Forever Autumn

by Mark Morris

  He shuddered and realised his mouth was very dry. Too dry to issue a challenge to whoever

  (or whatever)

  might be lurking in the shadows.

  Aware that he was behaving like a frightened child, aware that he hadn’t let his imagination run this wild since he was about twelve, Jim stomped across the room to the light switch by the door. As he did so he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the Evil Clown turn its head to follow his progress. Heart leaping, he swung his flashlight towards it. No, he had been mistaken. The clown was still facing front. It hadn’t moved at all.

  He reached the light switch and jabbed it with a sweaty finger. Darkness was instantly dispelled. Shadow-clotted hiding places became harmless nooks and crannies. Jim breathed a little easier. As though attracted by the light, the green mist outside seemed to curl and drift towards the door, to press itself against the glass panels. Jim told himself he couldn’t see shapes in it. Told himself he couldn’t see a pair of blurry hands squashing themselves against the glass, or a fat, doughy face with a yawning mouth peering in at him.

  Averting his eyes from the swirling greenness outside, he quickly searched the shop. There was nobody here. No one lurking between the costumes, no one hiding behind the counter. The masks were just masks and the Evil Clown in the window was just rubber and material draped over a tatty old mannequin that had been here since his father’s day.

  Though he was alone, Jim felt a bit embarrassed. He could imagine how Glenn would have hooted at his nervousness.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ Jim muttered, glancing towards the ceiling as if Glenn was up there somewhere, watching over him.

  He turned off the lights and clumped back up to bed. Yessir, he thought to himself, this was definitely going to be his last Halloween.

  Jim Tozier was not the only person in Blackwood Falls who was finding sleep hard to come by that night. Across town, 12-year-old Rick Pirelli was tossing and turning fitfully in bed, his sheets a sweaty tangle around his feet. His eyelids flickered and he muttered to himself. He kept drifting in and out of wakefulness, though for the most part seemed to be hovering in a kind of limbo, where dreams and reality were knotted together so tightly it seemed impossible to pick them apart. In his mind’s eye he kept seeing the book, kept feeling its binding squirm under his fingers like flesh. Then he was standing by the black tree. Then he was digging beneath it, sliding down between its roots into a stinking, filthy tunnel. Then he was fighting his way through green mist, trying to find his way home. But the mist was getting into his lungs and choking him, stinging his eyes and clamping itself to his face like clammy hands. He fought against it, but it wound itself around his legs like rope. And then Rick was back in his room, in his bed, and it should have been dark, but it wasn’t, because the room was lit by a sickly green glow. The glow was coming from the eyes of the werewolf costume he had collected from Tozier’s that day, and which was now hanging on the back of his door like the pelt of some savage animal. As Rick stared at the costume, it slowly turned its sagging, frozen snarl of a face towards him. He cowered in terror beneath the pitiless scrutiny of its blazing virescent eyes…

  … and woke, gasping, sweat or possibly tears running down his cheeks.

  It was dark in his room. There was no green glow. Rick looked across at the black, lumpy shape of the costume hanging on his door. It wasn’t moving. Of course it wasn’t. It was lifeless as an old coat. He stretched out a trembling hand and turned on his nitelight. It was a revolving one, Superman flying above the spires of Metropolis. A bit childish, he guessed, but Rick liked it. It made him feel secure somehow, made him feel that with Superman by his side he was safe from the monsters.

  That weird guy, the Doctor, had given him a similar feeling. Not that he was a superhero or anything. He just seemed like the sort of guy you’d turn to if…

  If what?

  If the monsters really did show up, a little voice whispered in his head before he could stop it.

  Rick settled back down into his bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. With Superman patrolling the skies beside him, he closed his eyes.

  But it was a long time before he slept.

  ‘So tell me about the tree,’ said the Doctor.

  He was sitting in a squashy old armchair, one hand wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate, the other scratching the head of a ginger tom cat curled in his lap. He’d once said something about not being keen on cats, but he seemed to be getting on OK with this one. Not that he had much choice. They were everywhere in Etta’s rambling old house, purring and prowling and slinking around their heels. Martha was just glad that she wasn’t allergic.

