Doctor Who_ Grave Matter Part 12

Sir Edward leaned back in the chair. 'Not sure that I can explain, really,' he confessed. 'It all seems a bit mad now.

With the lights on. I mean, in the dark and everything, that's different. But...' He sighed. 'I'm pretty new here, maybe that's why I'm the only one who's worried.'

'Worried?' Peri asked. 'What about?' She was trying to look at Sir Edward as he spoke, trying to ignore the fourth, silent person in the room.

'Well, it sounds silly when you talk about it. Lot of fuss over nothing, probably. But it's got me worried. Anxious. The deaths. Everything.' He leaned forward again, his expression earnest. 'All right, so there was the flu thing. And this fis.h.i.+ng accident. Unfortunate. But there are other odd things you notice too.'

'Like the way the sheep behave?' the Doctor prompted quietly.

'Yes,' agreed Sir Edward. Then more quietly, 'Yes, you'd noticed that too?' He shook his head. 'None of them are really that odd in themselves. But taken all together there's a sort of critical ma.s.s. Then when Dr Madsen said there was nothing wrong with this fellow's arm, I thought...Well, I'm not sure what I did think actually.'

'You thought,' the Doctor said, 'that here was something concrete you could actually check.'

Sir Edward nodded. 'Yes, I suppose so. That's about it.'

'Did you see his arm broken?' the Doctor asked.

Sir Edward shook his head.

'So Madsen could be right,' Peri told him. 'There could have been nothing wrong with it. Just a sprain.'

Sir Edward shook his head again. 'I don't think so. I've spoken to a few people who saw the boat come in that day.

They were all sure that the arm was broken. But they all a.s.sume they were wrong or don't want to bother following it up. Just one of those things.'

'And they've none of them spoken to each other about it?'

the Doctor asked.

'Don't know. But I a.s.sume not.' He smiled suddenly.

'Except Mrs Tattleshall, of course. She's spoken to everyone about it. It was her that put me on to it actually. But somehow her talking about it immediately makes people think it's all an exaggeration or a mistake. Gossip and rumour are her stock in trade, so why should this be any different?'

'Why indeed?' the Doctor wondered quietly. He leaped to his feet and looked closely at the corpse again. The body was dressed in a grubby, mud-smeared suit. The Doctor tugged at a sleeve. 'So what did you intend?' he asked.

'Thought I'd bring the poor chap back here, take a look at him down in the cellar.' He nodded towards the open door.

'The light's better down there. And there's more s.p.a.ce. S'pose that's out of the question now, though.'

'I don't see why,' the Doctor said. 'Give me a hand to get him down the stairs, will you?'

Sir Edward stared as the Doctor wrestled the body out of the wheelbarrow and hoisted it over his shoulder.

'Come along,' the Doctor chided. 'There's not that long before it starts to get light. We need him to be done and dusted and back in the ground before the milkman wanders past on the early s.h.i.+ft.'

Sir Edward and Peri watched as the Doctor worked. They had lain the body on the large wooden table in the cellar and stripped it to the waist. The skin was pale with a bluish tinge, and there was a sickly sweet smell that Peri tried hard not to think about.

'What now?' Sir Edward asked as they all stood round the table.

'What were you going to do?' the Doctor asked. 'Full postmortem? Surgical procedures or an external examination?'

Sir Edward shook his head. 'I don't really know,' he confessed. He gave a short, sharp laugh that was strangely devoid of humour. 'I may have run a department at the Ministry of Science, but I don't really have the first clue, I'm afraid.'

'Don't look at me,' Peri said. She shrugged, trying to think of what she could say that might help. 'Shouldn't he have rigor mortis or something?'

Sir Edward nodded as if he had the same thought.

The Doctor had stretched out the left arm of the body and was examining it carefully, pressing the skin and feeling round the elbow joint. 'Not if he's been dead for more than, oh, about forty-eight hours.'

'He has,' Sir Edward admitted, with a trace of disappointment. 'How's his arm?'

'It seems fine,' the Doctor said. He bent it back and forth at the elbow a few times to demonstrate.

'Maybe it was the other one?' Peri suggested.

The Doctor stared at her. Then he frowned and turned his attention to Sir Edward.

Sir Edward s.h.i.+fted uneasily on his feet. 'Not sure,' he mumbled. 'Don't think I asked, actually.'

The Doctor sighed theatrically and started on the other arm. 'No,' he said after a few moments. 'No, this one seems fine as well.' He let the arm flop back down beside the body.

