Forever Autumn

by Mark Morris

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Mark Morris

  Also in the Series

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  It is almost Halloween in the sleepy New England Town of Blackwood Falls. Leaves litter lawns and sidewalks, paper skeletons hang in windows, and carved pumpkins leer from front porches.

  The Doctor and Martha soon discover that something long-dormant has awoken, and this will be no ordinary Halloween. What is the secret of the ancient tree and the book discovered tangled in its roots? What rises from the churchyard at night, sealing the lips of the only witness? Why are the harmless trappings of Halloween suddenly taking on a creepy new life of their own?

  As nightmarish creatures prowl the streets, the Doctor and Martha must battle to prevent both the townspeople and themselves from suffering a grisly fate…

  Featuring the Doctor and Martha as played by David Tennant and Freema Agyeman in the hit series from BBC Television.

  About the Author

  Mark Morris is the author of fourteen novels, including two previous Doctor Who books, and numerous novellas, short stories, articles and reviews, which have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines. He was born the year that Doctor Who began, but his earliest Who memory, from 1967, is of the Yeti ambling down the mountainside to attack the Det-Sen monastery in The Abominable Snowmen. His website can be found at www.markmorriswriter.com.

  Also by Mark Morris

  Vampire Circus

  Dead Island

  Doctor Who: Ghosts of India

  Torchwood: Bay of the Dead

  Also available in the Doctor Who series:

  STING OF THE ZYGONS

  Stephen Cole

  THE LAST DODO

  Jacqueline Rayner

  WOODEN HEART

  Martin Day

  SICK BUILDING

  Paul Magrs

  WETWORLD

  Mark Michalowski

  For David and Polly,

  who share that Saturday feeling.

  A Doctor to call your own.

  When the bell finally rang, Rick Pirelli almost burst with excitement. Now there was nothing standing between him and the monsters.

  He spotted his best friends, Scott Beaumont and Thad Steiner, in the school yard. From a distance his buddies always reminded him of Laurel and Hardy, one tall and wide, the other short and skinny. He ran up to them, swinging his bag around his head in sheer exhilaration. ‘Hey, you guys!’

  They turned to him. Scott, who played quarter-back in the school under-13s football team, had a wide grin on his chubby, red face.

  ‘Ricky baby,’ he boomed. ‘How’s it going?’

  Rick thumped to a stop. The cool air felt great on his hot skin. ‘Man, I thought today was going to go on forever,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ said Scott. ‘It was like we were stuck in a time zone or something.’

  ‘Warp,’ said Thad quietly.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s time warp, not time zone. A time zone is just like whatever time it is in whichever part of the world you’re in. There are twenty-four time zones on the planet. But a time warp is like a time distortion, so it seems as if—’

  Scott rolled his eyes at Rick, who grinned back at him. ‘Yeah, Thad, whatever,’ he said.

  They set off home, Rick – medium build, tousled chestnut hair, a ‘cute nose’ according to Beverley Masterson, who sat behind him in Math – strolling between his two friends. Scott, on his right, seemed almost to bounce as he walked. For a big guy he was full of energy, and deceptively athletic. Thad, by contrast, was like a mouse, a little blond mouse with specs, which were constantly slipping down his nose. He was studious and precise and he read truck-loads of books, mainly science fiction, but all kinds of other stuff too. Maybe for that reason he told the best stories – at camp it was always Thad’s ghost stories the other guys wanted to hear. He could also be side-splittingly funny, though half the time he didn’t even seem to realise he was being funny, and in a way that made him funnier still.

  Rick was feeling good – great, in fact. It was Friday afternoon, school was out, and tomorrow was Halloween, which meant all the usual fun stuff – dressing up, trick-or-treating, bobbing for apples, eating candy. Then later, when it was dark, he and his friends would head down to the Halloween Carnival, which was always a big deal in Blackwood Falls, where they would eat as many hot dogs and go on as many rides as possible, and watch the ceremonial burning of the Pumpkin Man. And then, later still – if Scott hadn’t thrown up and gone home, like he did last year – they would head back to Rick’s and spend what was left of the night watching scary movies in their sleeping bags until they fell asleep.

