Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [32]
It intrigued Jane as well as repelled her -- curiosity bred fascination, and she found herself walking slowly towards the wall. Stones exploded past her and made her jump and shout with fright, but she held her ground. As the Doctor had been, she was nearly hypnotised by what she saw in there: great grey stone nostrils flaring above a grimacing, gigantic mouth, and high above them the green-white brilliance of the eyes. The whole thing looked as if it was made of stone, and yet it couldn’t be stone at all; this monstrous thing, which looked most like an enormous magnified medieval gargoyle, was alive.
‘It’s a face,’ she whispered.
It was such an evil face, destructive and filled with hate.
As Jane looked at it a feeling of nausea overcame her; her whole being was revolted by the sight and she had to avert her eyes.
‘Look at it,’ the Doctor insisted. Almost fnlly recovered, he was leaning forward in the pew and watching her intently. ‘Does it look familiar?’
Jane shivered. He wanted her to acknowledge a possibility she had been trying to ignore: that this thing could be the fabled Mains, waking up, struggling to be born in Little Hodcornbe of all places, and bringing with it who knew what powers of destruction. Yes, it looked familiar, but she didn’t know why, and she could not hear to look at the wall again.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I ... I’ve seen it before.’
The Doctor pointed at the pulpit with a gesture that was almost triumphant, for there was always some pleasure to be derived from winning an argument, no matter what the circumstances. ‘Look behind you,’ he suggested.
Warily, Jane turned around. She had been standing close to the pulpit and her eyes met the carved figure immediately: it seemed to leap up at her and she jerked back with fright. ‘But that’s a representation of the Devil!’
she cried.
‘Yes. Isn’t it interesting?’ The Doctor folded his arms and leaned back in the pew. He smiled, enjoying his little victory, intrigued by the way his theory was developing and the direction in which another plece of the puzzle was dropping into place.
But his triumph was short lived, for another piece of the jigsaw, which he had quite forgotten, unexpectedly jumped out of the place he had made for it. An uneven, scraping noise further down the nave made him spin round, and he saw again the man who had knocked him down in the street – the strange, hooded figure with his devastated face.
He stood beside the archway leading to the crypt, watching them and holding Tegan’s scarlet handbag clutched to his chest.
‘So there you are,’ the Doctor breathed.
The man moved suddenly. He came forward, out of the archway, painfully dragging one foot. The Doctor discounted the limp now, for despite being lame this fellow possessed an astonishing turn of speed. The man paused again. He regarded them with his single eye and a stern expression, and as the Doctor looked at him, a light which had been flickering deep inside his eye zoomed suddenly to the surface.
With a shock of horror Jane saw it come right out, breaking out into the air and shattering into fragments, like stars. These too divided into points of light which moved around the man’s head and shimmered and twinkled in a constantly changing pattern. ‘Who’s that?’
she breathed, and backed away.
‘A psychic projection,’ the Doctor explained cryptically.
He was on his feet and moving swiftly across to her. ‘Over here, Will,’ he called. His tone was quietly urgent; Will needed no second telling but ran quickly to the Doctor’s side. He stood close beside him, watching the man and the flickering lights, and he was quite ready to run right out of the church, and the village too. It seemed to Will that suddenly there was not a single thing which had not got quite beyond him.
Jane looked intently at the man: how could something so solid be a projection? ‘He looks so real,’ she whispered.
‘To all intents and purposes he is real,’ the Doctor replied, but before Jane could argue further the nave was filled with a sound like a wind blowing through from the fields outside. It rose