Tales of Terror

by Jacqueline Rayner, Mike Tucker, Paul Magrs, et al (retail) (epub)

  Kamelion regarded their outfits. ‘You are going to a formal event of some kind?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘A reception. A party.’

  ‘May I come too?’

  ‘Er, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You might attract rather too much attention.’

  If a robot could look disappointed, then Kamelion managed it.

  The Doctor patted him consolingly on the shoulder. ‘I’ll bring you back a vol-au-vent,’ he joked.

  The Doctor then turned to the console, operating the door control and ushering his companions out of the control room.

  ‘Don’t wait up,’ Tegan called back over her shoulder.

  Kamelion watched them go in silence.

  The party was in full swing by the time the Doctor and his companions arrived. As soon as they stepped through the doors, several smartly dressed waiters hurried forward to greet them, thrusting glasses of champagne into their hands.

  They were in one of the huge observation galleries situated on the rim of the space station, and the huge glass windows offered spectacular views of Earth below. Tegan would have been quite happy to stand and gawp at the view, but the Doctor was insistent that they listen to the speeches, and pushed them forward through the elegant crowd towards the small podium that had been set up at the far end of the room.

  What followed was a long (and, as far as Tegan was concerned, extremely boring) half hour, during which a series of elderly men and women of differing nationalities took to the stage and spoke in sombre and ponderous tones about the importance of the museum and of the preservation of history. Tegan could only stare longingly at the buffet table on the far side of the room, which was covered in delicious-looking food that sat untouched.

  Finally, and to tumultuous applause, Professor Levi took to the stage. His rich Italian accent was a welcome contrast to the previous speakers, but when he too started to speak about the vital role the museum played for the culture of Earth, Tegan found her mind wandering once more. She was only half listening when one phrase caught her attention, causing her to look up in alarm.

  Levi had his arms wide and was gesturing expansively at the panoramic windows. ‘Yes, my friends,’ he was saying, ‘you should all be proud of the part you have played in the creation of this great wheel in space.’

  A great wheel … wondered Tegan. Why did that sound so familiar?

  ‘This space station will now become part of human history itself,’ continued Levi. ‘As the wheel turns, civilisations will rise. As the wheel turns, civilisations will fall.’

  Wheel turns, civilisations rise. Wheel turns, civilisations fall. Something about the phrase echoed in Tegan’s mind. It was making her dizzy. She needed to get some air, to go and sit somewhere quiet.

  Ignoring the puzzled looks of several other partygoers, Tegan pushed her way through the crowd, and made her way out of the observation gallery and back to the museum atrium. The huge space was cool and calm, and she tried to clear her head, but Levi’s words kept swirling in her mind, over and over. The dizziness overwhelmed her, and she looked around for somewhere to sit down, but the atrium offered nothing as far as she could see. Choosing one of the radiating galleries at random, Tegan set off in search of a quiet seat, but it soon became clear that the architects of the museum had not designed it with the comfort of its visitors in mind.

  ‘Typical,’ muttered Tegan groggily.

  Her head was pounding now, her eyelids becoming impossibly heavy. The statues around her seemed to loom from the shadows, creatures from myth and legend, their eyes following her as she staggered almost drunkenly through their midst.

  Finally, it all became too much for her.

  She dropped to the floor in a dead faint.

  Elsewhere in the museum, the door of Professor Levi’s office creaked open and the long, empty corridor echoed with a low, drawn-out hiss. Slowly, cautiously, something started to move along the corridor, slithering over the marble floors.

  Triggered by the movement, lights in the ceiling snapped on. The thing gave a hiss of displeasure, recoiling against the wall as the corridor was bathed in warm amber light.

  Shielding its eyes from the glare, the thing slid forward, finally locating a lighting control panel next to the far door. Clawed fingers scrabbled at the controls, and razor-sharp nails raked across the metal, sending long, curling ribbons of paint coiling to the floor. With a shriek of metal, the thing tore the panel from the wall. There was a shower of sparks as the knife-like claws slashed and tore at the wiring inside.

