Falls the Shadow (4 page)

‘What?’ Ace exploded, ‘All my bloody gear’s in there.’

‘Gear?’ The Doctor looked at her suspiciously.

‘Weapons, explosives, heavy technology,’ Ace rattled off the list of her prized possessions, all the things which the Doctor disapproved of. Long‐
standing experience suggested that he wasn’t going to be swayed. She stopped talking and swore inwardly.

‘My diary,’ Benny said. ‘I left it in my room.’ She stared imploringly at the Doctor but he adopted a grainy expression and shook his head. Benny sighed slowly, gesturing around the room.

‘Do you have any idea where we are?’ she asked. ‘Somewhere unpleasant, am I right?’

‘Earth,’ the Doctor replied, without elaboration.

‘Couldn’t you be more specific?’ asked Ace, beating Benny to the question by a second.

‘Not really. We’re probably somewhere in the northern hemisphere. We’re underground.’ Ace smiled to herself as he spoke. ‘In the cellar of some sort of structure. A large house, a hotel, possibly a warehouse.’

Ace hugged herself. Derelict houses formed part of a vivid childhood nightmare. She’d grown much since then, but there was still a kernel of disquiet buried in her subconscious. There was something here, an echo of that experience. She shivered, then scowled, hating her obvious weakness.

‘What about the date?’ she asked.

‘I couldn’t tell you.’

‘Twentieth century?’ Ace prompted. It was an informed guess. The TARDIS had a knack of gravitating to that period. She’d asked the Doctor about it once and he’d summed it up as familiarity.

‘Possibly.’

‘Somewhere unpleasant,’ Benny added cheerily.

‘I can’t tell you,’ the Doctor shrugged. ‘Something’s interfering with the TARDIS computer systems.’ He paused briefly. ‘First there is a mountain. Then there is no mountain. Then there is.’

‘The easy ones first, eh?’ Benny responded. ‘I should’ve guessed.’

‘I’m going to see if there’s a way out,’ he said distractedly. ‘Five minutes. Don’t go wandering off on your own. Or together for that matter.’

Without waiting for an answer, he slipped into the darkness.

Benny rubbed her temples in a weary, soothing motion. Ace grinned and leaned back against the nearest wall. The brickwork felt alarmingly soft against her shoulder‐
blades. Bernice joined her by the wall, running a finger down its length. Ace could almost hear the dust accumulating on her fingertip, the layers of centuries being bulldozed aside.

‘Fascinating dust,’ Benny said, voice not dissimilar to the Doctor’s. She blew the dust from the end of her finger. Disturbed flecks sparkled in the beam of Ace’s torch as they drifted to the floor.

‘Just dust.’ Ace shrugged.

‘How many times have I told you, Ace? There’s no such thing as “just dust”.’ Benny adopted a light accent, startling the other woman with her uncanny vocal impersonation of the Time Lord. ‘Dust is fascinating, vibrant and sexy. If you really want to find out how a civilization works, look in its dustbins. History is made in pigsties, not palaces. Why do you think we spend so much time in the seediest dumps in the universe?’

‘Tell me about the dust, Professor.’ Ace decided to play along.

‘Well,’ Bernice slurred, slipping out of Gallifreyan accent and into the familiar tones of a bored and boring school lecture, ‘dust is interesting because it, er… it tells you a lot about the places in which it gathers. The dust here tells us that, uh…’

‘That this place hasn’t been cleaned for a few decades?’ Ace prompted.

‘Centuries.’ Benny smiled. She moved closer to the wall, pressing her hands against the brickwork. Intrigued, Ace crouched beside her, shining the beam of the torch onto the patch of wall Benny was examining. Bernice’s palms ran over the surface of the wall, pressing fingertips against the textured brickwork, and tapping at the crumbling mortar.

‘Seriously,’ Bernice said, after an oppressive minute’s silence, ‘the architecture’s a mess, chronologically speaking. This isn’t really my field.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Ace asked, with cautious interest.

‘Some of this is prehistoric. Sixteenth century.’ The patch of wall she pointed to was, as far as Ace was concerned, undistinguished. ‘But there’ve obviously been a lot of alterations in, uh, the eighteenth century. And they’ve been changing it almost continuously since then. This wall’s unstable. It looks like they’ve been ripping out bits of it on a regular basis. Replacing them with identical bits, of course.’

‘Right.’ Ace nodded. ‘Why bother?’

‘Probably because if this wall comes down, it’ll bring the rest of the house with it,’ Bernice said, carefully lifting her hands from the surface. ‘Mind you, I’m not an expert. You don’t like this place, do you?’ Her voice became lower, huskier. ‘I can tell.’ Ace ignored the urge to shiver again, and nodded.

