Doctor Who_ Cats Cradle_ Witch Mark - Andrew Hunt [23]
‘You're right! How about that? You really have been here before!'
‘Hey, what am I? A sky-brain?' He slapped his forehead. ‘Course I've been here. Llanfer Ceiriog - my mom and dad used to come camping here when they first met at Uni. I remember now, I was five years old . . .'
He was five years old, and he was hopelessly lost in the woods. 'Mommy! Mommy!' he shouted, bawling at the top of his voice. There was no reply and he began to cry, snuffling in between repeating his call.
It was a horrid wood. At first he had liked it because he was getting covered in mud and could play at being Flash Thunderbolt, Leader of the Freeforce Warriors, hiding behind the trees and occasionally risking a shot at the loathsome Clawmen. When, at last, he had finally caught the evil Gagnak he had noticed that it had started raining and the skies had changed to a glowering dark grey that turned the wood into a nasty place full of shadows. He realized that in the pitched laser battle he had completely lost his sense of direction.
Now the mud was sucking at him, holding him back; the trees clawed at him and when he tried to shelter from the rain the trunk glistened repulsively with green slime. Panic-stricken he ran, stumbling, through the maze of trees until he arrived at the bank of the stream. On the far side was an overhanging rockface where he could cower away from the worst of the rain. He splashed across the icy water of the stream and . stood shivering. Apart from the splash, splash, splash of the ram and the gurgling stream there was no sound. He let out another heartrending cry.
'Mommy! Daddy! Where are you?'
In the woods, on the other side of the stream, something moved. He peered into the gloom and began to chew savagely on his thumb. What was it? Again he saw a dark flash between two trees - moving closer. .
'Mommy?' he whimpered, scared even more than before.
There it was again, darting between the trees. He began to run, slipping and sliding, alongside the stream, not looking back. And then he had fallen, fallen, fallen . . .
Fallen into his Mommy's consoling arms. The nightmare forgotten, consigned to the mists of oblivion, but it lingered at the edges of his subconscious, waiting to re-emerge. And something else lingered too. And the place remained in his mind ...
'I remember now, I was five years old. Mom and Dad brought me here once and then the year after we moved home to the States. Jeez, ain't this a coincidence?' For some reason he gave a slight shiver at the thought, as though a shadow had just fallen upon his grave. 'The place hasn't changed much.' He looked around wonderingly.
The stream was now pulling out of the woods and beginning to run in a gully cut out of the hillside. It was shallow enough that in places its rocky bed projected above the water.
‘I can’t remember anything from when I was that young.’ Jack decided after straining his memory,
'except getting a kiss off Rosie Bond for a quarter.'
David laughed coarsely. 'I bet even back then she kissed like . . . What the heck?'
'What is it?'
'Look up there.' David pointed up the stream. Lying in the water was a horse, one of its legs projecting at an unsightly angle. There appeared to be a rider crushed under the weight of the huge animal. Neither was moving.
Jack and David set off at a run up the stream bed. As he went Jack couldn't help noticing that the rider was naked from the waist up.
Within a few seconds they were standing over the horse. David’s eyes widened in surprise and Jack crouched down get a closer look.
‘Jesus ,Christ,' he said softly, and turned to look up at David, ‘this isn't a man, it's a goddam centaur!'
There could be no doubt about it in either of their minds. The creature before them had the body of a horse, but where its head should have been there was the upper half of a man. Fine hair covered his skin, tinting it to the colour