Doctor Who: Nightshade Part 15

'Yes. I know.'

Hawthorne grimaced and started to clean his gla.s.ses with 'What d'you mean?' said Hawthorne, plucking the the hem of his cardigan. 'Well, I for one reckon we should Doctor's coat from his chair with distaste.

think pragmatically and try to make some sense of this data.

The Doctor crossed his legs on the console. 'Telephones Bodies or no bodies. There's nothing much else we can do.'

that don't work. Energy from s.p.a.ce. People seeing ghosts.

Vijay shrugged. 'I agree with Dr Hawthorne.'

That sort of thing. Now young Robin and myself have come It was probably the first time he ever had.

across a body on the moor.'

'A security guard?' asked Cooper.

Holly felt as if she'd been drugged. Sleep hung heavily 'What?'

about her, plucking her back into blissful unconsciousness 'This young lady claims to have found the body of a whenever she stirred. Until her head hit the downy pillow, security guard. We seem to have lost one.'

she hadn't realised how totally exhausted she was. There'd 'That's very careless of you.'

been a full day on duty followed by her sympathetic relief of Vijay. Then the crisis had kept her up until almost seven 136 137.

in the morning. Sliding between freshly laundered sheets, sharing. Sometimes she felt her love for him like a hot she had fallen almost instantly asleep.

physical weight, pressing through her ribs, and she would At some time during the day, she'd been aware of Vijay smile without quite knowing why.

getting into bed beside her and had snuggled up to the By the spring of 1962 they were contemplating marriage.

warm pressure of his body. Now he seemed to have gone Holly had graduated with honours from Cambridge and again but Holly couldn't be sure. She was dreaming or was considering a research post at a physics lab in Scotland.

remembering or both.

James, ever the optimist, was using his English degree to Uncle Louis was there, his face stern, his arms folded.

bludgeon his way into a position as junior reporter on a Holly was grinning sheepishly, James by her side. They Northumbrian paper. They were scouting for a house on the were both seventeen.

Scottish border and it looked as if they would see each other There had been some sort of fuss about them going off most weekends and alternate Wednesdays for the first few together, James's mum ringing up Louis to enquire where months. Holly had just arrived in Scotland when she got the the 'young lovers' had got to. James, she explained, had his call from Louis. She was so pleased to hear his voice that she exams to worry about and couldn't waste his time dallying babbled on for a full minute before registering the heavy with girls.

silence at his end. Then it came. A simple, leaden sentence.

In truth, they had been down by the brook, enjoying the 'Listen, love. I've got some bad news. I'm sorry. I don't forbidden thrill of first kisses. The air was summer sweet.

know how to say this. It's James. There's been an accident...'

Holly had let James's fingers trace the outline of her eyes, She knew at once that he was dead and felt numbness lips and slim neck. They were young, in love, and, that night, rising through her. There were no tears, not then, just a hot, in trouble.

dry emptiness. The phone had hung limply in her hand for Louis had shouted at her, worried about local gossip and hours as the room darkened around her.

how a young girl could get herself a reputation. It might be Well, that was over now. Six years gone. She had 1957 but there were still standards to maintain. Adolescent managed to continue at the lab. Pushed herself into her anger boiled within her, pouting her lips, quickening her work. Done well. Very brave. Everyone had said so.

breathing.

In the last year or so, she had finally started to relax again, But, against all the odds, it had worked out. Holly and making new friends and generally enjoying the loosening James went on seeing each other all through the summer.

up of society which the decade was bringing. Now there The months lengthened to years. University and separation was the tracking station. And Vijay...

seemed only to deepen their affection. She felt incomplete She did love him, she knew that. But it was a different sort without him.

of love than the sort she'd felt for James. Perhaps a little Holidays became times of unadulterated joy, br.i.m.m.i.n.g more spiky. A little less sure. But different...

over with silly talk, pa.s.sion and the indefinable pleasure of Something tugged at her foot.

138.

139.

Holly blended it into her dream and imagined herself tripping over a paving stone. She jumped and was awake.

The room was overwhelmingly dark. No light peeked under the door from the corridor beyond and the heavy curtains were tightly drawn. She glanced at the luminous Chapter Six hands of her alarm clock. A quarter to eleven. There was some pressure on her feet. She stirred her legs under the blankets, thinking, for a moment, that a cat must be lying there. But there were no cats in the station. And the weight was too heavy. She felt her heart rate increase. The pressure on her feet shifted slightly.

