Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [116]
I am the Doctor!
He fell. Around him, everything cracked and collapsed. The machine was shuddering apart, shaking itself to pieces. The lenses powdered into bright sparks. The roof slid off. The mirrors quivered on their base and then, one by one, fell shattering on their backs. Before the last one toppled, he glimpsed in it an elderly man, strong-featured and bright-eyed, crouched as he was, staring at him. Then that image fell too, and the Doctor huddled at the bottom of the still-standing inner chamber in the loudest silence he’d ever heard.
* * *
Nathaniel Chiltern and Constance Jane stood at Mrs Hemming’s door. She had thanked him. They had said good night. Still they stood there.
‘What will you do?’ he said.
‘Mrs Hemming talked of hiring me as a companion, and to help her in her spiritualist work.’
‘Would you like that?’
‘I would,’ she said. ‘The fact that I turned out to be a fake doesn’t mean that spiritualism is. And it comforts many people.’
‘Oh yes,’ he sighed, ‘the relief of suffering. It’s the only worthwhile work, isn’t it?’
She looked up at him. For a moment it seemed as if he might bend closer to her. But the moment passed. He raised his hat. ‘Good night, Miss Jane.’
‘Good night, Dr Chiltern.’
He went down the steps to the pavement and then two more paces, at which point, for no visible reason, his head twisted violently sideways and he fell dead.
Constance Jane screamed.
* * *
After a while, the Doctor managed to roll out of what was left of the machine on to the stage floor. After another, longer while, he turned his head. Chiltern was sprawled several feet away, his head at a grotesque angle. He wasn’t alone. The Angel-Maker lay crumpled nearby, her throat torn open. Sabbath was kneeling beside her.
Sabbath raised his head. He and the Doctor looked at each other for a long time.
‘She saved your life,’ said Sabbath.
‘She saved more than that.’
Very gently, Sabbath gathered the Angel-Maker in his arms and stood up. The Doctor didn’t move, just lay staring at the confusion of flesh and foliage that had been Chiltern. With his face turned away and his deformed hand hidden; he might have been a man who had simply fallen asleep under a low-growing rose bush. Except for the toaster, of course. And the hilt of the Angel-Maker’s knife in his lower back. And his neck. Sabbath must have broken it with his bare hands.
Shakily, the Doctor sat up. In the wings, Sabbath had carefully settled the Angel-Maker on a shabby blue velvet sofa from the ghost-show set. The Doctor got unsteadily to his feet and went over to them. Sabbath stood with his arms folded, his eyes on the body, absolutely expressionless.
‘Once again,’ he said, his voice betraying no emotion at all, ‘I’ve helped save you.’
‘She killed him to save your life, not mine.’
‘The fact remains, you are alive and she is dead.’ Sabbath turned his dark gaze on the Doctor. ‘I should never have saved your life that first time.’
The Doctor shrugged. His eyes were empty and old. ‘I told you I’d make you regret it.’
With a sound that was half-snarl, half-groan, Sabbath plunged a hand into the breast of his coat. The Doctor stepped back. Sabbath’s features contorted; he clutched the arm of the sofa to stay upright. Then, face pouring sweat, he straightened and flung something at the Doctor’s feet:
‘There. Mortal again.’
The Doctor looked down at a black quivering piece of meat. ‘Is that the one you loved her with?’
‘That?’ Sabbath lifted the Angel-Maker a final time, resting her head against his chest. ‘That is not a human heart.’
He walked into the shadows. The Doctor heard the inter-dimensional door to the Jonah open, the throbbing engines, the distant cry of apes. Then the noises stopped. Sabbath was gone. The Doctor stood staring at the bloody thing