Doctor Who_ The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose [85]
Office buildings lined the wide street. It was late afternoon, and people were leaving work, coming out of the buildings and heading for car parks or bus stops or the streetcar.
Periodically, he blacked out - there would be an abrupt shift of a few feet and a few seconds, as if a film had jumped forward several frames. During these periods, he decided, whoever actually ought to be here instead of him manifested. He was an accidental presence, an intrusion. He sensed something frustratedly trying to shove him aside or pull him back. 'It's not my fault,' he said, but no sound came out. He wished he weren't carrying a gun.
He came to a car park. At this point he suddenly understood that he'd been following someone - a tall man, middle-aged as far as the Doctor could guess from behind him, and professionally dressed. The man was walking rapidly and purposefully. Something about him gave the impression he always walked that way. The Doctor watched his arm raise the gun to point at the back of the man's head.
'No!' he shouted noiselessly. The car park began to strobe in and out of his vision, jittery as a silent movie. Straining against whatever was controlling him, the Doctor managed to stand still. He lowered the gun. Then something wrenched agonisingly at his spine, and he would have simply collapsed if he hadn't been held up, if he weren't being walked, like a doll, after the tall man. He took the gun in both hands and sighted along the barrel. He'd never liked guns, had hardly ever shot one, maybe he'd miss.
He felt his finger tighten on the trigger, then pause. He remained frozen, held in place. The strobing intensified. His target moved away.
Whatever gripped him shuddered. His arms slowly fell. He watched the tall man reach the far end of the car park and turn out of sight. Then the pain in his spine abruptly ceased and he fell, not slowly, into the dark.
Chapter Seventeen
The Men Behind the Curtain
Teddy Acree woke up and the magician was sitting on the foot of his bed.
Teddy recognised him because he had no face - or at least no face that Teddy could see in his present state, which, he realised as he lay there, paralysed, oozing sweat and tears and urine, leaking with fear, was not a result of drugs or of shock but was his permanent state, now and for ever, without end. True, everyone wasn't a monster. But some people were. He began to quiver, as he had seen mice quiver under a cat's paw, and his lips wetly met and separated, over and over.
The magician sat quite still, still as something that had never moved. After a while he began to speak. He made no sound, but Teddy knew what he was saying, just as he knew what people in dreams said to him even though he never heard their exact words. What the magician told him went something like this:
Well, you've gone and done it now, haven't you? Why is it that people always have to know? It's what got us thrown out of Eden, and Eden is where we belong, not here, among all this pain. But you had to know. Are you happier now? Are you stronger or better? You went and ripped your eyelids off, and now you'd give anything to close your eyes again. You can't. You could gouge out your physical eyes, and you'd still see. You thought it was horrible before when you were merely one more borderline psychotic having visions. You thought they were 'real'. Now you've got 'real'
- the real real, so to speak, the one
outside of your head that won't go away no matter what you do to your brain, shock it or drug it or have part of it removed. That won't go away till you die. And when you die, the reality will remain to torment others while your petty fantasies die with you. So much for solipsism.
Teddy began to sniffle.
Stop that. It's too late for that now. Where