  The corridor was plunged once more into blackness.

  With a rattling cry of satisfaction, the thing slipped through the door and out into the darkened museum.

  Levi was making his closing remarks when the lights suddenly went out. Someone let out a shrill scream, and an uneasy muttering flickered through the crowd.

  ‘Please, my friends, there is no reason to be alarmed.’ Levi did his best to keep the situation calm. ‘I am sure this is merely a small technical error and the lights will be restored momentarily.’

  The Doctor peered around the room. Everything was now bathed in the cool blue light from Earth, which cast long shadows across the floor.

  ‘Where’s Tegan?’ he asked.

  Turlough glanced at the people around him, then shrugged. ‘She was here a moment ago.’

  ‘Of all the times for her to wander off …’ The Doctor sighed. ‘Come on, we’d better go and find her.’

  Harry Gordon was on his way back from the kitchen with more champagne when everything was plunged into darkness. He stopped, heart pounding, waiting for the emergency lights to kick in, but for some reason they didn’t.

  After a few moments, his eyes began to grow used to the dark and he started to calm down. If this had been some kind of emergency, there would have been alarms; the fact that the station was so silent meant it was more likely to be a simple technical malfunction or something similar.

  Except that the station wasn’t totally silent.

  From the far side of the atrium, Harry heard something: a strange, wet, slithering noise.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called.

  The slithering noise came again, and Harry started to edge forwards, trying to see if he might be able to get a glimpse of whatever was causing it.

  He gave a yell of pain as his shins cracked against something hard, and he threw out an arm to stop himself from falling. As he did so, one of the bottles of champagne slipped from his grasp and shattered on the floor. He reached his free hand out in front of him to feel for whatever it was that he had collided with. His fingers touched cold marble. He’d walked right into the statue of Neptune that stood in the centre of the atrium.

  Glass crunching underfoot, he leaned forward to place the unbroken bottle of champagne on the plinth at the base of the statue. As he straightened up again, he was suddenly aware that a new noise – a hissing, wheezing breathing – had joined that awful wet, sliding sound. It sounded close. Very close.

  Just as Harry turned around, the emergency lighting finally came on.

  Harry found himself face-to-face with a creature that he could never have imagined in his worst nightmares.

  Even as he drew in the breath to scream, Harry felt the most unpleasant sensation start to grow within him. A numbness spread out from his body and along his arms and legs, making him feel slow, heavy and oh so cold.

  As the dying scream burst from his lips, Harry realised that he recognised the face of the creature.

  It was someone he had served champagne to at the party.

  ‘There,’ said the Doctor, looking up in satisfaction as the dull red emergency lighting flickered to life.

  He replaced the cover on the lighting control panel and scrambled to his feet. He had intended to keep well out of the way and let the space station’s technical crew do their job, but after several minutes of searching for Tegan in the dark the Doctor had decided to take matters into his own hands.

  �
��Do you know what caused the black-out?’ asked Turlough.

  ‘No.’ The Doctor shook his head. ‘But that little lash-up should give us some light while we find the trouble.’

  A terrified scream echoed through the gallery.

  ‘What was that about finding the trouble?’ said Turlough.

  ‘That came from the atrium.’ The Doctor raced off towards the source of the noise.

  Turlough caught up with the Doctor at the base of the statue of Neptune that had caught his attention when they had first arrived. He frowned. The Doctor was busy examining another, smaller statue alongside it that Turlough didn’t recognise.

  ‘That wasn’t there before,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Quiet a moment, Turlough.’ The Doctor’s face was grim. ‘This could be serious.’

  The Doctor stooped down and picked up what looked like the neck of a broken champagne bottle. He examined it, then placed it on the plinth at the base of the Neptune statue, alongside an intact bottle of champagne.

  As Turlough looked more closely at the new statue, he realised with a start that he recognised the stone figure in front of him. It was one of the waiters who had been serving at the party. ‘Doctor –’ he started.

