Doctor Who_ Ghost Ship - Keith Topping [3]
Life is not about certainties, whatever those for whom doubt is a foreign land may try to convince you of. It's a lack of answers that drives the engines of the mind.
A clock to my left was chiming.
Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
I looked around, observing the shop fronts that occupied the space surrounding me. My foot clomped satisfyingly on the hard wooden deck beneath. I took a penlight torch from my pocket and shone it above my head.
Behold, illumination.
W.H. SMITH & SONS, NEWSAGENTS.
MESSRS ILLBODE, ROMAINE & CLINKER, TAILORS OF FENKLE STREET, LINCOLN.
J.&D. COOPER, TOBACCONISTS. ESTABLISHED 1894.
FETCHCOCK, AMBLER, BUCKNELL & GRIMES, FANCY
FOODS AND HOSIERY.
FRED MURRAY AND MICHAEL SORE, COBBLERS TO THE QUEEN.
One of the deck boards, its nails perhaps loosened by the TARDIS's arrival, creaked and groaned beneath my feet like the bones of an old and arthritic man rising, unwillingly, from his chair. I stepped into the foyer in which the TARDIS had landed and, as the space widened, found myself on carpeted flooring. Red carpets that had once been deep and lush but were now, through the passage of countless pairs of shoes, faded and thin. They led to a stairwell to my left, all bright shining brass rails and velvetlined wall panels. I looked back at the TARDIS, which, for once, appeared to be completely incongruous resting next to the newsagent's shop in the main foyer. The light was better here, a distant chandelier banishing the murky gloom from even the darkest corners.
Something caught my eye on the floor and I stopped to pick it up, my hand touching the smooth, well-trodden carpet. It was a ticket stub and, with the information it contained, I knew the exact location to which I had been brought. The Cunard ocean-going liner the Queen Mary in October 1963, sailing from Southampton and bound for New York City.
The apprehension that had been growing steadily within me over the previous few moments that I might be trapped onboard the Titanic or the Lusitania some fifty years earlier, flooded away.
There were, seemingly, no disasters lying in wait for me here.
The high-pitched scream seemed to rip the fabric of the air in two. A piercing cry of terror in the depths of the night. As I heard it, the skin on my arm prickled. A dull, growling voice inside ordered or to get back in the TARDIS and leave this place at once. An ever-present pessimist who accompanied me throughout my journeys.
I did my best to ignore him. I always ignored him. Even on the odd occasions when he was right.
A second scream. Slightly louder. More terrified. More urgent.
It was a woman's scream.
Racing to what I imagined would be a bold and heroic rescue, I reached the corner from whence the sound had come, only to find a lengthy corridor leading away from me, completely empty. I was somewhat at a loss as to what to do next. Should I begin knocking on doors?
Whilst normally I would have allowed nothing to distract me when rushing to the aid of what my mind had decided was clearly a damsel in distress, such was my state of inertia that, for once, I temporarily hesitated and held back, waiting for something to happen.
As I paused, I felt a presence behind me.
Danger.
There was a sweat on my back. A thin film soaking my shirt and chilling my skin.
I turned, both hands raised defensively, half expecting to find myself
facing some monster from the worst imaginings of a fevered brain. A Dalek. A Cyberman. Something green and nasty, dribbling with ooze and about to kill me.
Instead, there was a small man with dirty blond hair wearing a steward's white coat and a rather bemused expression on his face.
I realised, after only a few seconds, that the reason for his perplexity was standing right in front of him. Me.
This was not an unusual reaction, I am forced to admit. I have not the faintest idea why I always seem to provoke such abject curiosity amongst those that I meet on my travels. Perhaps it is just that I am an exceptional fellow? Who, in all honesty, can tell?