Doctor Who_ Ghost Light - Marc Platt [67]
‘Come on! We’ve got to get clear before the take-off!’ she urged as he dawdled behind.
‘Take-off?’ He nodded backwards. The tunnel ended in solid rock. ‘They’ve gone like a passing thought. As long as their minds don’t wander.’ He chivvied her into the lift and slammed the doors behind them.
During the ascent, it crossed Ace’s mind that the ship’s new crew made the weirdest expedition ever. Nimrod would have his work cut out keeping Control and Josiah apart, depending on who was evolutionarily dominant that week. And Redvers would probably want to shoot every new species on sight. Then she remembered the Doctor and herself and decided that as weirdness went, it was probably par for the course.
As they neared the top of the lift shaft, they could hear a loud crackling and rumbling like the violent discharge of electricity.
The hall sank into view, lit by the fierce blue flashes of indoor lightning. Ace had to shield her eyes as they stepped down from the lift, but the Doctor had to look.
The shape of Light was still fixed, but there were thin cracks in its shell from which white brilliance seeped. The taut, frozen face of the angel crackled and sparked. Bolts of energy roared out and arced through the house, streaming into the walls and fittings. The flow roared ever faster, until a final eruption of thunder and brilliance which engulfed the whole area. As it faded and the storm rumbled away into the night, the shapes and angles of the house glimmered, picked out in a tracery of phosphorescence.
This gradually faded too, but for a while, when Ace blinked, she could see the white shape of Light imprinted on the inside of her eye.
She joined the Doctor and looked at the charred ashen shadow on the tiles where Light had stood. ‘It’s finally dispersed,’ he said and went to fetch his hat and umbrella from the hatstand.
‘For ever?’ she asked and sat on the stairs. She wanted him to say that the future would be different now, and that a fourteen-year-old delinquent would find a different house in a hundred years’ time.
The Doctor noticed that the grandfather clock still said six o’clock. ‘The house will remember,’ he said. ‘Just the ghost of an evil memory lingering. A dark secret after the candle is out.’ He reached inside the clock’s case and started the pendulum again.
‘I felt it here in a hundred years’ time.’
‘An evil older than time,’ he said, making a mental note to avoid certain of the rooms that might upset her on the way back to the TARDIS.
‘So I burnt the house down,’ she continued.
‘Any regrets?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm?’
She grinned. ‘I wish I’d blown it up instead.’
That’s my girl! thought the Doctor proudly, but he said,
‘Wicked!’
Document Outline
Front cover
Rear cover
Title page
Copyright
Contents
1 Tropic of Perivale
2 Gabriel Chase
3 Uncharted Territory
4 Gaslight Boogie
5 Josiah�s Web
6 That�s the Way to the Zoo
7 Ace�s Adventures Underground
8 Creature Comforts
9 Out of Control
10 Twice upon a Time
11 Trick of the Light
12 Beautiful Soup
Table of Contents
1 Tropic of Perivale
2 Gabriel Chase
3 Uncharted Territory
4 Gaslight Boogie
5 Josiah's Web
6 That's the Way to the Zoo
7 Ace's Adventures Underground
8 Creature Comforts
9 Out of Control
10 Twice upon a Time
11 Trick of the Light
12 Beautiful Soup