‘Not this place,’ she said, ‘just old houses in general. Empty rooms and passages. You think you can hear voices on the edge of your hearing. Ghost voices, scratching in the darkness, behind the walls.’

She blinked, turned to made eye contact with her companion.

‘Just something from when I was a kid,’ she said. ‘A stupid thing. Did you ever have anything that scared you?’

‘I used to have nightmares about a six‐
foot green spider wanting to eat my face while I was asleep,’ Benny replied lightly. ‘Then I discovered what “sterile environment” meant.’ She stopped, her face withering into a picture of embarrassment under Ace’s steel glare. Ace smiled and Bernice’s guilty expression broke up.

‘I’ve found a way out.’ The Doctor stepped out of the darkness. Ace had shifted her body into a defensive posture before realizing who it was. Her composure recovered, she breathed heavily with relief.

‘Sorry, did I startle you?’ he asked, radiating innocence. ‘Sorry,’ he repeated himself, with greater conviction.

‘Turned up anything?’ Bernice asked, finding her breath.

‘A door. It’s partially blocked, but we should be able to get through.’

‘The question is, do we venture forth like brave‐
hearted heroes, or lock ourselves in the TARDIS like honest cowards?’

‘We go.’ Ace was determined. Be constructive. There was no point lurking in the TARDIS. Take the fight to the enemy. Benny nodded, saying nothing. The Doctor glanced between them, studying their faces. Finally he nodded.

‘Once more unto the breach,’ he said, forcing a smile. ‘Follow me.’

The door was closer than Ace expected. It was little more than a rotting wooden frame set into a shallow cutting in the brickwork. There were some planks half‐
heartedly nailed across the doorway, but they were rickety and loose. The wood itself was brittle: the boards came away with minimal effort. Beyond the door was another uninspiring stretch of cellar. One plain brick passageway led off into the dark and a smaller side‐
passage – also brick – also terminated in darkness.

It was cleaner here, less cluttered. The floor was bare, clear of abandoned furniture and dust. There was an atmosphere of care and attention to this place which the other rooms lacked. The brickwork here seemed sturdier, less likely to crumble at the slightest touch. Glancing down the side‐
passage, Ace saw that there had even been an attempt to disguise the nature of the walls behind a smooth plaster finish. The other rooms had been derelict, obviously undisturbed for years. Not here. Ace could believe that people actually worked here.

The Doctor agreed. He pointed his torch upwards, so that the beam danced on the ceiling. Picked out in the light, was a web of dangling wires connected to an exposed light‐
bulb. The Doctor cast the beam further down the passage, finding further bulbs set at regular intervals along its length.

‘The lights suggest that someone uses this place,’ he said. ‘Lives here. Possibly.’

‘Possibly?’ Ace asked.

‘It looks industrial. Very heavy and intricate, without the need to disguise its functional nature. Hardly the norm in a domestic situation? Besides, how old is it? It’s not proof of anything.’

‘This is the bit where one of us suggests we split up and look around,’ Bernice said chirpily. There was something gleefully sadistic in her psychology that thrived in adversity. ‘And the monster picks us off and eats us one by one. Since you two are looking so grim, I think it’s going to have to be me. I’ll go this way,’ she said, pointing down the length of the main passage. ‘You two try down the other way. Meet back here in five – ten minutes. Scream if there’s any trouble, yes?’

There were nods, a brief exchange of torches. Then Bernice slipped into the darkness and the Doctor and Ace pulled into the side‐
corridor, walking side‐
by‐
side and in silence.

The passage ended sharply in a plain metal slab of a door. The beam of the Doctor’s torch flattened against its smooth surface, revealing that it had been painted an unappetizing shade of cabbage‐
green. The paint was beginning to flake. The door was indented with a hand grip, but was otherwise unfriendly and impregnable.

Ace stopped by the door, and stared at it single‐
mindedly.

‘Ace, I’m sorry if I’ve seemed a bit brusque,’ the Doctor said softly, close to her ear. ‘It’s just I’m very worried about the TARDIS.’

Ace hummed an acknowledgment but didn’t look at him. She was preoccupied with the door. She dug her hand into the indentation and tugged.

‘Ace, you’ve shown me you can survive in a totally alien environment without the TARDIS to fall back on,’ the Doctor continued, apparently oblivious to her efforts with the door. ‘In that respect, you’re a better person than I am. I need the ship. I don’t want to see it hurt… damaged.’

