High up on the high cliffs of the East Yorkshire coast, at the end of a barely used track, is a nondescript featureless grey building with no windows. A vane with little cups on the rotors spins round as the wind blows, and a variety of other sensors and antennae sprout around it. This all makes a lot of sense when you read the metal sign attached to the landward side of the building, which tells you that the building is property of the Environment Agency and that it is Atmospheric Pollution Monitoring Station 472.
Station 472 is indeed monitoring, but it is not pollution that it is watching for. If you could get in through the weighty metal door, which you can’t, you would find a very fragile old man doing nothing but sit in an armchair, staring into space. He won’t acknowledge you, but if you linger long some not at all fragile men from the government will arrive and put you in a Land Rover and then put you down a potash mine and curious cats may have nine lives, but you are not a cat.
The old man does not sleep, he does not eat, he does not drink. He just sits in the chair, facing the sea, even though his eyes cannot see it. He is just a vehicle for the spirit which is bound to him, and it is the spirit that watches out to sea, because walls mean nothing to it.
Station 472 is indeed monitoring, but it is not pollution that it is watching for. It is watching out to sea for things which might not come out from there for a thousand years, or they might come out tomorrow. And if they do, the spirit is there to call those who sleep under the hill, for they will be much needed.
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