by Doctor Who
Ali looked frightened. ‘What about you? What are you going to do?’
‘I need to look inside that room.’ Rose nodded over at the door. ‘As soon as I’ve seen what’s inside, then I’ll follow you.’
Ali shook her head. ‘I want to stay with you.’
‘No.’ Rose’s voice was stern. ‘You’ve got to go! If I don’t get out, if they get me again, then you have to find the Doctor and tell him where I am.’ She ruffled Ali’s hair. ‘I need you to do this for me. I need to know that you’re safe. OK?’
Ali thought for a moment, then nodded solemnly.
‘Good girl.’
Rose caught Ali under the arms and swung her up on to the window sill. Ali grimaced as rain splashed against her face, ducked through the window and carefully lowered herself down on to the metal plat-form of the fire escape. The ladder vibrated alarmingly.
‘It doesn’t feel very safe.’ Ali looked up at Rose nervously.
‘You’ll be fine.’ Rose tried to sound confident. ‘These things always wobble a bit. Now go. Quick as you can!’
She watched as Ali turned and made her way unsteadily down the rickety fire escape, brushing her wet hair out of her eyes. She reached the bottom and hovered nervously next to the wall of the house, staring at the dark courtyard. Then, with a last look up at Rose, she dashed across to the lean-to, splashing through the water that was pooled on the flagstones.
The little girl reached the shed and, with a little wave back up at the house, vanished from view. Rose gave a sigh of relief. She was safe.
From the aliens inside the house at any rate. The dark woods were ominous and oppressive, but for the moment they were mercifully free of the roars and shrieks of the creatures. Ali was a smart girl and 112
she knew the woods like the back of her hand. She’d get home OK. . .
wouldn’t she?
Desperately trying to convince herself that she was doing the right thing, Rose pulled her head back inside and slid the window closed.
The cold rain and fresh air had cleared her head a little and the sickness in her stomach was slowly fading. Brushing her hair back, she crept down the corridor to the door, pressing her ear up against it and listening for sounds of movement from within.
She frowned. She couldn’t hear movement, but rather something that sounded like. . . breathing.
She pulled back from the door, unsure about what to do. Perhaps the six ancient figures downstairs weren’t the only patients that Morton had locked away.
Tentatively she reached out for the brass door handle. It turned easily and the door swung open. Rose stepped into the room beyond.
And felt the scream start to build in her throat.
The big Range Rover swung into the estate, lights blazing, and pulled up on the edge of the wood in a shower of spray. The passenger door swung open and the Doctor bounded out into the rain.
‘OK, you wait here and keep an eye out for us. If anything with big pointy teeth comes out of the woods, leg it!’
Mervyn nodded, his face grim. The Doctor gave him a reassuring smile. The drive up from the pub had been a fraught one. The children were waking up, but it was taking a while and a few monsters still stalked the streets. The dent in the side door and the thick, dark ichor that was splashed across the bonnet of the Range Rover evidence of a closer encounter with one of the creatures than either Mervyn or the Doctor had wanted.
‘Doctor, I’m sorry.’ Mervyn held out an apologetic hand. ‘For earlier. . . ’
‘Oh, don’t worry.’ The Doctor shook his hand vigorously. ‘I do this sort of thing all the time!’ Then, with a broad grin, he slammed the door and vanished into the trees.
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Mervyn watched him go. ‘Yes, I’m beginning to believe that,’ he muttered finally.
Peyne tapped at the controls in front of her in puzzlement. Readings were slowly shutting down across the board. One by one, read-outs were starting to drop to tick-over levels, lights going dark on banks of instruments.
She glanced over at the others. Her technicians were darting from console to console, the once quiet air of efficiency starting to acquire a tinge of panic.
‘Hadron!’ she barked at one of the hurrying figures. ‘What is happening?’
The masked figure quickly came over. ‘We’re not sure, Priest Commander.’ The voice was muffled and indistinct.
Peyne tore off Hadron’s mask with an angry snarl.
‘What do you mean you’re not sure? Subconscious brainwave activity energy is dropping to unsustainable levels!’
‘Yes, Priest Commander.’ The Cynrog technician shuffled under her glare, forked tongue flicking across his thin lips. ‘But the fault is not here. The fault seems to lie with the imagers themselves.’
‘Impossible!’ snarled Peyne, thrusting the flaccid human mask back at him. ‘Check the generators! At once!’
As Hadron saluted sharply and hurried out of the ward, Peyne turned angrily back to the dropping readouts. The Synod was relying on her. The entire campaign plans of the Cynrog rested with her.
All had been going exactly as planned until now. Until the arrival of this interfering Time Lord. She gritted her teeth. They could not fail now. Not when they were so close to completion, so close to being able to leave this primitive backwater planet. She longed to feel dry sand under her feet again and the warmth of the suns on her skin, not this constant grinding dampness.
She wriggled uncomfortably in her human disguise. She wanted to be free of the constraints of this unpleasant body and the constant irritation of Nathaniel Morton. But she would do her duty; she would complete her mission.
