Doctor Who_ The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose [40]
They stood face to face. Dupre was Rust's height, and heavier -he stepped back, smiling condescendingly. 'Esoteric experiments beyond your comprehension.'
'Educate me.'
Dupre sighed, bored but always courteous to an inferior. 'A manipulation of power on the nonmaterial plane.'
'Any luck?'
'If I had succeeded in calling up a being of power, Lieutenant, I wouldn't be standing here taking your insults.'
Rust grinned. 'Likely not. Aren't you a little nervous about your hobby, though? Don't these things you summon tend to squash humans like flies?'
'What's it to you?'
'Well, you're right there. When they find you squashed, I won't shed any tears. I'll have to investigate, though, and I'm real tired of murders without solutions. Sure you didn't off Chic? It'd make my life much simpler if you did.' Dupre just looked disdainful. 'OK, then. I'll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing down there on the floor.' Rust smiled again, showing his teeth. 'But we'll talk again soon. Scout's honour.'
The Doctor didn't know he was dreaming. He thought he was lying on his back in bed trying to figure out why he was awake. From the street, faint bars of light fell through the slatted shutters. He could hear the muffled double beat of his hearts.
Had he been asleep, and had something awakened him? The street was oddly still. What time was it? It must be late if the street was so quiet. He extended his senses. Silence. Night and silence.
Something rattled at the shutter.
He stopped breathing, just lay there, listening. More silence. His hearts were beating and beating and beating. He wished they would shut up. He wished his blood would stop pounding in his ears. Ssh. Be very, very quiet -
I'm being hunted.
Slowly, he turned his head in the direction of the window. The movement seemed to take forever. Time stretched out like a tightening string. Tighter.
Tighter. It would break soon. It would break before he could see the window. It would -
Crack!
The Doctor gasped, almost a sob. He screwed his eyes shut, then opened them and faced the window. One of the slats was broken, as if someone had slipped a strong finger beneath it and jerked. But he saw no shadow, no indication of a presence.
This has happened before!
He tried to sit up, but couldn't move. His body felt like clay. This had happened before: He was dreaming, dreaming, if he could only say it - 'I am dreaming!' - he would wake up. If he could say it - He opened his mouth. No sound emerged. Concentrate. It's a dream. Concentrate!
The light from the street dimmed. Outside the slats, something blocked the light. No. It wasn't something. A shadow isn't something.
Concentrate!
A shadow is an absence.
Wake up!
A shadow is nothing.
The Nothing shot through the slats and whipped tight around him, smothering him, stifling his cry of rage, and he was pulled up. He thrashed, like a man trying to fight free of a blanket, and suddenly his head popped out into the air.
'Oops,' he said. He was dangling about thirty metres above the city and moving fast. Somehow he knew that his body was really back in bed, sleeping, that he wasn't quite caught yet. But near enough. Too damned near. He had to wake up.
If he wriggled free and fell, perhaps when he hit the ground he'd wake.
Unless when he hit the ground he died. Under the circumstances, it was hard to predict which outcome was the one to bet on. He was coming down anyway, slowly lowering over a little sea of flat and peaked roofs. He was above St Louis #1. A sepulchre loomed toward him.
Then everything was black.
But not silent. Wherever he was - he was on his back again - was filled with a rasping sound. It seemed to him that some time had passed and that he had been listening to this sound for a while. It wasn't unpleasant. Soothing almost. Rhythmic, slightly echoing -
The Doctor made a small, dreadful noise. He lay petrified, like a man on a narrow ledge above