Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [82]
Then they tried to scare the living crap out of you. Usually by pretending to kill you, if Fitz’s research was anything to go by. They stabbed you in the heart with a rubber knife, or shot you in the head with blanks, or pumped you full of drugs and let you imagine yourself being eaten alive by the space pixies. They usually said it was symbolic, a ritual to make the initiate (victim?) feel as if he’d been born again. That was the polite way of putting it, anyway. On the other hand, it also left a neat little doorway straight into your brain, so anyone who wanted to brainwash you could slip in while you were distracted and vulnerable. Mao Tse‐tung or the Lord of the Pit, the rules were pretty much the same.
When Mother Mathara had offered to initiate Fitz into the lower Orders of Faction Paradox, he’d spent a long time thinking things through before he’d agreed. The way he’d seen it, he knew all the tricks the Faction was likely to use on him. That meant he could go through the initiation forewarned and forearmed. The spirits of Paradox weren’t real; the Doctor had told him that back in San Francisco, when he’d met the Faction for the first time. If the spirits weren’t real, they couldn’t have any power over him. Right?
But the initiation wasn’t going quite the way he’d expected. It was all very well saying you didn’t have anything to be scared of, but when you were on your knees in the middle of a room that had been built entirely out of skulls, with your hands tied behind your back and your ears full of a buzzing noise that seemed to come from somewhere inside your own head, you were bound to sweat a bit. The Faction’s people had vanished as soon as he’d been led into the shrine, but for some reason he could still see their shadows, dancing in the light from the big black candles.
This is the place where the shadows are kept, thought Fitz. When the Faction’s people offend time to such a degree that their shadows leave them, this is the shrine where the silhouettes make new homes for themselves. The Faction probably keeps its victims’ shadows here, as well.
Was he just making this up off the top of his head, or what?
‘Nothing wrong with making things up,’ one of the shadows told him. It didn’t have a voice of its own, obviously, so it talked through the receiver that Mathara had planted in Fitz’s ear. ‘Creativity is what makes the rituals work.’
Fitz opened his mouth to speak, then realised he didn’t have to. Not with the shadow communicating through the receiver.
Am I hallucinating? he asked.
The shadow shrugged. Its hair was in curls, Fitz saw, and they bobbed around its head when it moved. ‘Depends on your definition. Are you “hallucinating” when you watch television?’
Whatever, said Fitz.
‘You’re tuning in to the Faction’s signals now,’ the shadow explained. It gestured towards the skulls that lined the room, and when it stretched its arms it started to blend in with the other shadows hanging around the place. ‘People criticise the Faction’s style, do you know that? They say it’s childish. They say it’s the work of sad little time‐wasters, trying to look all tough and scary. Oh, they’re always ready to mock, these people. Then what do they do? They spend their lives hanging around with fluffy kittens and emotionally retarded schoolchildren. As if that’s somehow morally superior to hanging around in bone yards. But I’m just a shadow, so what do I know?’
What’s your point? asked Fitz. By this stage, he was starting to forget the fact that he was meant to be resisting the initiation.
‘The Faction knows one thing for sure,’ the shadow told him, and it folded its hands in front of its face when it spoke, so they vanished into the darkness