[Sarah Jane Adventures 03] - Eye of the Gorgon

by Phil Ford

  It took a couple of heartbeats.

  Then Alan’s heart beat no more.

  He stood there, a statue of cold, dead stone!

  Chapter Ten

  Escape

  ‘Dad!’ Maria screamed it like her heart would burst.

  Sarah Jane held her tight, tried to cover her eyes, ‘Don’t look, Maria!’

  But it was no good. She had seen what her father had become. He stood in Sarah Jane’s lounge, flesh turned to stone. A statue.

  In the confusion and panic Sister Helena had grabbed the talisman. She now held it, triumphant, as the Abbess drew down her veil again. Sister Helena turned to look at Sarah Jane, ‘Pay heed to the Gorgon’s warning, and don’t interfere.’

  She raised the talisman high and spoke to the Abbess, ‘After 3,000 years, the doorway to your people can be opened again!’

  ‘And then what?’ asked Sarah Jane as she cradled weeping Maria in her arms. ‘Invasion?’ Sister Helena turned on Sarah Jane, scornful. ‘The Gorgons need us to survive, Miss Smith. Opening the portal to their world isn’t opening the door to invasion, but salvation!’

  ‘You’re mad!’ Sarah Jane spat.

  Sister Helena’s face froze. ‘Remember — don’t interfere!’

  And, with the Abbess, she swept out of the house.

  Maria broke away from Sarah Jane and reached out towards what had, until seconds ago been her father, her fingers brushed the stone hand that had held her only a couple of hours before as he tried to comfort her. Now it was hard and cold. And Maria felt a wave of guilt crash over her — if only she hadn’t run out on him like that… if only she hadn’t argued with her mum… ‘I didn’t mean to shout at you, Dad. I’m sorry… I’m so sorry.’ Maria sobbed, felt her heart shattering inside her chest. Her Dad was dead. Turned to stone. And it was all her fault!

  She felt Sarah Jane take her by the shoulders and turn her around to face her. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, looking straight into Maria’s eyes.

  ‘Listen to me. You are not going to fall apart. Do you understand me? Whatever has happened to your father, there’s one thing I’ve learned after all these years — there is always a chance. Do you hear me?’

  But Maria didn’t hear. She was overwhelmed by a tide of grief and guilt. She was drowning in it.

  ‘Mum was right!’ she gasped. ‘I should never have had anything to do with you! It’s all your fault!’

  Sarah Jane felt it like a slap in the face.

  ‘You and your aliens! I wish I’d never seen that one in your garden! I wish I’d never seen you! Everything was fine ’til we moved here!’

  Then, sobbing, she collapsed into Sarah Jane’s arms, but the truth of what Maria said burned Sarah Jane like drops of acid on her skin. She had warned Maria when it all began, of course she had. She had told her that her life was dangerous. She had done everything to stop her joining in this alien madness. But Maria had ignored the warnings. Of course she had. And some day she was going to get hurt, it was inevitable. But Sarah Jane meant what she had said — there was always a chance. And if they were going to find it and take it, they were going to have to talk to Mr Smith.

  The computer needed a metabolic scan of Alan Jackson. Maria said she would do it. Sarah Jane knew that doing something practical towards helping her petrified father would help her deal with the situation better than any amount of crying. It only took a couple of minutes to run the scanner over her dad. Its data was transmitted instantly to Mr Smith and by the time she got back into the attic he had already analysed it.

  ‘Mr Jackson has undergone massive molecular transmutation,’ he was saying as she walked through the door.

  ‘We know that. He’s been turned to stone,’ Sarah Jane snapped. Her patience was thin (not only had Alan been turned to stone but Luke and Clyde were still being held at the abbey, and she didn’t want to imagine what might happen to them if she didn’t get to them soon).

  ‘Not stone,’ said Mr Smith. ‘Not strictly speaking. It’s an organic petrification process.’

  ‘Like fossilization,’ Maria offered.

  ‘It is comparable. And, to correct you again, Sarah Jane, Mr Jackson hasn’t turned, but is turning.’

  Sarah Jane was electrified, ‘Do you mean the process isn’t complete? It could still be reversed?’

