The Nightmare of Black Island

by Mike Tucker

Seizing the moment, the Doctor caught hold of Bronwyn's hand, hauling her up and dragging her around the doorway. He bundled her inside the lighthouse, heaving the heavy steel door shut with his shoulder. Leaning all his weight against it, he fumbled for his sonic screwdriver. It sprang to life with a keening buzz, the blue light at its tip fusing the metal of the door to its frame.

  The Doctor worked at it for a few seconds, then stood back with a satisfied grin.

  'That should hold 'em.'

  As if on cue, something huge slammed against the door, shaking the whole lighthouse. The Doctor jumped backwards.

  'Well, I think it'll hold them. For a while. Well, a bit of a while.'

  Bronwyn gave him a hard stare. 'So have you locked them out or us in?'

  'Let's just hope they don't like canned food, eh?' said the Doctor.

  Morton's office in the old rectory was dark and quiet. In the centre of the room sat Morton in his wheelchair, fingers steepled and pressed to his lips, his eyes closed.

  A fire cracked in the large old-fashioned grate and the music of Elgar drifted across from an old-fashioned record player: the last bars of his cello concerto. As the last note faded, a high screeching roar came from outside as something huge and monstrous lumbered past the house.

  Morton opened his eyes and smiled. He wheeled himself over to the desk, picking up a heavy framed photograph. The picture was himself as a young man leaning on a cricket bat. The picture had been taken on the lawn out front many, many summers ago. Morton sighed. He had been through so much since then. So much pain and torment. But soon, soon it would all be finished.

  The heavy door to his office swung open, shattering his peace, and Peyne pushed Rose roughly into the room. Morton swung around in his wheelchair, a frown furrowing his brow. He didn't like people entering his office unannounced. His frown turned to surprise.

  'Miss Evans? And Miss Peyne.' He gave the alien a puzzled glance. 'You've slipped into something more comfortable, I see. I hope there is an explanation for this.'

  Peyne crossed to his side. 'I found her in the power room,' she hissed.

  'Really?' Morton looked up at Rose curiously. 'You really are very persistent, Miss...' He cocked his head to one side, looking at her expectantly.

  Rose shuffled uncomfortably. 'Evans, I told you.'

  'Oh yes? That's hardly original, even in Wales. There really is no point in lying to me any longer. You might as well just tell me the truth. It will make things so much easier in the long run.'

  Rose shivered. She had the feeling that he wasn't bluffing. 'Tyler. It's Rose Tyler.'

  'Better. And Dr... Jones? Is he around somewhere too? Do I need to send my people to flush him out?'

  Rose shook her head. 'No, he's not here. But he knows where I am. If I'm not back soon he'll come and...'

  'What?' Morton smiled. 'Come and pay your bail? Come and explain to the police what you were doing, trying to gain access to my affairs under an assumed name. Come and listen to you explaining why you were caught breaking and entering. Come and offer compensation for the criminal damage that you have no doubt caused gaining entry to my property.' He tutted condescendingly. 'No, no, no. I'm afraid that, if I want, you can be in an awful lot of trouble, young lady.'

  'And what are you going to do about them?' Rose nodded at the Cynrog that lurked in the open doorway. 'How you gonna explain to the police that you've got alien nurses looking after your patients?'

  Morton gave Peyne a look of surprise. 'She is well informed. How refreshing. Perhaps the police aren't such a good idea after all.'

  'Oh, I dunno,' said Rose. 'Bring 'em on. I'm sure they'd be interested in hearing about you covering up that death on the beach.'

  Morton stiffened in his chair and his tone changed. 'It seems that you have been digging rather deeper into my affairs than I had realised. Perhaps we do need to tighten up our operation a little. Peyne, whatever it is she found get rid of it. Then make sure that she was alone. Get your men to make a thorough sweep of the grounds. And tell them to put their masks back on. We don't want any prying eyes seeing too much, do we?'

  Peyne gestured to her unmasked colleagues and they snapped to attention, pulling the surgical masks with their human faces back into place and hurrying away down the corridor.