The door hadn’t budged. Not an inch. It couldn’t just be the weight. It had to be locked.

‘There’s something in this place powerful enough to tear the TARDIS from the vortex. If that thing is malevolent then imagine what it could do to you, or to Benny? We’re playing in the dark, gambling for our lives, with a hand we don’t understand, against a dealer who’s cheating. If I seem on edge, it’s because I’m worried. Terrified,’ he added.

‘You’re not alone, Doctor. Perhaps I’m just naturally antagonistic…’ Ace muttered, tugging sharply at the door several times, failing even to make it rattle. ‘Why won’t you open, you bastard?’ she yelled, her frustration finally getting the better of her.

‘It opens inwards,’ the Doctor hummed. Ace landed a vicious thump on the side of the door and it opened silently. A vexed smile settled on her lips, a light blush on her cheeks.

The room was as functional and bare as the rest of the building. Its walls were an insipid shade of grey‐
brown, occasionally enlivened by colourless scraps of wallpaper overlooked when the rest had been scraped away. The other rooms had been cold, but the chill was pronounced here. Briefly, Ace felt the sharp, icy brush against her skin, before her combat suit reacted and grew warm. Though colder than the rest of the cellar, the room seemed lighter. It was dark, but not the enveloping blackness of the other rooms. It was half‐
dark, the shadows robbed of their deeper levels.

Ace glanced upwards, and saw a light fitting dangling from the ceiling by a bare flex. There was no bulb.

The room was unfurnished. Almost.

It was large, grey and ugly. It squatted in the corner of the room daring anyone to come near it. It was, simply, a wardrobe. It brushed the ceiling. It was almost as wide as it was high, its bulk magnified by the metal out of which it had been built. The doors were wooden, but these were only panels slotted into heavy metal frames. The box sat against the wall and brooded.
Wardrobe
was too weak a term for the sombre artifact. It was a sarcophagus.

It had captured the Doctor’s interest.

‘Ace,’ he called eagerly, ‘what do you make of this?’

It was impressive, but Ace was unmoved by the Doctor’s enthusiasm.

‘Look at it,’ he said, the excitement in his voice suddenly replaced with a deep and resonant note of authority. Ace looked.

‘What for?’ she asked.

‘Watch,’ the Doctor commanded, seizing the handle on one of the doors. It came ajar gently after a slow tug, and as it opened it gained a halo.

The light grew suddenly. It blazed from the newly formed crack between the doors, suffusing the gap, streaming into the room. It was sterile and powerful – Ace raised an arm to protect her face from the glare – but not artificial. It was a natural light, like a snatched glimpse of a sun at its zenith.

The Doctor slammed the door, hiding the light. Ace blinked frantically; her eyes felt as if they were on fire, and a staple‐
shaped image lingered on her retina for more than a minute. She kept blinking, grateful for the coolness of the air.

The Doctor was talking.

‘It’s light,’ he was saying. ‘Intense light. First in the TARDIS. Now… Well, that couldn’t have been artificial, there’s no connection.’

‘And what does that tell us?’ Ace challenged him.

‘Nothing. I have suspicions.’ The Doctor mused momentarily before adding, ‘No proof.’ He shrugged wearily and shook his head.

Ace moved to the sarcophagus, slowly reaching out to touch the door. The Doctor intercepted her quickly, seizing her by the wrist and shooting her a sharp glance.

‘No,’ he insisted. ‘Leave it.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to know what it is before I go charging in,’ he told her. ‘And I want to find Benny first. We need to stick together.’

‘Dear diary, I’m not writing this down – if I could I’d be Mr Tickle – so I’m going to have to memorize this, or paint it on the walls.’

Soon after she had left the Doctor and Ace, Bernice found her surroundings changing. The brickwork and plaster of earlier sections gave way to walls lined with wooden panels. The barely concealed wiring of the lights system disappeared into the ceiling. The dry dust taste at the start of the passage was replaced by the fragrance of old varnish blending with wood, echoes of a natural, forest freshness. Only the atmosphere was unchanged, as trapped and oppressive as before.

‘I’ve been going for almost ten minutes now,’ Bernice told herself with a soft whisper, ‘and, tell the truth, Bernice Summerfield is lost. Not
lost
lost,’ she corrected herself, ‘just disorientated. This house is like a maze without any options. No turn‐
offs, no junctions, no forked passages, no doors. A very easy maze in fact. All I have to do is turn round and keep walking. But you wouldn’t believe the number of twists and turns there’ll be on the way back. The architecture’s too complex for its own good. This is
not
the work of a sane man, trust me.