The Drosten's Curse

by A. L. Kennedy

  Mangold thought about nodding but then couldn’t. He didn’t want to be a helpful person – it felt odd – a bit like jumping off a building and assuming he could fly…He attempted to convince himself this really was a terrible dream he was having and the sooner he woke up the better.

  It didn’t work.

  IN ARBROATH, THINGS WEREN’T going well. Although everyone had passed a more or less wonderful and restful night, the town was now filled with the misery, exposure and sheer irritation provided by a the huge telepathic clamp in which they were held. Husbands were aware of how much they annoyed their wives, wives were aware of how often they drove their husbands to distraction (and the details of partners’ distractions were sometimes quite alarming), children were aware of how little adults actually knew about anything and how much of the time they spent bluffing frantically and trying to look expert…every secret anyone had kept was out and jumbling about with every other secret – resentments, petty rivalries and uncharitable assumptions were battering against every, by now, deeply weary consciousness. And this was actually the most pleasant thing that the morning had brought. On the darker side, blocks of houses were being methodically cleared by police or soldiers with dead faces and deader eyes. All the occupants would be marched away, their faces also becoming eerie blanks. No one ever came back.

  Citizens found this disturbing and also found themselves unable to do anything about it. They sat in their homes, or wandered the streets, harassed by the minds of others and waiting to be taken away.

  A SHORT WALK AWAY from the Fetch Hotel, Putta was no longer feeling proud of himself. ‘But, but, but…’ He’d imagined that choosing to travel to Earth in Type F378a Abrischooner, because it looked uncannily like a Morris Minor Traveller (and because it was going cheap), would count in his favour. It had been perfectly feasible to land it in a field and then simply run it along in Overground Mode and pop it quietly in a car park. In fact, this rare example of foresight made Bryony snort down her nose and think he was joking for a while – not it a good way.

  ‘This…This is your spaceship…?’

  The Doctor shook his head and bundled them into the cramped and – it had to be admitted – fairly metallic and alien-appearing interior. ‘No time for that now.’

  Bryony banged her elbow on a cheap and unpadded bulkhead flange and then eased herself into the flip-down additional third seat which had added 6000 Credits to the Abrischooner’s price but wasn’t credible as something anyone could occupy over an interstellar, or even interplanetary distance. ‘Is this even roadworthy…?’

  The Abrischooner was – to be honest – only built for a maximum of two, small beings who were really fond of each other and therefore wouldn’t mind being crushed up together for fairly extended periods.

  The Doctor managed to sit in the co-pilot’s position by folding his knees almost level with his ears. ‘Really. No time.’ He turned – with difficulty – and gave her a teacherly glare and then a slight smirk. ‘You will be impressed after take-off…These rather more primitive models have a certain…um…quality in their handling that you lose in—’

  He couldn’t finish his sentence as Putta had fired up the two Formalone #7 engines (not bad, really for the Credits) jerked into Atmospheric / Aerial Mode and begun…well, not flying exactly – more tumbling roughly horizontally along at an average of 50 feet above the ground. The Abrischooner steered like a biscuit tin, but could make the equivalent of 300 miles per hour in 48 seconds. Travelling in a 300-mile-an-hour biscuit tin made for a slightly startling passenger experience. It scared lumps out of Putta.

  But it meant that the three – now even more bruised – adventurers could arrive very rapidly at St Vigeans village and land in the graveyard at the back of the church.

  Any doubts that they were in the right place were dispelled when they saw the array of undulating, fabulous animals patrolling the church walls: the ten foot high boar, its flanks covered with shifting runes, a massive bear, patterns and tendrils winding and lashing about its great head, a red-eyed goat with steely hooves. There were other beasts they couldn’t identify, pacing and snapping and shifting shapes. Wraiths of shadow also drifted about the grass and – Bryony was very sorry she noticed – the grass above some of the graves was heaving and swelling like blankets with uneasy sleepers beneath. The Bah-Sokhar’s control of matter could have all kinds of nasty consequences in a place filled with the dead.