  ‘Theoretically’, said Mr Smith. The molecular transmutation wasn’t yet stable. That meant it could be reversed. But, he told them, he didn’t know how to do it.

  Maria felt like she was going crazy, Then you’ve got to work it out! You’ve got to save my Dad. Please, Mr Smith.’

  ‘I’m not sure that there is sufficient time. My scan suggests the process will be complete in ninety minutes.’

  Maria looked at her watch. It was 2.30. If Mr Smith didn’t work this out by 4 o’clock her dad would be a statue for keeps. Sarah Jane saw the agony in her eyes.

  ‘Please, Mr Smith,’ Sarah Jane pleaded, ‘you’ve got to help us.’

  Mr Smith considered, ‘Perhaps if I was more familiar with the Gorgon… ’

  Maria felt new hope surge through her. ‘Bea! She might know something!’

  Sarah Jane didn’t want to crush Maria’s hopes; she might, but… ‘Bea has Alzheimer’s. Her mind is trapped in the past.’

  But Maria wasn’t going to let go of this shred of hope. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘That’s where she met the Gorgon!’

  And Sarah Jane knew she was right. Like she said, there was always a chance. They left the attic and rushed to the car.

  At around the same time Luke was turning the pages of one of the books in the abbey library, occasionally glancing up to see Clyde pacing the room’s length. Clyde didn’t know how many times he’d gone from wall to wall since Sarah Jane and Maria had gone off with Sister Helena and the Gorgon.

  ‘What’s happening, Luke? Is Sarah Jane really going to give that Gorgon-thing the talisman?’

  ‘Course not,’ Luke told him, turning the pages and taking in every word with little more than a glance. ‘If the Gorgon only wanted to go home, why would Mrs Nelson-Stanley have been so scared of the nuns Ending the talisman? Mum knows that, she’ll End some way of tricking them.’

  And get us out of here? Clyde hoped.

  ‘All the same, you and me — we should be looking for a way of escaping,’ he told Luke. ‘Not catching up on our reading.’

  ‘It’s a history of the abbey,’ Luke said. ‘Originally it was a private house, built in the sixteenth Century.’

  ‘Bangin’,’ said Clyde. He could get a history lesson any time he wanted off Mrs Pittman, a teacher who looked so old she had probably witnessed most of what she taught.

  But Luke was in the groove now. The house had been built at the time of the Reformation, Luke was telling him. King Henry VIII had declared himself head of a new English Church and under his daughter, Elizabeth I, priests and followers of the Catholic Church found themselves being persecuted.

  ‘But what the Catholics used to do was build secret rooms and passages in their houses so that priests could hold their services in secret, and escape,’ said Luke. He was making his way to the library’s over-sized fireplace as he spoke, ‘The people that built this house were Catholic.’

  And he pushed on a stone in the fireplace and smiled when he felt it give. An instant later the back of the fireplace slid aside revealing a deep, dark tunnel.

  Clyde’s jaw dropped in amazement and awe, ‘Are you good, or what?’

  Luke crouched in the opening of the secret tunnel, ‘It’s very dark. It could be dangerous.’

  ‘And hanging around here isn’t? Come on.’

  So Clyde led the way into the tunnel and Luke followed. It wasn’t too bad for the first few steps, the light from the library cast a half-light ahead of them, and then Clyde felt a brick in the floor give beneath his foot. It was the closing mechanism for the doorway in the fireplace. It slid shut behind them. Now the darkness was total.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Clyde.<
br />
  ‘Not afraid of the dark, are you?’ asked Luke.

  ‘Not the dark. Just what might be hiding in it.’

  All the same, he pushed on, feeling carefully with his fingers, one hand on the wall to his side, the other held in front of him. The bricks on the wall felt damp and sometimes his fingers touched something slimy that clung to them. Clyde tried hard not to cry out like a girl. He managed fine until he somehow got himself wrapped up in about 300 years’ worth of spider webs. Luke hissed at him to stop yelling — from the slope of the tunnel he figured they were now underneath the abbey somewhere, but Clyde’s cry of shock and surprise as he walked into the spider webs would be carried through the tunnel’s brickwork. The nuns might hear them! Clyde wiped spider web off his face and thought he felt hundreds of tiny legs running through his hair, but bit down on the urge to cry out again. Luke felt his way around Clyde then, and took the lead through the tunnel. They hadn’t gone much further however when he saw a sliver of daylight ahead, and they made their way towards it.

