Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [70]
Standing here, listening to the rain and the small creaking noises of the house, Justine could feel it coming into her from somewhere under the big stones of the floor. Maybe out of somewhere deep underneath the house. Up through her legs, lingering at the base of the spine to spread across her body along the Tantric lines of power, riding her backbone like domestic current running up cable into the base of her brain.
Now it was seeping into her thoughts. Just a sensation, a hint of disturbance at the edge of her mind. An awareness of another presence in her mind. As if someone else was in the basement with her. It was like seeing something out of the corner of your eye, something that wasn’t there when you turned to look at it directly.
Justine knelt and touched the floor. It was formed of big, irregular slabs that had been painted and then layered with years of dust and tool‐room oil. Her fingers brushed the old, cold surface. There were shapes there, blurred by paint and dirt and age but still detectable. Patterns of symbols carved in the stone.
The feeling was more intense now. She’d felt like this whenever she’d wandered near to the house. It was the nature of the place. Justine had walked in the shadows. She knew a place of power when she encountered one. Now she rose from the floor. Blood thudded in her brain, making her dizzy. Her vision swam but she could still see it in the light from the broken window.
Justine crossed the cold stone floor. Every step seemed to drive sparks up from her numb feet. The spark stung in her mind. She found herself moving off at an angle, turning away from the thing. She forced herself to face it squarely again and walk directly towards it. It was tall and its shape was indistinct. Someone had draped it with yards of old rotten cloth.
Justine reached out.
Fine embroidered sheets, torn and stained with age. Ivory coloured. Justine stroked the cloth and the tips of her fingers felt strange, suffocated by the smoothness of the material. Silk. Dust stirred and a wiry‐legged black spider crawled out of a fold in the silk sheets and ran on to the back of her hand. Justine caught the spider and set it carefully on the floor. Clouds of dust swam as she gathered the sheets into a bundle. The old silk was close to her face with its smell of mildew. She held her breath. Her throat was burning and pulsing with the dust she’d inhaled. She concentrated for a moment, tightening the muscles in her neck, and suppressed the urge to cough. She folded the sheets one more time and threw them into a corner. Only then did she let herself turn and look at the thing which had been under the sheet.
One autumn Justine had hitch‐hiked through the Channel Tunnel and on to Paris. She’d spent a week sitting in vigil at the cimetière Père‐Lachaise, beside Jim Morrison’s grave. She had fasted, living on nothing but black coffee which she drank standing up in the cafés. Standing up was cheapest. She’d fasted partly as an occult discipline, partly out of necessity. Sometimes she stole sugar cubes from the tables of cafés and ate those. Once a boy gave her a different sort of sugarcube and she ate it standing with him at the entrance of the cemetery. That night she was certain that she saw something as she sat by the sacred place, some black leather lizard‐king shape moving in the shadows as she sat there weak with hunger.
But that was all.
She hadn’t found what she was searching for. Justine returned to England and kept on looking, following clues and rumours. One day she knew she’d find what she was seeking.
A doorway that opened to other worlds.
Now the silk sheet was folded on the basement floor and Justine stood looking at it. A metal box like a deep wardrobe. Thick blue paint on it scarred and blistered. The absurd word Police written across the top of it.
Justine reached out to touch the doorway.
* * *
‘How is the TARDIS now?’ said Ace, breaking miles of silence.
‘Waiting,’ said the Doctor.
‘Waiting for us?’
The Doctor didn