Doctor Who_ The Awakening Part 7

Jane screamed and screamed

6

The Awakening

The noise of Jane's screaming echoed around the church until it too was swallowed up by the smoke. At her side, Will Chandler peered towards the wall, which had comc so terrifyingly to life with its noise and gus.h.i.+ng smoke and those awesome eyes. He whimpered with fear.

Then all at once the smoke began to clear. The rumbling noise subsided to an ominous, steady droning.

Through the drifting white cloud, which thinned before their eyes, they saw the Doctor again. He was standing in the exact stance he held when the smoke shrouded him: with his head bent forward slightly, and his hands upped over his cars, he looked as if he had been turned to stone.

Ignoring the remaining fumes, Jane and Will ran to him. Jane took the Doctor's right arm and tried to lead him away from that obscenity in the wall. He looked stunned.

'Doctor, are you all right?' she cried; he nodded, but she could see that he didn't know where he was or what was happening to him. Now he stumbled and she had to hold him steady. She guided him towards the pews; when his eyes focussed on them he staggered forward and sank down, exhausted.

Will ran around the back of the pew. He crouched down behind the Doctor, bewildered, frightened and near to tears. Jane watched the lad with growing concern, for it seemed to her that Will was not far from snapping altogether. Yet the Doctor was her most immediate problem: he looked shattered. And no wonder! she thought. She removed the green jacket from around her shoulders and put it around his. 'Are you sure you're all right?' she asked him again.

'Yes.' He nodded again, to her great relief.

But a crash made her jump as more plaster flew out of the wall behind her; it seemed to be bursting at the seams.

Smoke belched out and the hubbub was renewed, as if the thing inside had got its second wind.

It intrigued Jane as well as repelled her -- curiosity bred fascination, and she found herself walking slowly towards the wall. Stones exploded past her and made her jump and shout with fright, but she held her ground. As the Doctor had been, she was nearly hypnotised by what she saw in there: great grey stone nostrils flaring above a grimacing, gigantic mouth, and high above them the green-white brilliance of the eyes. The whole thing looked as if it was made of stone, and yet it couldn't be stone at all; this monstrous thing, which looked most like an enormous magnified medieval gargoyle, was alive.

'It's a face,' she whispered.

It was such an evil face, destructive and filled with hate.

As Jane looked at it a feeling of nausea overcame her; her whole being was revolted by the sight and she had to avert her eyes.

'Look at it,' the Doctor insisted. Almost fnlly recovered, he was leaning forward in the pew and watching her intently. 'Does it look familiar?'

Jane s.h.i.+vered. He wanted her to acknowledge a possibility she had been trying to ignore: that this thing could be the fabled Mains, waking up, struggling to be born in Little Hodcornbe of all places, and bringing with it who knew what powers of destruction. Yes, it looked familiar, but she didn't know why, and she could not hear to look at the wall again.

'Yes,' she whispered. 'I ... I've seen it before.'

The Doctor pointed at the pulpit with a gesture that was almost triumphant, for there was always some pleasure to be derived from winning an argument, no matter what the circ.u.mstances. 'Look behind you,' he suggested.

Warily, Jane turned around. She had been standing close to the pulpit and her eyes met the carved figure immediately: it seemed to leap up at her and she jerked back with fright. 'But that's a representation of the Devil!'

she cried.

'Yes. Isn't it interesting?' The Doctor folded his arms and leaned back in the pew. He smiled, enjoying his little victory, intrigued by the way his theory was developing and the direction in which another plece of the puzzle was dropping into place.

But his triumph was short lived, for another piece of the jigsaw, which he had quite forgotten, unexpectedly jumped out of the place he had made for it. An uneven, sc.r.a.ping noise further down the nave made him spin round, and he saw again the man who had knocked him down in the street the strange, hooded figure with his devastated face.

He stood beside the archway leading to the crypt, watching them and holding Tegan's scarlet handbag clutched to his chest.

'So there you are,' the Doctor breathed.

The man moved suddenly. He came forward, out of the archway, painfully dragging one foot. The Doctor discounted the limp now, for despite being lame this fellow possessed an astonis.h.i.+ng turn of speed. The man paused again. He regarded them with his single eye and a stern expression, and as the Doctor looked at him, a light which had been flickering deep inside his eye zoomed suddenly to the surface.

With a shock of horror Jane saw it come right out, breaking out into the air and shattering into fragments, like stars. These too divided into points of light which moved around the man's head and s.h.i.+mmered and twinkled in a constantly changing pattern. 'Who's that?'

she breathed, and backed away.

'A psychic projection,' the Doctor explained cryptically.

He was on his feet and moving swiftly across to her. 'Over here, Will,' he called. His tone was quietly urgent; Will needed no second telling but ran quickly to the Doctor's side. He stood close beside him, watching the man and the flickering lights, and he was quite ready to run right out of the church, and the village too. It seemed to Will that suddenly there was not a single thing which had not got quite beyond him.

Jane looked intently at the man: how could something so solid be a projection? 'He looks so real,' she whispered.

