Tales of Terror

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

‘Oh, you think you have. Of course you do. That’s the whole point, Doctor. Don’t you realise? You thought you had beaten me at the Hallowe’en party, but the truth is you lost. You failed to choose between Dodo and Steven and thus forfeited the game. Since then, you’ve been my puppet. I’ve amused myself by playing games with you. Sending you off into space, pitching monsters against you … It’s been great fun.’

  The girl doll with the teapot, the boy with the cakes …

  ‘Dodo,’ said the Doctor, their long-gone images conjured up in his mind. ‘And Steven. They were with me …’

  ‘Of course, when you lost, so did they,’ the Toymaker said. ‘At first, I kept you together. But Steven was a bright boy. He started to figure it out, so I had to take him away to a game of his own. But that turned out to be a good thing, because it gave me the idea that I could replace your friends with other dolls – those who’d once been the people who’d fought hardest, those who’d nearly won their own games. I was going to keep Dodo. She never struck me as being particularly insightful, but I misjudged her and had to get rid of her rather quickly. Never mind. It’s been a joy to see you paired off with some of my very favourite dolls over the years.’

  ‘And what of me?’ asked the Doctor. ‘That’s where your story falls apart, Toymaker. I’ve regenerated five times since I met you here. This is just a story, a trick.’

  ‘No trick! You forget, I am the Toymaker! The maker of toys!’ He flung back the lid of a large wooden chest. ‘Do you not think I can also repair toys when they are broken? Replace an arm, a leg, a head … at what point is it not the same doll? At no point!’

  The Doctor looked into the chest. A jumble of doll parts lay inside. A head, still with a floppy hat on top of its curly woollen hair. A plastic foot sticking out of the bottom of a single torn cream-striped trouser leg. A sewn white hand with a large blue-stoned ring on a cotton finger.

  ‘My rag box, Doctor. The remaining scraps of old puppets. Would you like to see my current puppet, though?’

  He led the Doctor through another door. A large, three sided box stood inside: a replica of the TARDIS control room, with photographic roundels on its three walls and a plastic console stuck in the middle. Inside, leaning against the console to keep it upright, was a rag doll with curly blond hair and a patchwork coat. A string was attached to each arm, each leg, the head, all fixed to a wooden crosspiece.

  ‘Did you think it was all real, Doctor? Truly? I’m the first to admit I got it wrong sometimes. The reality filters cut out every now and then, but you never seemed to notice the plastic Daleks or the bendy dinosaurs or that quite ridiculous giant plush rat. Did it never cross your mind to wonder why that time tunnel you fell into recently was actually, literally decorated with Christmas tinsel? A total failure on my part. I tried to distract you by bringing the Daleks out again, but now I’m beginning to wonder if I need have tried so hard. You were obviously completely oblivious to the whole thing.’

  Waves of doubt. Could this all be true? Could everything that had happened to him – every person he had met, every monster he’d fought – have sprung from the mind of the Toymaker? ‘You’re saying all my adventures were made up? By you?’

  ‘Well, it’s hardly plausible that so many things would happen to one person, even a time and space traveller. I mean, look how many times you run into the Daleks. The trouble is, they’re my favourites – perhaps because they’re one of the few monsters I didn’t make up myself. If ever I find myself getting bored, I just set up another Dalek battle. Totally implausible that you’d keep meeting like that – but again it clearly never bothered you.’

  ‘But if I’m your toy, being controlled by you – if I’m that very doll there – how can I be here too? You’re bluffing. It makes no sense.’

  The Toymaker smiled, obviously enjoying the note of uncertainty that the Doctor hadn’t been able to stop from creeping into his voice. ‘I expect it’s hard to get your head around, yes,’ he said, folding his arms, ‘but the answer is simply that you’re not here. You only think you are. Just like in all of your adventures since you became my toy. You’ve managed to create a degree of self-awareness, of autonomy, for yourself, but all I have to do is play with my puppet and you’ll be mine again.’

  ‘Why don’t you do it then?’ demanded the Doctor, also folding his arms in a gesture of defiance.

  ‘Oh, I will – eventually.’

