Doctor Who_ The Hollow Men - Keith Topping [79]
Thump.
Don turned suddenly, startled by the loud noise behind him. His heart thudded in his chest, but there was nothing there. He took a pace or two closer to the back door, but that was closed, as it should be. „Anyone there?‟ called Don, his voice trembling slightly.
Idiot, he thought. If there is anybody there, they aren‟t going to answer, are they?
The thump came again, less heart-stopping this time as Don was facing in the direction of the sound. A few feet away he could see that the trapdoor hadn‟t been shut properly, the wind causing it to flap upward. „Daft thing,‟ he said with a sigh of relief. „Fancy scaring me half witless like that.‟ He moved towards the hatch, but found himself wondering what had caused it to move in the first place. Don scratched his head.
Sighing, he threw open the heavy oak trapdoor, and stepped down on to the wooden rungs.
On the third step, Don reached out and flicked on the light.
Bob had never bothered to have anything stronger than a sixty-watt bulb in the cellar, but even this dim light brought a sigh of relief from Don. There was no one skulking about in the cellar, lying in wait to steal the takings or murder Bob and Joanna in their beds.
At the foot of the stairs Don took a long look around the beer kegs and stacked crates of bottles. The cellar was filthy and smelled of damp. Bob really should get something done about it.
Something moved.
Don snapped his head to one side, but felt only a gentle breeze on his face. He walked forward and found himself looking at a sheet of green tarpaulin that covered most of one wall of the cellar. Don had been down here many times and this bit of the cellar had always been stacked with crates.
Now they had been moved, recently, too, by the look of the drag marks in the dust on the floor.
Don walked to the tarpaulin, which was rippling slightly from the breeze behind it.
Behind it?
Don pulled back the sheeting, and found an opening carved into the cellar wall, and a tunnel beyond.
„Funny place for a hole in the wall,‟ he said to no one in particular. His voice echoed off into the distance of the concealed passageway. There was a light flickering somewhere in the distance. Now more curious than frightened, Don took a few tentative steps into the opening, stooping slightly as his head scraped along the curved roof of the tunnel. After fifty feet the passage widened into a chamber. A breeze scurried down from another tunnel, at the far side of the cave.
Mounted on one wall was a rusted oil lamp, its flame fading as the wick was almost burnt away. Don picked up the lamp and shook it. Immediately it glowed brighter as some of the oil came into contact with the flame. The orange glow from the lamp reminded Don of his childhood, and winter evenings in front of the fire. Don and his brothers and sisters, watching television while their parents screamed at each other in the scullery. Happy days.
His attention was caught by something wholly unexpected.
A mirror, set into the rock about twenty feet away. Don stepped closer, wondering what on Earth this place was. He estimated that he was right under the village green.
He looked into the mirror.
And screamed in terror.
Standing before him was not his own reflection, but a large man with mad eyes, anachronistic clothing, and bloodied hands. His expansive face bore a quizzical expression. „The demon Hatch is known to us,‟ said the apparition. „And Robert Matson visits when is weak spirit is fortified by drink.
But, stranger, what dost thou want with Jack i‟ the Green?‟
Up on the village green, covered by the dark blanket of night Josie Luston had found what she was looking for in the drunken shape of Martin Price. As Josie lay back on the bone-hard mattress of grass and wriggled her arms from her leather jacket, Martin was trying to tug his T-shirt over his head.
„Gimme a hand then, Josie, I‟m too bladdered,‟ he said with a mixture of anger and frustration.
„Do it yourself, boy,‟ she said with a giggle