'To all intents and purposes he is real,' the Doctor replied, but before Jane could argue further the nave was filled with a sound like a wind blowing through from the fields outside. It rose all about them as the man stared in their direction, yet it was not a wind at all. As the light had done, the noise broke into fragments. Splinters of sound stabbed at them from all directions and they were sounds of battle.

There were trumpets, and fifes and drums. There were guns firing and people shouting; horses squealed with pain. Will started to shake. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Terrified, he looked up at the Doctor for comfort and rea.s.surance. 'I heard that before,' he cried. 'Battle's c.u.min'!'

And before the Doctor could give him the rea.s.surance he so desperately needed, Will cracked. He ran, driven by an all-consuming fear, scuttling to the door at the back of the church as fast as his legs would carry him. The Doctor shouted, 'No, Will! Come back!' but Will took no notice.

He dragged the door open and looked back at them for an instant. 'I's not goin' to war again!' he wailed.

The noise of battle boomed through the church.

Harness jingled, men screamed. The half-blind man glowered with his single staring eye and a pattern of lights s.h.i.+mmered around and through him. It was too much for anybody to stand. 'No!' Will shouted at the top of his voice, and then he was gone.

The lights were now dancing all around the half blind man. They circled, they writhed like snakes, they built up into a dazzling display. Standing beside the Doctor, Jane was mesmerised by them. Then she caught her breath, unable to believe her eyes, for the figure behind the lights dimmed and then faded away completely. In his place, the image of a soldier appeared and hardened into reality.

He was grey as death. His stance was arrogant and threatening his right hand rested on his hip and his left gripped the hilt of his sword. His clothes were all grey, as if drained of colour, and his broad hat with its plumed leather was grey too; the skin of his face was pallid and grey-white like parchment.

He stood there, a big, threatening man, watching them from dead eyes.

From the moment he had separated from Tegan, when the hors.e.m.e.n caught up with them, Turlough had been on the run in the village, docking behind walls and hedges and fences, dodging in and out of gardens, orchards, alleyways, all the time avoiding troopers.

Something was up: they were arriving in ever-increasing numbers, soldiers on foot and troopers on horseback, all going the same way. Turlough was heading in the same direction now, for he was determined to discover what was going on.

He turned the corner of an empty street, ducked down and ran commando-style below the high stone walls of a building which seemed to he the village school. The day had grown hotter than ever. The cloudless sky swelled with the cries of birds, and the air was heavy with the musky scent of the roses festooning garden walls and the thousands of gaudy flowers in the gardens.

Just beyond the school, a sycamore tree overhung a garden wall and shaded the road. Turlough edged towards the tree with the greatest possihle stealth, for the road ahead divided to encircle the Village Green; from this he could hear the noise of horses' hooves softly clattering, and a murmur of men's voices. He pressed against the ivy-covered wall and peered around the sycamore to have a look.

The Green was a broad area of gra.s.s, which had been burned brown by the sun. There were pools of shade under spreading chestnut trees. It was surrounded by old cottages with warm, colour-washed walls and thatched roofs and it was bustling with activity. At one side a tall white maypole had been erected; its long ribbons wafted in the breeze. Not far away from it soldiers were bringing armfuls of brushwood and building this into a huge pyre. Mounted troopers patrolled the area.

Turlough frowned: that growing heap of tinder-dry brushwood looked ominous. But while he was still absorbing it all, a hand touched his shoulder. He turned.

In the instant of turning he glimpsed the rough, bearded face of a burly trooper, before a fierce blow in the stomach from the man's fist caused him to buckle forward and see only the ground spinning below his eyes. The next moment he had been imprisoned in a searing armlock, and then he was twisted around and frogmarched towards the Green with a vice-like arm pulled so tightly around his throat it was nearly throttling him.

'All right, all right!' he wheezed. 'You've made your point!'

The trooper ignored him. He frogmarched Turlough onto the Green and stopped only when Sir George Hutchinson, who had been overseering the preparations, cantered across on a big chestnut horse.

Sir George reined his horse to a halt, and from his vantage point glared down at Turlough. He pointed a black-gloved finger at him, and his voice was a paean of triumph. 'One by one,' he shouted, 'you and your companions will return to my fold, and you will never get out again.' He paused, and glanced across the Green, at its feverish activity. 'It's a pity you have seen this,' he said, and then, turning to the trooper, he snarled, 'Lock him up!'

With that Sir George galloped back to his other soldiers.

Before Turlough had a chance to protest, he was dragged roughly away.

In the church, the Doctor and Jane felt as if they were being dragged into the vortex of a whirlpool.

The very air around them was being stirred into violence. The monstrous roaring of the Malus in the wall mingled with those shattering sounds of battle to fill the nave with tumult. Smoke and masonry belched from the wall. The flickering lights whirled and dazzled and behind diem the image of the Grey Cavalier had solidified into a towering man in plumed hat and long curled wig, with a broad, pointed moustache and a thick beard, who was now moving slowly but threateningly towards them.

Jane's nerve gave way. She was going to run, but the Doctor grabbed her arm. 'Stand perfectly still,' he whispered.

