Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [41]
The energy of a poltergeist may toss objects about a room or cause furniture to travel across a floor. Moment by moment now, the Malus was swelling with the power of a hundred thousand poltergeists. It was making ready to burst free of its bondage in the fabric of Little Hodcombe church.
Still it grew. Energy flushed through it like blood and breath, and packed into muscle and sinew. It drew in more power from the village and still more, and as it swelled smoke poured from its gaping mouth and plaster and masonry spouted out of the wall and flew all over the nave.
After centuries locked in the womb of the church wall, the Malus was being born at last.
The Doctor was worried. His search for Turlough and Will Chandler had taken him through all the streets of the village and he had seen not a sign of either of them. Now he was getting close to the Village Green, the busy sounds of activity up ahead and a monotonous rhythmic clatter of drums told him that very soon he would be able to go no further.
The sun seemed brighter and hotter than ever, and the atmosphere throughout the village was so extraordinarily clear that every detail was sharpened to a bright, luminous precision. The Doctor wished it would reveal his friends, lbr all his theories about what might have happened to there were unhappy ones.
Suddenly, as he darted across a sunlit road into the cover of an overgrown rose hedge, he saw Will Chandler.
Will squatted on the ground, half hidden by the hedge; he looked as if he had been stunned. He was in shock. The Doctor crouched down beside him. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked him gently.
Will nodded, but his expression was lifeless and his eyes seemed to be drawn far back into his head, to be looking inward as if he was seeing something far away in his memory. ‘It’s just like before,’ he muttered. His hand flopped to indicate the scene beyond the hedge.
The Doctor frowned. ‘You mean, the last time you saw the Malus?’
Will nodded again, and sighed. ‘I’s not pleased,’ he grunted. He spoke very quietly, as though he were afraid even of the sound of his own voice.
For a moment the Doctor watched him; then he clapped his shoulder sympathetically and rose to look over the hedge and examine the activity on the Green.
This was now so far advanced as to be almost complete.
Indeed, there was an impression of readiness, an air of waiting for something to happen. Ready and waiting for what? the Doctor wondered. A crowd of onlookers had gathered there: men, women and chddren, every one of whom was dressed in seventeenth-century clothes. Not a button or a feather was out of place. There were many more troopers now, and more foot-soldiers. A horse-drawn cart was being led away empty, having deposited its load of brushwood on the pyre.
And now, with a brash military noise two drummers were coming, marching down the lane towards the Green, pounding, pounding their drums with an edgy monotonous rhythm. The people pressed forward with mounting excitement, for the appearance of drummers meant that the Queen of the May would soon he arriving.
All this made a colourful scene; it was like some complicated, carefully-wrought pageant. But the Doctor knew it meant far more than any pageant ever could. It had to be stopped, and quickly, before the Malus took full advantage of the psychic energy being produced and, gorging upon it, grew strong enough to break free of its prison.
Once it had freed itself it would be unstoppable.
Something had to be done now. But what? The Doctor crouched back down beside Will, and tried to puzzle it out.
‘They burned Queen of the May,’ Will mumbled. He winced at the memory. His lips trembled as the event happened all over again in his mind.
Now the Doctor knew the reason for the bonfire: they were going to do it again. A re-enactment, ‘correct in every detail,’ Sir George had said.