Doctor Who BBCN16 - Forever Autumn (5 page)

He hesitated for three seconds, then stepped off the path. Part of him wanted to go home, crawl into bed and pull the covers over his head, but a greater part felt the need to reach the heart of the mystery.

The closer he got to the source of the sound, however, the greater became his sense of dread. It was like a steel fist around his lungs, cutting off his air, making him dizzy and sick.

He hunched down behind a tombstone and forced himself to take several deep breaths. When he felt able to carryon, he did so in a semi-crouch, slipping from tombstone to tombstone, suddenly eager not to be seen. The sound of scrabbling was louder now. It surely couldn’t be more than a few steps away. Pressing himself up against a tombstone, h swallowed, counted to three, then raised his head slowly and peered over the top.

He could see nothing out of the ordinary. Just some old graves covered in weeds. One of the graves had a crooked sapling sticking up out of the centre of it. The sapling was creaking back and forth in the wind. . .

. . . and then Earl realised that there
was
no wind.

Without warning, the five spindly branches jutting from the thin trunk of the sapling bent in the centre, then opened out again. Earl felt all the blood draining from his face as he suddenly realised what he was
really
looking at.

It was an arm, black and twig-thin. And the ‘branches’ were fingers

– each one as long as his forearm; each one bony and segmented, like 27

the legs of a lobster; each one tipped by a hooked, razor-sharp talon.

As he watched, too terrified to move, the ground heaved and a figure rose slowly out of the ground. It was fully nine feet tall and impossibly thin, and seemed to be clothed in a rotting patchwork of black, tattered rags. Its hands – its long,
long
taloned hands – were awful enough, but more terrifying still was its head. It was huge and pale and fleshy, with deep-set eyes and a wide, wide mouth filled with jagged teeth.

Soil fell from the creature, pattering to the ground, as it pushed itself up from the earth. Once it had fully emerged, it looked slowly around, its great head creaking from left to right. It seemed almost to hover above the ground as though it weighed nothing at all. When it moved its hands, Earl could hear its fingers clicking together like bones.

As the massive head swung slowly towards his hiding place, Earl ducked down. He was panting and sweating and shaking. All at once he felt stone-cold sober. He forced himself to count to three again and then tentatively raised his head once more.

To his horror the creature was drifting like a wraith towards the tombstone behind which he was crouching. And what was more, it was looking straight at him!

Whimpering in terror, Earl rose to his feet and stumbled away. His body felt heavy and awkward, as though he was wading through sludge. He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears, could feel his breath tearing at his throat. He slithered and blundered between the graves, disorientated by the mist. He had an idea that if only he could make it to the cemetery gates he would be safe.

More by luck than judgement, he spotted the thin dark thread of the path between a pair of tombstones. He staggered towards it like a marathon runner towards the finishing line. Now he could see the black arch of the cemetery gates ahead, wreathed in mist. With every thumping step, he expected to feel long, bony fingers folding around his shoulder, yanking him back. He glanced behind him and saw the creature still gliding after him, the ends of its tattered rags trailing behind it. He turned back to face the gates – and another of the 28

creatures loomed out of the mist, blocking his path.

Earl clumped to a stop, too terrified even to scream. He was close enough to the second creature to smell it. It smelled foul and pungent, like decomposing fruit. Slowly the creature lifted a finger to its lipless mouth, as though urging him to be quiet. Then it used the same finger to slash a curious X symbol in the hazy air between Earl and itself.

Instantly Earl became aware that something odd and terrible was happening to his face. He felt a tugging, a tightening, almost as if his skin was reshaping itself. His eyes bulging in terror, he clapped a hand to his mouth. He dropped to his knees as the mist closed in around him.

Chris was lying in a small, enclosed space. It was so dark he couldn’t even see his hand in front of his eyes. There were hard surfaces on either side of him, and one just a few inches above his face.

It was a box of some kind, and it was hot and stuffy. If he didn’t get out soon he’d suffocate. He pushed at the underside of the lid, but it wouldn’t budge. He felt himself starting to panic.
Stay calm
, he thought,
stay calm
.