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Abandoning her useless controls in frustration, she crossed the ward to one of the sleeping figures. Her nose wrinkled in disgust. These humans were weak, feeble things, susceptible to every disease the planet had to offer. It amazed her that they survived at all, let alone that they made it into old age like these pathetic specimens. But for now the humans were necessary. More than that, they were essential and so she would bide her time. When the moment came she would enjoy the subjugation of this miserable planet. She would enjoy watching Balor destroy it if he saw fit.
She ran a hand over the forehead of the sleeping figure.
‘Soon, Balor,’ she hissed. ‘Soon.’
Rose stared in fascinated horror at the room. It was huge and very dark, a library by the look of things: bookcases on every wall, the shelves piled high with ancient, dusty tomes. Like practically every other room in the house, the furniture had been cleared away and the resulting empty space adapted to another purpose.
Here the once elegant antique tables now groaned under the weight of alien machinery, lights glimmering in the gloom. The thick cables that wound into the room coiled their way up the tall bookcases, splitting and dividing, spreading out through the room like a tangled spider’s web, looping their way to four heavy, ugly clusters of alien technology, one hanging in each corner of the room.
Energy crackled from the machines, sending flickering fingers of electricity arcing across the library. There was a smell like summer lightning. And hanging in the midst of the lightning was the thing.
Rose took a tentative step into the room, trying to get a better view through the dancing spears of light. The thing was huge, a mass of glistening flesh hanging suspended in the electrical web. Rose rubbed at her eyes. It was difficult to make out its shape properly. One minute she thought she could see scales and ridged skin, the next it looked like fur or, worse, like dead, pale human flesh.
Goosebumps ran across her skin and she felt the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her breathing becoming faster and faster. She forced herself closer to the 115
monstrous shape. Every fibre of her being screamed at her to run, to get out of this place as fast as her legs would carry her, to run and not look back, to hide from this monstrosity before it reached out for her and dragged her into that horrible c
rackling web.
She swallowed hard, trying to control the fear that threatened to overwhelm her. She had to let the Doctor know what was going on.
He was relying on her and she wasn’t going to let him down.
She forced herself to take a step closer, then another. Waves of energy seemed to ripple across the creature, almost changing its shape as they washed around it. Horns and claws and tusks seemed to appear and disappear across the writhing skin. One minute it looked almost humanoid, the next it was something hunched and animal-like. High above her, almost pressed against the ceiling, Rose thought she could make out the shape of a head of some kind. Shadows flitted this way and that, making it difficult to see. She leaned closer. She had to get a proper look.
The creature’s eyes flicked open.
The Doctor raced through the wood, branches whipping at him as he followed the line of the old rectory wall. The villagers were now integral to his plan, giving him time. With the kids awake, the woods would be safe, and no monsters to avoid meant that he didn’t need to be stealthy. But it also meant that whatever was going on at the rectory would now be interrupted, and that probably wouldn’t be a good thing for Rose. He had to get inside quickly, preferably unseen.
Ali’s mysterious tunnel seemed like the best way.
If all went the way that he hoped, then Morton’s plans would be interrupted until morning. It was unfortunate that he had so many disparate elements to deal with. The lighthouse was out of the way and tricky to get to – which was no doubt why they had used it to house the transmitters in the first place – the rectory was tucked away on the cliff tops and Bronwyn was down in the village.
The Doctor still wasn’t certain how Bronwyn Ceredig fitted into the puzzle, but she was part of it, of that he had no doubt. Bronwyn, Nathaniel Morton and a small boy called Jimmy who was almost cer-116
tainly Bronwyn’s son. All of them pieces of a puzzle he still had to solve. . .
‘In between rescuing Rose and Ali, dismantling the transmitters and stopping all this ever happening again. I do love holidays by the sea!’
The tangle of rhododendron bushes and broken brickwork that Billy Palmer had told him about loomed out of the darkness. The Doctor pushed his way through the wet leaves and into the remains of the old coalbunker. The tunnel entrance was only partially concealed. Billy had said that they’d left in a hurry.
The Doctor pulled the sodden plywood to one side, peering into the dark.
‘Cold, wet tunnel. . . just my sort of thing!’
His sonic screwdriver flared into life, casting a bright blue glow into the gloom, and the Doctor dived inside.
Rose ran faster than she could ever have believed possible. She made no attempt at concealment; she just wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and the nightmare in the library.
When the thing had opened its eyes Rose had felt such fear and dread and total despair that she thought her legs were going to give way beneath her. As the cold, black gaze had swept over her, every nightmare and every bad moment of her life had bubbled up from the places in her memory where they had been hidden. She had started to shake uncontrollably, too frightened to cry or to scream. All warmth had left her, all hope; she was cold and empty and alone, abandoned, at the mercy of this thing.
She had screwed her eyes up, waiting for the final blow, for teeth and claws to tear into her flesh, but that blow never came. She forced herself to open her eyes again, physically flinching under the silent gaze of the towering monster.
The eyes were dead. Vacant. Nothing had glimmered in those cold black orbs: no intelligence, no life, nothing. The creature was a shell, a vessel. It couldn’t see her, but somehow that made it even more frightening.