If only she could make out something in the darkness. Her Billy Coote was snoring loudly, an old grey army blanket mouth went dry. She swallowed.

slung over his skinny form. The monk's cell in which he lay There was a sound, very close by, as if someone were was bare and functional, although someone had once had breathing in her ear. Or stirring fallen leaves. Holly reached the presence of mind to install a radiator in the far corner: a out and found the trailing cord of the lamp switch. She fussy thirties thing convoluted like intestines and painted a pressed the b.u.t.ton and a little sun of weak orange light depressing cream colour.

exploded in the room.

Billy snorted and coughed loudly in a hacking spasm, There was a man sitting on the end of her bed, dressed in what his dad always called 'the workhouse cough'. Too a sports jacket and tapered trousers. He had short, blond many Woodbines and draughty bus shelters, some doctor hair, finely chiselled features and his broad hands were had once told him. But never mind that, he'd had some folded neatly across his lap. He was smiling.

good times on the road. No responsibilities, n.o.body trying Holly drew back with a startled cry, her mind spinning in to tie him down. It hadn't been so bad...

disbelief. She tried to form words. But the man just put his That morning, he had run down into Crook Marsham full finger to his lips and smiled benignly.

of tales about a funny police box - tales that had been It may have been the shadowy light, but there was a greeted with the usual mixture of scepticism and disquieting blankness in the man's gaze; his eyes were black amus.e.m.e.nt. Somewhat forlornly, he had wandered over to and opaque like unpolished jet. He reached out and took the monastery where he knew he was guaranteed a bed and Holly's hand in his, the palm warm and rea.s.suring. Then he a free meal once or twice a month, sometimes more if he giggled.

pushed his luck.

The Abbot always treated him kindly but didn't like to see him hanging around. Not very Christian of him in Billy's 140 141.

opinion. No, his true friend there was Brother Alec, a former In the village, however, he was relegated to the position of soldier who had spent a good while sleeping rough in his local idiot: someone with whom to pa.s.s the time of day, buy time.

a drink for at Christmas and use as a bogeyman to frighten He understood Billy's way of life, letting him stay in the errant children. Get to bed now, or Billy will come and get monastery and doling out some of the monks' leftovers.

you!

'As long as you don't make a habit of it,' he would always He was happy, though, happy enough. If it wasn't for the say, laughing at his feeble joke.

headaches.

Tonight, Alec couldn't really turn him down. It was They'd first appeared some months previously: sick, dull, freezing cold (Billy had chuckled at the conspicuous thumping pains at the base of his skull, sometimes corduroys showing beneath Alec's robes) and looked like it accompanied by blinding lights.

might snow. He could hear the wind from the moor now as He was seeing things too. Nothing he could get a grip on.

he drifted in and out of sleep, the thin, arrow-slit window Colours and places, lit up like Christmas trees, that swam rattling in its frame.

and shuddered in his mind.

There had been a time when his opinion counted for After the attacks he would feel hollow and utterly something in Crook Marsham and the surrounding districts.

miserable, a profound, stomach-deep depression which took Right up until the War he had been a bit of a local celebrity, days to lift. It was all very worrying. He would talk to consulted on all manner of things from the possibility of a Brother Alec about it in the morning.

dry summer to the s.e.x of unborn children. After all, he was Abbot Winstanley heard it first, a low, low moan, drifting the seventh son of a seventh son. More or less.

down the corridors of the monastery. He opened his eyes Well, he had the 'gift' certainly, even though it was a bit and listened intently. The sound came again, haltingly - a erratic at times. His weather forecasts in particular brought desperate, shuddering wail like the cry of a lost soul or the down the wrath of local farmers and, after predicting a mild mournful song of a whale.

winter in '63, his services had been spurned in favour of the Winstanley remembered childhood stories about - what BBC's.

were they called? - yes, the Gabriel Ratchets. A celestial Sometimes, though, an image so pure and unsullied horde of wretched spirits forever doomed to walk the earth.

would spring into his mind that he could announce with This was how they might sound, he thought. Desperate, certainty its coming to pa.s.s. It had been that way over the hopeless, forgotten.