  And – naturally – as soon as they climbed out of the Abrischooner, they all felt the impact of skull-crushing headaches.

  But – as the pain pincered in – the Doctor saw in his mind’s quiet eye a brief image of that mightier, lovelier horse form and felt again the press of its forehead against his own. He made sure, as he loped across the undulating graves, to press out the thought, I know. I know. You want to be other than you are. I know. We’re coming to help you.

  The three ran – it seemed they couldn’t do anything other than run – towards the door. The Doctor added. Please try not to kill us. We’d really appreciate it.

  As the Time Lord reached out for the door, he could feel artron energy pattering thickly against his skin, pressing him back. The air was throbbing with malevolence.

  Bryony was heartily regretting any wish she’d ever made for excitement and adventure. She felt sick and small and knew it was almost certain that she would die soon and never do anything of the things she’d wanted. She reached out for Putta’s hand and he took it – his face pale and sad.

  Putta felt Bryony’s touch and let it anchor him to reality, to some type of hope, as he backed along behind his friends, watching the deer, the boar and the horses stalk closer, their eyes on fire.

  AT ABOUT THAT TIME in Arbroath, a number of golfers and their partners (in the marital sense) were disembarking from a number of cars. They’d come in from the west and had been waved in through a cordon, composed mainly of grim, stiffly moving commandos. As they’d passed by the cordon, Kevin Mangold briefly thought how absurd it was that he was here at all and how unlikely it was that he would ever pass out of the cordon again. He had the idea that geese felt like this on 24 December when they were ushered into an interesting new van and about to be taken on a trip.

  Still – they were here now…

  And it was terrible to see the small parties of men, women and children being herded off by uniformed figures. It was terrible to be in so much silence outside your head and for there to be so loud a din inside…And yet, the din was fading…

  Even the largely numbed Kevin Mangold could hear minds blinking out on all sides, being extinguished.

  The fewer thought-voices there were, the easier it was to hear that those last thoughts before shutdown, before the long for extinction took over, were flickers of affection, memories of kindness, lunges of need and love – there was a terrible sense of all that would be lost, just before it was lost – removed for ever.

  Even the largely numbed Kevin Mangold, couldn’t stand it, had to stop it.

  ‘Now then…’ he began, peering round at the strange accumulation of plaid and pastel-shaded wool and grief which the assembled golf-lovers presented. He didn’t feel like a leader. He had never acted like a leader. But the Doctor had given him a job to do and…that just sort of meant you had to do it.

  ‘I know this is…This is horrible. This is terrible. Everything that’s happening is terrible and I know I want to go to sleep until it stops.’ As soon as he said this, his eyelids drooped violently and he could barely focus, but he kept on. ‘We can make it stop, though. I think. I think what the Doctor said will work. We saw it did work.’

  A recently bereaved husband started sobbing.

  Even the largely numbed Kevin Mangold found this upsetting, but also inspiring. He wanted to do well for the Doctor and for these people that he didn’t know. He might even want to do well for himself – do well in a way that wasn’t about being important, or getting a pay rise, or filching other people’s treats. ‘We’re sad. I kn
ow. And…look, we have to go and think loving thoughts and mean it and…’ He dropped his head. ‘You’ll be better at this than me. Remember the people you loved. Remember what happened in the dining room. Remember you might be saving the world.’

  He mumbled the last words a bit, but as the crowd of golfers heard him in their minds, too, and felt that he meant what he said, they did indeed begin – gingerly – walking into the side streets, taking strangers’ arms, approaching puppet-like policemen and thinking at them loudly with affection.

  Mangold watched them head off and then headed straight for a column of six postmen. They turned to him as one, stony eyes glistening. He felt his will draining from him, his arms turning heavy and clumsy, his mind draining peacefully into a grey blank.

  He’d hoped he could hold out longer.

  But he couldn’t.