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And so Rose had run. She had turned and fled from that room, tearing down the long corridor, throwing open the window and escaping into the night. She had almost broken her neck on the fire escape. The metal was wet and slippery and her feet had slid away from her a couple of times, sending her tumbling down the steep stairs. She had hit the courtyard running and hadn’t looked back, diving headfirst into the tunnel.
Only now, in the cool dark, did she finally start to slow down, aware that if she carried on in her manic flight she was liable to fall headfirst into the mud and brain herself on the wet brickwork.
She dropped to her knees, oblivious to the freezing water, her breath coming in great ragged gulps. She hated herself for running, hated herself for being unable to stand her ground. After all she’d been through! But most of the things she had faced somehow paled into insignificance beside the terror she had felt in the library.
‘What are you up to Morton? What the hell are you up to?’
Ali sat in the dark tunnel, banging her torch against the palm of her hand in frustration. The blinking light from the LEDs had been fine when she’d reached the safety of the tunnel, but as she’d progressed further and further into the inky depths it had started to falter. Now she could only get any light if she turned the torch off and then back on again, and even then it only lasted for a few seconds.
Hunkering down against the tunnel wall, she unscrewed the back of the little keyring and carefully pulled out the two tiny watch batteries. She clasped them in the palm of her hand, trying to warm them up. Whenever the TV remote control had failed at home, she had seen her father take the back of the handset and roll the batteries back and forth in their housing to get them working again. She desperately hoped that warming the torch batteries would give them enough power to get her to the end of the tunnel and safety.
She squinted, trying to make out any shapes around her, but the blackness was total. She had been walking for four or five minutes when the torch went out so she figured she was about halfway down the tunnel.
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Even though she was more frightened than she had ever been in her life, Ali was hugely proud of herself. She knew that she’d have some explaining to do to her mum, and she didn’t even want to think about how angry her dad was going to be, but the rest of the gang. . .
They were going to be well impressed, and there was no way that Dai Barraclough was ever going to be able to tease her again, not after he’d run off like a startled rabbit.
In the dark Ali allowed herself a little smile. But that swiftly faded as the sound of something further down the tunnel reached her. Had one of the monsters entered the tunnel behind her? The noises were getting louder and louder. Whatever it was was coming fast.
Ali clambered to her feet. She could hear splashing footfalls echoing down the tunnel and the sound of laboured breathing. She started to back away, fumbling with the batteries. The tunnel was too small to hide in. In her panic the batteries slipped from her grasp. She heard them splash into the water that trickled through the drain. With a cry of despair she dropped to her knees, fingers raking through the slime.
The noises behind her were getting closer and closer.
In terror, Ali abandoned the batteries and started to run. She could see nothing and her feet threatened to slide from under her at every step. She ran with her arms outstretched, desperately trying to balance herself against the wet walls. Her ankle caught on something and she went flying, bouncing off the tunnel wall and diving headlong into the freezing water. Sharp pain shot through her shin, but ignoring it she scrambled to her feet and continued her headlong flight.
She didn’t care what her parents or friends thought of her now; she just wanted to get out of this tunnel, out into the open air and away from whatever horror was in here with her.
Her eyes blurred with tears. As Ali made to brush them away with her sleeve, she cannoned into something tall and dark.
And screamed.
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Ali bit and screamed and flailed at the thing that had caught her, lashing out with her fists and feet. She could see nothing as the darkness was total, but the thing that had her was tall and gangly and she could hear it gasp in pain as her blows connected.
It was a most un-monster-like voice.
Ali stopped struggling and an electric blue light lit up the tunnel.
Rose’s friend the Doctor stood there. He held a slim tube, like a torch, and the blue light was flaring from its tip.
‘You’re stronger than you look,’ he said, hunching over, wincing in pain and rubbing at his knee.
Ali slapped his arm. ‘Ow! What was that for?’
‘You scared me!’
‘Well, you scared me too!’ The Doctor was indignant. ‘Honestly.
Charging about like that. Took years off me.’
He crouched down, looking her full in the face. Ali suddenly realised what nice eyes he had.
‘What were you running from?’ His voice was gentle and full of concern.
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Ali pointed down the tunnel behind her. ‘Something down there.
Something behind me. I can hear it.’
‘Can you now?’
The Doctor cocked his head to one side, listening. In the quiet dark the splashing footsteps were clear.
‘Hear it?’ whispered Ali. ‘I think it’s one of the monsters.’
‘Do you? Well, it’s your lucky day.’ The Doctor stood up, pulling his coat straight. ‘’Cause I’m the Doctor, and if there’s one thing that I do well, it’s monsters.’
He held out the silver tube, pointing the glowing tip down the tunnel. Ali huddled behind him, staring into the shadows cast by the bright blue light. The splashing was getting louder and louder. She could just make out a shape in the dark. She screwed her eyes up, wondering what exactly the Doctor was going to do.
‘Rose!’
The Doctor’s voice was like a gunshot in the dark. He stood in the glare of the blue light from his sonic screwdriver.
Ali’s face peered out from behind his legs.
The little girl was