Doctor Who_ The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose [57]
'When did you last see it?'
'Let's see I suppose it must have been about three years ago.'
There was just enough left of Flood for dental identification. When the Doctor had heaved open the trap, the bones and what still loosely held them slid sideways on to the linoleum in a heap unlike anything he had ever seen - which, he commented to himself, was saying something. He gingerly picked his way past the remains. He didn't want to leave shoe prints. Rust was not going to be at all happy about this.
He wasn't particularly happy about it himself. As he drove back to the city, he turned what he knew over in his mind. In 1980, Auguste Delesormes had performed a conjuration that, though it destroyed him and his wife, not to mention several other people, was successful. A water spirit/being/elemental, a naiad, an undine, whatever you want to call it, had come through. This was Mrs Flood, who, after heaven knew what kind of adventures, had ended up in the power of Vernon Flood. The Doctor presumed, as she had implied, that that power was sexual. A nonmaterial being trapped in matter was subject to all sorts of limitations dictated by that matter, and the chemicals released by intercourse had turned her body into a trap. He had read of similar things, though he hadn't before encountered an example.
Flood had stolen the charm to sell. But before sending it to France he had copied the runes, and then attempted to work with them on his own down in that tiny cellar, in an effort to gain more complete control over his wife. He hadn't known what he was doing. In general, that appeared to be true of his whole life. Now it was his epitaph.
So everything was neat and tidy, the circle was closed, all was back in balance - or was it? What about the untimely death of Delesormes' son, the boy he had pulled from the wrecked house? Was that somehow an extension of the initial incident? And how did he fit into it?
How had the charm ended up in the TARDIS, and, of all places, on the floor of his
-
The Doctor nearly went off the road.
Time. So-called elementals existed in a completely different relationship to time than anything mortal. Which meant that any physical object that was empowered to breach the wall between their world and this one had to have, at the very least, a time status more complex than the simple past-to-future existence of ordinary material objects. And if that were the case, and Delesormes' son, trying to deal with the wretched thing in the best way his child's mind could figure out, had slipped it in the jacket pocket of the nearest adult&
He wanted to head straight to St Louis #1 and the TARDIS. But he didn't.
He knew better. The charm wasn't on the floor of his wardrobe, even though he had left it there only last night, because, given its peculiar temporal properties, he had left it there the exact same night he received it, 30 April, 1980. It would no longer be there to find, because he had already found it - ten days ago and twenty-plus years after the fact.
The Doctor decided that he really needed to clean his wardrobe more regularly.
Chapter Twelve
Dork Ride
Laura was shelving books when the Doctor walked into Ow She was here.'
'Oh,' said the Doctor tiredly.
'She left a note.'
'Oh.' The Doctor followed her nod to a folded piece of paper on the counter.
'You look like hell.'
"That's appropriate.' The Doctor would have expected Swan to write on mauve notepaper with crimson ink, but in fact the sheet was torn from a yellow lined pad. He read it without expression. Then he sighed.
'She's worried about Teddy,' Laura guessed astutely. 'She wants you to come see her.'
'Yes.'
'You have time for a shower and a cup of tea first.'
The Doctor agreed.
Swan had been crying. Her face was swollen and her eyes were red. When she answered the door, she glanced anxiously up the stairs behind her, then ushered the Doctor on to the porch.
'What is it?' he asked.
She twisted her hair, not looking at him. 'He's sick.'
'He's been sick.'
The tip of her tongue emerged