Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [35]
Now, from his exceedingly limited viewpoint, Turlough looked across the flour. He saw a few bales of straw scattered about, and an oil drum. Apart from these the room appeared to be empty. Yet, as he lay regaining his senses, he could hear a soft shuffle of feet on the floor.
Then a shadow fell across his face.
Startled, Turlough looked up into the grizzled, un-shaven face of an elderly man. He wore twentieth-century clothes - a matter sufficient in itself to mark him as unusual. Turlough pushed himself up on to his elbows and looked at the man fearfully.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ the old man said. He knelt down beside Turlough and laid a hand on his shoulder.
Turlough felt easier now that he could sec him more clearly: with his baggy old tweed suit, crumpled shirt and tie, untidy hair and mild manner, he looked harmless enough.
Then he said, ‘I’m Andrew Verney.’ Turlough was looking into the face of Tegan’s grandfather.
Jane had run through the church and kept going at top speed through the vestry, down the steps and along the underground passage, but now she was having great trouble keeping pace with the Doctor. He seemed tireless.
She staggered around a bend into yet another gloomy stretch of tunnel. Now she could hardly see the floor, because the Doctor had the torch and he was pulling further ahead with every second.
‘Doctor!’ she panted. ‘Slow down! That thing isn’t following us.’
‘I need to speak to Sir George,’ the Doctor called over his shoulder.
‘Haven’t you got enough troubles?’
The Doctor stopped and waited for her to catch up. ‘Do you know anything about psychic energy?’ he asked urgently.
She shook her head. ‘You know I don’t.’
‘Then here’s a quick lesson.’ He tapped his hand with a finger to emphasise what he was saying. ‘It can, of course, occur in many varied forms, but the type of psychic energy here, capable of creating projections, requires a focus point
...’
Jane was nodding and trying hard to appear as if she understood him, but the Doctor could see she was confused already. ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he tutted. He searched desperately for another word, and found it. ‘A medium!’
‘Ah.’ Jane began to catch on at last. ‘You mean, as with a poltergeist?’
‘Well, yes,’ the Doctor agreed, ‘but it’s a bit more complicated than that. In this case it isn’t the medium who is creating the projections, but the Malus. The medium simply gathers all the psychic energy for it to use.’ He leaned forward and looked intently into Jane’s face, peering at her through the gloom. ‘And what, at the moment, is creating the most psychic energy?’ he asked.
Jane was puzzled again. She was thinking hard, but along unfamiliar lines, and the Doctor could not wait. ‘The war games,’ he prompted her.
And light dawned. It exploded like a firework in the darkness of the passage. ‘The war games!’ Jane almost shouted.
‘And who controls the games?’
There was true understanding now. ‘Ah,’ she nodded
‘You had better speak to Sir George.’
The Doctor frowned. ‘The trouble is, I don’t think he can have any idea what he’s doing. The Malus is pure evil.
Given enough energy it will not only destroy hirn. but everything else.’ He noticed Jane’s glum expression, and brightened up for her sake. ‘Cheer up,’ he said lightly.
Outside the village, a figure was running across a meadow.
He came pounding through waist-high, flowering grasses and weeds with arms flailing and breath heaving, as though the hounds of hell were after him.
It was Will Chandler.
Will hadn’t stopped running since he left the church.
He still kept glancing behind him in panic and now, as he looked over his shoulder again, his foot slipped into a rabbit hole and he tripped and fell headlong, disappearing from sight among the rank vegetation. Whimpering, he struggled to his feet, stumbled forwards and lurched into a run again.
His chest ached and his face showed the extent of his agony. But the sounds of the battle were still ringing in his cars; he was driven onward by the horrors of the fighting that was still