  Etta, sitting on a sofa adjacent to a crackling log fire that was filling the high-ceilinged, book-lined room with the sweet scent of wood smoke, spread her chubby, wrinkled hands. ‘What’s to tell? It’s old. Older than old. According to the Niantic, it’s been here for centuries.’

  ‘Niantic?’ queried Martha.

  ‘The indigenous peoples of this area.’

  ‘And your ancestors named the town after it?’ the Doctor said.

  Etta nodded. ‘They used it as a kind of… focal point, I guess. Built the town around it.’

  ‘But why Falls?’ the Doctor asked. ‘I mean, the Blackwood bit’s obvious, but why Falls? Is there a waterfall around here?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Etta. ‘The Niantics believed that the tree didn’t grow from the ground but fell from the sky. They believe it hit the ground with such force that it buried itself deep in the earth. So deep that the roots pierced the spirit-world and released a tribe of cannibal spirits called Hee-oko.’

  ‘Hee-oko,’ the Doctor murmured, a fiercely intense expression on his face.

  ‘What is it, Doctor?’ Martha asked. ‘More jigsaw pieces?’

  He was staring into the middle distance, evidently thinking hard. ‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘and I don’t think I like the picture I’m starting to see.’ Abruptly his head jerked up, as if he was waking from a trance, and he stared at Etta. ‘I’m guessing the roots of that tree extend right under your property, yes?’

  She shrugged. ‘I suppose. But what of it?’

  ‘I’m also guessing,’ he continued, ‘that the members of your family who’ve lived in this house have had—’ he waggled the fingers of both hands at the sides of his head ‘—lots of weirdy brain stuff going on? Second sight, that kind of thing?’

  Now Etta looked a bit more impressed. ‘It’s true that we’ve been blessed with certain psychic gifts,’ she conceded.

  ‘Knew it!’ he shouted, jumping up and spilling the startled tom cat onto the floor. It gave a yowl of protest and stalked out of the room, tail in the air. The Doctor raised his head and sniffed as if he could smell something burning. ‘That pong is unmistakeable. And my teeth are itching again. Can you smell it, Martha?’

  ‘I can smell cat pee, if that’s what you mean,’ she muttered under her breath.

  ‘Residual psychic energy!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s all over the place. This house is steeped in it.’

  ‘Is it dangerous?’ asked Etta, glancing around nervously as if she expected to be able to see what he was talking about, like patches of dry rot staining the walls.

  ‘Won’t do you any harm,’ said the Doctor. ‘If anything, it’s good for you. Invigorates the old grey matter. Bet you’ve never had any village idiots in your clan.’

  ‘I should say not,’ said Etta a little stuffily.

  The Doctor held up his sonic screwdriver. ‘Mind if I do a bit of sonicking? Just to see what’s what?’

  Etta waved an imperious hand. ‘Be my guest.’

  The Doctor grinned and turned the sonic on. The tip glowed a brilliant, dazzling blue.

  In the black chamber, the softly pulsing green light that trickled through the veins of the place like life-blood suddenly became more agitated. The spindly giants drifting about the room, tending to various items of equipment, stopped what they were doing. One by one, their great h
eads creaked round and the glinting caverns of their deep-set eyes focused on the central dais. The book was convulsing in its fibrous mounting like a fibrillating heart, jagged threads of green light skittering across its surface. The leader of the creatures hissed and moved forward, placing its hands on the book. It uttered a series of alien words and phrases in its sing-song voice. The light gathered itself into a crackling knot, then leaped from the book into its hands. The leader opened its vast mouth wide, exposing rows of viciously pointed teeth, and let loose a breathy ululation of sound that might have been a war cry. It opened its hands and released the spitting orb of light. The light rose into the air, shedding sparks, and then with a sudden, furious flash it disappeared.

