Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [82]
Holly frowned. ‘Like a giant fairy ring.’
‘Should be, by rights. Those beasties...’ She shook her head An icy gust ruffled her hair. ‘What about Mr Trevithick ...
disbelievingly. ‘One caught me across the forehead but I and Cooper?’
managed to get under here. Must’ve passed out.’ Holly Vijay sighed. ‘Maybe they got away.’
hugged the older woman. Cooper patted her back Holly hung her head despondently.
affectionately.
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Vijay stood up suddenly, his keen gaze fixing on York. George Lowcock, however, kept the keys in the something. He wandered away towards the fence.
bottom drawer of his desk and that Christmas morning, he
‘Hawthorne?’ croaked Cooper weakly. Holly shook her opened the ancient doors to convene his meeting.
head. ‘The old man too, probably. The Doctor went off to Now the dingy interior was crammed with villagers.
the monastery.’
Lowcock had done his rounds late on Christmas Eve, telling Cooper nodded, her eyes closing. ‘Holly?’ Vijay’s voice everyone to be in the church for eight the next morning as cut through the moan of the wind. ‘Will you be OK a there was a bit of a flap on. He was shocked to discover how moment?’ asked Holly urgently. Cooper nodded, fingering few people answered his knock. It was almost as though the wound on her forehead with some distaste. ‘Holly!’
they had all gone away.
Vijay was walking up and down in agitation just beyond Mr Bayles, Crook Marsham’s butcher for thirty years, the edge of the fallen fence. Holly ran over to him, the seemed to have upped and left, fresh turkeys abandoned on question on her lips answered by the sight of the great, his counter. Old Mr Pemberton at the post office, who had tumulus-like mound of earth heaped before her.
never been more than thirty miles from the village in his life, The subsidence had opened a gash in the moor some had similarly vanished.
thirty feet across. The soil yawned above a crooked cave It was only when Lowcock called on Win Prudhoe that his mouth, with broken stones and clods of earth littering the suspicions became a sick certainty. These people hadn’t left entrance. The ring of scorched heather extended right Crook Marsham. They had been taken, consumed, just like around it.
the others they had found.
‘What did the Doctor say this place was built on?’ said He’d knocked lightly on the door and pushed it slowly Vijay, knowing the answer. Holly nodded excitedly.
open until it banged against the umbrella stand. There was a Vijay turned back to the pitch-black chasm. ‘I think we’ve burnt smell in the air and clouds of what appeared to be just found his palaeolithic quarry.’
steam hanging low under the rafters.
The stones of Crook Marsham’s little church had echoed Gingerly, with heart pounding, Lowcock walked through to the sound of Christmas Day worship for almost nine the sitting room, looking about at dusty furniture and old hundred years. Rows of creaking pews gave on to an aisle photographs. There was one of Jack Prudhoe and old so worn down that it formed a channel rather than a straight Andrew Medcalfe, shoulder to shoulder on the day they path, making the whole interior resemble a heavily rigged had both gone off to war.
ship, the towering pulpit looking like some ecclesiastical
‘Hello? Mrs Prudhoe?’
fo’c’s’le.
He knew, with a dread that made his head reel, that she Attendance had dwindled to such an extent that the was no longer alive. Easing open the kitchen door, he church had been closed for all but the most special occasions.
noticed at once that the kettle had boiled itself dry on the Those villagers still devoted enough took the bus over to stove, little tongues of gas flame licking at its blackened 230
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underside. Then he glanced down at the bundle of rags in The Doctor’s head brushed against the trap door and he the corner and failed to stifle a scream.
stood up, pushing against the wood with the flat of his
‘Mrs Prudhoe, then?’ Jill asked him as he ushered