'No sign of a break in either of them. No bruising or contusion either, which is a surprise if it was a bad sprain. I'd expect some sign.'

The Doctor turned his attention to the face of the body.

Peri winced as he pushed back an eyelid with his thumb and stared into the exposed eye. After a moment he leaned across the table and repeated the procedure with the other eye. 'Irises are very pale,' he murmured. 'Almost bleached.'

The body's head moved slightly as the Doctor examined the second eye. Peri gasped. 'Look,' she said, her voice husky and strained.

'Hmm?' The Doctor leaned back to see what Peri was looking at.

'His neck.'

The Doctor rolled the head aside to see where Peri was pointing. There were two slightly raised b.u.mps in the neck, adjacent to each other and about an inch apart. In the centre of each was a dark dot.

'Puncture marks?' Sir Edward asked, his voice little more than a whisper.

The Doctor nodded and let the head roll back again.

'Looks like it,' he agreed. 'Looks very much like it indeed.'

'Vampires,' Peri breathed. The word seemed to hang in the air. Sir Edward gaped.

The Doctor pursed his lips. 'That's ridiculous,' he decided after a moment's hesitation. 'There are dozens of other far more plausible explanations for these marks.'

'Oh?' Peri asked. 'That's good,' she added.

'Dozens,' the Doctor repeated. 'Could be the result of an accident, a fish hook got caught, well, two fish hooks.

Something.' He stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. Then he immediately pulled them out again. 'Or injections of some sort.'

'That's only two explanations.' Peri said. 'Dozens means...dozens.'

The Doctor snorted. 'Well, whatever the explanation is, it's not vampires. Now I think it's time we got this chap dressed again and back to bed.' As he retrieved the dead man's s.h.i.+rt, Peri could see that the Doctor's fingers were crossed.

'I hear you talked to the children up at the school,' the Doctor said. 'Miss Devlin was telling me.'

'What?' Sir Edward said. 'Oh, er, yes. That's right. Couple of weeks ago.'

Peri could understand he had been thrown by the question.

They were wheeling a dead body back to its grave at nearly three o'clock in the morning, and the Doctor was chatting about the local school.

'How did you find the children?' the Doctor asked. He was wheeling the barrow, Peri and Sir Edward close behind him. 'Sort of normal, responsive...Individual?'

Sir Edward looked at Peri. She shrugged.

'I'm not sure,' he replied. 'Not really an expert on children myself, so I don't know what normal is.'

The Doctor nodded. They had reached the churchyard gate now and he waited for Peri to come round and open it for him.

'No,' he said quietly. 'Not an area where I have much expertise either.'

Peri was carrying the torch and Sir Edward held the spade.

The Doctor set down the wheelbarrow away from the mound of newly dug earth and gestured for Peri to s.h.i.+ne the torch into the open grave. At the bottom she could see the coffin, the lid angled across it.

'Could you give me a hand getting him back inside, do you think, Sir Edward?' The Doctor asked as he straightened up again. He paused, then added: 'It is Sir Edward, isn't it?'

'What?' The elderly man turned away, focused his attention on the body in the wheelbarrow. 'Yes,' he said as his face was turned away. 'Sir Edward Baddesley. That's right.'

The Doctor and Peri exchanged glances. Peri raised an eyebrow, wondering if the Doctor could see the movement as she held the torch still pointing at the grave. He gave the barest shake of the head, as if to say: 'Leave it for now.' She nodded in return.

'So why did you come here, to Dorsill?' the Doctor asked as the two men hefted the body out of the wheelbarrow and stumbled with it towards the grave. The Doctor set down the feet and jumped into the grave, landing astride of the coffin.

He looked up at Sir Edward, who was still holding the body upright under the arms.

'Oh, no reason. Do some walking. Always said I'd find somewhere peaceful when I retired.'

'Just a coincidence then,' the Doctor said lightly as he threw the coffin lid out of the grave. 'Arriving with all this going on.'

'That's right.' Sir Edward shuffled the body forwards, so that the feet dangled over the edge of the grave, and the Doctor guided the body down into the coffin as he lowered it.

'Just a coincidence.'

The Doctor had managed to get the body lying pretty much straight inside the coffin, and folded the hands across the chest. He stood up to admire his work. 'Pa.s.s me the lid, will you? I don't think we need to nail it on. The weight of the soil will keep it in place and this poor chap won't complain, I'm sure.' He grinned, his head and shoulders sticking incongruously out of the ground.

