Doctor Who: The Awakening (8 page)

Will had gone down on one knee. He held a hand cupped to his car as if he was trying to hear something --listening back through centuries to see if the noises he remembered might return. He winced nervously and said,

‘Troopers come.’

‘No. No.’ The Doctor moved close to him. ‘Not the troopers, Will. Something else.’

Will backed away further. He was trying to escape the memory. He shuddered. ‘Malus come,’ he said, in a low and fearful voice. Then his face twitched with terror and he blurted, ‘Malus is God o’ War, isn’t he? Makes fightin’

worse! Makes ‘em hate more!’

His nerves were in a bad way, but the Doctor had to press him still further to be absolutely sure ff what he was saying. ‘The Malus is just a superstition, Will,’ he suggested.

Will gasped. ‘No!’ he cried, so emphatically the word came out like a hammer blow. ‘I’ve seen Malus! I’ve seen it!’

‘The Doctor watched him keenly, and saw the shadow of the Mains move through his eyes.

Tegan and Turlough, looking for the Doctor to warn him about the invasion of the TARDIS, ran up the crypt steps and hurried through the church. Outside, they gazed uncertainly around the lines of gravestones m the churchyard.

They had hoped they might find him still exploring the vicinity of the church itself before setting off elsewhere, but the nave had been dark and empty and out here, although it was brighter - brilliant with sunshine, in fact –

the churchyard was equally deserted. There was no sign of the Doctor anywhere, and they gazed around in disappointment.

‘Now where?’ Turlough groaned.

‘He said he was going to the village,’ Tegan reminded him. Churchyards made her think of ghosts, and more than anything else just now, she wanted to get away from here.

‘Right, let’s go,’ Turlough agreed. ‘But watch out for those horsemen.’

Keeping a watchful eye and ear for soldiers and troopers, they headed for the lych-gate and the village, leaving the Doctor and Will behind them, in the vestry.

The Doctor had laid a hand on Will’s shoulder, for comfort. It had an instant effect, and soon Will was calmer and quieter, though still tense. His eyes, though, remained distant, brooding on those past events as the Doctor gently prodded him into recalling something which he would much rather forget.

‘Will ...’ The Doctor probed as warily as a brain surgeon, for he knew that he was exploring an area of fear so extreme that Will’s mind could be snapped by an unwise word. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said softly. ‘How did it appear?’

Will Chandler allowed the memories to come back. As he did so he stared straight ahead and his eyes dilated.

‘There was Roundheads an’ Cavaliers,’ he murmured. ‘An’

they wur fightin’ in church! And thur was a wind comin’ –

such a wind!’ His breath sobbed and his face twitched violently. ‘Then Malus come from nowhere ...’

He looked at the Doctor with tears in his eyes.

‘What did it look like?’ The Doctor pointed to the tombstone among the stone flags and placed his finger on the image etched into its surface. ‘Did it look like this?’

Will looked at him, pleading to be released from this.

The Doctor knew he was falling apart inside, but he had to keep pressing him. ‘Did it, Will? Like this?’

With a supremely courageous effort of willpower, the youth nerved himself to look down where the Doctor’s finger pointed at a monstrously distorted, grotesque figure, like the carving on the church pulpit. He whimpered. He cried, ‘Yes!’ and shrank back, turning away his head so that he would not be able to see that terrifying face.

Now the tombstone surprised them both.

As Will turned away the Doctor leaned on it and pressed his fingers into the sculpted face; the stone reacted by moving beneath his hand. He jerked back in astonishment, as the stone swivelled on its axis and rose silently into the air.

Will, looking over his shoulder, drew in his breath sharply: there must be a limit, he thought, to the number of frights he could be expected to take.

‘It’s all right, Will,’ the Doctor soothed him. ‘It’s all right.’ He leaned forward over the hole revealed by the now vertical stone, and saw steps leading down into darkness.

‘That’s interesting,’ he murmured. He produced a torch and peered down into the pit. Then he wagged a finger at the reluctant and terrified youth.

‘Come on. Will,’ he said.

