Dead of Winter - James Goss [51]
Dr Bloom’s wife squeezed his shoulder. ‘My husband is a very important man.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ the Doctor looked bored. ‘But… someone else is running things, aren’t they?’
Perdita stood very still.
So did the other patients in the room.
It was electrifyingly odd.
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s curious. It’s been listening.’
‘What?’
The Doctor waved around the room. ‘Look at them… something has got into all their minds. Something very vicious and nasty.’
The patients stood there. Silently. Awkwardly. Staring at us.
‘Er, Dr Bloom,’ whispered the Doctor. ‘I really, really think you should listen to me when I say this… Something is very badly wrong with your patients.’
‘How so?’ Dr Bloom looked baffled.
The patients all stepped forward. Shuffling closer. As one, they raised their hands. BANG! The French windows burst open and the storm started to pour in. The candles blew out… but the room stayed lit – a strange green glow was seeping up from the floor.
The Doctor looked at the Blooms and then at the patients.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Interesting. Fifty-seven varieties of interesting. Dr Bloom, you woke up something very alien but mostly benevolent on that beach. You saw a way to use it to cure people. Only something’s taken control of that creature, and instead of using it to take bad things out of people… to cure them… only now, it’s putting things back into them.’
‘Really?’ asked Dr Bloom.
One of the Elquitine sisters twisted slowly towards him, fog pouring from her mouth and clothes. The same thing was happening across the room – skirts and jackets billowing and leaking out a thick, green mist. It stank.
It was a terrible sight, so bad that it shook Mr Nevil from his trance. ‘Olivia!’ he roared. ‘What’s happening to her?’ he demanded. ‘Is this your doing, sir?’
‘No,’ the Doctor sounded alarmed. ‘There is a strong psychic link between the thing on the beach and the patients. Someone has been using it to affect the patients and the creature…’
Inside the mist, lightning crackled – it was like the storm was in the room.
‘That is very bad.’ The Doctor shook his head, warding us back. ‘That psychic link needs severing… It’s not going to be pretty.’
Mr Nevil stood there, his hands shaking. ‘I have a gun, sir, I have a gun!’ he yelled, pulling one out.
‘Well, please don’t shoot it at the weather,’ snapped the Doctor.
‘Nonsense!’ roared Nevil. ‘I don’t care about that. I’m going to take down a couple of these leaky blighters. Soon square them up sharpish.’ He took aim. The Doctor reached out to push away his hand, but instead the storm acted – a bolt of lightning lashed out of the mist, striking the gun and wrapping Nevil in St Elmo’s Fire. He stood there, jerking and yelling like an angry puppet toad and then stopped.
The light around him faded – the room was dark now, dark apart from the crackling green fog that was pouring out of Mr Nevil’s mouth.
‘It’s the storm,’ I said. ‘How are they doing that?’
‘Tell you in a minute.’ The Doctor grabbed my hand. ‘I need you all to get out of here…’
The lounge was changed – the shutters were banging wide open in the rain, and the fog was pouring in through the windows – that same fog from the beach, curling up around everyone’s feet and lighting the room a pale green glow.
Something pulled at my brain. I couldn’t move. I looked at the Doctor, desperately, but there was something… something in my throat.
The Doctor seemed to realise. ‘Please, hurry. It’s me they’re after…’ He turned and shouted to the storm. ‘Yeah, go on, lovely juicy brain. Come and get it!’
I could move my feet a little. ‘What are you doing?’ I demanded.
‘Hopefully giving you all a bit of space. Run!’ The Doctor stood there alone, confronted by the steadily advancing patients. Fancy dress zombies shuffling closer and closer towards him.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Come on.’
We made it to the door before the Doctor started to cry out. Whatever he was doing, it hurt him.
Dr Bloom’s Journal
How we made it out of the