Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [83]
heavily. ‘Same as the others. Withered. Decomposed.’ He He poked his head through and peered into the gloom. A slammed shut the church doors. ‘You sit yourself down, moaning wind, accompanied by a beam of weak, diffused love. You’ve done enough.’
sunlight, was blowing through the glassless window. All
‘I’m all right,’ said Jill determinedly, resenting his else was shadow.
patronising tone in spite of her experiences.
The Doctor hauled himself through and, with a grunt, The confused residents of Crook Marsham, some fifty or slammed shut the trap door.
sixty people, were conversing in low, frightened voices.
He walked to the window and gazed out on to the moor a Lowcock strode up the aisle and mounted the pulpit to hundred feet below. The light made him wince and he make the most difficult speech of his life.
turned back to the room. Tears sprang to his eyes. Just the light, he told himself, just the light.
The Doctor was running blind, the curved walls of the Sliding down the wall, the tails of his duffel coat folding tower blurring past him. He forced himself to concentrate under him, the Doctor breathed in deeply. He’d been on the steps under his shoes, stone by stone, as he rose ever through so much. Ridden so many of the waves of Time.
higher. The Abbot’s landing appeared and then was gone.
Yet, for all those years, he’d put his own feelings to one Stone by stone. Stone by stone.
side, tucked them away as if they were of no importance.
Up and up he ran, his legs wracked with pain and his Now the full weight of his troubles was becoming clear.
mind reeling, a succession of confusing images glittering Instead of trying to confront his insecurities, like any before his eyes.
rational being, he had buried them deep in his psyche.
Susan.
He was the Doctor, after all, and expected to be immune Susan but... not Susan. Why did it have to be her? As if the to such things. Above such trivial matters as emotion and thing were focusing in on his darkest thoughts, exacerbating longing and... love.
the very feelings which had brought him to such a crisis.
It was only a matter of time before all those repressed It knew. It knew.
feelings flooded his system like poison from an untreated With a cry, the Doctor banged into the trap door which wound.
led into the attic chamber. He sat down wearily, wheezing Something glinted in the hard winter sunlight and the for breath, and buried his head in his hands. The steps up Doctor reached out a trembling hand to pick it up. It was a which he had run remained dark and silent. There was no flat, coiled metal object, cool to the touch. With a start, the sign that the apparition had followed him.
Doctor recognised it as the earring Ace had picked up on 232
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their visit to Segonax. The one she had taken to wearing in her left ear.
‘Ace?’
She was here then, or had been. The Doctor stood up, sensing movement in the dusty shadows.
Twin oak beams dominated the far corner and, between them, a shambling figure was stirring.
The Doctor recognised Billy Coote from their encounter in the Great Hall. But there was something different about him now.
As the Doctor moved closer, Billy emerged into the light, stumbling forwards on his knees as though in great pain.
His face was deathly pale and clammy with little beads of sweat.
The Doctor shuddered as tiny particles of skin fell away Ace jammed her feet into the guttering and clung on to from Billy’s face like old plaster, allowing radiant points of Robin. He responded by nudging closer, placing his warm light to shine through the pock-marks.
hand over hers.
The Doctor put out his hand with some trepidation.
They had been lying against the slates in this way for Billy Coote’s eyes snapped open and the Doctor gasped.
some time. It was freezing cold and Ace would rather have There was no colour in those orbs now, not even the opaque