Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [15]
Backed up against the door, Tegan stared upwards at these flickering movements that were both light and sound together. They fascinated and frightened her at the same time, and she felt her body begin to tremble so violently that she had to press into the rough timber to steady herself Then she gasped: something was happening inside the lights.
Between the pinpoints of brilliance ceaselessly dancing and vibrating a glow began to emerge - still, solid and white, it was spreading and forming into a kind of shape ...
Tegan felt a scream rise in her throat as the glow steadied into the distinct shape of the torso of a man - a pale, grey-white, headless body suspended up there in the darkness under the roof. Ribs protruded from its gaunt, naked chest; two arms hung bare and limp at the sides and folds of sacking were loosely draped about its waist. Its skin was as pallid as the skin of a corpse.
The noise had changed once more, dropping again to a deep roar that seemed to surround the glowing torso like a force holding it together. The lights which still played about it moved less violently now. But suddenly everything activated again: the lights whirled and leaped about and the droplets of sound sparkled. The torso laded from sight.
It was replaced by a disembodied head.
‘Oh no,’ Tegan whimpered. She pressed back against the door, as if she was trying to burrow down inside it.
It was the head of a very old man, and it stared down at her with cold, dead eyes. Long white hair drooped lankly about a pallid, sad, tired-looking face, whose skin seemed all wrinkled up, folded and waxen and dead as paper.
The face looked down at her. Tegan was sure it was looking at her. ‘Oh, no!’ she shrieked, for this was more than real flesh and blood could stand. She hammered on the heavy door. ‘Come on!’ she yelled at it as the lights flashed above her and the humming sound returned and swelled loud enough to burst her ears.
Desperately she looked back. The face was growing larger by the second. And it was moving ... forward and down, swooping towards her and looming now just above her head. She shrieked again and pushed and pounded the door, and suddenly it moved.
But it moved the wrong way. It was moving an impossible way, inwards, against the force of her pushing, thrust by an outside agency that was stronger than she was.
Her breath gagged in her throat; the door jerked and swung inwards and swept her off her feet.
Tegan rolled across the floor among rotting vegetables and sacking and straw, and saw the door swing wide open.
Sunlight flooded through, and then a shadow fell across her and a hand gripped her shoulder; she screamed again as a figure leaned down and another face swooped and loomed down low above hers.
‘Oh! It’s you!’ It was Turlough’s face. Relief surged through Tegan as he took her arm and helped her to her feet.
‘What’s happening?’ Turlough asked. puzzled to see her so distraught.
Tegan could not stop trembling. Nervously she looked around the barn and up towards the gallery. She saw nothing – there was nothing there to see now. There were no lights, no sounds, no torso or dead, staring face. How could she possibly explain to Turlough?
‘Later,’ she muttered. ‘Let’s get away from here first.’
And to Turlough’s astonishment she ran from the barn as though a ghost was after her.
It was blazing hot in the streets of the village. The sun flared out of a hard blue sky as the Doctor hurried about the roads and lanes in search of Tegan and Turlough. He was surprised at the lack of human life anywhere. The place seemed deserted; there was neither movement nor any noise, other than the constant barrage of birdsong which seemed to surround the village like an invisible sound barrier.
It felt as though the shimmering heat had taken all living things into suspension and the whole village was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. The Doctor felt this atmosphere of suspense keenly, and he was getting worrled. He had looked everywhere in the village: up and down side streets and alleyways,