torchwood ruin his life?

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

At the suggestion of his doctor, Claudia, Iain records an audio diary with the help of his parents, Isla and Doug, to give himself a sense of control over a supposed alien encounter he believes that he experienced. He retells how he was obsessed with the supernatural when he was young and how he walked widdershins, i.e. anti-clockwise, around the Church of St Swithun and Llandyth Rock, a standing stone, to raise the Devil. The stone glowed and he found himself pulled into a fleshy spacecraft in the sky with the rest of Llandyth. He is unable to recall exactly what happened afterwards, but he felt that his eyeballs left their sockets and saw Gloria from the pub disassembled and kept alive with a funnel put into her mouth. He then understood that the same was happening to him.

Iain awoke in bed the next morning and learnt that he and the other villagers had all been missing for three days. They proceeded to be taken by the government to the college and interviewed about their whereabouts and whether they had seen anything strange, but Iain felt guilty for walking widdershins around the graveyard and decided not to tell them about the stone or the ship. The villagers came to believe that they had been the victims of a terrorist gas attack and were returned home, after which Iain ran clockwise around the stone in the hopes of reversing what he had done. He then met two members of Torchwood, neither of whom Isla and Doug can recall, and agreed to show them around to ensure that he seemed innocent. They explained that the spaceship belonged to alien cataloguers who have left behind traces of traumic radiation.

Iain takes Isla and Doug to the church to retrace his steps and remembers that Torchwood read myths of the Devil visiting Llandyth every few centuries to make the villagers play games which not everybody would survive, most recently in 1702. He admitted that he walked widdershins around Llandyth Rock, which Torchwood then inspected and identified as an antenna left behind by the cataloguers to help them return. It was thus a coincidence that Iain walked around it when he did. Using a device he received anonymously in the post, Iain detects radiation in the house and Isla finally admits that she remembers the spaceship arriving and that she was the only one left behind. She agreed to help the cataloguers to save herself and told them all about human society as the experiments were being carried out.

Iain cuts ties with his mother and spots the Torchwood SUV. The American man inside reveals that he was the one who sent him the traumic radiation scanner and offers him a job at Torchwood. His answer is a maybe.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Crew[[edit] | [edit source]]

Senior Producer - John Ainsworth
Cover Art - Sean Longmore
Director - Lisa Bowerman
Executive Producer - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
Music - Blair Mowat
Producer - James Goss
Script Editor - James Goss
Sound Design - Rob Harvey
Written - Guy Adams
Theme Music - Murray Gold

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

Claudia is Iain's doctor.
Llandyth is in Pembrokeshire and dates back to the Bronze Age. It has a population of around 600.
Mr Evans runs Llandyth's local shop.
Iain drinks beer.
Gloria works at the pub.
The Church of St Swithun is in Llandyth.
Swithun was an Anglo-Saxon miracle-worker and a "fan of rain".
Llandyth Rock is a prehistoric standing stone.
Three explosions are reported to have happened in Baghdad.
Doug offers Iain marmalade on his toast.
Jonathan lives next door to the Thompsons. He drinks scotch.
BTECs were put on hold after the people of Llandyth returned.
Doug sarcastically tells Isla that she is not Julia Anderson.
Iain received an email from someone about traumic radiation.
Hugo Small was once the vicar of St Swithun's.