Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [54]
His throat felt gripped and his breathing was thin, because -
Because this was a bad place.
Bad things had happened to him here.
Didn’t bad things happen in everyone’s childhood?
The crofter’s hut was gone. Snatched out of existence like it never was.Oh yes it was it was I know it was...
She was in the cattle truck. She could feel the metal beneath her shoes. Dark.
But she wasn’t alone. The Ragman was with her.
It still possessed her father’s features - she could see them in a faint glow as if dawn were struggling to arrive in the impossible truck, just like it had before she walked the moor. The creature was four yards away, close enough for her to smell him, and the smell was farmdeath shambles: blood, hay and garbage.
Her father’s nose, hooked; her father’s chin, protruding like a bony nub.Her father’s eyes, but not her father’s eyes.Stone-grey, dead pebbles, snail things without iris or pupil.
The Ragman.
Hunchbacked, thin as a ghoul, cloaked in vile tatters.
Unspeakable hair - it wriggled, it writhed. Hair?
Worms.
Slowworms nailed to the rock head, stirring limply, blindly.
Charmagne knew she was screaming, but there was no sound in the horror truck. No echo.
Nothing.
Her hands were over her mouth, but she knew she was screaming.
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And then the Ragman showed her things.
Kane pushed the door open and the first thing he saw was the check-out counter. The receptionist.
The library shook, but the quake was in his head. He was sweating.
Remember me? I’m back. You forgot me all these years, but now I’m back to haunt you.
Remember remember.
DON’T WANT TO REMEMBER! DON’T WANT TO LOOK AT
THAT AGAIN!
No choice, no choice. Walk over here, there’s a nice window seat near the Dr Seuss books. Remember? The Sneetches, The Sleep Book, Yurtle the Turtle, they’re all here...
Oh, and one other book. That’s it, over here. On THAT shelf.
Warm, warmer... But of course it’s hidden away, isn’t it, just where you shoved it all those years ago. Put your hand behind those books, that’s it, that’s a good sodding little boy. That’s it...
REMEMBER??????
And there it was in his hands again after twenty-two years, impossibly hidden, as if waiting for him, and him alone, to find it.
Now she was standing beside some ancient stones in a field, and the moon was high and full. Again she was not alone. A young couple were embracing nearby, oblivious to her presence. They wore old-fashioned clothing: she was in a gorgeous scarlet dress, he was in jerkin and hose, buckles on his shoes, his hair lustrous and black. Their features, like their clothes, were fine. Haughty, carefree. They leant against a gnarled standing-stone and kissed in the moonlight.
The midnight breeze brought with it a trickle of music. If Charmagne stepped around the stone nearest to her she might be able to see where the sound was coming from. She did so, and there they were: five travelling mummers sitting around a camp fire across the meadow, separated from Charmagne and the 132
embracing couple by a grassy trench running the length of the field and rimmed by more standing stones, all of them twice the height of a man. Daisies glowed in the moonlight, scattered across the meadow and in the gulley like drops of spilt milk.
The mummers were dressed in striped jerkins and trousers thickly adorned with brightly coloured paper streamers. They were playing lutes and singing softly along to old songs. When they moved, bells jingled from their boots and sleeves.
Charmagne watched them, and knew they were scorned. Lights from the village winked in the near distance. They weren’t welcome there; they weren’t welcome here. She was about to see that first-hand, for one of them was rising from the fire and approaching her now. No, not her, because of course she wasn’t there at all. The mummer was approaching the couple; he had spotted their solitary lovemaking and was about to crash the party. He disappeared from