Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [52]
125
‘Oh, the Church looked after it when its mother passed away, of course. The girl’s father made sure of that. A father’s shame paid for the child’s upbringing in a godly house.’ The old lady gave what was supposed to be a sanctimonious smile, but in the dim light of the crypt it looked lewd and creepy. Her eyes had lost their cheerful aspect too. Kane’s head was buzzing with questions, yet at the same time he wanted to get out of here.
‘So when did all this happen?’ he managed, trying not to imagine the old lady’s face transforming into something nightmarish in the gloom.
‘Maybe you should go to the village library, love. You can read all about it there, I’ll be bound. Not that you’ll want to.’ And now it was too late - her face had turned into a vampire crone’s, feeding on his curiosity with unholy relish. Kane found himself thinking of a horrible black-and-white German film he’d seen once: Vampyr. There’d been just such a ghostly harridan in that.
He reined in his fantasies, because the crone was continuing her rambling.
‘It’s one local legend they likes to forget round ‘ere, my love .You see feryerself: go find the book’
All this time the stranger in the velvet jacket had stood quietly by, with a sort of thoughtful impatience. Now he roused himself from his contemplation of the tomb and stopped the old lady in her tracks.
‘Legend?surely this is actual history?’
The woman grinned at him. ‘Depends how yer read it, sir. Most folks like ter think ‘tis just a story. But the book holds the entire sordid tale. It weres’posed to be burnt, but I know it never were.
Some things is just too hard to get rid of; they has a habit of hanging around - like a bad smell, if you like. Strong stuff it were, and should never have been on the children’s shelves.’
The stranger looked even more thoughtful. Kane decided that now that his own family history had been divulged, it was the frilly man’s turn to give. But the stranger was already turning to leave the crypt. Kane put a hand on his arm.
126
And what’s your story, mate?’
The dandy smiled, and casually removed Kane’s fingers from his jacket. ‘Oh, I’m just a passing stranger. But I imagine you get rather a lot of those here.’ With that he minced grandly up the steps, leaving Kane with the old cleaning woman, who was still watching him with those bright green eyes, as if longing to tell him more tales.
Her shoes rang on the metal floor of the truck as she stumbled blindly around. Then suddenly the hollow clanging stopped. The floor was soft beneath her feet; springy... like...
Impossible!
The roadie had slipped her some kind of drug, some hallucinogen - that was the only answer. That, or she was losing her mind.
Losing her mind, tripping, or whatever - she was walking on grass. The darkness was receding, as if dawn were breaking inside the nightmare truck. She could feel a wind sighing like a ghost through the grass, and the cold light of morning showed her the endless heath all around.
Sheep were grazing near and far, and for a moment she was convinced that, impossibly, she was back on Dartmoor. When she saw the hut in the distance however, she realised that, just as impossibly, she was somewhere entirely different. And much further away.
This is a dream. You’re going to wake up back in your flat in Plymouth, and you’ll drive to the office and there’ll be a neighbour dispute to report on or... or...
Or a gig on the moor at Princetown to visit.
She knew that hut, and as she walked towards it, drawn like she’d been drawn ever since that fateful morning in her flat, she knew she was walking back into her childhood.
And she really didn’t want to go there! Not to that hut, not to that lonely crofter’s but in the absolute middle of nowhere on the east coast of Scotland. Don’t make me go back.
127
Please.
The hut was close enough for her to see the cobwebbed windows now, the element-bullied wooden boards that held it up, the rope bridge crossing the brook winding beside it.
The bridge was as she remembered it, too: