Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [69]
Deactivation. The Doctor thought of the blond-haired boy whom he’d found in the alley in Soho. What was his name? Stone – that was it – Eddy Stone.
It seemed impossible that the boy who’d fought so hard to stay alive had only been a mannequin, animated only by Jack’s love and need to be loved in return. What would Jack make of this? Best not to tell him, the Doctor thought. No point in hurting him further.
The room was long and thin. There was a door with an opaque glass panel set into it at the far end. The Doctor pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his nose and mouth with it, trying to hang on to his stomach.
Slowly, mindful of where he found his footing, he began to wade through the human swamp towards the door on the far side.
He was halfway across when something snagged his ankle in the depths of the bodies. The Doctor froze, trying to prevent his imagination from running wild. He waited for a moment and then tried to move on. Something pulled at his ankle again, only harder this time.
There was something alive at the bottom of the pile of bodies. A something that had wrapped itself around his foot. The Doctor fought an impulse to make a mad, desperate dash for the far side of the room. If he fell he might end up under the sea of corpses – it wasn’t a prospect he relished.
Instead he bent over until his face was only a foot from the surface of the swamp and reached down through the entwined limbs until he found his own ankle. A cold hand was gripping it tightly.
A shiver ran up his spine.
The Doctor swallowed and began to prise off the icy fingers one by one.
He’d almost freed himself when a strangled hoarse cry emerged from some-116
where beneath him and the hand transferred its grip from his ankle to his wrist.
The Doctor yelped in surprise and fear and yanked his hand free. The surface of the sea of dead mannequins began to heave and fall, the corpses shifting like flotsam on a rough sea. Something was coming up after him.
Whether it was tiredness or just plain fear, the last remains of the Doctor’s bravery left him; he turned and started to try to run out of the swamp. Inevitably, he lost his footing and fell face down against the bodies. They were soft, cool and dry against his face. He clawed at several of the moving bodies as he attempted to get back on to his feet. He only succeeded in tearing the skin of several of the Toys. Thick red blood seeped out of the saggy cadav-ers, adding a new chaotic pattern to the regular blue and white stripe of his pyjamas.
And then, behind him, a blank-faced mannequin erupted out of the surface of the swamp, howled in rage or perhaps in pain and then leapt at him, using its long, sharp fingernails to scratch at his face. The Doctor tried to bat it away, but his blows only glanced off its thin, muscular grey body.
It thrust itself forward until it was leaning over him, and all he could see was its empty, oval head silhouetted by the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling.
The Doctor fought on, slapping the creature’s head with the heel of his open hand. As he did so, his fingers caught in the creature’s face and he retched bile as they sunk into the thick, tacky flesh. The air around the creature’s face was filled with a rich aniseed flavour. Instinctively, he pulled his hand back, but his fingers were embedded, up to his knuckles, in the mannequin’s soft face and as they came away they tore the creature’s blank face from its head as if it were a mask.
It was a mask. And beneath it was the face of a young woman. Her eyes were wide and saucer-like. Her mouth opened to make a silent scream. Her face was blistered and inflamed by the flesh-mask. She made a few pitiful guttural sounds and then collapsed on top of the Doctor, all the fight