  ‘Shhh!’ the Doctor interrupted urgently, holding up a warning finger. ‘Did you hear that?’

  A horrible slithering noise was echoing around the atrium. Turlough and the Doctor looked at each other, then turned in tandem away from the statue of Neptune.

  Emerging from the door to one of the galleries behind them was a terrifying creature.

  The creature appeared to be female – or at least half of it looked like a female human. From the waist up, it had the shape of a woman – slim, bare-shouldered and with serpentine tattoos winding down each arm – but in place of legs a long snake-like body coiled and twisted, green scales sliding across each other, the thin tail twitching and quivering. Its face could almost have been described as beautiful if not for the way that the mouth curled into a leering snarl, and for the hate that glared from the dark eyes set beneath the creased and angry brow.

  Worst of all, though, were the snakes that writhed and twisted in a ghastly parody of hair. As Turlough took a stumbling step backwards, the snakes turned as one, fixed him with the same blazing glare and bared their fangs.

  At that moment Turlough recognised the creature’s face. ‘Doctor …’ he stammered. ‘It’s … it’s Tegan!’

  ‘Not possible.’ The Doctor was staring in disbelief. ‘It’s just not possible.’

  With a hiss of anger, the creature raised its arms and a fiery red glow started to burn within its eyes.

  The Doctor grabbed Turlough’s arm. ‘Quickly, Turlough, turn away from it!’

  Turlough did as he was instructed. ‘But what’s happened to her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor confessed. ‘What I do know is that if we want to avoid the fate of that waiter over there, then we must not look into her eyes.’

  Turlough could hear the thing slithering closer to them, its hissing breath getting louder and louder.

  ‘Ah, Doctor. There you are!’ A familiar voice boomed across the atrium, and Turlough glanced over his shoulder to see Professor Levi and a small group of partygoers making their way towards them. With a startling turn of speed, the creature whipped round to face the newcomers.

  ‘Don’t look at her eyes, Vittorio!’ yelled the Doctor. ‘Run! All of you!’

  There were screams of terror as most of the group turned to flee, Levi among them. One unfortunate woman was too late though, staring at the creature in disbelief as it bore down on her. There was a horrible, brittle cracking noise, and the woman’s skin instantly started to harden, her body stiffening as all the soft tissue was turned to cold, grey stone.

  Its grisly task complete, the creature slithered off in pursuit of Levi and the others, who had by now disappeared from the atrium.

  Turlough could only gaze on in horror. ‘Why is she doing this?’

  ‘More to the point, how is she doing this?’ The Doctor’s face was a mask of confusion. ‘Transmutation of matter like that is not possible for any organic creature to –’ He broke off, eyes widening. ‘It’s not Tegan,’ he gasped. ‘It’s Kamelion.’

  ‘Kamelion?’

  ‘Yes. Using the same transformative energies that he uses for his own shape-shifting.’ Another insight struck the Doctor. ‘He’s being controlled by Tegan’s subconscious!’

  He turned to face Turlough, his voice urgent. ‘Turlough, go after the others. Warn them of the danger. And, whatever you do, don’t look into her eyes once they start to glow.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I must find Tegan. The real Tegan.’

  Before Turlough could argue, the Doctor had set off into the bowels of the museum, yelling back over his shoulder as he went. ‘Remember Perseus!’

  As the Doctor made his way through the gloomy museum galleries, his mind was racing. The tattoos on the snake creature’s arms flashed up in his memory. Far from being purely decorative, they were all too familiar to the Doctor. He had seen those marks before. The mark of the Mara.

  He had encountered the Mara twice before. It was a dark force that hid in the mind, in dreams – in the Dark Places of the Inside. The Mara desperately wanted a physical form, and used fear as its weapon. The image of the snake was almost like its calling card.

  It would seem that, in their last encounter, the Doctor had failed to destroy the dark force entirely, and it had lain dormant somewhere, waiting for another opportunity to achieve its goal of existence in the real world. Kamelion had been perfect for its needs. Now its objective was to create fear – fear that would feed its power.

