Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [103]
‘You have no idea how liberating that felt,’ it said. What made it so much stranger was that it was still the woman’s voice
– slightly more inflected, more musical, but still distinctly hers. It waved a disconcertingly still-human hand towards Ace, the Doctor and Sooal. ‘Incarcerate them whilst I remove the rest of this... this filth.’
The Annarene began to peel the rest of the fleshsuit away from its chest as the male nodded and gestured with the gun for them to move towards the storeroom. Only then did Ace realise that Joyce was missing: she must have slipped back up the stairs when no one was looking. Ace hoped that she’d be back soon –
with help.
‘Whassat?’
Alexander jolted, suddenly brought back from his guilty reveries about abandoning Ace, as John’s voice came from the front of the boat. Long, wavering shadows staggered drunkenly across the deck as the lamp swung to and fro. John came padding through the pool of light, his face grim, tired and irritated.
‘What?’ Alexander asked, wondering if he’d missed some sign from Ace, back on the island. Maybe she’d just lost her torch. Maybe she’d found that transmat thingy that she’d been looking for and had gone home. No, he didn’t think she was the type to desert them, even if she did seem awfully keen to get back to this Doctor.
John raised his finger to his lips and cocked his head on one side. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.
Above the gentle slopping sound of the waves against the hull, oily and glutinous, there was another sound. Over the weeks that they’d virtually lived aboard the boat, Alexander had become accustomed to the myriad creaks and squeaks of the vessel – the shrinkage and expansion of the timbers, the pained groans of rusty metal on rusty metal – to the point where he didn’t hear them any more. On the rare nights he’d spent on the island, he’d found the lack of any sound but the wind vaguely disturbing, as though something vital had been snatched away, leaving a void that nothing could fill. But as he listened, he heard it – a tiny scrabbling, scratching sound, amplified by the boat’s hull. As one, they looked down at the edge of the deck. John peered over the side. But it must have been in complete shadow, and he stepped back, shaking his head.
The yelp that Alexander emitted when the shiny black thing crawled over the edge of the boat onto the deck was, he later admitted, just a little bit girly. But John jumped back in alarm, perhaps saving his life. At that moment, something sprang through the air and slammed against the cabin wall.
It was about the size of a small dog, black and bristly with short, stumpy legs ending in splayed claws. Alexander was immediately reminded of the tweedies’ little dog. Ace had thought there was something creepy about it, but surely this couldn’t be the same thing...?
Glittering blue eyes darted from one brother to the other, as if assessing which of them to go for first. Fortunately, the two of them saved the creature the trouble. As if they’d read each other’s minds for probably the first time in their adult lives, the two of them stepped to the railing and vaulted over, disappearing into the blackness with one huge splash.
As Joyce entered her mum’s room and saw the figure helping her mother to her feet, she had a sudden flashback to the morning of her attack – until she realised that it was Michael.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, still flushed and breathless from her flight from the charnel house in the cellar.
Michael turned sharply, his face set determinedly. ‘Don’t stop me, Mum. We have to get Gran out of here. I know she’s having her treatment and all that, but –’
‘OK,’ Joyce said simply, placing her hand on Michael’s arm.
He jerked his head back sharply, and Joyce felt ashamed at what passed momentarily through his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but she shook her head, shushing him. ‘You’re right. This place is no place for your gran.’
‘But what you said earlier