Ahab Jones crossed the village street heading towards the Golden Cross. It was a quarter past seven on a Tuesday evening in late January. The drizzle had persisted all day and threatened to transform into snow overnight. In the dim yellow street lights the pub looked welcoming; the only sign of life on that side of the road at that time, apart from a mangy mongrel sniffing at bins, a member of the semi-feral pack that lived behind the village hall. He was just over six foot tall, well built, had unkempt hair and was furnished with a full beard. He was the village handyman; could turn his hand to any job that anyone had for him, from a spot of building work to car repairs, fence fixing to hedge-laying. All he asked for was to be paid in cash. Ahab neither asked for state hand-outs, nor paid anything into that pot. To those who managed taxes and the like he was invisible. Ahab reckoned they would be happy to have one less person’s files to handle.

He went through the main door, checking he had his money in his jeans pocket, and turned left into the public bar, brightly lit with a pine-log fire breathing warmth and a homely scent into atmosphere. The landlord, nowadays only answering to the name The Captain, seeing Ahab, immediately pulled a pint of Banks’ Bitter. The Captain had really been in the military, but never gave any details of his service. Some said he must have had some bad experiences, others reckoned his role was something ‘hush-hush’. Ahab put the correct money on the bar, picked up the glass, took a sip, nodded his approval of The Captain’s well kept beer-cellar, and accepted the set of dominoes proffered across the bar. Tuesday was always darts and dominoes night for Ahab and his chums.
He sat down at their usual table in the corner near the dartboard, placing the dominoes in the centre of the table along with his ‘arrers’ with their well sharpened points and purple flights, and his glass onto a well used beermat redolent with the odours of last week’s beer. There were a few other customers already seated, all regulars and knowing not to sit at the corner table on a Tuesday night. Ahab took another swig of beer, took the lid off the well scuffed domino box and amused himself constructing a pagoda out of the pieces while he waited. Twenty five were precariously positioned in a four storey temple; three to go for the pinnacle, when the clock in the lounge could dimly be heard to chime for half past seven. Ahab took another swig of beer, picked up a piece and it was then the table shook. The pile collapsed. The shaking continued and a plate on the mantelpiece over the fire slowly tipped forward and smashed to pieces in the hearth. Ripples spread across the drinkers’ glasses, muted by the head on the beer. For about five seconds there was silence in the pub, and then a general hubbub started. And then it began; a sound like a low distant rumble growing into a growl that slowly died away. Nearly everybody headed straight for the door, and Ahab followed them carefully clutching his beer. “Make sure you bring my glass back, Ahab” called The Captain. Halfway out of the door, Ahab scowled at the unfounded accusation, but left his unformed response to wait for later.

