by Jacqueline Rayner, Mike Tucker, Paul Magrs, et al (retail) (epub)
The Doctor hurried towards them. As he advanced, their wails grew louder, and the specks of spectre vanished into the air.
A dread silence fell across the street.
‘Are you all right?’ the Doctor asked, softly resting a hand on the young man’s shoulder.
It took the stranger a moment to register the Doctor, his head still buried firmly in his hands. When he finally looked up, he seemed both relieved and haunted.
‘Thank you,’ he said quickly, catching his breath.
‘Don’t mention it.’ The Doctor smiled and offered the young man a handkerchief. ‘I’m the Doctor, incidentally, and this is my young friend –’
‘Ace!’ she interrupted, a little too keenly. ‘Nice to meet you …’ she trailed off, and gave the slightest cough, prompting the man to finish her sentence.
‘Oh, er, my name is Nathan,’ he replied a little unsteadily. Then, as if they might have heard of him, ‘Nathan Gough?’
‘Nice to make your acquaintance, Mr Gough.’ The Doctor helped the man to his feet. ‘I hope we didn’t disturb anything just now?’
Nathan glared at him incredulously. ‘It wasn’t you I was disturbed by!’
‘Yeah, bit freaky, wasn’t it?’ Ace agreed. ‘What were those things?’
‘What did they look like?’
‘I, er … I don’t know.’ To Ace’s surprise, she found herself hesitating. She knew full well what the things she’d seen had looked like – to her, they’d looked like ghosts – but she didn’t want to say that. Not in front of the Doctor. She’d been travelling with him for long enough that she knew such things weren’t real. If it looked like a ghost and sounded like a ghost, chances were it wasn’t anything of the sort. No, she knew better than that. There was bound to be a rational explanation.
‘If I didn’t know any better,’ the Doctor said, ‘I’d say they looked like ghosts.’
Typical, Ace thought. Of course he’d say that!
‘No such thing,’ snapped Nathan. ‘The dead do not come back. When they pass, they are lost forever. We have to accept that. We have to!’ Anxiously, he dusted himself down, brushing dirt from his sleeve. He looked about him, getting his bearings. ‘Now, if you don’t mind,’ he told them politely, ‘I really ought to be on my way. Thank you both again for your … assistance.’
‘The pleasure was all ours.’ The Doctor doffed his hat. ‘Have a good evening, won’t you?’
Nathan didn’t say another word. Instead, he began to walk in the other direction, stopping only once or twice to make sure of his location. Ace instinctively moved to follow him, but the Doctor held her back.
‘Professor!’ she protested. ‘What are you doing? Shouldn’t we follow him?’
The Doctor pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Not yet,’ he whispered. ‘He’s nervous enough as it is without us adding any more to his troubles. Besides which, he keeps checking over his shoulder – he’d be bound to spot us.’
‘So what do we do then?’
‘We wait a minute, give him some distance … and then we follow him.’
Ace nodded. ‘So there is something going on here after all?’
‘Oh yes.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘Indubitably!’ He had a mischievous twinkle in his eye. ‘Come on. Keep to the shadows and follow me.’
When Nathan returned to his home, he poured himself a very large glass of something ‘medicinal’, followed by another, then finally slumped into one of the armchairs by the window holding a third. He felt his entire body shudder in that moment – partly due to the temperature of the room, but mostly because of what he’d experienced out on the street. If it hadn’t been for that strange little man, the Doctor, and his friend …
Nathan dismissed the thought quickly. He didn’t want to consider what might have happened if they hadn’t found him. And yet it all seemed even more hopeless now. He’d gone out to clear his head, perhaps even forget about his troubles, but it seemed there was no escaping them. His demons followed him everywhere he went … and now something worse had joined them.
He heard his mother’s voice inside his head, still tinged with bitter disappointment. ‘What about your work?’ she rasped.
‘I can’t,’ Nathan protested aloud, feeling more than a little sorry for himself. He drained the contents of his glass and set it down. ‘Painting’s not that easy. It shouldn’t be easy. It requires time, and thought, and above all else passion.’