  Followed by Martha and a somewhat bewildered Etta, the Doctor wandered around the ground floor of the old lady’s house, sonic held out before him. Occasionally he would stop to thrust the device at, or into, something – a portrait of a sombre-looking man with mutton-chop whiskers in the hallway; an Ormulu clock; a basket of slightly wrinkly fruit on the dining table. Several times he stopped and doubled back, pushing between Martha and Etta as if they weren’t there, eliciting tsks of annoyance from the old woman. Once, he dropped to his knees so abruptly that Martha winced, and pressed his ear to the scuffed floorboards like a Native American tracker in an old cowboy movie.

  ‘Have you found something?’ Martha asked after she and Etta had stood there patiently for thirty seconds while he tapped and hmmed and listened.

  ‘There’s a boll weevil down there,’ he said, jumping up. ‘It’s a long way from home and it’s got a nasty cough. Poor little feller.’

  Martha and Etta exchanged a look. It was clear the old lady was growing impatient.

  ‘Yes, but have you found anything… relevant?’ Martha said.

  ‘Relevance is relative,’ replied the Doctor, ‘and try saying that three times quickly after a bottle of sambuca.’ He strode off again, sonicking all over the place. ‘Thing is, it’s a hard one to pinpoint. The fabric of the house has been soaking this stuff up for so many years that the entry point is hidden. It’s like looking for a red ball in a sea of identical red balls. Impossible.’

  ‘So what’s the point?’ snapped Etta. ‘Sounds to me like you might as well quit.’

  ‘Quit?’ exclaimed the Doctor, horrified. ‘Just because something’s impossible that’s no reason to quit. I happen to like impossible. Impossible’s a challenge. Any old chancer can do almost impossible, but the real thing, the genuine article… that’s the one that sorts the legends from the wannabes. Oh.’

  He had been striding about as he was talking, but now, at the bottom of the wide staircase, he stopped dead and looked up. A black cat was crouched on the top step, fur standing up on its body, glaring balefully down at them.

  ‘I don’t like the look of that,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Oh, that’s just Romeo,’ said Etta.

  ‘I think the Doctor’s referring to the way the cat’s eyes are glowing green,’ said Martha. ‘My guess is they’re not supposed to do that.’

  Romeo hissed at them. Out of the corner of her eye, Martha sensed movement, and turned to see another cat slinking along the hallway. This one was long-haired, its rust-coloured coat streaked with black, and its eyes too were glowing with an unnatural green light.

  Next moment the ginger tom that had been sitting on the Doctor’s lap darted out from the doorway of the dining room across the entrance hall, and was immediately followed by a dainty white female. The light that filled both cats’ eyes was swirling sluggishly, like a luminous version of the mist outside. It was a thick, soupy, somehow putrescent light. Martha wasn’t sure why, but for some reason it made her think of things that were dead and rotting.

  ‘They’re possessed, aren’t they?’ she whispered to the Doctor.

  ‘Well, I prefer to think of it as holistic subjugation, which doesn’t necessarily denote—’

  ‘Doctor!’ Martha screamed.

  The black cat had launched itself at them from the top step, a yowling black missile of teeth and claws. In a flash, the Doctor grabbed Martha and Etta and swung them behind him, snapping back his head as Romeo sailed past his face, taking a swipe at him and missing his nose by inches. The cat landed on its feet and immediately turned to confront them again. And now more cats were appearing from above and around them, a bristling, screeching legion of vicious teeth, unsheathed claws and blazing green eyes.

  ‘Run!’ the Doctor yelled, and bustled the two women ahead of him along the corridor that ran parallel with the staircase. But they had taken no more than a few steps when the kitchen door at the end of the corridor was nudged open and a further wave of cats came streaming out, eyes burning with green fire.

