Doctor Who_ The Hollow Men - Keith Topping [4]
Something in the ground. Something... hungry.‟
„What?‟ There was both astonishment and curiosity in the Yorkshireman‟s voice.
Jowett cast a last, horrified look at the scene of the massacre. „There is something in the green,‟ he said.
SECOND PROLOGUE
STICKS AND STONES
The boy was dreaming. Bad, bad dreams.
He was running through a cornfield, the stalks snapping and falling to the floor like tiny hollow corpses. The sun was setting, etching the golden corn with splashes of blood. And the ensuing darkness would mean something terrible.
He pulled himself through another untidy mass of plants, whipped together by the wind into a thicket of yellow. The leaves snagged on his blazer like rose thorns; when he glanced down, his clothing was covered with crushed ears of corn.
Ears? They weren‟t ears. They were tiny eyes, staring at him. Unblinking, pupils wide and accusing. They knew where he was.
„No!‟ he shouted, trying to brush off the corn as he ran. If only he could make his uniform clean again, they wouldn‟t be able to track him, and he‟d be able to push on to the edge of the field - if it had an edge.
Oh God, what if the field went on for ever?
Something crashed through the tall plants behind him, causing his next cry to die in his throat. With a sudden surge of strength, he pulled himself free, and ran on, all the while glancing over his shoulder.
The thing that tramped through the corn after him was at one with the plants and the grinning, empty sky. It moved as quietly as a summer breeze over carved chalk hills, or rats‟
feet on a cellar floor. Terrified, he stumbled on, his breath coming in short, harsh rasps. No... way... out.
He tripped and fell just as the grotesque uniformity of the rows of corn was threatening to give way to the safety of the scrub grass of the field‟s edge, and the trees beyond. His world spun, sun-bleached gold, dappled sky-blue, then the solid, enveloping musty brown-of the earth.
He forced himself to look around, trying all the while to pull himself to his feet. His chest throbbed with the impact. He pushed with his legs, but they refused to work. The boy dug his fingers deep into the ground, seeking roots and old branches on which to pull, striving to drag himself forward.
It was no use. He felt fingers of bone and twig grip him tightly, then flip his body over as easily as if he were a rag doll.
Another sickening surge of colour, finally settling to show the face of his pursuer, the one who taunted him every night.
A blank expanse of cloth, with stitched slits for eyes and mouth. Ears of corn rained down from the squashed head like spilled blood.
And a straw-stuffed hand pulled back the mask.
He awoke to the distant sound of Elgar‟s Enigma Variations.
It was just on the periphery of his hearing, as unreal and intangible as the dream he had emerged from.
He rolled over on to his side, then sat bolt upright, his cheeks flushed red. He swore under his breath, ashamed and cross and guilty. The bed was soaking wet. Again.
If word got out, tomorrow would see another round of taunting and abuse, another stylised beating. And he could rely on the teachers being less than sympathetic, too. He glanced at the alarm clock on his bedside cabinet.
Tomorrow? Make that today. It was just after five in the morning.
He pulled himself from his bed, rummaged around for his slippers and, as quickly as he dared, another pair of pyjamas, and then padded silently down the length of the long, tall chamber and towards the bathroom further down the corridor.
The school was eerily quiet, but for the sounds of Elgar.
Ironic that he was taunted by his peers as a stupid, Scouse spasmo, and yet none of them would be able to tell Elgar from Debussy, or Schumann from Schubert. Ignorant bloody straw-sucking peasants, the lot of them.
The boy changed swiftly in the bathroom, and then pulled his dressing gown around him, tugging the cord tight. There was an Everton logo on the lapel, a rebellious link to his former life, the life that most of the children despised.