'What is it?' Jane croaked. Her throat had dried up and felt as rough as sandpaper.

'I told you,' the Doctor reminded her. 'It's a psychic projection.'

Jane winced, and submitted. 'It pains me to say it, but I'm sorry I ever doubted you.'

She s.h.i.+vered, and the Doctor returned her jacket and placed it across her shoulders. 'We all learn from our mistakes,' he said drily.

Suddenly, swooping up from nowhere and adding to the already strong impression that the world was being torn apart about their ears, a wind - a real wind this time - rose in the nave. It came up out of silence to roar and howl, and hit the Doctor and Jane like a tidal wave. They staggered under the pressure - Jane would have lost her balance and been dashed to the floor had not the Doctor managed to hold on to her and push her upright again. The power of the wind took their breath away.

'Now what?' Jane gasped.

'More psychic disturbance!' the Doctor shouted above the howling of the wind. And then suddenly there was another thing to worry about: the Cavalier was almost upon them - he loomed up out of the noise and with a rasp of steel drew his sword.

The Doctor retreated, and dragged Jane with him.

'It seems he intends to kill us!' he gasped. 'Make for the underground pa.s.sage. Run!'

He pushed Jane in the direction of the vestry, and followed close behind her. As they ran up the church, the Malus roared again and lurched inside the wall. It was growing more powerful with every movement. Little by little, it was breaking free.

The trooper frogmarched the almost unconscious Turlough across a deserted courtyard on the edge of the village. His left arm was locked so tightly around Turlough's throat that his air supply was cut to almost nothing, and still he maintained the pressure which forced Turlough's right hand high up between his shoulder blades. Turlough was in desperate straits.

The courtyard was seldom used and the hard earth had gra.s.sed over with weeds, over which the trooper now heaved Turlough towards a small, red-brick building at the other side. When they reached it he unbolted the door and threw him inside.

Turlough pitched headlong across the cement floor.For a moment he lay breathless and dizzy, sprawled lull length with his face in the dirt. He heard the door close and the bolt being drawn across, and the trooper's feet march away.

Now, from his exceedingly limited viewpoint, Turlough looked across the flour. He saw a few bales of straw scattered about, and an oil drum. Apart from these the room appeared to be empty. Yet, as he lay regaining his senses, he could hear a soft shuffle of feet on the floor.

Then a shadow fell across his face.

Startled, Turlough looked up into the grizzled, un-shaven face of an elderly man. He wore twentieth-century clothes - a matter sufficient in itself to mark him as unusual. Turlough pushed himself up on to his elbows and looked at the man fearfully.

'Don't be afraid,' the old man said. He knelt down beside Turlough and laid a hand on his shoulder.

Turlough felt easier now that he could sec him more clearly: with his baggy old tweed suit, crumpled s.h.i.+rt and tie, untidy hair and mild manner, he looked harmless enough.

Then he said, 'I'm Andrew Verney.' Turlough was looking into the face of Tegan's grandfather.

Jane had run through the church and kept going at top speed through the vestry, down the steps and along the underground pa.s.sage, but now she was having great trouble keeping pace with the Doctor. He seemed tireless.

She staggered around a bend into yet another gloomy stretch of tunnel. Now she could hardly see the floor, because the Doctor had the torch and he was pulling further ahead with every second.

'Doctor!' she panted. 'Slow down! That thing isn't following us.'

'I need to speak to Sir George,' the Doctor called over his shoulder.

'Haven't you got enough troubles?'

The Doctor stopped and waited for her to catch up. 'Do you know anything about psychic energy?' he asked urgently.

She shook her head. 'You know I don't.'

'Then here's a quick lesson.' He tapped his hand with a finger to emphasise what he was saying. 'It can, of course, occur in many varied forms, but the type of psychic energy here, capable of creating projections, requires a focus point ...'

Jane was nodding and trying hard to appear as if she understood him, but the Doctor could see she was confused already. 'Oh dear, oh dear,' he tutted. He searched desperately for another word, and found it. 'A medium medium!'

'Ah.' Jane began to catch on at last. 'You mean, as with a poltergeist?'

'Well, yes,' the Doctor agreed, 'but it's a bit more complicated than that. In this case it isn't the medium who is creating the projections, but the Malus. The medium simply gathers all the psychic energy for it to use.' He leaned forward and looked intently into Jane's face, peering at her through the gloom. 'And what, at the moment, is creating the most psychic energy?' he asked.

Jane was puzzled again. She was thinking hard, but along unfamiliar lines, and the Doctor could not wait. 'The war games,' he prompted her.

And light dawned. It exploded like a firework in the darkness of the pa.s.sage. 'The war games!' Jane almost shouted.

'And who controls the games?'

There was true understanding now. 'Ah,' she nodded 'You had had better speak to Sir George.' better speak to Sir George.'

The Doctor frowned. 'The trouble is, I don't think he can have any idea what he's doing. The Malus is pure evil.

Given enough energy it will not only destroy hirn. but everything else.' He noticed Jane's glum expression, and brightened up for her sake. 'Cheer up,' he said lightly.

Outside the village, a figure was running across a meadow.