Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [65]
‘Look after Captain Yates, sergeant,’ Lethbridge-stewart ordered, gesturing at the unconscious captain’s body. He followed them as they carried the limp form out into the open space beside the crematorium, surveying the watching encampment for trouble. Daring the travellers to make some move, almost willing them to do so.
All this inactivity and restraint was killing him.
And where the bloody hell was the Doctor now?
Kane was back in his favourite place: sitting on a tomb in Cirbury’s graveyard. The book he had stolen from the library was in his hands. The librarian had ushered him out at closing time the
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day before, but she had not noticed him shove the large book inside his leather jacket. Or perhaps she had, and was glad of it.
Glad to see the blasphemous volume leave the library for good.
He hadn’t been able to finish it that evening in his bedsit above the fish and chip shop. Damp on the walls had assumed elongated faces and there had been a tapping at the windows that he was sure was more than rain. He had hidden the book beneath the wardrobe, determined to let it rot there.
Of course, the next morning he had lugged it out with all the relief and assurance that a bright new day will bring. The churchyard seemed a fitting place to finish the story.
The three villagers are making their illustrated return from their errand, their sanity long gone. Their eyes are empty things, and they walk like lost souls. Of their journey to dispose of the mummers’ corpses and the monster rock they have only wild and garbled tales to tell, the ranting of the insane. They promise the mayor and the magistrate that the village has not seen the last of the Ragman. He will return one day.
And of course, as is always the way with these sort of tales, return he does. Spectacularly.
Here the artist really freaked out. The last few pages were soaked in blood, with brief glimpses into hell in the midst of the red tide. Kane dropped the book, numbed to his soul. He staggered away from the tomb leaving the volume where it had fallen, face down in the buttercups.
A snail made its idle way past the book of horrors, antennae questing curiously, and then hove slowly away in search of pleasanter pastures.
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Chapter Fourteen
PROTECT COUNTRY SPORTS cried one banner. Another proclaimed: HALT THIS ATTACK ON THE RURAL WAY OF LIFE.
Nick had never seen so many tweeds and Barbour jackets. He felt an insane urge to spray them with red paint; indeed the urge to kill was hot within him. The infection, he called it: the Unwashed and Unforgiving infection. He glanced nervously at his companions. There was going to be trouble, that was obvious.
Castle Green was an expansive stretch of parkland covering the site of the old eleventh-century castle, long since gone. Some pieces of old wall were all that was left, and the moat ran underground, a hidden medieval world beneath their feet. The north side of the park was taken up by the elitist Country Life supporters. The south was full of travellers on a special day out from the cemetery, with beer and drugs instead of picnics. UNIT
had let them go unmolested, and Nick could only guess it was because the authorities believed more of a riot would start if they tried to contain them. If that was the case, UNIT were fools.
Instead of having a riot on their hands, they were going to have a bloodthirsty massacre if recent class-related events were anything to go by.
Could they really be that stupid or were their motives ulterior, transmitted from above? The shadowy Above. That caused all the trouble. All the shit.
Whatever, the admittedly substantial police and UNIT forces sandwiched between the two groups were certainly going to have their hands full today. So far, nothing serious had broken out apart from a few hurled beer bottles and insults. Give it time, and there would be blood. (And it would be oh so good.) He felt a cold breeze pass through him as he remembered the eager desire for violence he had experienced at the Oblong Box. He