  Mangold’s face cleared, his headache went away, along with his memories and habits and his personality. He docilely stumped into line with the postmen, his head nodding.

  He was no longer aware of other stumping bodies being added to the small herd of passive prisoners being drawn along by the Bah-Sokhar’s psychic force and its human marionettes.

  Mangold didn’t notice as twenty or so young men – himself among them – were taken into a school yard and then left to stand while, up from the ground rose a legion of twins with grasping hands and icy eyes.

  THERE WAS A KIND of blaring reddish light and something like an impact wave impregnated with loathing and distrust crashed in around the Doctor, Bryony and Putta. They were propelled into the church and fell – as was required – on to their knees at the feet of Zandor where he sat enthroned.

  Bryony found she was gazing up at the slightly spotty face of a peevish adolescent. It wasn’t possible that so much terror and wrong could be emanating from such an unimpressive person. And yet, when she saw the dark charge of selfishness in the young man’s expression, saw the howling insecurity and the true, naked cruelty of his spirit, now allowed full reign she understood that whoever this had been, he was fast becoming a very real dictator. He was transforming himself into Zandor. The very fact that he was unimpressive and absurd was firing his desire for power almost as much as the vast psychic reserves of the Bah-Sokhar.

  Behind Zandor, the perfectly fused Pictish stones were fiercely beautiful and it was clear that he didn’t notice this, or respect it. It was obvious that he didn’t care, or even think, about the ornate intelligence that sent complex and wonderful patterns of carving across its high back and sculpted arms. It was wasted on him. Pretty much everything was wasted on him. That was why he found it so easy to destroy pretty much everything.

  Putta, although he’d been the underdog all his life, couldn’t bear being forced into this undignified position – crouching and cowering – and he attempted to stand. Zandor simply glanced at him and the air around Putta shaded with tendrils of additional energy which shook him, set him into absurd positions, made a fool of him. His arms wagged as if he was dancing, his legs kicked high. Then he was simply left suspended when Zandor ran out of ideas…and then he was crushed to the flagged floor and pressed into a position of utter supplication.

  Bryony was sickened and furious. Clearly Zandor was more than capable of tormenting or killing any one of them, just for his entertainment.

  ‘Stop it.’ The Doctor didn’t shout, he simply spoke with natural authority.

  The former Paul Cluny Junior twitched, but then sneered back, ‘My parents used to say that kind of thing to me. And look where they ended up.’ He raised a finger, indicating the roof cages that contained his mother and father. He didn’t bother raising his eyes to them. ‘You kinda interest me, Doc. That’s your name isn’t it, Doc? I got told that, I think – by the Thing…Or maybe you kinda interest the Thing that works for me…But you’re getting pretty boring, pretty quick.’

  The Doctor had been thrown to his knees before numberless thrones and forced to bow down before all manner of power-crazed despots. He knew that any being can preserve their dignity and refuse to serve injustice from any position. This tended to show and this, in its turn, tended to really annoy the despots.

  ‘Boring…’ The Doctor managed to kneel slightly sideways as if he was relaxing at home on a nice rug. Everything about him seemed just naturally insubordinate. He grinned in his very broadest and most dangerous way. ‘Well, I’ve always been of the opinion that only really boring people manage to be bored, wouldn’t you agree? I travel a lot and I’ve found that to be case and kneeling before a throne – of course, if you’ve never had people kneel before your throne I suppose it would be interesting, but my dear fellow it is rather a cliché, isn’t it?’

  Bryony listened and felt herself cheering inside, felt herself thinking – through her headache – He’s done this before, hasn’t he? The Doctor has done this before and he sort of even likes doing this and he must always have won in the past because he’s still here…he’s still here…

  But the Doctor wasn’t going to have it all his own way. His triumphantly gleeful blend of rambling, insulting and philosophising quickly drove Zandor to respond. It was intended to. As Bryony looked on from her crouch and Putta breathed uneasily – compressed into a hunched knot of limbs by Zandor’s spite – the Doctor was lashed with a blow of psychic violence.

