Doctor Who_ The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose [33]
'I scare very, very easily,' said the Doctor. 'Budgies unnerve me. Gerbils throw me into a state of panic. Don't even mention rabbits.'
'Here.' Dupre took a candle from the wall and held it out to him.
'Aren't there supposed to be other guests at this party?'
'I invited you to come early, so you could see the house.'
'Particularly the second floor, I gather.'
Dupre looked petulant. 'You don't have to,' he sulked. 'I thought you'd want to.'
The Doctor sighed and took the candle. 'Well, of course,' he said, 'I do want to.' It was true. Just not entirely true. He was afraid, as he climbed the narrow stairs, that he was going to come face to face with something pathetic.
The second floor had contained the servants' rooms, which Dupre had converted into one long space illuminated by a number of twisted, varicoloured lamps suspended on loops of delicate iron chain. When he looked at these close up, the Doctor realised they had been made from melted Mardi Gras beads. But he didn't spend much time with the lamps -
his attention was drawn, unwillingly but inexorably, to the rest of the furnishings.
He tried to tell himself the style was like bad Poe, but bad Poe was still dreadful. Amid swaths of heavy dark-red velvet, the walls were hung with what could only be described as pieces of dead people. Mummified hands and feet. Mummified fronts of heads, cut away from the skull like masks.
Dried inner organs. Lots and lots and lots of bones. Around the top of the walls were nailed dried bits of skin with hair trailing thinly from them. There were many ears. Coffins used as tables held jars with foetuses floating motionless in them, and little gold-lacquered bowls of teeth. The room was dominated by a chair on a raised dais constructed from a human skeleton.
The symbols on the floor looked as if they'd been scrawled with brown paint. The Doctor knew it was blood.
He thought of a horror movie he'd once seen, about a murderous family who made furniture from the limbs of their victims. But that had been a movie. It was gory, and meant to scare. This was unselfconsciously vicious and tacky, appalling and embarrassing at once. The mixture of brutality, pretension and corniness aroused a feeling in the Doctor that went way beyond disgust. For the first time in many years, he felt as if he wanted to sit down. Just sit on the floor for a while and take deep breaths. With his eyes closed. He must have in fact done this, because he was startled when Dupre touched his arm. He jerked away. 'This is horrible.'
'I know,' said Dupre soberly. His dark gaze travelled over the walls. 'It has to be. What I seek is against life.'
The Doctor thought that Dupre was probably on the right track to finding what he sought. Which meant that he was on the right track to finding what sought him. Can it be this? he wondered bleakly, looking around the ghastly room. What has this to do with met
Dupre's hand was back on his arm. It tightened. 'I don't want you to leave.'
'I'm not leaving,' said the Doctor.
The Doctor wasn't really surprised when the beret-wearing pontificator from Death's Door turned up. He wore all black except for the bandage over his ear and introduced himself as Roy. The Doctor half expected to see Teddy Acree, in spite of his legendary reclusiveness, but he and Roy turned out to be the only men present besides Dupre. The rest of what the Doctor supposed he ought to call the coven consisted of six attractive young women, all of whom had removed their clothes, and one of whom had skilfully melted a pair of very shallow black candles on to her large breasts.
Roy seemed particularly impressed with this feat.
'You know,' he said, 'women perform magic naked because they don't need all the paraphernalia men do. They're closer to the mysteries of nature.
Most people don't know that.'
In their brief conversation so far, the Doctor had figured out that Roy didn't need, or even much want, responses to his remarks, so he didn't provide one. The two of them were standing near the door. Roy