  The Doctor had to move quickly if there was to be any hope of defeating it this time around.

  He stopped at a map of the museum that was affixed to one of the walls.

  Somewhere in this museum, Tegan was sleeping, her dreams helping to shape the creature that had been created. Given the form that it had taken …

  The Doctor tapped his finger on the map. ‘The Greek gallery.’

  ‘No, please, signor Turlough. Those are priceless.’

  Vittorio Levi watched in despair as Turlough forced open more and more display cabinets and began handing out swords and spears to the frightened guests.

  ‘We have to have the means to defend ourselves, Professor.’

  ‘But, if I can just reach my office, I can call for help, and there will be no need for this vandalism.’

  ‘And reaching your office might have been an option if there wasn’t something unpleasant slithering around out there trying to kill us, wouldn’t it? You were lucky to make it this far.’

  They really had been lucky. Turlough had followed the group of frightened partygoers as they had fled from the pursuing creature, only to lose them amongst the spectacular exhibits in the Egyptian gallery. As he had cautiously made his way through the towering columns and obelisks, he’d suddenly become aware of someone waving frantically at him from the shadows cast by a vast stone sphinx.

  Hurrying over, he had found Levi and the others huddled in the space between the statue’s outstretched paws. Any questions that he might have had were quickly silenced as Levi pointed towards the far side of the gallery.

  The creature was there, writhing around the stone remains of two more victims. That had stiffened Turlough’s resolve; the Doctor had given him the task of warning these people of the danger, and now two more were dead. He had to do something.

  As they had watched, the creature began to move slowly through the gallery, obviously searching for them. As the professor and the remaining partygoers had become more agitated, Turlough looked around desperately for a solution.

  A sign above a doorway had caught his eye: ANCIENT ROMAN GALLERY. The endless history lessons from Brendon Public School popped into Turlough’s head – in particular a textbook that had featured dozens of illustrations of gladiators.

  ‘Wea
pons.’

  Urging everyone to keep quiet, Turlough had led the frightened group through the endless lines of Egyptian statues and into the neighbouring gallery. Here there were fewer statues, but dozens of glass display cases; cases filled with swords, spears and, most importantly, polished shields.

  Now, with a Roman short sword in one hand and one of those shields on his arm, Turlough was beginning to feel a little more confident. He held up the shield, using its polished surface to watch the door behind him for signs of movement. Levi watched him with interest.

  ‘The legend of the Medusa? Snake-headed, turning people into stone with just a stare?’ The doubt in the professor’s voice was clear. ‘Surely you don’t believe …’

  ‘Whether I believe it or not doesn’t really matter, does it?’ said Turlough bluntly. ‘The fact is, that creature is acting like the Medusa, and so we must act like the ancient Greek hero who defeated her: Perseus.’

  Professor Levi looked thoughtful. ‘By only viewing her through reflections.’

  Turlough nodded. ‘Help me explain to the others. And quickly, before the creature finds us again.’

  Locating Tegan proved even easier than the Doctor had anticipated: she was right at the centre of the Greek gallery, slumped at the feet of a huge bronze statue of Zeus, her dress crumpled around her and her head resting on her arms. As the Doctor hurried over, he could see that she was deep in a troubled sleep, her brow furrowed, her eyes flicking to and fro beneath her eyelids.

  Gently he eased her off the floor, leaning her back against the marble plinth at the statue’s base.

  ‘Tegan.’ He shook her gently by the arm. ‘Tegan, it’s the Doctor.’

  Still asleep, she pulled away from him sharply, a hiss of displeasure escaping her lips.

  The Doctor shook her again, harder this time. He was aware that waking her so abruptly was dangerous – but not as dangerous as letting her sleep.

  ‘Tegan, you must listen to me. You must wake up.’

  From somewhere nearby came a series of terrified screams.

  The Doctor was running out of time.

  Turlough watched in horror as the Tegan-Medusa slithered through the doorway of the Roman gallery, the snakes on its head hissing venomously.