Doctor Who: Rags (19 page)

Then, with much straining and grunting, and the aid of five 137

ropes and ten villagers, the large rock was unearthed from its mooring. The mayor supervised the process, and conceived its purpose: the rock, still wrapped with four bleeding bodies, was levered aboard a large and very stout cart.

‘Take them far; the mayor roared into the night, charging three villagers with the arduous task.’Take them to the furthest corner of the land, from where the stink of their evil can no longer pollute our village. Dispose of them like the midden heap they are, where there be no goodness, where nature ends. Let this rock of horrors be their memorial’ The three villagers boarded the cart and began their journey. That journey took them beyond the edge of the frame, beyond the edge...

Off the page, and into Kane’s mind.

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‘Found something interesting, old chap?’

The Doctor leant against a shelf and gave Kane a reassuring smile as the young man looked up. The smile vanished as he took in the evil illustrations inside the book Kane was holding. Kane’s eyes did nothing to alleviate the Doctor’s uneasiness: they were haunted, branded by terror.

‘It’s all right, there’s nothing here to scare you,’ the Doctor tried to reassure him. He leant forward to take the book and Kane reacted violently. Leaping to his feet, he snatched it away from the Doctor’s grasp and scuttled over to a far corner of the library, where he sat on a window seat clutching the book and glaring at the Time Lord like a dog jealous of a juicy bone. The Doctor considered approaching him again, and then thought better of it.

The long-haired young man looked capable of anything right now; the mania in his eyes could explode into physical violence at the slightest excuse.

Better let him lie.

Besides, the Doctor had seen those gruesome pages, and Kane’s resultant transformation upon reading them, and that rather confirmed his theory.

The cleaning lady at the church had fired his curiosity. It wasn’t much of a mental leap to suspect some link between the woman’s hints of a dark history to this village and the source of the energy pulse. Maybe Kane, or more precisely the book, held the key. Acting on impulse, the Doctor crossed over to the ageing librarian positioned behind her counter which smelt of old hardback hooks and gave her his warmest smile. She eyed his velvet smoking jacket and frilly shirt dubiously, but returned his smile Mier a moment. She was every inch the librarian: horn-rimmed spectacles, severe white bun pulling the skin of her rosacea-flushed face back into a red mask.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ she held a book stamp in mid-air rather 139

than putting it down, as if by wielding the tool of her trade she could justify her existence to this elegant if flashy stranger.

The Doctor inclined his head towards the corner where Kane sat alone, once more engrossed in the book. He could see the cover from here and it depicted shadowy men with blunderbusses and a gaunt grey creature stalking them. He could see no title.

‘I was wondering about the book that young man is reading...’

He beamed at her with full-throttle charm. ‘I was interested in exactly how long it has been on the shelves here.’

The librarian, despite her formidable glasses, obviously couldn’t see as well as the Doctor could, because she came from behind the counter and took a few steps towards Kane before halting.

The Doctor noticed her back tense, as if she’d been touched by someone she really didn’t like. She returned to the counter, deliberately not looking at the Doctor. Her face had lost its redness completely.

She picked up another book and flipped open the cover to stamp it.

The Doctor waited patiently.

‘Well?’

‘I’m sorry sir,’ she said without looking up.

‘And what are you sorry for exactly?’

‘I’ve never seen that book before in my life,’ she stammered, furiously stamping the book.

The Doctor inclined his head and pursed his lips ruminatively.

‘I think we both know that’s not entirely the truth, don’t we?’ he said gently.

The librarian looked up, her eyes wide. Her chin wobbled a moment, and then she blurted out:

‘I was sure it had been burnt. Long ago, when I was a child.’ she paused, and the stamp was shaking in her hand. She looked at it as if it were an alien artefact and put it down before continuing. It gave me the worst nightmares you can imagine, she said in ahushed, conspiratorial tone. ‘The worst.’

The Doctor leant across the counter and put one hand tenderly 140

on top of hers. She looked up at him quickly, then down again.

Shemade a move to pick the stamp up again, as if by resuming hernormal duties she could efface any unpleasant memories that were lurking like sharks beneath the waters of her mind. Instead she merely touched it, as if for reassurance.

‘The librarian of that day ordered it to be destroyed shortly afterwards - after my mother complained.’ She frowned at the Doctor. ‘I dare say there must have been two copies... ?’ she didn’t look convinced herself. ‘Either that or... or they couldn’t bring themselves to burn a book of such local interest.’ She shivered noticeably, and the Doctor saw behind the crusty spectacles - saw the scared little girl hiding in her eyes.

‘Yes,’ the Doctor said thoughtfully. ‘Tell me, would you happen to know where the book came from, and who was the author?’

The librarian frowned at him. Then shot a glance in Kane’s direction. The Doctor followed her gaze. Kane’s unshaven face was milk-white behind the large cover of the book.

‘Why, the author was the same as the illustrator. And should have been imprisoned for it, if you ask me. Or at the very least certified. Because he was mad, or so they said when I was little.

so very mad. Mad, and very, very bad.’

The Doctor raised his eyebrows encouragingly. ‘Really? And what exactly did he do?’

‘Besides create that obscenity, you mean? I only heard rumours... rumours that could never be proved. It might not be professional of me to wag my tongue so many years after the events.’

‘No... ‘ the Doctor said with mock complicity, ‘I suppose not.’

‘Dark things. That’s all I know. Rites amongst the stones.

Bloody deeds... I... I really couldn’t elaborate. But suffice to say a local publisher decided to take a gamble and publish the unwholesome thing, and the library decided to stock it. As to the author...’ she leant towards the Doctor, lowering her voice.

‘Do go on,’ he prompted.

