Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [0]
MICK LEWIS
Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd,
Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane
London W12 orr
First published 2001
Copyright @ Mick Lewis 2001
The moral right of the author has been asserted Original series broadcast on the BBC
Format @ BBC 1963
Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC ISBN 0 563
53826 0
Imaging by Black Sheep, copyright @ BBC 2001
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton Luckily, the books he wanted were on the bottom shelf.
He pulled out Dracula first, a thick book with a purple cover as large as his head. He nearly dropped it, it was so heavy. He flicked through the yellow, well-thumbed pages in search of the scary bits. The bloody bits. His eyes bugged when he found them.
Next he dragged down Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The text was dense and long-winded, but he still managed to find passages that excited him. Utterson’s bones jumping on the street under the blows from Hyde’s cane. He memorised the powerful words of violence, and then he reached for a third book.
This one was bound in an ancient plastic cover that depicted a monstrous figure peering between the curtains of a four-poster bed at a terrified man.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ The shrill voice cut through his secret pleasure. The librarian with her bird-like features and pointed, no-nonsense spectacles was behind him, staring down at him in rather the same awful manner as the monster on the cover.
He glanced back at the book in his hands. It was obvious what he was doing. The librarian snatched Frankenstein from him, holding it out so that she could examine the cover. She slammed it back into its slot on the shelf and seized hold of his right hand, pulling him up from his cosy squatting position on the parquet flooring. The rubber soles of his shoes squealed on the wood as he struggled.
‘You’re far too young to be reading these,’ the woman barked at him, dragging the eight-year-old boy away from the adult section of the library. She didn’t notice him snatch Dracula and slide it under his jumper. He hugged the book close as she dumped him in the children’s corner.
‘Does your mother know you’re reading this sort of thing? I don’t think she would be very pleased. Although, then again, maybe she wouldn’t care. Where is Mrs Sawyer?’ The librarian glanced around peevishly. Although only in her thirties, the severe bun of hair and vicious glasses transformed her into a middle-aged spinster. Her brow crimped with displeasure as she realised the
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boy’s mother wasn’t in the library. She crossed to the checkin desk and reached for the telephone.
The boy slumped down on a window seat in the children’s corner, flicking desultorily through The Sleep Book and The Sneetches, comforted by the feel of the thick book under his jumper and the naughty thrills it would deliver later when he got home.
He glanced over his shoulder as he pulled more children’s books down from the shelves. Mrs Nasty Specs was wittering away into the telephone. He hated her. Ugly witch. She was like all of them, treating him like some kind of weirdo. At school they still made him read Janet and John. He’d been reading proper books without pictures in them for about three months now at home, although his mother didn’t approve. She’d clouted him once when she’d caught him with a book of horror stories by Poo.
He sniggered. Not Poo: Poe. They’d been pissin’ good. And he could swear like a grown-up too - especially when his mother took Poe off him; she was just like his teachers at school who thought he was stupid, just like Nasty Specs. They all wanted him to be stupid. But he wasn’t. He’d show the pissin’ lot.
His investigating fingers found a large hardback stuffed behind the leaning books, hidden like a guilty secret. Dust puffed at him as he pulled it free. He glanced at the cover, wondering idly when his mother would come and get him. And then he forgot his mother, the librarian, even the book shoved behind his jumper.
Suddenly he felt very cold, even beneath the hot strip-lighting