‘A Particularly Nasty Game’

The village was deserted. Every street and alley which Turlough and Tegan warily moved through in their search for the Doctor was quiet and still. The air was motionless –

even the breeze which had moved the leaves so gently earlier, seemed to have died away now. The sun beat down on their heads out of a sky empty of cloud, and blistered and melted the asphalt surfaces of the toads under their feet.

At the roadside a telephone kiosk glowed red; the white-painted walls of the thatched cottages dazzled their eyes in the strangely luminous atmosphere. It felt as though the world was burning up - and it seemed that hnman life in the village had already vapourised.

Both impressed and disturbed by the stillness, they came to an uncertain halt. ‘It’s eerie,’ Tegan whispered.

She was very nearly awed into silence herself.

‘Where is everyone?’ Turlough wanted to hear a voice, even if it was only his own. He wanted it to activate something, but the heat soaked it up like blotting paper.

They looked around uneasily, and set off again at a run, as if by doing so they might startle something in the village into showing some signs of life. Moving at the double they came to a T-junction, turned left, and arrived at a ford, where a river ran across the road in a sparkling watersplash.

They stopped here to get their breath back. And it was only then, when they were making no noise themselves, that they heard the horses behind them. They looked round and saw Joseph Willow and a pair of troopers come cantering out of a side road. As soon as they spotted the two companions, they shouted and spurred their horses into a gallop.

‘Oh, no,’ Tegan sighed.

‘Split up!’ Turlough shouted. He ran back up the lane they had just come down, while Tegan bolted forward into the river. She splashed through the ford, and the sudden sensation of cold water dashing against her skin made her shudder.

But their ruse had confused the troopers, who had stopped, uncertain which of them to pursue. After a moment’s hesitation, Willow sent his men to chase Turlough, and went after Tegan himself As she raced out of the ford Tegan looked back over her shoulder – and stumbled into the arms of Ben Wolsey. The big Gumer, who had stepped out of the cover of a narrow alley, caught her as she came running past, and although Tegan struggled and screamed she was helpless in his strong grip. He held her writhing body without effort.

‘Let me go!’ she shouted, as Willow came riding up.

The Sergeant reined his horse and leaned down towards her. ‘Not yet, my dear,’ he leered His pleasure it her predicament made Tegan’s skin crawl.

Wolsey sensed it too, and frowned. ‘Do you have to enjoy this sort of thing quite so much!’ he asked.

Willow tugged angrily at the reins; his horse reared, aid clashed its hooves down on the road. ‘Just obeying orders, Colonel!’ he shouted.

‘That’s what they all say,’ Wolsey commented wryly.

The Sergeant was furious. ‘Hah!’ he shouted, and savagely spurred his horse back across the ford.

Tegan sensed that the friction between these two was close to breaking out into open hostility; since they were on opposite sides in the war game they would soon have ample excuse to work it out. But for the moment she herself was unable to exploit their quarrel.

There was nothing she could do at all, except accompany Colonel Ben Wolsey in whatever direction he decided to take her.

Ever since Willow had locked her into Wolsey’s seventeenth-century parlour, Jane Hampden had been trying to escape. But there was no way out; the windows were securely fastened, Willow had barred the door, and nothing she could do would free either. Wearily she began another round of the room, in case she had missed something.

This time her eyes alighted on an old fighting axe, half-hidden among a display of Civil War weapons on the wall above the fireplace. She cursed herself for failing to realise its potential earlier – with an axe she might be able to smash her way out! She hurried across to the fire, reached up to take the axe – and saw the hunting tapestry move beside her face. It hung near the weapons; now it shifted slightly, as though tugged by a draught of air.

Jane forgot the axe. Excited, she hurried towards a heavy curtain which draped from ceiling to floor at the other side of the tapestry. She tugged at this and disrovered that a section of the wooden wall panelling behind it had moved away from the rest. A draught of air was rushing through the gap. Jane pushed the panel; it moved open, like a door. At the other side, a stone passage led away into darkness.

Up to now, Jane had been acting slowly, with the greatest wariness and care. There was no way of telling what she had discovered, or where it might lead. But now she was forced into precipitate action. She heard boots approaching rapidly outside. A voice was raised in anger, then a key turned in the lock. The voice was Sir George Hutchinson’s – and Jane panicked.