‘Why, the author was no more than one of his lot’ And once 141

more she glanced furtively in Kane’s direction:One of those lazy sawyers. His grandfather, if you really want to know. Always were a bad lot, those Sawyers. A bad lot.’

The Doctor glanced at Kane.

He was staring right back at them, the book in his lap.

They had climbed to their feet, and now they were shuffling towards her in the dark.

Four musicians - four mummers - in the dark.... in the truck.

She could not see their faces, she could not hear them breathe.

But she could see the silhouettes of their tatters, could hear the scrape of their boots on the metal floor. And, as if the Ragman had popped another vision inside her head, she understood what they were.

As they came for her.

‘But sarge, wouldn’t it be far better to disperse the travellers, rather than allowing them to go where they want?’

The young corporal’s eyes were hard and angry, and Benton knew she was speaking for the majority of the squaddies. But there was also something else in her wide blue eyes. something a little like hate, and Benton didn’t like that at all. He shrugged at her.

‘Not for us to worry about now is it, Robinson? Besides, they’re out of harm’s way while they’re in there. We’ve got them contained rather nicely.’

‘Are you sure we’ve got them contained, sarge? Or is it that they’re just not ready to move on yet? I get the feeling they’re taking the piss because we’re not doing anything about them.’

Benton had no reply to that. ‘The Brigadier’s just following orders from above,’ he finally snapped.

The blonde corporal wasn’t satisfied by the answer. She glowered through the spiked gate at the cemetery which was now succumbing to twilight. Camp fires were blossoming amongst the tombs. ‘Doesn’t make it right, does it Sarge?’

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Benton grimaced helplessly. ‘Like I said, nothing for you to worry about.’

‘Until someone else gets killed,’ she shot back. She was only small, but she managed to knock a few inches off Benton just by her attitude. He felt his cheeks burn.

‘Now look, your job is to obey orders, not voice opinions.’

‘Everything all right here, Benton?’

The familiar crisp tones of the Brigadier made the sergeant whip around guiltily. Although he hadn’t been the one questioning orders, it was still someone directly under his command, and he felt responsible. He crashed to attention, as did Corporal Robinson.

‘Everything’s in order, sir,’ he said smartly.

The Brigadier eyed him shrewdly, and then turned to the corporal. He nodded his head at her as if weighing up the insubordination he had so obviously heard while they had missed him in the gathering dusk, and Benton couldn’t resist rolling his eyes in frustration. He was always being caught on the slack. He really should tighten up on his men. And women. Captain Yates wouldn’t have stood for it for a moment. Benton was too soft, and he could tell the Brigadier was thinking the same.

Lethbridge-Stewart stared through the gate. Some of the travellers raised double digits at him from a nearby camp fire. He eyed them impassively, completely unfazed.

‘I’m glad everything’s under control, Benton.’ He shot a glance at the sergeant, one eye ominously narrowed. ‘Very glad indeed.’

The moon watched him drive, an old, fat moon keeping pace with the silver-haired Time Lord as he motored through the country lanes, watching out for him on his urgent errand or maybe gloating over his anxieties. Yet it was just the same old familiar moon when all was said and done, and this was just the planet Earth.

Just the planet Earth, yet once again the Doctor had managed to find himself involved in one big and very unearthly mess.

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He knew exactly where the cattle truck was, and therefore the location of the original pulse, so there was no need to use the sensor any more. He had left midnight behind somewhere in the Wiltshire lanes, and now he was chasing towards dawn, the night wind combing his hair back from his brow. His face was grim, and his black gloves were tight on the wheel.

He curved round a bend, the moon flirting with him through the branches of some voluptuous oaks, and there was a figure in the centre of the lane.

The Doctor didn’t see him at first. As the oaks slipped away to his left, a barebacked range of hills had been revealed under the moonlight and, glowing bone-white on a hillside as if sketched there with luminous paint, was the huge figure of a chalk horse.

The Doctor took his eyes off the amazing sight and concentrated on the road ahead. And there was the man in the lane.

Except it was no man. It was a scarecrow thing of rags and stone-coloured flesh, head bald but for a Medusa writhing of blind, oversized worms. Eyes reflected the moonlight malefically and, throwing up one arm to protect his face, the Doctor swung down hard right on the steering wheel with the other.

The Edwardian roadster ploughed into the hedge on the side of the lane, hurling the Doctor forward across the top of the windscreen. The car lurched to a halt embedded in the thicket, and the Doctor slumped over the steering wheel, stunned.

The moon stared down at him as if in rebuke over his clumsiness, bathing the car, the hedge and the empty lane in its impassive light.

Dawn caught up with the Doctor as he finally succeeded in heaving the car out of the hedge and back on to the road. Pale first light, and birds shaken out of their slumbers and indignant for it, shattering the silence with their vociferous chorus. They reminded him of his lack of sleep, and that he would doubtless also lack the opportunity to get any in the future, but this was something he was becoming used to.

And to think he’d believed exile on Earth was the equivalent of 144

the Time Lords shoving him away in a retirement home!

He sat behind the wheel again, removing half a nettle from around the steering column, and looked ruefully at the car’s muddy bonnet. He thought of the figure that had been in the road and then vanished, and he forgot his ruefulness, even his tiredness; he remembered that Jo was with the truck, and that perhaps he had procrastinated long enough if that was truly what he had been doing. Could checking up on all possible data instead of acting on the information he already had be called procrastination? Or was it simply following the natural curious instincts of a scientific mind? He knew what the Brigadier would have said, but then the Brigadier had always relied on instant action without weighing up all the possibilities first - looking for cause and effect rather than blowing things up had never been first on his list of natural responses. Bless him.