Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [51]
There were no doors.
She fell headlong, banging her knees and elbows against the corrugated metal floor. She sat up, stunned for a moment, trying to think logically. The giant had tossed her in through the doors, just inside them in fact. They had to be right behind her. She stumbled up and groped carefully behind her, in the direction her common sense dictated behind had to be.
Nothing.
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No doors.
She was breathing heavily now, and the first tears had spilled down her cheeks. You got what you wanted, you got to look inside the truck. Now just please let me get out again. she groped sideways, reaching for the metal wall.
There was no wall.
Feeling panic uncorking itself within her, she lurched to the other side of the truck, reaching blindly for the wall she knew had to be there.
And wasn’t.
Her scream echoed madly within the metal vehicle.
‘LET ME OUT. LET ME OUTITT!!!!!’
My God please let me out.
‘It’s his name, all right.’
A new voice, a new visitor to the crypt. And that made three.
The new arrival was the old cleaning woman Kane had glimpsed at the church doorway when he’d contemplated bottling one of the stained-glass windows a week or so before.
He was waiting for an explanation. Cleaning lady and frilly man didn’t seem in a hurry to give one, gazing at the marble tomb in silence. Kane decided he’d better force one out of them.
‘Is someone having a laugh at my expense?’ He stood before the velvet-jacketed stranger in a threatening posture. The man was taller than him by about three inches, and he stroked his chin thoughtfully as he turned his wise eyes upon Kane. That was no answer, though.
‘Well?!’
‘I assumed it must be your family name from your extreme reaction, my dear chap0,’ the stranger said in elegant tones.
‘Don’t you pissin’ "dear chap" me.’ Kane was furious. He didn’t like this situation - oh no, not at all: it was freaking him. ‘What were you doing following me down here - are you some sort of pervert?’ The man certainty looked a bit dodgy in his frills and velvets.
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The stranger straightened to his full height.’I am nothing of the kind, young man. I heard the erratic ringing of the church bell, and wondered if someone might be in trouble. I found the crypt door open and discovered you here, staring in obvious shock at this monument.’
‘I heard you, too, love: the cleaning lady piped up. ‘That certainly ain’t the way the regler bell-ringers does it, and that’s fer sure.’ Her face was a bowl of wrinkles bound by wisps of grey hair. Grape-green eyes peeped cheerfully at Kane. ‘Bit of a shock to yer, was it, love? Findin’ that there memorial? Don’t s’pose you’d have had cause to hear of it from anybody else, seein’ as not many folks gets to come down here.’
Kane stared at her like she was a witch. Were these jokers playing mind games with him? shit, he needed another drink. ‘So who is it?’ he said, and his voice was more of a whisper. He turned to stare at the marble form again, with its lost, vacant eyes and pitiful baby clutched tightly to its chest.
‘Why, lordy, but it’syer ancestor, love. Emly Sawyer. She who was cruelly neglected, specially when she was with child. ‘Tis a sad story, and no mistake, and not one I expect yer family would keep in memory. Some things is best left buried.’ However, now that she was warming to her theme, the old lady was obviously not of this opinion. ‘Her father abandoned her, see, when she fell pregnant. She was..now what was the words?... Disowned, reviled and so fell into moral decline, my love - at least that’s how the story was passed down to me by the Reverend Tieburnhisself.’
‘I know exactly how she felt.’ Kane was recovering his composure now, and beginning to wonder why seeing the form should have freaked him so. Perhaps it was the aura of tragedy hanging over the marble tomb - and then seeing his name connected with it.
‘This here memorial is a father tryin’ to put right what he done wrong. She died, see, in poverty and want.’
‘And the baby?’ Kane asked, poking a boot at the tiny form