  The Doctor walked over to the console-room set and looked down at the marionette. Was that all he was – all this incarnation of himself had ever been?

  No. Even if it were true, he had been the Doctor once, and he was the Doctor now. His thoughts were his own, his decisions were his own, his actions were his own, even if the situations he was placed in were the creation of someone else. Well, hadn’t they always been?

  A soft voice came from behind. ‘I propose a game.’

  The Doctor spun round. ‘Well, of course you do! You’re the Toymaker! Games are your meat and drink. Is there a prize?’

  ‘Naturally. If you win, my power over you will be broken.’

  ‘Not that I will live to enjoy it – your world and everyone in it perishes when you’re beaten, I know. And, if I lose, I remain your puppet for all eternity, I suppose?’

  The Toymaker inclined his head. ‘As you say.’

  ‘Games with you are a no-win situation, as my friends from Earth would put it. I suppose I have no choice but to accept – but on one condition. I get to choose the game.’

  ‘Very well.’ A light had come into the Toymaker’s eyes. This was what he lived for, the Doctor knew. Oh, the Toymaker wouldn’t entertain the idea of losing – but to toy with his victims, to make them think they had a chance, that was everything to him. The first time they had met, the Doctor had both beaten the Toymaker and survived his wrath – perhaps the only person ever to do so in the eternity that this strange man-outside-time had existed. He’d made a bad enemy then. No wonder the Toymaker had lured him to his Hallowe’en party all those centuries – or was it all those minutes? – ago. His motive had been revenge.

  ‘There’s a very simple game I came across on Earth. It’s called two truths, one lie. I give you three statements. Two are true, one is a lie. You have to say which is the lie. If you get it right – you win. Should be easy, really, for someone who’s been in charge of almost everything I’ve ever done.’

  ‘Oh, you’re going to try to trick me!’ said the Toymaker. ‘How delightful. You suggest it will be easy, which means you’ve come up with something you think is impossible for me to know. Now, go ahead, Doctor. Play your game.’

  ‘These are my statements,’ said the Doctor. ‘Statement one: I am a toy of the Toymaker. Statement two: I am not a puppet controlled by the Toymaker, so he must let me go free. Statement three: This is an elaborate trap designed to put me under the Toymaker’s control. Which one of those is false?’

  The Toymaker gaped, as the Doctor smiled. It was the smile that many of his opponents had seen: the smile of someone who had successfully set a trap. It was a smile that had been on the Toymaker’s own face a thousand times, but that he had rarely seen on others’ faces.

  ‘You were wrong,’ said the Doctor. ‘I didn’t want to play this game because I’d come up with something it was impossible for you to know. I’d come up with something you knew only too well. None of this is real. I did win the game back then. Dodo, Steven and I did escape from you, and one of the reasons I know that for a fact is that I saw their TARDIS leave as I arrived, which wouldn’t have happened if you’d kept them here as toys – and which you couldn’t have fabricated and put in my head if I had temporarily obtained autonomy, as you claimed. Your world was destroyed. All of this –’ he swept a hand around, indicating the entire mansion, the trappings of Hallowe’en – ‘has been rebuilt by you.’

  He went back to the previous room and stood in front of the toy TARDIS, staring at the companion dolls. So much trouble taken. He had no doubt that the Toymaker had foun
d a way to watch him over the years, waiting to find a good time to spring his trap. A time when the Doctor had no friends travelling with him, a time when he could be psychically manipulated without anyone there to pull him back to reality.

  As the Toymaker joined him, he continued. ‘Oh, the trick-or-treat boys were an excellent touch. Making me think I was trying to give myself a message, making me think I’d found a clever way to break through. You fooled me for a while. Although not for as long as you thought. This whole charade was to build up to another game: I was supposed to think a loss would merely lead to an extension of the status quo and therefore I really had nothing to lose, whereas in reality the loss would turn me into one of your playthings for the first time. So tell me: what is your answer? Which of my statements is false?’

  But the Toymaker couldn’t answer. To give the correct answer would have been an admission of the truth and would have handed victory to the Doctor. To give an incorrect answer would have been to lose the game.