There was only the one way to escape, and no time for caution, so she pushed the panel wide and ran through the opening into the gloomy passage. She came almost immediately to a spiral staircase; very slowly she began to grope her way down, into almost total darkness.

Behind her, in the room, the key turned in the lock, the bolt was unbarred and the door opened. Followed by two armed troopers, Sir George came in with his mouth open ready to speak to Jane, and for a moment he paused uncertainly, looking around the room with a goldfish expression. Then his eyes alighted on the long curtain blowing back from the wide open panel.

‘The fool!’ he fumed – a spark of anger which quickly blazed into a full-throated shout of rage at his men. ‘After her!’ he screamed, adding as they broke into a run, ‘We’ll need some light! Get a candle!’

The troopers snatched candles from the silver candelabra on the mantelpiece and bent down to light them at the burning logs in the hearth. Then they shielded the guttering flames and followed Sir George into the passage. in pursuit of the schoolteacher.

The Doctor and Will Chandler were also underground, bent almost double to move along the low, narrow passage from the vestry.

In the frail light from the Doctor’s torch Will could see only indistinctly its rough, damp sides and roof. They were growing more vague by the minute for the Doctor was moving very fast and Will was lagging further and further behind. It had been like this since their first step from the vestry: the Doctor almost running, swept onward by his eagerness for discovery, while Will, breathless and aching in this constant crouching scuttle, struggled to keep up with him.

Without warning the Doctor stopped suddenly and listened. He beckoned to Will to come nearer, raising a finger for silence. ‘Stay close, Will,’ he whispered.

Will paused at his side, thankful to have a breather. In the wavering torchlight he could see that the passage broadened just ahead and then opened to a wider area that was like a room hewn out of the rock. At one side of it a spiral staircase led upwards; apart from that the place seemed to be featureless – an empty, eerie cavern in the bowels of the earth.

Then Will heard them: feet scuffing the floor above their heads and then moving slowly and hollowly down the stairs. While he was still translating the sound into words in his mind, the Doctor was diving forward and dragging him into the dark area underneath the stairs. They crouched down there and pressed back against the chill, oozing wall, while the stairs above their heads creaked softly.

Will held his breath and hoped the person would never reach the bottom. But the Doctor was impatient, eager to see who it might be. Suddenly there was another, more distant sound – a voice raised in anger far above them.

Then more footsteps scuffed a far-off floor.

Jane Hampden heard the voice while she was still on the stairs. In a panic she looked back towards the passage above, and the last faint spread of light from the parlour, expecting Sir George and his troopers to appear at any second. Not daring to take her eyes off the entrance to the passage, she came down the last stairs backwards.

‘Through here!’ she heard Sir George shout in a voice brittle with irritation. Another, deeper voice muttered something in reply, then suddenly their footsteps were much closer. Jane shivered. She reached the bottom stair and looked apprehensively around, squinting through the gloom at what seemed to be a room cut out of solid rock.

She almost collapsed with fright when a voice hissed from the darkness beside her: ‘Sshh! In here!’

A hand touched her shoulder and she spun round with a choking cry. Then she saw the Doctor and a youth under the stairs and nearly shouted with relief. The Doctor beckoned and she dived into their hiding place; she was just in time, for Sir George was already coming down the stairs, with the troopers lumbering heavily behind him.

Their candles cast distorted, shifting shadows on the walls and roof. ‘Keep that light near!’ Sir George snarled.

And then, ‘We’ll catch her before the church.’ He stopped at the foot of the staircase and looked back up at the troopers’ clumsy descent. ‘Move yourselves,’ he shouted, ‘I don’t want this to take all day!’

They hurried across the open area and disappeared into the passage leading to the vestry. Soon the sounds of their footsteps faded away.

Jane let out the breath she had been holding ever since Sir George appeared, and relaxed enough to look curiously at the dirty, queerly-dressed youth who was ducked down beside her. For his part, Will was staring open-mouthed after the running men. He was disturbed and excited by their clothing. ‘Them be troopers!’ he cried.