  Could life get any better, he thought. As the three of them tromped through the quiet, tree-lined streets, Scott yakking about some old movie he’d seen on cable the night before, something about a guy who shrank to the size of an ant and had a fight with a giant spider, Rick looked around, taking in the sights, drinking it all in. It seemed to him that everyone in Blackwood Falls loved Halloween. Maybe, he thought, the Mayor or the town committee or whatever wouldn’t let you live here if you didn’t. Wherever he looked, front porches were bedecked with Halloween pumpkins, trees were hung with rubber spiders and bats, and windows were festooned with spray-on cobwebs, paper skeletons, cardboard witches and leering rubber masks.

  The air even smelled right, of dry leaves and wood smoke and damp, mulchy earth.

  This was gonna be the best Halloween ever, he thought.

  Rick’s house was one of the biggest and oldest in Blackwood Falls, a sprawling colonial residence surrounded by a picket fence, flanked by well-established trees and fronted by a long porch. When the boys were hanging out, it was where they usually ended up, mainly because it was the closest of all their houses to the school, and also to the town’s main square, which – once they’d dumped their stuff and grabbed a snack – was where they were imminently headed.

  They clattered through the front door, dropping bags as they went, and into the kitchen.

  ‘Hi, Mom!’ Rick shouted.

  ‘Hi, honey!’ came a voice from upstairs. Half a minute later, Mrs Pirelli appeared. She was a willowy, dark-haired woman, with a nose even cuter than Rick’s.

  ‘You boys doing OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure,’ replied Scott, his mouth stuffed with an almost entire Hershey bar.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Pirelli,’ said Thad.

  She smiled at them. ‘Betcha can’t wait till tomorrow. You picking up your costumes today?’

  ‘Yep, Mom, right after this,’ said Rick.

  ‘You all got your money to pay Mr Tozier?’

  They nodded.

  ‘OK, well here’s an extra ten dollars to buy yourselves some ice cream afterward. If you like, I’ll run you guys home later.’

  ‘Wow, thanks, Mrs Pirelli,’ said Scott, his enthusiasm drowning out Thad’s grateful murmuring.

  ‘Yeah, thanks, Mom,’ said Rick.

  Her smile widened. ‘My pleasure. Have fun, guys. I’ll leave you to it.’ She exited the room with a little wave.

  ‘Your mom is so cool!’ said Scott.

  ‘You’ve just got the hots for her,’ Ric
k teased.

  Scott’s face turned an even deeper crimson than usual. ‘Have not!’

  ‘How come you’re blushing then?’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘Are so.’

  ‘Hey, guys,’ Thad said quietly, ‘look at this.’

  He was standing in front of the big window over the sink that looked out over the long back garden.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Scott, glad of the distraction.

  ‘It’s the tree. There’s something weird about it.’

  Rick and Scott joined Thad at the window. At the bottom of the garden, in front of the high fence that separated their property from that of old Mrs Helligan, was the most famous tree in Blackwood Falls. It was, in fact, the tree which had given the town its name – although, oddly, no one seemed to know what kind of tree it was. All Rick knew was that its gnarled trunk was as black as charcoal, and that it was ugly and twisted and had never, as long as he’d been alive, sprouted either buds or leaves. He wasn’t sure whether the tree was actually dead, but it certainly looked as though it was. It looked like it had been killed by a disease or something, because its branches were covered in lumpy black growths, like boils or tumours. When he’d been a little kid, Rick had thought the growths were the tree’s eyes, watching him.

  ‘I don’t see anything weird,’ Scott said now.

  ‘There was a green light,’ said Thad. ‘Like phosphorescence.’

  ‘Phosphor-what?’

  ‘It’s a light produced during a chemical reaction, like when fungus is rotting.’

  Scott sniffed. ‘So the tree’s covered in rotting fungus? Big deal.’