  Rose nodded after them. 'Couldn't afford proper masks for that lot, then? Had to resort to cheap fancy-dress nurses' outfits for everyone except matron here?'

  'Quite so.' Morton wheeled himself over to her. 'Full lip synch in the masks is very expensive to achieve and I'm afraid the Cynrog are sticklers for working to an exact budget. Miss Peyne here is the only one who needs direct interaction with the populace. The others are merely disguised for the benefit of nosy, interfering busybodies.'

  'So what are you up to, Morton? What deal have you done with the Cynrog? Running a nursing home for them?'

  'You know nothing.' Morton's voice was low and measured.

  'Those things are killing people, Morton!' Rose was getting angry now, frustrated by the calmness of the man in front of her. 'Does she tell you about her little night-time trips to clean up the mess that's left when your monsters have finished eating? Does she? People are going to be missed. You can't just keep on with what you're doing without someone noticing!'

  Morton wheeled himself slowly over to the desk. He opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic bag. Inside Rose could see a wallet, some credit cards and a set of car keys. Morton unsealed the bag and pulled out a driver's licence. He studied it sadly for a moment. Then held it up for Rose to see.

  'Carl Jenkins. Twenty-eight years old. No parents, and a sister who is currently serving time at Her Majesty's Pleasure for aggravated assault.' He gave Rose a sad smile. 'Do you really think that anyone is going to miss him? His death was unfortunate, but the simple truth is that the world will never notice his passing. He is simply irrelevant.'

  He tossed the driving licence on to the fire, watching the plastic curl and smoulder.

  'The work we are doing here cannot be interrupted. If death is the price that has to be paid, then so be it. Sacrifices must be made.' He sealed the bag again and handed it to Peyne. 'Dispose of that in the incinerator. No traces.'

  Rose felt a cold fury towards this man who regarded life so casually.

  'Whatever it is you're doing the Doctor will stop you. Harm those kids and I'll stop you.'

  'You know nothing!' Morton repeated, this time slamming the palms of his hands down on the arms of his wheelchair, his calm demeanour gone. 'You have no idea of what I have had to endure! Of what I have gone through to get to this point! I am not the child-murdering monster that you take me for. You can't even begin to understand!' He stopped, his face dangerously red, and slowly tried to control his harsh breathing. 'Peyne, I want to know who she is and where she comes from.'

  Peyne smiled unpleasantly. 'Certainly Nathaniel.'

  'And I want to know quickly. Use the machine.'

  The smile faded. 'But we have just started the night's operations. If we interrupt the sequence.

  'An hour's delay will not matter!' snapped Morton. 'The night is still young. I need to know if there is any danger of delay to our plans. I need to know who she is and who this mysterious Doctor of hers is. Or would you prefer to explain to your Grand Synod that you had advance intelligence and failed to act on it?'

  Peyne said nothing, but her eyes were full of hate.

  'Then do as I say!'

  Peyne glowered at him before turning and pulling an old-fashioned bell pull in the corner of the room. Morton took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow.

  'Now, Miss Tyler, we shall really get to the bottom of things.'

  Two of the masked warders appeared in the doorway.

  'Prepare a bed for our guest.'

  EIGHT

  The Doctor lay flat on his back, peering into the guts of the alien machine, his sonic screwdriver acting as a torch.

  The pale green glow cast by the machinery crackled around
him, sending sparks of energy across the fibres of his jacket like St Elmo's fire. The Doctor glanced down at his glittering jacket warily. There was an enormous amount of power being generated by this machine, a lot of it that he still didn't understand. The readings he had taken indicated that it was safe, at least for a short time, but he didn't want to be exposed to it any longer than was absolutely necessary.

  Bronwyn was perched on the stairs just outside the doorway of the lamp room. She'd refused to stay at the base of the lighthouse, and the Doctor couldn't really say that he blamed her – the noise of the monsters' claws scraping along the steel plating was enough to give anyone nightmares – but he was concerned about exposing her to the unquantifiable radiation of the lamp room.