‘You used to find painting easy. What’s changed?’
Nathan choked back his reply. He didn’t want to tell her it was her fault, that her death had had such an impact on him. He didn’t want her to feel guilty for holding him back. Or, worse still, he didn’t want her to think that he blamed her for his own shortcomings. Not that she was actually there, of course; she couldn’t be. Nathan knew that. And yet …
‘I’ll finish the painting soon,’ he said, more to himself than to her.
‘Tonight,’ his mother insisted.
‘I …’ Nathan hesitated. ‘You don’t understand. I can’t. I physically can’t!’
‘Oh, but you can,’ she urged. ‘You can do anything you put your mind to. Isn’t that what I always used to tell you? You, my boy, you can achieve the impossible.’
Nathan shuddered again, as though he could feel the chill caress of her hand on the back of his neck.
‘You have to carry on working at this difficult time. You know that.’
‘But thinking of you, trying to paint you … not enough time has passed!’
‘Then you must paint something else,’ his mother instructed. ‘A self-portrait, perhaps? That handsome young face of yours, captured forever in pigments and oil. What a masterpiece that would be!’
Nathan considered this for a moment. He’d been so consumed with grief that it hadn’t occurred to him that he could use that sense of loss, he could exploit how he was feeling, and pour all those dreadful emotions into his work. After all, art didn’t need to be happy to be good.
He sprang from his chair with a newfound sense of purpose, gathering his tools up from around the room, and began to think of his new composition.
That’s when the tapping started.
‘Is it me, or is it getting colder around here?’ Ace shivered as she and the Doctor arrived on Nathan’s street.
The Doctor pulled a fob watch from his pocket, then flipped it open and held it up in front of him. It chirruped a sequence of strange mechanical trills.
‘You’re right,’ he confirmed, interpreting the watch’s burble of data. ‘There’s been a recent drop in ambient temperature … some atmospheric disturbances … not to mention instances of temporal distortion. All of which suggest we’re in the right place!’ He snapped the case of the fob watch shut. ‘Now we just need to work out which of these buildings our young friend Mr Gough resides in.’
‘If you mean “Where does he live?” I think I’ve a fair idea.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah.’ Ace pointed up to a third-floor window a few doors down. ‘Look!’
Obediently, the Doctor did as he was told. There was a light in one of the windows. Not the golden, reassuring flicker of candlelight, however, but the unnatural, sickly green sparks that they’d seen above Nathan Gough in the alleyway.
‘I mean, it’s just a hunch,’ Ace continued a little smugly, ‘but I’m guessing it’s probably that one.’
The Doctor hurried over to the house, then bounded up the steps that led to the porch and rapped his knuckles four times on the door. He waited a few seconds for a response, then knocked again. This time, he heard footsteps coming down a staircase, followed by the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door swung suddenly open, revealing an extremely flustered Nathan.
‘Mr Gough, what a coincidence!’ The Doctor beamed, trying a trifle too hard to sound surprised. ‘We had no idea you lived around here!’
Nathan eyed the Doctor warily.
‘You remember my young friend, Ace?’ the Doctor said.
‘Hiya!’ She waved, bouncing up to greet him. ‘Mind if we come inside? It’s a little bit wet out.’
Nathan wasn’t sure that was a good idea; he wasn’t very sure of anything any more. ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ he said, keeping his voice low. ‘Now is … now is not a good time.’
‘Oh, I know all about time!’ the Doctor blustered, barging past Nathan and into the hallway. He shook the rain from his umbrella and started marching up the staircase, calling back behind him. ‘Strictly between you and me, the bad times tend to be my speciality! I take it upstairs is where you’d rather we didn’t go?’
Nathan’s dumbstruck silence could only mean yes.
‘Splendid. I thought as much!’ The Doctor stomped from step to step. ‘Come along now, Ace. No time to lose!’
Ace smiled apologetically at Nathan. ‘Sorry about him,’ she said. ‘If it makes you feel any better, he knows what he’s doing. Most of the time.’
