Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [48]
‘You dropped the accent though,’ I pointed out. Was it my imagination, or did Simpson hastily conceal a hint of a smile at my observation?
‘Oh, that. Yes.’ Kreiner waved his arms about rather more than was strictly necessary as he blustered. ‘Well, actually that’s just for professional purposes you know. People expect German experts to be, well…’ His voice tailed off.
‘German, sir?’ Simpson suggested.
Fitz did not reply. He was looking at Simpson, his head slightly to one side as if considering whether he trusted the man or not. He continued to stare as I poured myself a glass of whisky and sat down on the other side of the room. I needed some time, some peace and quiet during which to marshal my thoughts.
I stayed in the drawing room only long enough to drink a second glass of whisky. Simpson left to sort out rooms for Baker and Stratford, which saved me from having to decide whether the inspector had asked me to send the butler to him again or whether I had imagined it. Suddenly I was immensely tired, as if today’s events were finally over and I was now free to retire from the stage until morning. Once in bed I was asleep in a moment.
The next thing I knew, Harries was leaning over me, his face scarred and ripped, but mercifully obscured for the most part in the shadows. His teeth glinted in the dark as if he were insanely grinning, while his single eye gave him a permanent, mocking wink. A syringe containing some vile, bubbling fluid was clenched in his monkey-like hand. I tried desperately to move away, but the bed seemed to suck me down. A panicked thought fled my mind as Harries leaned closer – the whisky, there had been something in the whisky. But that hardly explained the corpse grimacing over me.
I thought at first that I was still asleep, but the noise convinced me that this was no nightmare despite its slowed and distorted action. As Harries pressed the syringe towards my eye the scratching grew louder, and I could see – for I could no more close my eyes than cry out or escape – that the sound was that of his teeth as they ground against each other in anticipation.
The needle met my pupil, and the world exploded.
The light was the sun, and out of it flew the bat, swung in a wide arc by Joe Wells. I had no time to move, and as the ball struck my ankle I screamed and fell, the bone once more shattered. But the nurse was there. The white dress clung to her body as if wet and her hand held up a scalpel. Her fingernail scratched along its handle as her tongue moistened her lips.
‘It’s all right. You were dreaming.’ Miss Seymour put her arm around me and I relaxed as she wiped my soaking forehead. I looked up at her, grateful, and saw my mistake. It was not Susan Seymour, but Catherine Harries. But was there something odd about her? Her eyes? Her hair? Even as I watched, one of her eyes blistered and boiled away and the snakes that I had mistaken for her hair writhed still more and strained to reach me, their tongues darting back and forth with a strange scratching sound.
With a jolt the room was empty apart from me. And the eyes. I was awake now; I knew that, because the fear I felt was so real that I could taste it. The pain in my ankle had dissipated to the dull throb to be expected after the day’s exertions.
But still there were the eyes – tiny black eyes, gleaming in the night as they caught the first hint of dawn through the curtains. The scratching quickened into a scuttle as the eyes disappeared and something long and thin, with ridges or scales, flicked my face as the creature turned and leaped from my bed. I jumped the other way, reaching for the nearest lamp. The room seemed empty. Had the rat too been part of my nightmare?
I left the light on and climbed carefully back into the bed, still damp with my sweat. Was it only my shivering as I slipped back into a fitful sleep, or was there a faint scuffling sound – as if something was trying to scratch its way out of the room? Or into it.
* * *
THE REPORT OF INSPECTOR IAN STRATFORD (6)
I woke the next morning