  There was another reason too. The machine was operating on a psychic level in some way. The Doctor could feel a persistent tickling at the back of his mind. Its effect on the children of the village was now obvious; its effect on him was merely an irritation – his own mental discipline was more than enough to keep the intrusion of the machine at bay – but Bronwyn was another story. Her mental state was in a very delicate balance already and the Doctor couldn't say what effect the machine might have on her.

  'Assuming it hasn't had an effect on you already,' the Doctor muttered.

  'What was that?' Bronwyn frowned at him. 'You'll have to speak up.'

  'Nothing. I'm still trying to formulate some kind of plan, that's all.'

  'Well, we can't stay in the lighthouse for ever.'

  'We're hardly likely to make it back to the shore in one piece either!'

  The Doctor could imagine what aquatic horrors lurked in the waters around Black Island.

  'What are we going to do, then?' Bronwyn asked, wincing as the lighthouse reverberated with another attack from the creatures outside.

  'I think our best bet at the moment is to try and get to the cave and its mysterious spacecraft. There's a possibility that I can open the main hatch and we can shelter in there. I doubt that even these creations of nightmare could break into a duralinium hull.'

  Bronwyn snorted. 'How are you going to get into an alien spacecraft?'

  'I'm quite good with locks.' The Doctor gave her an apologetic smile. 'Look, Bronwyn, I'm trying to concentrate. Please?'

  He stretched his neck with a view to squeezing himself further underneath the machine. He was determined to get a closer look at the mechanisms. It wasn't easy, though. The machine was huge and heavy, bolted to the floor of the lamp room with massive, blind-headed nuts. The base was only thirty centimetres or so off the floor and pipes wound through every available space. The Doctor peered through the tangle.

  'Aha!'

  Six ugly metal lumps studded a curving section of the machine's underside.

  'That's how you affected Rose's dreams in the TARDIS!' The Doctor shifted his position, trying to get a closer look. 'The machine has telepathic aerials of some kind. Not only is it sending out transmissions that affect the children's dreams, but it's also acting as a receiver, storing those dreams, utilising them in some way.'

  The TARDIS had its own telepathic circuits – that was how it translated languages for him and Rose whenever they landed on an alien world. It must have picked up transmissions from the machine when they materialised to take bearings, meaning that Rose's dream had been influenced in the same way as the dreams of the children in the village. The Doctor's mind was racing, piecing the puzzle together.

  'The machine must be tapping directly into the psychic reservoir of the children's nightmares, manipulating them in some way and then taking images from those nightmares and generating them as physical entities. But why? Who would want to populate Wales with creatures from children's nightmares?'

  One thing was certain. He had been right that this machine was the key to everything that was going on. If he could just disengage the telepathic circuits then the machine would no longer function.

  'Disable the machine's telepathic ability, stop the monsters. Easy.'

  The Doctor stretched again, trying to reach the cluster of metal protuberances. His fingers brushed the side of one of them, but the space between floor and machine was too tight for him to reach.

  'Then again, perhaps it's not going to be that easy.'

  He sat back upright, studying the panels of lights and switches that littered the surface of the machine. The equipment was complicated even by his standards and starting to mess randomly with the controls might have dire consequences for the children being affected.

  'What are you doing under there?' asked Bronwyn, peering through the door.

  'Thinking!'

  His only option seemed to be to unbolt the machine from the floor in order to reach the telepathic generators, and that was going to take time. He sighed.

  'I hope you didn't have any other plans for the evening.'

  He started to shrug off his coat when there was a terrifying screech from behind him and the flap of leathery wings. Something sharp hit him in the small of the back, sending him sprawling, his sonic screwdriver clattering into a corner. He scrabbled across the floor to get it, but a huge talon slashed at his feet, sending him tumbling to the floor again.

  Looming outside the lamp room was a huge pterodactyl-like creature, wings beating furiously as it scrabbled to gain a purchase on the wet steel of the lighthouse. The Doctor could see his face reflected in its beady black eyes. The creature threw its head back and screamed, before lunging at him with its razor-sharp beak.

