Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [5]
What else?
‘Someone might have stranded me on an Earthlike planet. It wouldn’t take much effort to create the house from my memories. But the seagulls are a superfluous touch.’
What else?
‘I might have finally gone around the twist.’
What else?
‘Purgatory,’ said the Doctor shortly.
The mirror’s laughter was like light-bulbs underfoot.
Coming apart at the seams who’ll be trapped and who’ll be free?
‘You’re trapped here too.’ The Doctor leaned over the piece of glass, gripping the edge of the table. ‘You’re trapped too. Do you know a way out?’
When everything comes apart at the seams.
‘Is it this world that’s changing? Or my perception of it?’
You’ll be trapped and who’ll be free?
The Doctor thumped the table, infuriated. The wineglass tumbled off the table, shattered on the floor tiles. The sound was muffled, indistinct.
There was something watching him from outside the window.
He bolted to the sink, peered outwards into the gathering dusk. Nothing. He ran out of the door. Still nothing. ‘Show yourself!’ he shouted. ‘Talk to me!’
He sat on the rock, watching the tide come in.
It wasn’t computer-generated. He’d tried three different tricks to spot the programming. He’d wanted so much for it to be a VR. It couldn’t be real — it couldn’t be.
Unless, of course, he was coming apart at the seams.
His best guess right now was that he had been deliberately marooned here. Judging by the house, the menu, he very much suspected he had done it himself.
He might have been here for years. Decades. Centuries.
Long enough that the days blurred into one another, the little events of daily living lost their focus, until his memory was worn smooth as old stone.
There weren’t many stars tonight. He stared at them, willing the sky to get darker, willing them to come out. Willing the surf to sound louder, the sand to regain its texture, its warmth. Even the feeling of being watched was gone.
But why? In the nightmare, he’d asked again and again,
‘What have I done?’ It might be a clue. He might be enduring some punishment. A life sentence. The dream suggested an arrest, a trial. But, if anyone had passed judgment, it would have been him.
What had most probably happened was that he’d gone mad. Not merely insane. Mad. Tumbled down into mental spaces a human being couldn’t even imagine, turning corners only a Time Lord could turn.
Goodness knew what he might have done.
Leaving him alone in some quiet corner of the universe would have been the only safe thing to do. ‘Heaven left him at large to his own Dark Design,’ he whispered, ‘that with reiterated crimes he might heap on himself damnation.’
Absolutely nothing he did now would matter. It would take him a lot of years to die.
The grip started with his ankles.
Of course he tried to get up and run, but something had his feet, and shortly it had his legs as well.
‘No,’ he said, but the grip ran up his body, clutching muscles and skin. He felt it in his elbows and running through his hair, invisible fingers taking hold of his body, the way they had taken his hand and used him to break the mirror.
They went down to the surf together, the thing in the glass and the Time Lord. There were no stars, no horizon.
The water was invisible, just white noise licking at the beach.
‘You were right,’ said the Doctor. ‘It is coming apart at the seams.’ He hovered at the edge of the surf in the darkness, the water licking at his feet. ‘You’re unravelling it all, aren’t you?’
He heard that tinkling laughter again. The fingers were inside his skin, cold and sizzling, eroding him from the inside out.
He lunged for the water.
The grip inside him tightened, angrily, making him thrash in the hungry surf. The water dragged him away from the land, sucked him under.
‘For God’s sake, hold him down!’
The thing in the mirror screamed with rage as he tried to breathe ocean. His arms and legs jerked as it tried to force him back to the surface, back to the beach. But there was no beach. The water rolled on and on.
Someone was shining a brilliant light into his eyes. He flinched,