Ace could see from Nathan’s expression this wasn’t helping, so she tried a different tack.
‘Last one up’s a Ratkin!’ she cried, tagging him on the shoulder and dashing upstairs.
‘You really don’t want to go up there!’ he shouted, but he had no choice but to follow them.
When the Doctor entered Nathan’s studio, he instantly knew something was wrong. A foreboding atmosphere permeated the room, the air tasted oddly stale and the hairs on the back of his neck were beginning to prickle. He tried to make out what detail he could, but, aside from a couple of half-burned candles on the mantel, the room was wreathed in darkness.
‘I’m afraid I’m unused to house guests,’ Nathan explained, following them both hurriedly into the room. He immediately threw open the curtains, not that it helped much. The moonlight was struggling to break through the rain clouds.
‘Interesting place you have here,’ the Doctor said, wandering casually around the room, picking up ornaments.
‘Creepy, more like,’ Ace muttered, flicking through a discarded sketch pad. ‘You like drawing, then?’
‘I’m an artist,’ Nathan admitted. ‘Though I’m not sure “like” comes into it. Rather, I’d consider it my calling.’
‘Ah, the temperamental type!’ The Doctor chuckled. ‘That would explain why it’s been targeting you.’
‘Why what has? What are you talking about?’
‘You tell me, Mr Gough.’ The Doctor tapped the handle of his umbrella against his chin. ‘You … tell … me.’
Before Nathan could answer, a low, hard thump sounded from the corner of the room. It was as though something large and solid had hit the other side of the wall.
‘What was that?’ Ace instinctively turned in the direction of the noise.
Another thump boomed, followed by another, then another.
‘Hey, I think it’s coming from over here!’ Ace moved awkwardly into the corner of the room, shifting the paints around Nathan’s easel. ‘Can’t see where though.’
The Doctor and Nathan moved to join her.
There came another thump.
‘I think,’ the Doctor said, ‘that it might be coming from the canvas itself.’ He pointed towards the easel Ace was crouched beside, where a broad frame had been suspiciously covered from view with a tattered old dust sheet. ‘Care to tell us what you’re working on, Mr Gough?’
‘It’s nothing. Just a personal piece,’ Nathan answered quickly. ‘A portrait of my … of my mother. She died recently.’
‘Did she indeed? Well, let’s take a look, shall we?’
Before Nathan could stop him, the Doctor had whipped away the dust sheet with a magician’s flourish, revealing the image that lay beneath. If it had once been a loving depiction of Nathan’s mother, it had drastically changed. Her features lacked the warmth she’d had in life, and the face was hard and sallow; it was most definitely not how Nathan would have chosen to remember her.
‘Either that’s not your mother,’ whispered Ace, ‘or you really didn’t like her very much.’
Nathan shook his head in disbelief. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think I do,’ said the Doctor, plucking the fob watch from his pocket. ‘This area’s rife with temporal instabilities.’
The others looked confused.
‘Put simply, that canvas is now a weak point in the fabric of space and time. Like a doorway, a portal, to another aspect of reality altogether. Something’s breaking through. Those things we saw outside? Those ghosts?’
An angry thump punctuated his words.
‘In truth, they weren’t ghosts at all, but something else.’
I knew it! thought Ace.
‘There are all manner of abstract creatures we don’t even know about yet. Entities that stalk the gulfs of the Space–Time Vortex, beings unlike anything you’ll have ever known here on Earth. They exist in five dimensions all at once; they’re here and yet they’re not here.’
Another thump. This time it shook the easel.
‘But how can that be?’ asked Nathan. ‘How can we not see them?’
‘Because they exist in a different dimension,’ explained the Doctor. ‘Think of it this way: we’re three-dimensional beings, yes? We exist. The pictures you paint are only two-dimensional. They also exist. And yet, the subjects you depict in your paintings couldn’t even begin to conceive of a third dimension, never mind a fourth or even a fifth!’
‘So you’re saying we’re basically stickmen?’ Ace suggested, not very helpfully.