  The tunnel led them into some sort of forgotten outbuilding in the grounds of the abbey. It was filled with gardening tools that no one had used in decades. Creepers had found their way in through the broken window and wrapped themselves around the unused implements, like Nature had a sense of irony. The door to the outbuilding was locked, but the wood was flimsy and rotten, it didn’t hold for long against the force of the two boys’ shoulders. Then they were filling their lungs with fresh air and taking a moment to bask in warm sunshine again.

  Clyde saw Luke move around the side of the old potting shed as he dusted himself off, and ran his fingers through his hair, hoping he had imagined those spiders up there. Quickly satisfied, he followed Luke — and what he saw brought him to a sudden stop.

  They were behind the abbey, in its gardens. Despite the condition of the tools in the potting shed, someone was obviously taking care of the lawns and the neatly clipped hedges. But that wasn’t what had Clyde rooted to the spot. Spread through the garden were statues. Dozens of them. And instinctively he knew that none of them had been carved by a sculptor — no artist would sculpt the kind of horror that Clyde saw on the faces of these statues. Once these had been people. They were the victims of the Gorgon.

  Clyde found his voice and spoke to Luke, who stood just a couple of steps ahead of him, fascinated by the statues, ‘Couldn’t they get garden gnomes like everyone else?’

  Luke didn’t laugh, ‘It’s killed all these people, then put them on show like trophies. Or a warning.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Clyde. ‘And I’m taking it. Let’s get out of here.’

  Luke nodded and followed Clyde. They were going to have to go past the abbey itself to get through the gates, but it seemed quiet enough out here. Maybe the nuns had more to do today than tend their garden and statue collection.

  They hid when the big black hearse pulled up.

  Sister Helena got out of the car first, the Abbess stepped out after her, as other nuns came through the front door of the abbey. Luke gasped when he saw Sister Helena brandish the talisman.

  ‘We have the key!’ she proclaimed. ‘Rejoice, Sisters! The Gorgon shall be free!’

  Sister Helena and the Abbess began to move towards the abbey, but as she reached the door the veiled nun stumbled badly and had to be caught and supported by Sister Helena and another nun. Sister Helena’s brow furrowed, ‘She is weakening. We must open the portal as soon as possible.’ Clyde and Luke watched as the nuns moved inside and the door thudded shut behind them.

  ‘Right. Now, while the coast is clear!’ Clyde had almost taken his first running step before he felt Luke’s hand pull him back under cover.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Luke.

  What you talking about?’ Clyde hissed.

  ‘I promised Mrs Nelson-Stanley I wouldn’t let them get the talisman. I’ve let her down.’

  Clyde drew a breath, ’ ‘When you promised her, did she tell you you’d be going up against a Gorgon and if you kept your word you’d probably end up a garden ornament?’

  ‘Well — no, but… ’

  ‘She wasn’t straight with you, Luke, and this goes way beyond the call… ’

  ‘Mum would never have given them the talisman — unless something had happened.’ Clyde had seen Sister Helena holding the talisman. He had been trying to ignore the uncomfortable questions that conjured up about Sarah Jane and Maria.

  Luke’s eyes were set with determination, ‘I’m not going to let the Gorgon win, Clyde. I’m just not. But I’m going to need your help.’

  Like Clyde had any choice.

  Chapter Eleven

  Host

  Maria stood outside Bea Nelson-Stanley’s door. She heard music. Someone singing about having a pocketful of starlight. Sarah Jane had apologised as she drove to Lavender Lawns, she wasn’t going to be able to go in with Maria. She had to find Luke and Clyde. Maria understood.

  ‘Everything Bea knows about the Gorgon is still inside her head,’ Sarah Jane said, pushing the little blue car for everything it would give her. ‘You just have to find a way to unlock it.’

