Doctor Who_ The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose [41]
He was neither in nor not in the place he feared. Neither encased nor not encased in a little space. Neither enclosed nor not enclosed by bronze walls.
Then he realised that, beneath his palms, the surface on which he lay was cold metal.
The Doctor screamed. He lashed out, scraped his knuckles, banged his head. He twisted in the hard darkness. His face smashed against metal. He was trapped, trapped, sealed in, sealed up, buried alive. 'No,' he gasped.
'No!' he roared, striking at the walls. There was no room for leverage; his blows were weak as shoves. He was screaming again, bellowing in fury, but he felt the edge of hysteria in his scream, the unravelling thread of panic. Ludicrously, he rolled over and over, the only full movement he could make. He thought, I'm spinning in my grave. He laughed, and the laugh didn't sound right - he had to do something, before his mind just broke like a dropped mirror and scattered away. He had to go somewhere. He couldn't get out. He couldn't get out!
'But I can get in,' he gasped. And went.
He hit something hard. Knocked on his back, dazed, he saw that he lay outside a stone wall, ancient and ivied. And, he estimated as he got to his feet, about twice his height. He made a couple of experimental jumps to no avail, then searched for finger and toe holds. But despite its age, the wall was solidly put together. There was no way to climb up.
He started walking around it widdershins, his left hand to the stones, which were oddly warm. To his right, out of the corner of his eye, he sensed a landscape so ill defined as to be incomprehensible, and he decided not to look that way. One thing at a time, Doctor.
Of course, he thought as he walked, there wasn't necessarily a door. And if that were the case, there really wasn't any way for him to know when he'd gone all the way round. He could go in circles for ever. Again, not unlike life, and he'd worry about that when he had to.
After what might have been any length of time but felt like about half an Earth hour, he saw ahead of him a shadow that might indicate an opening.
He picked up his pace, and a few more minutes did indeed bring him to a door - more accurately, a gate of elaborately wrought iron, not unlike the ones he'd been admiring in New Orleans, though much larger. Through the bars, he glimpsed a kaleidoscope of colours and, moving closer, he found himself looking into the most beautiful garden he'd ever seen. The play of colours sparkled like sunlit water, chords of tint and tone muted with cool green. His whole body suddenly ached with loss and he thought that if he did not get inside his hearts would break.
There was no handle or lock. He looked up to the crowning spikes, calculating. Then, as he seized the bars, he saw something he hadn't noticed.
Just inside, to the left of the gate, a bed of sky-blue and bright-red flowers nestled against the wall, and, strangely, someone was lying among them.
In the very centre of the garish patch, a small man in a white suit was curled up asleep. He wore a battered hat, also white, and held clasped to him, like a child with a stuffed animal, a ridiculous-looking red-handled umbrella.
His face wore an expression of deep, exhausted repose, as if this were a sleep not fallen into but achieved, a hard-won peace. The Doctor was oddly moved - as well as nagged by a conviction that he had seen the sleeper before. Briefly. With a woman, perhaps. At a funfair& He tried to recall, but there were too many years, too many people he'd seen, too many funfairs for that matter Shrugging, he tightened his grip on the bars, preparing to climb -
- and suddenly the man's eyes snapped open. They were a brilliant and awful blue. The Doctor recoiled.
'Go away,' hissed the man in a fierce Scots burr,