Then he heard a sound, right above his face, on the other side of the lid. A dull, heavy thump that broke into a scratchy patter of smaller items coming to rest. There followed a moment of silence, then it came again. And suddenly he realised where he was, what was happening.

He was in a coffin and he was being buried alive!

He began to scream and flail in the desperate hope that someone would hear him. And all at once the lid gave way under his fists. It didn’t crack or splinter, but became soft, pliable, like dough. He sat up, smothered in the stifling thickness of it, and eventually it slid away from his face and he was able to breathe, to see. It was still dark, but there was a faint, greenish glow coming from somewhere in front of him. In the wan light he could just make out the familiar contours of his room, and realised the light was coming from the window.

It had been a dream, that’s all. Just a dumb dream.

Chris fell back onto his bed, heart beating hard, sweat drying on his 29

forehead. He didn’t usually have nightmares. Bad dreams were kid’s stuff. But he wasn’t a kid any more. He’d moved on from all that, he’d matured. Of course, he wouldn’t tell anyone about this, especially not Rick. Rick was still into trick-or-treating and dressing up with his loser buddies. Let
him
have the stupid nightmares. He deserved them.

Chris got out of bed to fetch himself a glass of water. His nocturnal freak-out must have been something to do with this weird green mist that had descended on the town. It was cool in a way, be guessed, but at the same time it seemed to be putting everyone on edge. His dad had been snappy at dinner, and his mom had kept glancing at the window as if she expected to see someone out there, peering in at them.

He glugged two glasses of water from the tap in the bathroom, then carried another back to his room. It was 12.30, and the house seemed encased in the kind of thick, muffled silence you usually got only with a heavy snowfall. Before getting back into bed, he stopped at his window and peered out. The mist was thicker than ever now. He could only just make out the vague shape of the black tree at the bottom of the garden.

Then he gave a little start. There was a glowing green light down by the tree. It seemed to be hovering in the air, like a giant firefly, or maybe a candle someone was holding. But a candle with a green flame? Could that be an effect of the mist?

He placed the glass of water on his bedside table and got back into bed. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the green light. There was something freaky about it. In truth, he didn’t think it was a firefly or a candle. So what then?

Only one way to find out,
a little voice murmured in his head.

‘Aw, gee,’ he groaned, as if he didn’t have a choice, and threw back his bedclothes. He pulled on jeans, sneakers and sweatshirt and went downstairs. He briefly considered waking his dad, but what would he say – ‘I saw a light in the garden’? Yeah, big deal. If there was nothing there, and Rick got to hear of it, Chris would never live it down.

So OK, he’d check this out and then he’d go back to bed. There would be nothing there. It would just be one of those weird little 30

mysteries, quickly forgotten. In the morning it would probably even seem unreal enough for Chris to convince himself he’d been sleepy, half-dreaming. He walked quietly through the dark house and let himself out the back door.

The mist latched onto him straight away and curled around him like something alive. It was hilly, clammy, and now that he was down at ground level, it seemed much thicker. So thick, in fact, that he couldn’t even make out the tree from here.

Neither could he see a light. He considered going back inside, but knew he wouldn’t settle until he’d at least trudged down to the tree to satisfy himself there was nothing there. He took a deep breath and set off. It was only thirty paces, maybe less, but in this mist he felt oddly reluctant to stray even that far from the house.

He was maybe halfway there when the tree came into view as a vague shape through the murk. For some reason, he slowed his pace.

Though Chris had never told anyone, the tree had always freaked him out, and even these days he tried to look at it as little as possible.

He began to tread more carefully, trying to be as quiet as he could, though he didn’t know – or maybe he just didn’t want to know – what he thought might hear him. He was less than ten paces away when he realised there was something strange and different about the tree.

No, not the tree itself, but the area where it stood. Next to the black tree was another tree that Chris felt sure had never been there before.

It was tall and thin and there was what looked like a roundish clump of foliage at the top of it.