  When they reached the rest home, Sarah Jane hugged Maria and wished her luck. Then she said, ‘You were right, I never should have let any of you get involved. It’s not just you or me that gets threatened by all this alien madness. It’s everyone we know.’

  Maria had seen tears in Sarah Jane’s eyes, and she felt wretched for what she had said earlier, ‘It’s not your fault. I wanted to see aliens. Who wouldn’t?’

  Sarah Jane smiled, then fixed her with steely eyes, ‘If there’s a way of saving your dad, I know you’re going to do it!’

  And then she was gone. And now Maria was standing outside Bea’s door. And she was wondering just how on earth was she going to do this?

  Catch a shooting star

  And put it in your pocket

  Save it for a rainy day…

  Maria knocked on the door. But she got no answer, just the guy singing on Bea’s old record player.

  For when your troubles start multiplyin’

  And they just might!

  It’s easy to forget them without tryin’

  With just a pocketful of starlight!

  Maria looked at her watch, it was 2.45. Fifteen minutes gone, already! She twisted the door handle and walked in. Bea didn’t notice, she was happily singing along to the record.

  ‘Bea? Hello, its Maria. Do you remember me?’ Bea stopped singing and looked at her, suddenly puzzled, ‘Hello, darling, you’re a little young, aren’t you?’

  Maria felt her heart sink. Bea didn’t remember her.

  ‘Young?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, dear. To be curator of the Museum of Egyptology.’

  Maria fought the tears that she felt burning behind her eyes as she felt time running out with every passing second.

  The nuns had gathered in the great hall of the abbey. At its centre lay what looked like a well carved from ancient stone surrounded by Grecian pillars. The Abbess was now in a wheelchair. She held the talisman in one clawed hand and it glowed again — ice-blue.

  Sister Helena gazed at the other nuns. ‘Sisters, after 3,000 years our work comes to an end. And our world is on the threshold of a new age.’

  The well-shaped construction in the middle of the room was the Gorgon’s portal, protected like the creature itself over the millennia, and now soon to come to life again for the first time in thousands of years. Sister Helena knew that the Gorgon world was a million light years away — it would take maybe an hour for the angles of ascension to align and the portal to open. When it did, those billions of miles across space would be nothing but a footstep. She wheeled the Abbess towards the portal and one clawed hand put the talisman in place. A glow began to develop at the centre of the portal.

  ‘Sisters, the portal is opening. In an hour the portal will open and after all these centuries the Abbess’s people will join her and the Gorgons will have their promised land!’
/>   Suddenly the Abbess reached out, grabbing Sister Helena’s arm. The talons dug into her flesh with urgency.

  Time grows short!

  Sister Helena heard the creature’s voice in her head, and she understood what she had to do.

  ‘The host is dying,’ she said. ‘We must find a new carrier before the portal opens.’

  Maria looked at the clock on Bea’s mantelpiece.

  Another ten minutes had dragged by, and she had got nowhere. She watched Bea put another record on her old player.

  ‘Bea,’ she said, ‘please help me. You have to tell me about the Gorgon.’

  But Bea was swaying to the music. Maria recognised it as Perry Como again. The guy who had been singing about shooting stars and putting them in your pocket. Bea had told her that much. Big deal.

  Bea’s eyes were closed, she was smiling dreamily, ‘Edgar and I danced to this once in the palace of the… ’ she struggled for a moment, fighting with some part of her brain that refused to give her what she wanted, ‘The Sultan of Ishkanbah. Do you know the Sultan?’

  Maria felt like screaming. Somehow she hung on to her temper, ‘No. I’ve never even heard of Ishkan wherever. Listen, Bea, the Gorgon has turned my dad into stone, and if you don’t help me, I’m never going to get him back. Do you understand?’

  But Bea was in another world, ‘The Sultan was such a fascinating man. He had seen the Yeti, you know? He was one of the few people Edgar and I could really talk to about the things we had seen.’

  Maria felt a spark of new hope. ‘Tell me about the things you’ve seen. I’ve seen all kinds of things with Sarah Jane. She’s seen loads of aliens and monsters on Earth, even other planets. She’s had hundreds of adventures, just like you and Edgar did.’