Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [77]
‘All these places...’ he continued, ‘...you were really there?’ It was a sceptical accusation, his voice laden with tired cynicism.
The mummer took a step towards him before answering, and Nick’s face became even whiter in the firelight. The final catgut string of the lute burnt away with a lonely wail. Silence for a sweaty fistful of seconds as the mummer turned the full gaze of his implacable shark eyes on the spike-haired young man.
‘In spirit, if not in flesh: he replied at last, his voice a menacing drawl, the menace of which was lost to all but Nick.
Nick nodded, then furnished his own slant on the mummer’s words: ‘In thought, if not in deed.’ And suddenly, he saw the truth of the whole shambles: Rod’s face floated up from the darkness of his mind: there he was, walking up to Glastonbury tor in the dead
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stretch of night, alone, having said goodbye to his friends for the last time. Nick saw what was waiting for him at the top and tears were in his eyes, and a great righteous fury flared up from his heart.
‘I’ve been to those places too,’ he said slowly, and his voice was no longer shaking but iron hard, as the tears trickled down his cheeks, not dissipating his strength but rather intensifying it. He looked at Sin.
And she saw the tears and the inner strength and her eyes widened momentarily, and horror and loss filled them, for one blissful moment only. Then she was the cold, hateful sin again, and Nick made his speech.
‘Yes, I’ve been to all those places too - in my head. Along with hundreds of other places like them, and I saw a different story.
Not glory. Not glamour. Not a celebration of violence and discord.
I saw only fear and desperation. A need to change, not destroy.
What do you offer, Mr Mummer? A solution? Hope?...’ He laughed. ‘Freedom?No. What you offer is a walk into the heart of hate, purely for the wild joy of it. And hate is all you’ve got.’
The mummer’s eyes were no longer lustrous and dark. They were grey, grey as hard stone. And Nick stopped talking, and his head drooped on to his knees once more, and Sin looked at him, once, then looked away.
The fire burned. A knot of wood burst, then hissed. The mummer left them and walked across the field of stones towards the cattle truck.
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Chapter Seventeen
It was like a hellish version of the TARDIS’s dimensional transcendence, but knowing that did not save the Doctor from his own private horrors. He was bound to a stake as fire kissed the tinder wood and a crowd of bellowing ragged people celebrated.
And, under the hoods and tatters, he recognised every one of them. There was Susan, there Vicki. And bearing the flickering torches that had kindled the faggots, Ian and Barbara grinning with bloodlust.
‘Not you, Jamie,’ he moaned, as another figure hurled a stone that gouged his cheek. ‘Oh, not you.’
And although he knew he was simply caught like a leaf in a perceptual whirlpool inside the filthy cattle truck, it did not make the flames burn any less. He was a wicker man offered up to the hungry gods of his own delusions and fears and, inside his head, he’d found the one place where there really was no haven.
Zoe was mincing up to him and her rags were dropping away, freeing her to dance naked and wild before him. She threw her arms and head back and moved sinuous as a snake to the sound of his screams. He saw his skin blackening, and the agony was unendurable.
The stones came thick and fast then, all of them hurled by people he had loved and lost.
But now he was back in the control room of the TARDIS, holding on to the console while the craft shook wildly as if grabbed in the jaws of a monstrous cat. Lights flicked on, off, on, off. The floor bucked and threatened to hurl him against the indented roundels of the far wall. He held on, braving the psychic storm. The observation screen glowed into life and simultaneously the thrashing of the ship ceased, leaving the Doctor still clutching the console, sweating and panting.
He looked over his shoulder at the screen. It showed only an unfamiliar star