  He cried out and doubled over, his skull ringing and his hearts labouring. It was more than obvious that the young man was an idiot, and a self-obsessed idiot with massive power. The Doctor was in too much pain to nod tiredly as he found this out. (Despots were so tedious – even the clever ones were still too stupid to realise that the way they behaved was unsustainable…) But – as he’d intended – he had tested Zandor the Boring’s reflexes and found them hypersensitive, unthinking and therefore basically weak. If you could call a mad child-man with the universe’s worst assassin beast at his command weak…

  But that’s the thing, isn’t it? I don’t believe you really are at his command, are you? The old spell, the old behaviour isn’t what you want any more…Isn’t that right?

  The Doctor play-acted being a bit more in agony than he actually was so that he could send out a thought in the Bah-Sokhar’s direction.

  ‘Stop speaking to the Thing!’ screamed Zandor. ‘It’s my Thing! I own the Thing! I’m the boss of that Thing!’

  This time the Doctor didn’t have to fake his agony. He was hurt so badly by a burst of psychons that he couldn’t breathe for a few seconds.

  But then he lifted his head, his face wet with sweat and carried on where he’d left off, sounding as amiable and comfortable and utterly self-assured as he could, ‘Oh, I’m not so sure about that…really? A young chap like you? A great big Thing like the Thing…? It’s called the Bah-Sokhar, by the way – I don’t suppose you bothered to ask its name, though.’

  What was once Paul Cluny Jnr glared and then growled, ‘OK. Now you really did get boring. Now you gotta die.’

  And a rush of fire seized the Doctor. It sprang up from the stone floor beneath him and Bryony gasped at it closed over the Time Lord’s bowed head.

  THINGS WEREN’T GOING WELL in Arbroath, either. The golfers were doing their best and, indeed, had minor successes when they approached the personnel cleansing the streets and houses of its people, feeding the beast.

  Although they had recently experienced how utterly infuriating the thoughts of others could be, they were also aware of how similar some of the obsessions, the little lies, the fears and pleasure of strangers could be. It wasn’t as hard as they’d thought to reach out towards the minds of those automaton-faced policemen, the men and women of the Civil Defence Corps, the Commandos. There would be moments when expressions came back to life with a start or a groan. But then the psychic clamp would tighten.

  The Fetch Hotel volunteers fared better with the twin forms when they emerged. Something about adopting that shape seemed to leave residual traces of the original twins’ kindness and desire to help humans.

 
After a while, though, the twins’ faces would morph into that of a smug, furious, skinny youth and the Bah-Sokhar’s defence forms would advance, hands ready to touch and drain any perceived threats.

  On the outskirts of the town, commandeered vehicles – some scarred by fire or with broken windows – were being parked up by postmen and then left. Then up from the ground, from the pavements, from the tarmac, two by two, came Paul Cluny Jnr forms who loaded themselves determinedly into the cars and vans. Soon they would drive off to other gatherings of humans: villages, towns cities. They would feed the Bah-Sokhar and it would grow out beneath them, faster and faster, more and more furious.

  THE FLAMES HOOPED OVER the Doctor, but he popped one hand insolently out above the burning field of psychic projection – refusing to take it seriously. He waved.

  High Emperor Zandor frowned. His lips pursed. The flames fell away.

  The Doctor, panting and shaking, still managed to start his monologue up again, albeit with a cracked voice. ‘I do beg your pardon. I suppose you wanted me to scream and beg for mercy.’ Zandor’s mouth flinched while the Doctor continued. ‘Perhaps if you torture me with something else I might…It’s just that I’ve been tortured by experts, you see – beings who really knew how to torture other beings…and of course, they were fully in control of their powers.’ For an instant the Doctor’s eyes sparked.

  Zandor didn’t notice. He was too busy screeching. ‘I’m in control! I’m in control! I’m the Grand High Emperor!’