Doctor Who_ Daemons - Barry Letts [9]
Once more, Miss Hawthorne found herself caught by his eyes. The extraordinary large pupils, the irises, so dark, so brown as almost to be black and yet flecked with lighter tones of... surely not gold?
'You must believe me...' the soft voice went on.
This seemed a very reasonable and desirable proposition. Of course she must believe this most excellent man, this man with the eyes of such incredible blue, a blue so dark, midnight blue... but weren't they brown just now?
'I... I must believe you,' she heard herself murmur—and came to herself with a shock of anger.
'Why should I believe you?' she gasped, her voice trembling. 'A “modern” man are you? A rational man? I'll tell you what you are, sir. You are a fool! If you won't help me to prevent the barrow from being opened tonight, I must find someone who will!'
She turned and left. A moment later came the slam of the front door.
Mr. Magister's face was livid with frustration and thwarted rage. He looked out of the window. Miss Hawthorne was letting herself into the churchyard. Mr. Magister's face twisted. Under his breath he swore in some alien tongue. He turned to the door. 'Garvin!' he shouted.
At once the verger was in the room. The Vicar raised his hand and pointed. Miss Hawthorne was on the point of going out of sight.
Garvin smiled, nodded and slipped noiselessly from the room. The Vicar took a deep shuddering breath and followed him out of the house, across the churchyard and around the north-east corner of the church.
Squire Winstanley was roaring with laughter.
Bert Walker, the landlord of 'The Cloven Hoof', really was a wag! He was keeping the whole bar in fits.
'Well, I'll tell you, sir,' he went on as he put a replenished glass in front of the Squire, 'when the hens start giving milk and the cows a-laying eggs, that's when I'll believe all this nonsense. Leave all that to the addlepated tourists.'
A weaselly little man with smudges of oil on his face, looked up from his game of dominoes. 'You'll sing a different song tonight, Bert, if they open up the Hump and Old Nick walks out.'
'Maybe you're right, Tom Wilkins,' Bert replied, grinning. 'Tell you what, though. If the Old 'un does come along, I'll offer him my best room. My bread-and-butter, he is!'
As the bar exploded with laughter once more, Squire wiped the tears of mirth from his eyes. His intention of visiting the Vicar had quite gone from his head.
Garvin finished tying the unconscious Miss Hawthorne's hands.
'Right,' said the Vicar. 'In here,' and he unlocked the lid of a large carved-oak chest in the corner of the vestry.
The verger picked her up. Her thin, wiry body was surprisingly light. He could feel her bones through the loose weave of her cloak, like the ribs of a dead squirrel.
And Mr. Magister stood back and watched with a smile of satisfaction as Miss Hawthorne was laid gently in the chest onto a fresh white bed of newly-ironed surplices...
3 The Opening of the Barrow
It was twilight in Devil's End. All over the village shutters were being fastened and doors, front and back, bolted against the perils of the night. A solitary child, hustled indoors, caught the unspoken terror from her frantic mother, and earned herself a smack by wailing a protest. A foolish old man, awakening from a senile day-dream, hammered on his daughter's door. A brief flash of light as she opened to his voice, then dusk again and the clank of bolts to seal the silence—a silence more intense for the distant howling of a hound, baying the pock-marked face of the full moon rising above the Goat's Back.
Across the churchyard flitted a shadow a little more dense than the shadows of the gravestones in the moonlight. Seeking the sanctuary of the church wall, it paused momentarily as if to make sure it was unobserved and then vanished through the vestry door.
Nervously crossing the darkness to the far side of the room, the figure halted by the low oaken door with the heavy wrought-iron hinges, which led to the steps down, into the cavern beneath the