  Rose tried hard not to panic as the masked warders strapped her down to the metal-framed bed. Around her in the converted dining room the six sleeping figures lay still, their breathing slow and steady, the noise of the machines soft and rhythmic. Other warders sat at a bank of consoles along one wall, their hands moving in complex patterns over flickering controls, their eyes fixed on dozens of tiny read-outs.

  Morton wheeled himself to Rose's side.

  'You'll find it less unpleasant if you don't try to resist the machinery.'

  Peyne crossed to his side, a complex arrangement of metal straps and coloured wires in her hands. It was some kind of helmet, a thick bundle of cables coiling across the floor to where two of the warders were setting up a console with a large screen attached to it.

  Peyne lifted Rose's head from the pillow, jamming on the helmet. Rose winced as it tugged at her hair.

  'Careful, Miss Peyne.' Morton's voice was mocking. 'We don't want to damage that pretty head. Not before it's told us what we want to know.'

  'And then what?' Rose strained to pull against the straps. Another accident on the beach with one of your monsters?'

  That depends.'

  'On what?'

  'On whether you have a mind that is useful to our plans or not.'

  Morton glanced up at Peyne, who was adjusting controls on the console now.

  'How long?'

  'We have to calibrate the machine. A few minutes.'

  Morton patted Rose's arm. 'We won't keep you waiting long.'

  The Doctor tore himself free from the grasping claws of the flying monster, scrambling around to the other side of the lamp room as the creature's beak slammed into the floor. Hissing in anger, it thrust its long scrawny neck in further through the window, claws scrabbling. Snatching his coat up from the floor, the Doctor used it to beat at the head of the monster, sending it flapping off into the night screaming.

  He watched as it wheeled against the boiling clouds before turning and sweeping back down again, slamming into the lighthouse and renewing its attack with fury. The Doctor dodged to one side as the beak snapped next to his head with a loud kklak! He darted around the machine once more, trying to keep it between him and the screeching thing. The creature had positioned itself in the window directly above the stairwell, so there was no way he could get there without coming in range of that wickedly sharp beak.

  The Doctor craned his neck over the edge, desperately looking for a way to escape. The shrieking cries were starting to att
ract the other creatures and slowly, one by one, they were all converging on the lighthouse.

  'Doctor?' Bronwyn's voice was terrified. 'Doctor? What's happening? What's that noise?'

  The pterodactyl thing cocked its head to one side, its cold eyes fixed on the top of the stairs.

  Before the Doctor could shout any warning, Bronwyn's head appeared again, peering cautiously into the lamp room. The creature pulled its own head back to strike, screaming in triumph.

  'No!'

  The Doctor hurled himself forward, fists clenched, determined that these things would not claim another victim.

  His fists met only open air. Bronwyn took a step back in shock, almost tripping and tumbling down the spiralling stairs.

  'What on earth are you doing?' she screamed.

  The Doctor looked around in amazement. The pterodactyl thing had gone. The glow from the alien machine had faded too, the controls on its surface now silent and dark. Cautiously, the Doctor peered out of the shattered window. Far below, the island was quiet and empty, the only sound that of surf crashing against the rocks and the soft hiss of rain.

  The Doctor turned to the bewildered Bronwyn. 'They've gone,' he said. 'They've all gone!'

  Morton and Peyne were hunched over the control console, peering intently at the small display screen. Behind them Rose was writhing on the bed, straining against the straps, her eyes closed, a frown of pain flickering across her brow.

  'The machine is recalibrated for her gender and age,' Peyne said, adjusting a control. 'We can begin.' Her finger hovered over a pulsing button.

  Morton nodded and Peyne stabbed her finger down.

  Rose knew that she was dreaming again. It was like before, a sense of hovering over her shoulder, of being able to observe herself. But this time her dreams were not hers; this time she knew that others were manipulating her thoughts, driving her dreams in a direction they had determined. She desperately wanted to force herself to wake up, but the drugs wouldn't let her.

  She could feel fingers in her mind, rummaging through her thoughts and memories. Slowly, things that she would rather have kept buried were being dredged to the surface.