Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [77]
Chiltern faced him expressionlessly. ‘Repair the machine. It’s the only way.’
‘It may not be.’
‘It is. Will you repair it?’
‘Tell me what exactly is going on. Give me a chance to explore alternatives.’
‘Will you repair the machine?’
‘No,’ said the Doctor.
‘Sir,’ said O’Keagh, ‘I hear something down there.’
Chiltern was at his side. The Doctor exhaled angrily and drew as far back in the recess as he could. There was nothing more he could do to save either of them. ‘Oh, stop...’ he said hopelessly. ‘You know, Chiltern. You know you can’t –’ But they had gone.
The Doctor didn’t want to hear. He particularly didn’t want to just sit there and hear. But he was going to have to. He rested his palms flat beside him on the cold stones and waited. It didn’t take long. There were shots. There was an ugly blurt of pain, probably from O’Keagh. Then there were screams. Long and horrible, and many of them. For a time, these had pauses between them, as if the screamer had momentarily broken away from his tormenter. But finally they became one continuous sound. The Doctor bent his head and pressed his hands over his ears. It didn’t help, of course. Nothing would help. Help was not in this story.
After a while, the screams stopped. The Doctor lowered his hands. Now he was going to have to save himself. Funny how skilled he was at that. Not always so good with others, but damn good with himself. Teeth clenched, he turned his back to the gate and drew himself in, hands and feet tucked away, his coat pulled up so his hair couldn’t be snagged. It wasn’t going to get hold of him without opening the gate.
Then, for a long time, there was no sound. A palpable absence, the kind that presses against the eardrums. The Doctor waited, curled in his still little ball. He thought of many things. They were not thoughts he could have communicated, had anyone asked. Silences were in them, and hollow distance. He felt tears dry on his face – the way they so lightly, lighter than any touch, just for an instant tightened the skin.
At last, almost with relief, he heard it. The awkward thudding step, the scraping rustle. What had it been doing? Gloating? Feeding? He bunched up tighter. His back felt horribly exposed. It was like one of those nightmares where he was being chased by something through a passage too narrow for him even to look over his shoulder, so he couldn’t tell how near his pursuer was. Or had that actually happened to him? He smelled roses. Iron clanked on iron: it had the key.
Something groped at his back, felt for an arm or a leg, seeking purchase, wanting to hold him still while it opened the gate. The Doctor continued in his hedgehog impersonation. The something – what was it anyway? – lashed at him angrily a couple of times; he felt it drag across his back and heard his coat rip. Then it withdrew. The gate began to scrape back.
The Doctor rolled and lunged. He hit the gate and knocked it wide open, pinning the other against the wall. It yelled in rage. The Doctor slammed the gate at the wall again. And again. And again. Whatever he was hitting yielded and crunched, a sound that set his teeth on edge. It was yelling in pain now. The Doctor kept pounding at it in sickening desperation, putting his whole body behind the blows. What was he hitting? How badly was he hurting it? Was he killing it? He didn’t want to, but he wanted even less to be caught by it. When the cries finally stopped he gave the gate a couple of extra bangs for good measure, then sprinted up the steps.
He ran down the hall, dodged into the room where he’d met Chiltern, jerked open a window and jumped out, landing in a stone-flagged yard. A wide gate stood open to the moor. He dashed through it. Under a near-full moon, the heath before him was patched with pale light and black shadow, the distant tors like brooding giants.