Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [2]
There was a sudden flick of movement on one of the walls. He glanced around, but it-was gone. Probably a gecko; they got into the house all the time.
He’d bought the beach house when he was having the place at Allen Road painted. Everything there had been covered in dusty sheets, and the air was thick with chemical smells. So he’d flown to Sydney (with Mel in tow, if he remembered correctly) and driven a rented VW up the coast until they found the place, set back from the dunes in a shorn patch of thick scrub. Isolated. Quiet, except for the constant growling of the sea.
Very quiet. Where was everyone else? The place had seven bedrooms. They were probably sleeping in. Lucky he hadn’t woken them all up, shouting like that.
The book wasn’t under the desk leg.
He went out onto the beach in his shirt sleeves, with a pair of dark glasses and some zinc cream. There was a haze of heat over the ocean. The water hissed and sucked at the shore. He walked along in the beery fizz of the surf for a while, watching the seagulls and looking for interesting shells, and finally had to admit that he couldn’t remember how on earth he’d come to be here.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and jutted out his lower lip. Amnesiac episodes like this always disturbed him. Or at least he assumed they did. But with his lifestyle the odd swim in the Lethe was an occupational hazard.
He was probably recovering from something or other. He might have been asleep for days. His companions would probably be delighted to see him. He hadn’t had a chance to say thank you for breakfast.
He spun around. A movement, out of the corner of his eye — no, it was just the gulls. Or an illusory sense of being watched. The nightmare feeling wouldn’t go away.
He wanted someone to talk to.
Back at the house, the lights were on, but no-one was home. He snapped off the fluorescent tube in the guest bedroom, wandered from room to room. There was no sign of his companions.
In the kitchen, the breakfast things had been tidied away.
He puffed out his cheeks. There was intelligent life around somewhere, then.
He moped at himself in the bathroom mirror. Nothing ached, he couldn’t see any obvious scars, signs of damage.
It was, of course, possible that he had deliberately locked his own memory away, for whatever reason. Anyway, an enemy was hardly going to throw him into the briar patch like this.
He sighed. Always enemies in the shadows. His holiday plans attracted them like magnets.
He looked back at the mirror. Something looked back out at him.
‘That’s a cheap trick,’ he said.
The thing in the mirror didn’t respond.
‘Well?’ he asked, reaching out a finger to touch the smooth glass.
Skin, said the thing in the mirror. Flesh hate skin hate flesh you can’t trust it gets sick it corrodes it ages and it dies when you least expect it.
The Doctor watched as his palm slid down the mirror.
The glass was startlingly cold in the warm noon. He tried to pull his hand away.
Abruptly, he was smashing the mirror. Nasty skin wicked skin hate skin hate flesh. He smacked his hand against the glass until it splintered, shouted as the slivers bit into the thick skin of his palm.
He lost his balance, grabbing at the sink that held the mirror, but hitting it, hitting it. Hate skin hate you hate you.
Hate you.
When he woke up again it was evening. The wind hissed through the scrub. The purple sky was already breeding stars, glittering harshly in the cold, clean air.
Pieces of mirror were lying all over the floor, spattered with blood. He was lucky the cuts hadn’t been worse. He rummaged in a drawer for bandages and things, bound his hand up, scowling.
The something in the mirror...