  ‘Remember that thing I was talking about called a no-win situation?’ said the Doctor. ‘I think this might just be one. But for you this time, not for me. Goodbye.’

  He looked again at the dolls, wishing for a moment that they were capable of becoming real people, that he could see again all the friends he had lost.

  But no. Dwelling on the past was what had brought the Toymaker to this situation. The Doctor had to look on, to the future.

  So, leaving the Toymaker trapped, forever unable to end the game without losing it, the Doctor returned to his TARDIS.

  Fear gripped the city. Elliot Matthews was running for his life.

  Until this point, his day had been the very definition of routine. He’d got up at the crack of dawn, headed out for work, and set up his stall in Old Spitalfields Market. The day had been slow to start, but they usually were. He took a break for lunch around midday, a few sly drinks, a bit more work, then, as the October dusk began to fall, he shut up early. Nobody wanted to be out in London after dark. Now Elliot understood why.

  He’d heard all the stories, of course. He and the lads had taken ghoulish glee in sharing them with one another, often embellishing the details, competing to tell the most terrifying tale they could. They talked of monsters and demons, phantoms and spirits, creatures that stalked in the dead of night. But not one of them ever believed that these creatures might be real.

  Elliot didn’t stop running. He wasn’t entirely certain what it was that was pursuing him; all he knew for sure was that it wasn’t a man. He cried for help and banged on doors, but nobody came to his aid. They’d heard the stories too.

  He ducked round a corner, pausing slightly to catch his breath, then darted off down an alleyway. He had thought, at the back of his mind, that he might know London better than whatever was trailing him did. He hoped that maybe he could lose it, or tire it out, or perhaps it might even lose interest. Unfortunately, Elliot Matthews was wrong on all counts.

  In his haste to get away, he made a fatal mistake: he began to run even faster. Almost immediately he slipped on a mulch of leaves and lost his footing, falling to the ground with a smack. He picked himself up from the cobbles and tried to steady himself, to carry on running, but it was far too late for that now.

  A presence appeared behind him and time seemed to slow.

  Elliot knew in his head and his heart that it was over. This was the end.

  Slowly, finally, he turned to face his pursuer …

  And he screamed.

  In a dark converted studio just a few streets away, Nathan Gough remained oblivious to Elliot Matthews’ plight. He’d been staring at the same sheet of canvas for most of the day, willing inspiration to strike him. A couple of times each hour, he picked up a paintbrush. Sometimes he simply waved it in phantom strokes; more often he’d mix up colours on a palette, idly combining oils he’d never use.

  He sighed and sank back in his chair. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d struggled so hard to paint. Painting had always been something he loved, something he had excelled at. Now, however, it was nothing more than a means to an end, a way of making money by selling commissions.

  Not that he was working on a commission at the moment. He hadn’t taken on any paid work since the death of his mother a few weeks earlier. Instead, he was focused on completing a project of his own, a personal piece: a portrait of his mother, something to remember her by, maybe even help him through his grief. Perhaps it was rather too soon for him to be thinking about such things, but he felt compelled to paint the portrait. He could hear his mother’s voice in the back of his mind, urging him not to forget her, to find a way to keep her spirit alive …

  The night of her funeral, Nathan had even thought he’d seen her in his studio. She had been just an abstract shape at first, reflected in the shards of a broken mirror. The figure never moved, so to begin with he didn’t notice it at all. It was only as the hours drew on that he became aware of a strange sensation, almost as if there was somebody else in the room. Someone watching him. His mother.

  Since then, he could feel his mother’s presence growing stronger with each passing night. He knew, somehow, that she was always standing over him, observing him work. At first it was almost comforting. His very own guardian angel, come to protect him! Then, as the weeks drew on, he couldn’t shake the notion she was judging him.

  Even now, he could hear her, clear as day: sometimes encouraging, often criticising, but always forcing him to carry on with his work. ‘I gave you life,’ she reminded him. ‘Now you will grant me mine!’

  Nathan wasn’t quite sure what she meant by this. He stared blankly at the canvas, hoping for an answer. Then, when it was clear that none was coming, he leaped out of his chair and, with a yawn, grabbed a coat on the way to the door.

