Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [31]
‘Hello,’ the Doctor murmured to himself. He tried to look inside the hole and for a moment thought he could see something which made him catch his breath ... it was impossible to he sure, but it looked like part of an enormous mouth. High above that there was something green and shining.
A plume of smoke almost choked him. ‘Come and have a look at this,’ he shouted to the others.
The luminous green light was growing larger. Suddenly it jerked forward towards him. A roaring noise began far down in the wall and sped forward too, moving with the light. The Doctor had to leap out of the way as another chunk of masonry exploded from the wall and whistled past him. Jane screamed.
Something was coming, and coming fast. That deep rumble was roaring towards the surface of the wall at great speed. The green light was coming too - and suddenly it was a colossal eye, glaring at them out of the black socket of the hole.
‘No!’ Will yelled.
‘No!’ Jane shouted too. And ‘No!’ she shrieked again as more plaster was blasted out and another eye loomed in the blackness, high above a huge stone mouth which was twisted wide in the most terrifying leer. It was the same grotesque monster which had been carved on the pulpit and on the vestry tombstone, but many, many times bigger. And it was coming to life before their eyes: moment by moment it grew larger, stretching out and up like an inflating balloon and shooting lumps of plaster and masonry out of the hole with noises like cannonfire.
The Doctor was much too close -- right in front of the hole. The noise came screaming to the surface and roared around him like a wind. He clapped his hands over his cars, but it vibrated his eardrums and twisted his face in pain.
‘Look out!’ Jane yelled - too late, for smoke erupted from the hole, as if the noise had assumed visible firm. it poured over the Doctor like a waterfall, and he was obscured instantly.
The noise roared and the smoke billowed, and inside it there were exploding noises as if the wall was disintegrating. The Doctor was inside it too. He had disappeared.
‘Doctor ... !’ Jane screamed and screamed 6
The Awakening
The noise of Jane’s screaming echoed around the church until it too was swallowed up by the smoke. At her side, Will Chandler peered towards the wall, which had comc so terrifyingly to life with its noise and gushing smoke and those awesome eyes. He whimpered with fear.
Then all at once the smoke began to clear. The rumbling noise subsided to an ominous, steady droning.
Through the drifting white cloud, which thinned before their eyes, they saw the Doctor again. He was standing in the exact stance he held when the smoke shrouded him: with his head bent forward slightly, and his hands upped over his cars, he looked as if he had been turned to stone.
Ignoring the remaining fumes, Jane and Will ran to him. Jane took the Doctor’s right arm and tried to lead him away from that obscenity in the wall. He looked stunned.
‘Doctor, are you all right?’ she cried; he nodded, but she could see that he didn’t know where he was or what was happening to him. Now he stumbled and she had to hold him steady. She guided him towards the pews; when his eyes focussed on them he staggered forward and sank down, exhausted.
Will ran around the back of the pew. He crouched down behind the Doctor, bewildered, frightened and near to tears. Jane watched the lad with growing concern, for it seemed to her that Will was not far from snapping altogether. Yet the Doctor was her most immediate problem: he looked shattered. And no wonder! she thought. She removed the green jacket from around her shoulders and put it around his. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ she asked him again.
‘Yes.’ He nodded again, to her great relief.
But a crash made her jump as more plaster flew out of the wall behind her; it seemed to be bursting at the seams.
Smoke belched out and the hubbub was renewed, as if the thing inside had got its second wind.