Doctor Who_ The Hollow Men - Keith Topping [55]
Now, it seemed, the merest sniff of alcohol made him muggy-headed.
For the first time Burridge noticed movement at the bottom of the hill. A bush was twitching frantically, as if an animal had become trapped. Burridge was not the sort of man to cringe at the thought of an animal suffering, but he was pragmatic: if a lamb was stuck there, well, he was just the man to put the creature out of its misery. And there was always plenty of mint sauce in the larder. He cautiously approached the twitching knot of thick brambles, but in the darkness it was difficult to see what was going on. Burridge reached out with his hands, gingerly parting the branches.
Without warning, something moved at his feet. Burridge glanced down, expecting to see a fox or a rabbit darting for cover.
The ground was moving.
Burridge leapt away in horror. A long strip of land, with the bush at its centre, was writhing. It was as if an enormous snake was struggling just below the dark soil.
His eyes now accustomed to the gloom, Burridge could see the true extent of the moving thing. It stretched from back towards his house, down to the bottom of the hill, right across a flattish piece of scrub land, and then out over the fields beyond. And suddenly Burridge saw that other patches of ground, far off to his left and right, were twitching and shuddering.
Obeying some wordless instinct, Burridge found himself trudging alongside the shifting earth, following the trail of the movement.
He walked for a mile or more, coming finally to a small meadow overlooking Hexen Bridge. The moonlight seemed to cut the field in two: a darker area, towards the village, and lighter ground beyond. There was frenzied movement at the intersection between the two.
A mass of tentacles and ill-formed limbs reared up from the dark soil.
Burridge stumbled closer. He glimpsed plantlike fronds and dripping, insect legs, mottled by what seemed to be... faces?
And hands?
His stomach churning, he turned to run, and blundered straight into a human shape that smelled of straw and damp cloth. Phil Burridge let out a cry of surprise, staggering backward. Then he laughed.
It was just a motionless scarecrow, gaunt and impassive in the darkness. He must have become disorientated, and stumbled towards the edge of the field and into the shadowy manikin.
Phil Burridge turned away, and hands of straw and flesh flew towards his throat.
The Doctor was thrown into a police van that smelled of alcohol, urine and dogs. Other people were being bundled in and, through the mêlée, the Doctor could just make out the face of the girl. She had sad eyes, big and brown. The Doctor felt something he had rarely experienced during his travels through the cosmos: shame.
„That woman has not -‟ he began to say, but again he was forced into silence by a well-placed blow to his body.
„You her pimp, or what?‟ asked one of the young constables with a snarl.
The Doctor remained silent. There would be no reasoning with these people in the mood that they were in. As far as they were concerned, he was a criminal, a deranged man who had endangered the lives of innocent people. He looked across at the girl as the van doors banged shut. She was staring out of the back window, her eyes brimming with tears.
Two burly constables sat on either side of the Doctor, digging their elbows into his sides.
„I‟ll tell you everything I know about Shanks,‟ said the Doctor, which certainly seemed to capture the attention of the police officers in the van. But let the girl go.‟
„No deal, sunshine,‟ said a man in an expensive suit sitting opposite the Doctor. „Possession is nine-tenths of the law...‟
He guffawed loudly and his colleagues joined in with sycophantic sniggers. Right, Frank,‟ he shouted,