  ‘I need some air,’ he told the empty room, slamming the door behind him.

  As the chimes of Big Ben struck seven, a 1950s London police box materialised on the city’s Embankment, shrouded in a haze of mist and drizzle. Its door snapped sharply inwards and a young girl stepped out. She wore a jacket adorned with badges and with her nickname, ‘Ace’, emblazoned in large, stark letters across the back. She shivered, taking in the dismal sight in front of her.

  ‘You’re on to a right winner here, Professor!’ she huffed, yelling back inside the TARDIS. ‘This place is cold, dark, dreary and damp!’

  ‘Good job I brought a brolly then, isn’t it?’ replied the older man who stepped out after her. He wore a light cream linen jacket, checked trousers and a distinctive question-mark-decorated pullover. He popped a straw hat on to his head to finish off the ensemble. Neither one of them had dressed for the weather, or the period.

  ‘London, 1887!’ The Doctor grinned, raising his voice above the sound of the falling rain. He opened his umbrella and held it above Ace’s head, offering her what precious little shelter he was able to. She smiled and huddled closer to him as they strolled gently off along the river.

  It occurred to Ace that London never really changed. Even now, a century before she’d grow up there, it all seemed weirdly familiar. True, the lamps were ablaze with gas instead of electric, and there was a distinct lack of modern skyscrapers on the horizon, but there was still the inimitable bustle of Londoners, the unmistakable stench of the Thames, and of course the awful British weather. Even the Tower of London hadn’t changed much. Though, in fairness, that was probably to be expected.

  ‘You have to appreciate this city’s ambition,’ the Doctor said cheerily. ‘Just look at it all: the people, the sprawling architecture! Difficult to believe that this is a London still in its infancy.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess,’ Ace conceded a little reluctantly, ‘but it’s not exactly London’s heyday, is it?’

  The Doctor looked puzzled. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you know … 1887? It’s a bit of a dark period, isn’t it? All smog and slums and street urchins and, oh yeah, wait! Jack the Ripper!’

  ‘The Ripper murder
s won’t take place for another year,’ the Doctor replied. ‘Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about them. Or rather, nothing we can do now … or not that I’ve already done … or perhaps even will do. Time travel’s funny like that.’

  Ace groaned. She hated when the Doctor mangled his tenses. It was one of the few downsides to travelling with a Time Lord. ‘So what you’re basically saying is that it’s not all bad?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, Ace.’ The Doctor sighed. ‘Nothing’s ever entirely bad. Just as nothing can ever be entirely good. Lifetimes spent travelling the universe have shown me that much.’ He offered her a reassuring smile. ‘But no. Right here, right now, London isn’t such a terrible place to be. Trust me.’

  Ace was almost ready to relent and take his word for this, when an anguished cry echoed abruptly through the streets. She couldn’t help raising an eyebrow. ‘You were saying?’

  But the Doctor didn’t respond. Instead, he licked the tip of his index finger and held it up to the chill night air. If he could work out which direction the wind was coming from, he might just be able to pinpoint the victim’s whereabouts. He closed his eyes and focused on the voice, blotting out all other sounds around him.

  ‘This way!’ he barked. ‘Just up beyond the Tower!’

  Ace didn’t need telling twice.

  Together, they ran towards Whitechapel as fast as they could and, since the horrible screaming never stopped, they didn’t either.

  As they rounded a corner on to one of the side streets, they stumbled upon a wholly unexpected sight. A dishevelled young man was lying in the middle of the road, curled up on his hands and knees, crying out for someone – anyone – to help. However, it was immediately clear why nobody had.

  ‘Gordon Bennett!’ Ace blurted under her breath.

  Above the stranger’s body, suspended in the air, a host of abstract figures spiralled round him. Occasionally, they even looked like people, though when they did it was only for the briefest of moments. For the most part, they were more like the embers of a fire caught on the wind: abstract sparks picked out in unusual patterns, threatening to resemble a far larger, more sinister form. Each of them glowed a sickly, eerie green, burning crisply through the murk of London’s smog. They howled like a building gale, hounding their victim.