Outside there was already quite a group of people, villagers and pub dwellers,, all looking south towards the murky mountains three miles away where the sound appeared to arise from. There was a sort of pale orange glow near the unforested summit of peak. It was hard to discern through the rain, but everyone could see it. Slowly it faded and then reappeared before starting to fade again. Opinions of what happened varied from earth-tremor to “Blessed if I know”, or words to that effect. The Bala Traci bus came down the High Street dead on time as usual, and pulling up nearly opposite the pub discharged Ahab’s three friends. The Buffaloes they called themselves when they played other darts teams, referring to The Cross as The Watering Hole.
“Did you see it?” asked Dai, first off the bus as usual. He was rehearsed in that feat, having the best thirst of the group.
“See what? replied Ahab.
“Something shot across the sky, like it was on fire,” said an excited Danny, the youngest of the four at just 21, “we saw it just shoot across back there where the road looks out over the valley above the chapel. It disappeared behind the trees on the other side.”
Ahab pointed across at the hill “Could that have been it?” he asked, but by now the glow was very faint and looked unfocussed, and he had trouble convincing the three that it was brighter a few minutes earlier. John with his rufous hair and beard, the taciturn member, just errr-ummed.  The only other witness in the street to the aerial phenomenon was a boy about 10 years of age who claimed it must have been a plane, all on fire, with its wings ripped off and exploding before it hit the mountain. Dai, wasn’t going to let this spoil the evening, and disappeared into the pub and emerged a few minutes later with a round for the four of them on a tray. The words of The Captain were unforgotten by Ahab who asked if Dai had to put a deposit on the glasses.
The talk naturally centred on the sequence of events, for all the amateur experts present would have an explanation for what they had witnessed once they knew what happened first. Everyone was agreed that the shaking came before the noise, but there was disagreement as to when the light in the sky appeared. The bus travellers hadn’t felt the tremor, buffered as they were by the tyres, and whatever testimony the boy offered was ignored as a result of his previous wild accusations. But slowly the order unfolded into lights, shakes and bang; that seemed logical. They were now split between a plane crash and an earthquake. Those hills had claimed a fair few planes over the years, the last one only three years previously, an RAF fighter on an exercise. Someone recalled the first crash; a biplane just after the Great War. A farmer at the end of the valley still had the engine from that wreck, dug out of the peat into which had been embedded, and it was now used by a third generation n that farm to power a generator. The number of military aircraft had risen in the last few years and they often did low level swoops, surprising villagers and animals alike.  “Some of them are experimental types”, claimed someone who clearly had expertise in these matters. “They don’t have pilots and they fly them by remote control”. If true then that may explain everything was a consensus opinion.  The Buffaloes considered this a very good explanation, mainly because it would mean that the crash would already be known to the military, and there would be no need for volunteers to head up on a chilly wet night and trekking across moorland where it would possibly be snowing later, looking for injured and maimed survivors.
The boy was still trying to make himself heard. Old Henri Williams, reckoned to be the best tall story teller in the village, took his old cloth cap off, knelt down by the boy and slowly and quietly explained. Everybody stopped talking to listen. “I’ll tell you what is was. My granddad, God bless his soul, told me when I was your about age of the Gwybr of Llanrhaeadr, a flying serpent that lived in the lake over that very mountain. Every so often it would rise from the lake, fly down the river breathing flames as it went. If the villagers were lucky it would just take a sheep or a lamb. But sometimes it would take the prettiest girl in the village  …..” He paused for effect. “.. or a young lad just like you! An old wise lady who lived alone in those hills told them the secret of how to kill the dragon, but what I reckon is this. They may have killed the dragon, but she will have laid some eggs at the bottom of that lake. It can take centuries for them to hatch, but now at last one has. And that was its first flight. Its flame has now been lit and you saw it. It went back to its lair on the mountain and the ground shook as it landed. We all saw it blow fire up there. Now it will be hungry and within the hour it will be back looking for someone like YOU!!” At this the unfortunate boy ran off towards his home to hide under the bed, oblivious to the laughter this had generated.
Talk now shifted from planes to the old legends and more recent ones. That range had inspired any number of stories. Several had heard of the Hell Hounds, with blood red eyes that glowed in the dark, that were said to roam the slopes. And up there was the supposed lair of the Beast of Bala, a large cat-like predator that now stalked the sheep on the hills. A black panther escaped from someone’s collection of big cats was blamed, but locals favoured a ‘melanomorph’ variety of the Welsh Wild Cat, whose fur takes on the shades of night in the twilight.
Dr Jenkins, the local GP, brought them back to reality. “Well I am off to see if it is a plane crash” he told the crowd, “I may be able to give some first aid.”
A voice was heard from the back of the crowd. “Have you got enough Elastoplast?”
The doctor ignored this and asked “Has anybody phoned the police yet.” Silence followed. “Well somebody should you know’” he added. With that he started up his Morris Minor and headed off up the side road that wound it way out of the village and into the hills. Danny said “I’ll call them,” walking towards the phone box on the corner. “What’s the number?” he joked. “Nine nine nine” chorused the crowd.
While Danny was still making his call two police cars, presumably from the town tore around the corner and followed the nurse’s car into the hills. “Bugger me”, said Dai, “That’s what I call a quick response. They took two days to call round after my bike was nicked from the shed when I was a kid.
With everything seemingly in hand, and no more lights or quakes the crowd, now damp and cold, began to disperse. The four friends headed into the pub; perhaps now they could play some darts. In their hearts though, they knew competition that night would be half-hearted with their minds on what had happened. Ahab got a round in and didn’t add his usual “Have one for yourself”. The Captain’s earlier comment was unforgotten and still unforgiven.
The four men had a couple of rounds of games and beers before they heard the jeeps. Looking out of the window, the drinkers could see several military vehicles passing the pub and heading up the road to the hills.
“Must have been an RAF plane or helicopter then”, said Ahab.
“Then why bring in the Army?” replied The Captain. “Those were the Welsh Fusiliers from their uniforms.”
The darts and dominoes evening finished at quarter past ten. Ahab’s friends needed to catch the last bus home, and they knew it would arrive precisely at twenty three minutes past the hour. You could set your watch to those buses. As they stood at the bus stop, more vehicles could be heard approaching; two large flatbed trucks with lifting cranes and one with several large black boxes on board. They were painted dark grey and had no markings, not even vehicle number plates. They too rumbled up the hill road.
“If they meet someone else coming down that road it’s going to be quite a squeeze” said Danny. “Those trucks are going to be scraping the hedges as it is, and there’s no place to pull-off much of the way”.
“I think the police may be turning anybody else back that may be coming over the hills tonight” said Ahab.

Part II