‘But no, those phantoms …’ Nathan was struggling to process what the Doctor was saying. ‘They came for me. They know me!’
‘Not at all. Just insubstantial glimpses of a dimension beyond our own. But the fact we can see them means they’re getting closer. They’re growing stronger, minute by minute, and I think it’s thanks to you, Mr Gough.’
‘Me?’
‘Of course. Entities like this feast upon the abstract. They devour concepts and emotions, meaning creative talents like yours are the perfect target. Add to that the death of your mother and you become the perfect puppet. They’re using her to manipulate you.’
Nathan heard his mother in his head again, warning him not to heed the Doctor’s words. Who was this stranger, anyway? She knew him better than this ‘Doctor’ ever could! After all, he was her special baby boy and always would be.
Thump!
‘I don’t know what to do.’ Nathan sighed, pulling up a chair.
‘Then listen to me!’ The Doctor grabbed Nathan’s arm as he reached for the easel. ‘You can’t allow them to get any closer. You have to stop this.’
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Ace recoiled as the portrait started to shift. Its features twisted horribly.
‘HE WILL CONTINUE!’ the image rasped, its green eyes rolling to the back of its head. ‘HIS WORK MUST BE COMPLETED!’
‘Mother?’
‘Nathan, no, it’s not your mother!’ the Doctor warned. ‘You know it isn’t. It’s using your talent, exploiting you to establish a link. These things, these monsters, they feed off abstract concepts. Works like this, they capture a specific point in time – in this case, a time before your mother’s death, but that time has well and truly passed. I’m sorry, but that’s how they’re doing it. They’re leeching off the abstract years that never were, between how she used to be in the image and how she is now. Reliving happy times: it’s the most basic form of time travel, and they’re exploiting that through you to travel here.’
Nathan’s mother’s face snarled, and the canvas creased around it. ‘PAY HIM NO HEED, CHILD,’ it hissed. ‘GIVE ME LIFE!’
Suddenly a spectral hand tore through the canvas, ripping at the fringes of reality and grabbing Nathan firmly round the throat. ‘GIVE ME YOUR LIFE!’
The Doctor tried to wrest the hand away, but the creature was far too strong. Nathan had formed a link between dimensions, and the monster was beginning to take his place. Nathan could hear its voice inside his mind now, screaming in triumph, its supe
rnatural life force coursing through him. He tried to scream but couldn’t. His will was already being crushed from inside his body.
‘YOU HUMANS MAKE THIS SO EASY!’ the creature gloated.
Then Nathan heard another voice cry out. It was Ace.
‘Oi, grotbags!’ she yelled, picking up a jar of murky liquid. ‘Get out of his head, yeah?’
Ace threw the liquid at the canvas, smearing it with her hands and distorting the image. Immediately the force’s influence started to wane. Nathan’s senses were taking hold again, and the creature’s grip round his throat was beginning to weaken. It howled at Ace in fury, releasing its hold on Nathan, then punched back through the canvas, leaving behind nothing but a smear of muddy oils.
It was as if it had never been there.
‘Ace!’ The Doctor’s voice cut sharply across the room. ‘That was extremely irresponsible of you!’
She looked like a wounded puppy. ‘Oh.’
‘But also extremely resourceful and really rather brilliant,’ the Doctor continued. ‘I wish I’d thought of it!’
‘What did she do?’ asked Nathan, getting his breath back. His neck was stained with dark paint from the creature’s claws.
‘She disrupted the link, with the help of a handy jar of paint thinner,’ the Doctor replied. ‘As I said, it needed that painting of your mother to form a link with you, to feast off the years between life and death. Spoil the image and you spoil the link, giving it no choice but to retreat back to its own dimension.’
‘So that’s it now – she’s gone? My mother’s gone?’
‘Your mother has been gone for a long time, Nathan,’ the Doctor told him solemnly. ‘But it hasn’t gone. It’s just not here any more, but it won’t be long before it finds another victim, another target much like you.’ He sighed and considered his options. ‘We need to draw it back here.’
‘I’m not sure I like the sound of this,’ Ace muttered.