Peri shone the torch on the uneven ground where the coffin lid lay, so that Sir Edward could pick his way across and lower it end first into the grave. The Doctor lowered the lid, angling it to fit between his feet and over the top of the coffin beneath.

Peri took a few steps towards Sir Edward, trying to get a better angle for the torch as she shone it down into the grave again. The Doctor seemed to be having trouble getting the lid straight.

'That's funny,' he murmured. 'Seems to be something in the way.' He was bending down now, almost kneeling on the lid as he tried to force it down into place.

Then suddenly he was flung back, losing his balance as the coffin lid sprang up. Peri's first thought was that he had slipped somehow and see-sawed the lid on the edge of the coffin. But as the torch light spilled over the Doctor struggling to regain his balance, Peri could see the arms reaching up, pus.h.i.+ng the lid away. She screamed and dropped the torch.

Sir Edward scooped up the torch in a moment, putting his other hand on Peri's shoulder as he shone the beam into the grave, at the Doctor's feet. The Doctor was kneeling on the lid once more, forcing it down.

'I think maybe we should have brought some nails,' he gasped as he hammered his fists down on the lid. At one edge several pale fingers were working their way out from underneath. The Doctor caught sight of them as he struggled to his feet. He stamped on that edge of the coffin and the fingers withdrew inside. A moment later the wood in the centre of the lid splintered and split apart. A fist emerged from inside, ragged and torn. Dried blood stuck in streaks to the skin, the knuckles were red raw. From directly above the churchyard came a sudden crack of thunder.

Peri screamed again. Sir Edward's grip tightened on her shoulder, and the light from the torch wavered. There was another crack of thunder and the rain started, an immediate torrent pouring down through the damp misty air. The Doctor leaped out of the grave in a single bound, his feet slipping and sliding on the earth at the edge of the hole. Dirt showered down as his feet struggled to gain purchase. It sprinkled over the coffin lid, running off in dark streams as the rain splashed into it.

Finally, the Doctor managed to get a grip on the slippery soil and he shot away from the edge of the grave, tumbling head over heels and landing in a sitting position looking back at the dark hole in the ground. A moment later the coffin lid was hurled after him. It landed on the mound of earth, end first, sticking in upright. Like a tombstone.

One after the other, two pale hands appeared over the edge of the grave. Dead fingers scrabbled at the mud and the matted turf.

The Doctor was on his feet again, an arm round each of Sir Edward and Peri. 'I'm not sure I care for the way this evening is turning out,' he said quietly. He was pulling them gently backwards, none of them able for the moment to turn away from the sight in front of them.

The forearms were visible now, angled to give leverage as Bill Neville hauled himself out of his grave. His head appeared above ground, his dark hair plastered to his scalp by a mixture of mud and rain, and Peri saw with horror that his eyes were open. Wide open. Staring and blank. The irises reflected the wavering torchlight, pale and yellowed. The pupils were non-existent. For a moment the corpse paused in its efforts to pull itself out of the ground.

Then suddenly the body was moving again, and the Doctor was pulling her back, and they were all turning, all running towards the gate out of the churchyard.

It was not until they reached the gate that the Doctor held up his hands for them to stop. He had turned already and they all watched as the dishevelled, muddy corpse staggered slowly and clumsily towards the front gate on the other side of the churchyard. The sound of the creaking hinges carried through the night air as it swung open the gate and set off in a shuffling, stumbling manner away from the village and towards the quay. Its arms were stretched out in front of it, Karloff-like, as it was swallowed up by the swirling mist.

'Oh my G.o.d,' Sir Edward breathed. He turned to the Doctor and Peri. 'What do we do?' he demanded, his voice cracked and strained.

'Well,' the Doctor was frowning. 'I think we probably don't want to panic the villagers. Not yet anyway. So I suggest we put the lid back on the coffin and fill in the grave. Then you can have your spade and wheelbarrow back.'

'We can't just pretend this didn't happen,' Sir Edward protested.

'No, but we can leave things tidy.'

'Oh well, that's something,' Peri said, hoping she sounded sarcastic rather than terrified. She sneezed suddenly and loudly. 'Oh great, a cold. That's all I need. Comes from spending most of the night in a cold wet graveyard.'

But the Doctor was not listening. He clapped Sir Edward on the shoulder and led him back across the churchyard towards the open grave. 'Oh come on,' he said encouragingly, 'tonight's been a terrific success after all.'

'It has?' Sir Edward sounded distinctly dubious.