Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [108]
Connie’s need for the toilet was becoming unbearable. She wished she’d had a commode in her room – some of the residents did – but as she’d explained when they’d arrived, both she and Jessie were perfectly fine in that department thank you very much. How she regretted it now.
‘It’s no use, Jessie,’ she said after a few minutes of jiggling on the bed. ‘I’ve got to go.’
Jessie was staring into the dressing table mirror.
‘Jessie, did you hear me? I’ve got to –’
‘Ssh!’ said Jessie. ‘Can’t you hear it?’
‘Hear what? Oh, please Jessie. I have to...’
Her voice tailed away as she heard a faint, thin sound coming from far away. Someone calling her name.
‘Who is it?’ she asked Jessie. ‘They’re calling me.’
‘No they’re not; they’re calling me.’
Connie listened harder. No; it was definitely her name they were calling.
Connie... Connie, can you hear me?
‘Yes,’ she answered out loud, cautiously ‘Yes I can.’ Jessie turned to her, a puzzled frown on her face.
‘He asked me the same thing,’ she said, almost in awe.
Jessie, heard Jessie.
Connie, her sister heard.
They looked at each other, an expression of fear and wonderment passing between them.
Help me, the voice said, wavering in and out like a bad wireless signal. Please... I need your help.
The Doctor sat on a large drum of cooking oil, toying with –
but, thankfully, not actually playing – his spoons. He tumbled them absently over and over the backs of his fingers until Ace snatched them from him and shoved them in her pocket. She tried to engage him in conversation, but he seemed distracted, almost pained, waving away her concerns with his hand and pulling his hat down over his eyes as if shutting her out. It seemed very unlike him, and it disturbed her. She was poking around in the boxes and cartons on the shelves, realising that they’d actually only been locked in for less than an hour, wondering what kind of meal she could cook up with salad cream and instant potato, when she heard a noise outside, a heavy thump.
Michael smiled when he found himself looking round for backup: it was frightening how automatic the reaction was, checking over his shoulder, expecting to see reassuring blurs of dark movement, the rest of the team. But there was only blackness and silence, wrapping around him like the smells of pine and boiled cabbage. He moved to the top of the cellar steps, the fluting voices of the aliens receding into the background.
He’d followed them in through the kitchen door and when they’d paused in the dining room, he’d taken his chance. He didn’t know what their next move would be, and he didn’t know where the Doctor and Ace were – if they were still alive – but from what Mum had said, most of the action seemed to be concentrated in the cellar. It was as good a place to start as anywhere.
He clasped his hand to his mouth. What was that smell? It was... he hardly wanted to think about it. Burned, charred meat.
Flesh. He’d almost forgotten what his mother had told him of what Sooal had done to those aliens. A thin, yellowish haze of grease hung in the air, made even more visceral by the orange-tinted lights overhead. He stepped quietly into the laboratory and paused, holding his breath as he listened.
Through the open doorway at the far corner of the lab, he could hear a gentle crunching noise, like a dog with a bone. He needed a weapon. Stacked on one of the shiny steel workbenches was a pile of huge pans, each big enough to boil a small child in. The grim humour in the thought made him shudder, as, wincing at the inevitable noise it made, he lifted the topmost pan. The chomping sound from the other room ceased abruptly, and Michael backed away from the door, holding the pan like a club.
He almost laughed when, with