  ‘No, but this was different. Strange. There, look!’

  All three of them saw it this time, a peculiar green glimmer that seemed to flash up from the dark earth at the base of the trunk.

  ‘Freaky,’ said Scott.

  Thad turned, his pale blue eyes wide behind his spectacles. ‘Let’s investigate.’

  They went outside. Rick had never liked the tree. As a kid he’d been scared of it, and now that he was older he kept away from it for fear of catching something from its raddled bark. Even his parents gave the thing a wide berth. The soil down that end of the garden had always been crummy anyway, so they had no reason to go near it. The closest any of them ever got was when his dad mowed the lawn.

  Standing at the base of the tree now, Rick realised it was the nearest he’d come to it in years. Maybe ever.

  ‘There’s nothing here now,’ he said.

  ‘Not even any fungus,’ said Scott gloomily.

  ‘Maybe whatever made the light is underground,’ suggested Thad.

  Rick pulled a face. ‘How can it be?’

  ‘I dunno, but maybe it is.’

  ‘Hey, maybe it’s buried treasure,’ said Scott. ‘Emeralds or something. Maybe we should dig down, see if we can find anything.’

  ‘Aw, c’mon guys,’ said Rick. ‘This is a waste of time. Let’s go pick up our costumes.’

  ‘Don’t be a wienie,’ said Scott.

  ‘Couldn’t we just dig down a little way?’ said Thad.

  Rick sighed. ‘OK, if it’ll make you lame-brains happy. But I’m telling you, it’s pointless.’

  He trudged back to the house. It had been raining on and off for the past week and the ground was a little squelchy underfoot. He reappeared a minute later with his dad’s spade from the garage, which he handed to Thad.

  ‘You wanna dig, you dig,’ he said.

  Thad took the spade and used it to prod at the ground. Scott rolled his eyes.

  ‘What’re you doing? Tickling the worms? Give it to me.’

  Thad handed the spade over without protest and Scott began to hack at the clay-like earth. Within a couple of minutes sweat was rolling down his face, but he had managed to create a sizeable hole.

  Suddenly Thad shouted, ‘Hey, stop! I see something!’

  ‘What?’ said Rick.

  ‘I dunno. Look there.’ Thad pointed into the hole, and all at once what little colour he had seemed to drain from his face. ‘Aw, jeez, you don’t think it’s a body, do you?’

  All three peered into the hole. There was something down there. Something brownish and leathery and smooth. Was it skin, wondered Rick. Dry-mouthed, he took the spade from Scott’s slack hand and began to probe tentatively into the hole, loosening thick clots of earth from around the object. He uncovered an edge, a corner. Suddenly he relaxed.

  ‘It’s not a body,’ he said. ‘I think it’s an old book.’

  He lowered himself to his knees in the mud and leaned into the hole. There was an unpleasant smell, like mouldy bread or rotting vegetables. Holding his breath, he leaned in further, grabbed the leathery object and tried to tug it from the earth. He half-expected it to disintegrate in his hands, but it came free with a thick schlup sound.

  The book was big, like an old Bible, and its cover was made of a weird brownish-red substance that was a bit like leather and a bit like plastic, and also, thought Rick with distaste, a bit like flesh. He straightened up and his friends crowded round to look.

  ‘Cool,’ muttered Thad.

  ‘Awesome,’ breathed Scott.

  Rick produced a handkerchief and wiped away as much of the muck as he could. Emblazoned on the book’s cover, or rather carved into it, was a strange oval symbol criss-crossed with jagged lines. When Rick tilted the book, the symbol seemed to flash momentarily with a peculiar green light.

  ‘Did you see that?’ said Scott.

  ‘Reflection, that’s all,’ Rick mumbled.

