Doctor Who_ The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose [114]
He was no place meant for flesh, he realised, whirling and not-whirling, vomiting that sound. He was no-place. Space is an extrusion of matter, he reminded himself, rolling now, head over heels, around the wall of the maelstrom, and there is no space here. But I am matter. This paradox must end with my destruction.
He swirled down the helical whirlpool. He wanted to cry, This is wrong! It ought to be a spiral! But what would be the point? he thought, swirling now in the other direction, even though there was no other direction. How could form do anything here except distort as it collapsed into infinity?
Infinity was coming into him. Vacuum lay in his bones where his marrow should be. His self dropped from beneath him and he fell through the void.
He thought of marmalade. He babbled of green fields. He was cold as any stone.
And then he remembered that time too was an extrusion of matter.
He slid out of time, spinning like a compass whose pole has vanished. He was several places at once, several ages at once, several people at once.
All the colours smashed together into grey. Sound buzzed like an insect.
His teeth floated out of his mouth.
But even as he smothered in the chaos, his senses peeling away like strips of rotting flesh, something flashed at the edge of his consciousness.
Something imprisoned, writhing free as time collapsed. Something that wanted to be known. Horror seized him. He jerked like a man in a fit, praying to gods he didn't believe in, calling on devils he'd always disdained, ready to embrace any creed, believe any lie, make any bargain - 50 long as he didn't remember*.
He screamed like an animal, then arms wrapped around him and pulled him back into the world.
'Don't be afraid,' Thales said in his ear. 'I've got you.'
The Doctor floundered, still panicked. Beyond the candles, the walls of the room were a swirling, encroaching blackness. Rust ?'
'You've destroyed him.'
'I've destroyed all of us,' the Doctor gasped. 'Let go of me, or it will take us both. Let go!'
Thales held him tighter. 'No,' he said. 'It can't have you. You don't belong to it. I know you don't.'
One of the candles hissed out. Then another. Then a third. But the blackness, rather than deepening, began to fade, replaced by ordinary darkness. The Doctor glimpsed the walls again. A fourth candle went out -
and he realised that, like the others, it had been extinguished by rain that was falling gently inside the room.
Thales released the Doctor and sat up. Then, without effort, he climbed to his feet. The rain fell softly on his upturned face.
'Mother ?' he whispered.
The blackness rushed away like a tide, and the Doctor's consciousness as well, as Mrs Flood reclaimed her son.
Epilogue
This Christmas, the members of the Vacherie volunteer fire department in St James Parish had outdone themselves. They had been put out of sorts the previous December by a couple of departments over in Ascension Parish seizing the bonfire-night honours by combining forces to build a six-times-lifesize timber framework of Santa's sleigh complete with two sticklike animals they claimed were reindeer, that had not only gone up spectacularly but burned almost till dawn. Earl Pears, who had been with the Vacherie volunteers for thirty-four years, was heard to remark, loudly and more than once, that any damn fools could do something fancy if they had twice the manpower of any other organisation involved. One thing led to another, and, almost before they knew it, the Vacherie firemen found themselves committed to a full-size Spanish galleon with three masts, a crow's nest and a carved figurehead for which Betsy Botetort, the reigning Crawfish Festival Queen, kindly agreed to pose in a bathing suit.
'I don't see the point,' said Anji, squinting up at the construction on the levee from her place in the queue winding out of the firehouse garage, emptied of trucks for the occasion in order to accommodate vats of heavenly smelling gumbo and red beans and rice,