  Now there were cats both at their heels and ahead of them. Using his body as a shield, the Doctor pulled Martha and Etta behind him again. All three of them backed towards the wall of wood panelling that ran up the side of the staircase. Once again the Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver and held it up like a weapon, swinging it from left to right. Behind him, Martha and Etta pressed themselves into his back. Martha raised her hands to protect her face as the cats closed in…

  SOMETHING WAS JABBING Martha in the back, but she was so focused on the advancing army of cats that at first she didn’t register its significance. Then it struck her: she was leaning against a doorknob. She twisted round in the confined space between the Doctor and the wall and realised there was a door literally carved into the wood panelling. The reason she hadn’t noticed it before – aside from the fact she’d been preoccupied with not getting her face scratched off by a mob of possessed felines – was because the door was so flush with its frame that it was easy to overlook. Even the doorknob wasn’t much bigger than a walnut. She curled her hand around it and gave it a tug and the door popped open.

  ‘In here,’ she hissed. It seemed that the reason the cats hadn’t flown at them already was because the Doctor was doing something clever with his sonic screwdriver. He was sweeping it in front of him, creating some sort of barrier or field or something which the cats seemed reluctant to cross. They kept trying, but then would jump back, yowling, as if they’d had a mild electric shock. If the door hadn’t been here, she supposed this tactic would have resulted in a tense stalemate, lasting until either the cats returned to normal, the Doctor got cramp or the sonic ran out of juice (if it ever did).

  The Doctor glanced over his shoulder and saw the open door. ‘Brilliant!’ he grinned. ‘Aw, I love doors, me. Number one invention of all time. And so versatile. Did you know the outlawing of doors was directly responsible for the fall of the Tymerian Empire? All that extra faff climbing in and out of windows and having to walk up and down stairs ’cos you couldn’t use lifts any more meant that nothing ever got done. Productivity dropped, the economy crashed, and all because her Royal Tectrope got her fourth proboscis jammed in a suction door and was made to look a prat. Bonkers. Utterly bonkers.’

  By the time he had finished babbling, the three of them were through the door and had hurried down a worn flight of stone steps. They found themselves in a low-ceilinged but sizeable cellar, cold and dank and smelling faintly of apples. The only light came from a fur-coated bulb hanging from six inches of flex in the centre of the ceiling. A long slit of a window, hinged at the top and set at eye-level in the opposite wall, provided the only visible escape route. The green foggy darkness pressing against the glass gave Martha the odd sensation that they were underwater.

  The Doctor looked around. ‘Norman Bates chic,’ he said musingly. ‘Like it.’

  Above them they could hear the cats mewling and padding about. The Doctor pointed at a large wooden trapdoor set into the stone-flagged floor. ‘What’s that?’

  Etta frowned, obviously irritated by what she saw as an irrelevant question. ‘It’s a fruit store,’ she said. ‘Nothing but a big, airtight box in the earth. There’s no way out through there, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

 
Martha noticed the Doctor purse his lips, noticed too the way his dark, unblinking eyes lingered on the trapdoor for a moment. Then he hurried across to the long, narrow window on the far side of the room.

  ‘Shame about the cats,’ he said as he unlatched the window and cautiously lifted it. ‘I was getting quite fond of them again after all the friendly ones we met on New Earth. But this lot have blotted the copybook. They’ve sent cats plummeting right back down my species popularity chart. Not that it’s their fault, I suppose.’

  Martha glanced at Etta to see how she was taking all this, considering that the old lady was obviously a cat lover. Etta didn’t look angry, however, merely worried. Martha could guess what question Etta wanted – but was afraid – to ask, and so she asked it herself. ‘Will they stay like that?’

  The Doctor was peering through the long letterbox slit of the window, presumably on the lookout for more hell-cats. Wisps of green mist drifted in through the gap like probing, ghostly fingers.

  ‘Nah,’ he said dismissively. ‘Soon as whoever’s put the hex on them realises we’ve legged it, I expect they’ll switch off the old voodoo. Your moggies will be harmless little furballs again by the morning, I should think, Etta. Probably be a bit offish, but blimey, they’re cats – who’s gonna notice the difference?’

  He lifted the window all the way open and pushed it back. ‘Right, I think the coast’s clear. Come on.’