  There was nothing else on the book’s cover, nor on the spine. Nothing but the oval symbol. For some reason the book creeped Rick out a little. Holding it gave him a shivery feeling, as if he was holding a box full of snakes. Almost reluctantly he opened the book at random, tilting his head back as if he expected something to jump out at him. The thick, wrinkly pages were covered in what he at first thought were random shapes, unfamiliar symbols. Then, just for a second, he felt dizzy, and all at once his eyes seemed to adjust. And he realised that the shapes were not shapes at all, but letters; letters which formed words. He tried to read the words, but they seemed jumbled up, foreign maybe. What was more they gave him the kind of prickly feeling you get when you think someone is standing behind you in an empty room.

  ‘Esoterica,’ said Thad.

  ‘Who?’ said Scott.

  ‘Like a secret language, known only to a small number of people.’

  ‘Is that what that is?’ asked Scott.

  Thad shrugged. ‘That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Scott, ‘maybe this book belonged to, like, devil worshippers, and maybe these words are spells to call up demons or something.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Thad.

  ‘So why don’t we try it? See what happens?’

  Rick slammed the book shut. ‘No.’

  ‘Aw, c’mon, man,’ said Scott, screwing up his face, ‘don’t be such a girl. What’s the worst that can happen?’

  How could Rick explain the effect the book was having on him without making it sound dumb? Maybe if his friends actually held the book in their hands…

  ‘Here you go,’ he said, thrusting it at Scott, ‘if you wanna call up a demon, you call up a demon. But don’t blame me if it bites your stupid head off.’

  Scott rolled his eyes and took the book. Rick expected to see a change come over him, a look of unease appear on his face. But Scott just opened the book and started to read from it.

  ‘Belloris,’ he said, ‘Crakithe, Meladran, Sandreath, Pellorium, Canitch, Leemanec, Freegor, Maish…’

  The weird thing, the really creepy thing, was that Scott seemed to have no trouble reading the arcane words. He read them in a strong, confident voice, almost as if he was doing a roll-call of his classmates’ names or reading out a list of the American states. Another weird thing was that almost as soon as he started to read his eyes went glassy and his body went rigid. Watching him, Rick could
n’t help thinking that the book had him under some kind of spell and, somehow or other, was bringing the words to life through him.

  But that was nuts.

  Wasn’t it?

  ‘OK,’ he said, trying to make it sound as if he was bored, ‘you can stop now.’

  But Scott carried on as if he hadn’t heard: ‘Mullarkiss, Sothor, Lantrac, Ithe…’

  ‘I said stop!’ yelled Rick, and snatched the book from his hands. This time when he slammed it shut sparkles of green light seemed to puff up from the pages like dust. Rick blinked to clear his vision. Man, why was he getting so worked up?

  Scott swayed a moment, blinking rapidly. He looked like someone coming out of a trance.

  ‘You OK?’ asked Thad.

  Scott scowled. ‘Sure I am. Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘You turned really freaky for a minute there.’

  ‘And you should know,’ said Scott, sounding like his old self, ‘being Mr Freaky 24-7.’

  They trudged back to the house, Rick carrying the book. He was wondering what to do with it, wondering whether he should show it to his parents. But when his dad appeared at the back door he found himself instinctively shoving it behind his back.

  ‘What have you reprobates been up to?’ Mr Pirelli asked good-humouredly. He was tall, a little thin on top, but he had kind of a goofy grin, which made him look younger than he was.

  ‘Nothing, Mr Pirelli,’ said Thad quickly.

  ‘Dad,’ Rick said. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’

  ‘I brought some stuff home to do on computer. It’s easier to concentrate here.’ Tony Pirelli noticed the state of his son’s clothes. ‘Heck, Rick, what have you been doing? Rolling in the dirt?’

  Before Rick could come up with a convincing explanation, Scott blurted, ‘We’ve been digging for treasure, Mr Pirelli. Under the old tree.’

  Tony Pirelli unveiled his goofy grin. ‘That so? You find anything?’

  ‘Yeah, a big fat zero,’ said Rick before his friends could reply.

  ‘Pity. Well, you guys take your shoes off before you come inside. And Rick, get yourself cleaned up. Your mom would have kittens if she found out you’d gone to town looking like a vagrant.’