Doctor Who_ Psi-Ence Fiction - Chris Boucher [3]
The darkness was unrelenting and she was exhausted, terrified, lost.
Suddenly she wanted to look back. She wanted to see it. She knew the light was there and she wanted to see something, anything. She wanted to put an end to the blind fear. But she knew her death was there, ready to snatch her if she looked. She knew it was ready to swallow her being if she listened and it was calling to her constantly now. 'Chloe? Chloe!' Now a woman's voice in the distance, now a man's. 'Chloee! Chlooeee?' And now it whispered to her. 'Die,' it gloated, so close it seemed to be inside her head. 'Die in darkness, bitch!'
It was all around her, near and far, outside and inside. 'Chlooooeeee!' It was mocking her, sneering, leering. She must not look back no matter how much she wanted to. She must not stop running no matter how much she wanted to. She must get out of the wood. She must get out of the darkness.
Without warning the black blankness ahead of her thinned and clotted into patterns of lighter and darker shapes. She glimpsed momentary specks of brightness like sparks from a fire. Almost without realising it she crashed into the brambles at the edge of the wood, ripped through them, plunged down through an empty ditch and found herself in open pasture.
Clear of the ancient gloom under the trees it was possible to tell the sky from the ground, and in the distance she could see the lights of the University of East Wessex. She staggered a few paces further into the field.
Relief dragged at her, draining what little strength she had left. She sank to her knees on the damp grass and sobbed for breath. She could see the lights of safety there across the open fields. She knew the way back. She'd beaten it, him, whatever it was - ghost, demon, murderer. Whatever it was she'd beaten it.
'You think so?' It was a whisper and was followed immediately by cackles and hoots of savage laughter that seemed to surround and buffet her. 'You can't run from me, you stupid bitch.' It was an agony in her skull like the burning ice of a migraine attack. She pushed herself upright.
'Chlooee!' Behind her the voices were back. She looked. Small lights danced in the wood, calling her name. She turned and fled, running for the safety of the campus. She ran across the open fields without looking back, without listening to the voices in the wood or in her head. Her only purpose was to reach the stockade of light and brightness in the middle of the endless plains of darkness.
She was still running when she woke with a start in her study bedroom in the student hall of residence. Daylight was bright behind the curtains.
Someone was banging on the door. All the unreal terror and insane confusion of the night before vanished. It was a dream, she thought, just a stupid dream. Something must have disagreed with her. Something had screwed with her brain chemistry, big time. She tried to remember what she had been doing the evening before. Had there been a party?
There was more knocking on the door. 'Chloe? It's me. Meg. Are you in there?'
Just a minute,' she mumbled.
She got out of bed. She was naked. She slept that way for comfort though there was also an element of vanity since she was proud of her slim body and pale, unblemished skin.
It was as she was looking for her bathrobe that she realised her hands and face were scratched and she was covered in developing bruises.
The Doctor was frowning at the control console. "There's a reason for everything,' he remarked. The TARDIS had just spun off the time line and was moving motionlessly across the transdimensional direction loops towards an undiffer-entiated focal point. It left the Doctor with little idea of when they might be going and where, and the more the TARDIS
manoeuvred the less idea he had. You start knowing nothing and end up knowing less, he thought, there's a lesson there somewhere. All he could be sure about was that wherever and whenever it was going