Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [92]
He knew his mind, desperate in the face of no meaning, would quickly make artificial sense of things, construct a sense-metaphor for what was happening to him. There were a few false starts. He was falling down a vertical tunnel, past a shelf with a jar of marmalade on it. He plunged into a watery chasm towards a shrouded figure white as snow. In a dark wood, a lion crossed his path. On a grey plain, a tornado whirled, gathering force. He flashed through these scenes, like the projectionist in that silent movie who walked into the film he was showing and had his world edited out from under him.
Now he was walking. There seemed to be a hard path under his feet, leading gradually downwards. His surroundings were vague. Nothing so definite as mist or as stark as darkness. He was simply in a place of unseeing. After a time, this too changed, shifting and forming into a kind of mist, but with none of the softness of mist or the mystery of fog, nothing but a bland, obstructive greyness: dullness visible.
He kept walking. Finally, he felt what he had been waiting for – a tug at his back, between his shoulder blades. He looked back and saw the silvery thread stretching into the non-mist. Good. Nothing to do now but continue. He expected it would become more difficult, and it did. He began to feel as if he were pulling a great weight with that slender thread. He kept on. More time passed. He had begun to lean forward as he pulled, like a man in a harness. If he had been breathing, he would have been panting, even though the way led downhill.
It was as if he were trying, against all odds, to drag something infinitely large into a tiny space.
Structures began to appear to either side: hallways. They flashed in and out of existence. At the end of some of them were open doors, flashes of brilliant green. The Doctor ignored these. The place he wanted wouldn’t have an open door.
What would it have? A locked door? A bridge? A gate? Or would it be a chasm, or a river – la trista riviera d’Acheronte – with a ferryman who refused to carry the living man who came here so unnaturally?
Just when he thought he could haul his immense burden no farther, the gate appeared. Age-darkened oak studded with iron roundels, it rose higher than he could see and extended without end from side to side. Undeterred, the Doctor walked up and knocked.
‘Let me in!’ he called. ‘Unless you want a live being polluting your threshold!’
The doors opened. The Doctor entered.
More colourlessness. More emptiness. More silence. Only the sense of the hard track beneath him. He walked on.
A hand plucked at his sleeve.
‘Give me your coat.’
‘What good is it to you?’
‘You must give me your coat if you want to go down.’
‘Take it,’ said the Doctor, and walked on. He was cold now.
A hand grabbed at his heel.
‘Give me your shoes.’
‘What good are they to you?’
‘You must give me your shoes if you want to go down.’
‘Take them,’ said the Doctor, and walked on. Now the pathway bruised his feet.
‘Give me your scarf.’
‘It’s a cravat,’ said the Doctor, ‘and I can’t imagine what you’d do with it.’
‘You must give it to me if you want to go down.’
‘Take it,’ said the Doctor and walked on. His throat felt frail and exposed.
Since he had come through the gate, he no longer felt the weight behind him. Was the thread unbroken? He knew better than to look back.
A hand brushed his face.
‘Give me your eyes.’
For the first time, there was a catch in the Doctor’s step.
‘What good are they to you?’
‘You must give me your eyes if you want to go down.’
‘Take them,’ said the Doctor, and walked on. Tears and blood ran down his face.
A hand seized his elbow.
‘You must give me your hands.’
‘What good are they to you?’
‘You must give me your hands if you want to go down.’
‘Take them,’ said the Doctor, and walked on, stumbling and weaving.
A hand touched the small of