Abdication crisis (Billy had heard the King's departing He got up and padded to the door of his cell, pressing his speech in his mind a whole year before its broadcast), hand against the dark wood.

Churchill's death, and even the date of the last election It came again, more substantial this time, like a breath of (which had won him ten bob).

wind blowing suddenly fierce. Winstanley slipped on his 142 143.

shoes and opened the door. The corridor beyond was The man's shape seemed to shift and change, his skin completely empty.

blurring and glittering like burnished metal. Light began to He looked up the pa.s.sageway towards the Great Hall and trail from his hands and eyes.

then down towards the kitchens. Nothing. Only a hollow, Holly turned leaden eyes to gaze into his face. The mouth silent darkness.

was huge now, red lips and teeth glistening with spit.

He caught his breath sharply as the moan sounded right 'Holly!'

by him, fluttering the hem of his habit and creeping down She turned. Vijay had strolled into the room and was the back of his neck. He shivered, wishing he were not alone staring in disbelief at the miasmic cloud into which Holly in that sad corridor. If only the Doctor had returned.

seemed to be sinking.

Winstanley had derived great comfort from the newcomer's 'Holly!' he called again, desperately thrashing his arms at arrival.

the insubstantial ent.i.ty. There was a crackle of energy and Somewhere, deep in the monastery, a heavy door creaked Vijay was tossed across the room, hitting the wall with and slammed shut. Winstanley jumped out of his skin and tremendous force. He picked himself up, clutching his ducked back into his room, shutting his own door with bruised chest, and stumbled towards Holly. He called her sweaty hands.

name again and again, his voice rasping with despair.

Eventually she turned her sleepy head.

Billy Coote's door swung shut of its own accord and the 'Vijay?'

old man's face jerked in response. The air about his sleeping The cloud seemed to retreat; its staggering brightness body seemed curiously stirred, whispering around the dimming like a sputtering candle.

grizzled locks of hair, teasing at the wide-open, staring eyes Holly forced herself to think of Vijay, their first meeting, which had turned as black and opaque as coal in a their first kiss. He was solid, concrete, substantial. Her snowman's face.

wavering consciousness strained to lock on to his image as he swam at the edge of her vision. She was suddenly Holly felt herself falling. The man's grip on her arm had paralysed with fear, her eyes bulging.

become intense, painful; his hand felt hot and searing as if it Vijay waded across the room, the pulsing cloud wrapping were burning into her skin. His face seemed to balloon diminishing tendrils around him. A thick, viscous fluid before her heavy eyes, the mouth expanding into a gaping settled on his skin, running in rivulets into his nose and hole.

mouth. He spat disgustedly and wiped at his coated eyes.

Holly could see things in his opaque eyes and felt Holly could feel a dull pulsing in her head and pressure strangely comfortable. It would be so easy just to let go. So on her skull as if an unseen hand were forcing her down.

easy...

It was too late, she told herself. She was lost.

144.

145.

Vijay's face rose before her like a painted mask, furrowed Hot tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her flushed with concern and anxiety.

face. 'I love you,' she said simply. 'But he meant so much to Too late.

me. You must understand.'

She was suddenly alert and gulping air with pistol-shot 'I do,' said Vijay, stroking her hair. 'I do.'

clarity. Vijay was holding her tightly in his arms and she Whatever he had seen in the room was certainly unearthly.

blinked over his shoulder at the room, now partially lit by A cloud of light and energy, like a delicate sea creature, the corridor lamps. The man was gone.

trailing crackling fronds. It had terrified and astonished him.

'Are you OK? Holly? What happened?'

And, just for a moment, he'd made out a human face, its She shook her head. Slowly at first and then with features writhing and twisting in fury.

unnatural speed, she began gabbling a stream of Vijay put his arm around Holly and together they incomprehensible words.

shambled down the corridor.

Vijay's hand cracked across her face and she fell, sobbing, The gaudy wallpaper in the TV room was, Ace surmised, into his embrace.

an attempt to bring a touch of homeliness to the otherwise Vijay picked her up bodily, forced her into some clothes sterile station. There were a few cheap prints pinned to the and managed to struggle out into the corridor. He threw her walls and a dog-eared poster of Che Guevara. Skinny over his shoulder and began to walk back to the control Christmas streamers pocked with drawing-pin holes were room. But Holly pulled away and slid to the floor.