Doctor Who_ Daemons - Barry Letts [44]
'Not if I can help it,' returned the Captain, and hurried out.
'Well, well, well,' said Miss Hawthorne, firmly subduing errant lock of wispy hair, 'there's more to that young man than I thought...'
Stan Wilkins woke up. Why was his cheek resting on cold rock instead of on his friendly old pillow, lumpy though it was? He gingerly moved an arm. His hand touched the rough stone pillar and at once memory came flooding back, and with it his fear. All was quiet now and the intolerable heat had died away. Stan carefully sat up and peeped into the Cavern. It was empty. Apart from a lingering smell—an animal smell—there was nothing to indicate that he had been through anything but a hideous dream.
Cautiously he stood up and crept across the Cavern and up the steps to the door. As he put his hand on the great iron handle, he froze. Voices! Mr. Magister was in the vestry, talking to someone.
'And do the job properly. The Doctor's been in my way far too long.'
'But what if I can't find him, Magister?'
That sounded like the landlord of 'The Cloven Hoof', that did, though it was funny to hear the cocky Bert Walker soundittg so uncertain of himself.
'Make sure you do.'
'Right, Magister. I'll do my best.'
For a moment, Stan thought that they had both left the vestry, but then he heard the Master's voice once more.
'You know, Walker , I was foolish, very foolish, to speak with Azal alone. It might easily have ended in total disaster. Next time I shall use the full ceremony. If I am to control Azal, I shall need every ounce of power I can summon up. Every possible member of the coven must be present. Pass the word.'
'Very good, Magister.'
So Bert was a member of the coven too! Stan stood for a moment digesting the fact, as he listened to the sound of first the main vestry door and then the back door which opened onto the Vicarage path. If Bert was a member, and he'd never known it, then anybody he met might be. Anybody in the village. It would be very interesting to see who came to the 'full ceremony' whatever that might be. With a shock, Stan realised that he wanted to come himself. Now that his terror was rapidly becoming nothing but a memory, he could recognise the fascination the whole thing held for him. A guilty thrill ran through him as it came to him that he was the only one, bar the Magister himself, to have seen the... the Dæmon. Yes, that's what Azal had called himself...
It should be safe by now. Cautiously he opened the creaking door, crossed the vestry, and escaped to the churchyard, running down the path and across the green, taking grateful gulps of cool fresh air.
As Mike Yates came through the side gate of the churchyard he saw the vestry door starting to open. Diving for cover behind the old elm tree, he watched as Bert, with a badly concealed air of urgency, half walked and half ran down the main path to the green, jumped into a scruffy old car and drove away. That gun he'd been carrying. It didn't look like a shotgun. More like a rifle. Now, whatever would the respectable landlord of a village pub be doing with a rifle?
The problem was pushed to the back of Mike's mind as the vestry door swung open yet again and a spotty youth, little more than a boy, shot out and away. After forcing himself to wait a few minutes more, Mike emerged from his hiding place and made his way through the long grass back to the path, and with infinite caution pushed the vestry door open. A moment's pause. Nothing. Mike suppressed the tremors in his stomach. 'Here goes,' he thought, and in he went.
Cradled in the aromatic grass, Jo Grant peacefully dreamed of childhood holidays in the springtime, quite unaware that her would-be rescuer had passed by not three feet away.
'... and it comes out here.' The Doctor pointed to the bottom of the enormously complicated circuit diagram he had scratched in the sandy soil with the point of a stick.
'Thank you, Doctor,' said the Brigadier. 'We'll keep our fingers crossed. Frankly I didn't understand a word of it, but I'm sure the Sergeant