Then the new tree moved. Not much, but enough to make Chris realise that it wasn’t a tree at all.

Impossible as it seemed, it was a person. Someone very tall and thin with. . . no, it must be the swirling mist playing tricks with his eyes. The figure’s head couldn’t really be
that
big and wide, could it?

Because if it was, how did the spindly neck support it?

Chris stood motionless, watching the figure. He was pretty sure he hadn’t been spotted, and suddenly being seen by this. . . this thing was the last thing he wanted in the whole world. He saw the figure reach up with its hands (its impossibly long hands) and make a series 31

of weird gestures in the air. And then it did something that made his blood run cold. It started to speak.

It wasn’t the words that chilled Chris, though – he didn’t understand them; they sounded old, Latin or something – it was the voice. It was breathy and childlike and kind of echoey, and it sounded totally, totally mad. It made the hairs stand up on the back of Chris’s neck, made the liquid drain from his mouth. The
thing
– he couldn’t now think of it as anything even remotely human – raised its arms high in the air and said something that sounded like ‘
Zagaraldas
’.

Instantly it began to sink into the ground. It was as if a fissure had opened in the earth and was smoothly drawing the creature down.

Chris watched as it disappeared, inch by inch, almost as if it was descending in an elevator. It took maybe a minute for the thing to disappear completely. Last to go were the taloned fingertips of its upraised hands.

Chris stood for another five seconds, looking at the spot where the creature had stood, then he turned and ran. He ran as if the thing had burst back out of the earth and was loping after him. He didn’t stop running until he was back in his room and in his bed, shuddering under the bedclothes.

‘About a million channels to choose from,’ Martha said, remote control in hand, ‘and not one decent thing to watch.’

The Doctor didn’t reply. He was standing by the window of Martha’s hotel room, peering out into the darkness. His hands were in his pockets and he was rocking backwards and forwards on his heels.

‘Are you gonna stand there all night?’ she asked, turning off the TV.

‘Probably,’ he said gloomily.

‘Good. Well. . . enjoy yourself. I might as well try and get some sleep.’

She didn’t, though. She continued to lie on top of the bedclothes, her head propped on her hand. She didn’t even take off her shoes.

Being with the Doctor had taught her that she should always be ready to run somewhere at a moment’s notice.

‘What you thinking about?’ she asked finally.

32

‘Talk in your sleep, do you?’ he said.

‘All the time,’ she said. ‘Never shut up, me.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

‘My mum’s fault, that is. Never stop asking questions, Martha, she always said to me. Always have an enquiring mind. Remember, Martha, she’d say, every day’s a school day.’

In the window reflection, Martha saw the trace of a smile flicker across the Doctor’s face.

‘She never said that,’ he said.

‘She did so.’

‘Your mother? I can’t imagine her saying that.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s ’cos you don’t really know her. You should get to know her better.’

He hunched his shoulders, gave a little shudder. ‘No thanks. Been there, done that, got the bruises to prove it.’

‘What do you mean, “been there, done that”?’ Martha scoffed.

‘You’ve only met my mum that one time, and then it was hardly –’

‘It wasn’t your mother I was talking about,’ he said softly.

Martha went quiet. Ever since accompanying the boys back to Rick’s – thankfully managing to avoid bumping into his parents and all the awkward explanations that that would have involved – only to find that the mysterious book had disappeared, they’d been at a bit of a loose end. And whenever that happened, whenever they weren’t dashing from one place to another, the conversation invari-ably seemed t turn towards the Doctor’s ex-companion.

In an attempt to steer him away from that particular subject, she said, ‘So what’s our next move?’

He made an exasperated sound with his lips. She knew how much he hated mooching around, biding his time. He always had to be somewhere, doing something. She, however, was a mere mortal and, however much she loved being with him, she was glad of the occasional rest, the chance to recharge her batteries.

‘Back to Rick’s first thing in the morning, speak to his brother, see if he’s got this book,’ he said. He rocked forward until his head hit the 33