Doctor Who_ The Hollow Men - Keith Topping [80]
„What are you laughing at?‟ he asked furiously, pinning the still-chuckling girl to the grass as he knelt astride her.
The scream that emerged from the Green Man caused both of them to sit up in embarrassment.
They both looked towards the pub. Its lights still blazed like a beacon in the night, and the door flapped open in the gentle breeze as Don Tyley sprinted away from the building, shrieking in terror.
„I don‟t get it,‟ said Steven. „Baber didn‟t tell us how to find Jack.‟
„You weren‟t listening,‟ said Ace. „All that stuff about Jack‟s children. He must have meant the school.‟
„But the legends say that Jack‟s under the green.‟
„Yeah, but he‟s growing, right? And anyway, like you said, we can hardly start digging for him. I think the Matsons would have something to say about that.‟
They trudged the lane towards the school in silence for some time, Steven jumping at every rustle from the hedgerows.
They heard the sound of a car engine just as the school came into view. „Someone‟s coming,‟ said Steven.
„And fast, too,‟ said Ace. „Better get off the road.‟
They stood on the verge, the arms of the hedge prickling their backs. Two huge globes of light turned the corner, the headlights of the car dazzlingly bright.
„Who the hell is that?‟ asked Steven. They‟re driving like a lunatic.‟
„They should have seen us by now,‟ said Ace, moving even further away from the road.
Instead of following the curve of the corner, the car‟s nose pointed in their direction. The engine screamed still more loudly as the accelerator was stamped to the floor.
„Christ,‟ said Ace. „They‟re going to hit us!‟
CHAPTER 12
UNFINISHED SYMPATHY
St James the Less was silent. Whatever voices Baber had once heard here - whatever answered prayers he had witnessed, or revelations he had received - had long since passed into memory. Now there was just the hard stool under his bent legs, and a church full of emptiness.
Baber continued his prayers, but it was as if he was shouting into an infinity of nothing.
„My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?‟ he cried.
The rough canvas that covered the broken stained-glass window twitched, as if his words were enough to shake the church‟s foundations. But it was just the wind, patrolling restlessly through Hexen Bridge.
Baber sighed. At theological college he‟d read about what St John of the Cross had called the dark night of the soul, but back then it was just words, an abstract concept. He had studied hundreds of miles from Hexen Bridge, and his faith had never seemed more alive.
But the dark cloud of unknowing had swallowed him almost as soon as he returned to his birthplace, to the church his family had watched over for centuries. God might be the Lord of the whole Earth, but even he seemed to draw the line at Hexen Bridge.
Baber remembered the conversation with the young girl, Ace, and her friend. The weight of the dark secrets of decades had pressed him down, threatening to snap him like a twig.
And yet... Some part of him wanted to share the burden, to bring the shadows into the light and see them fade. The girl was overconfident... But perhaps she did hold the key, along with that mysterious Doctor whom everyone spoke about, but no one could describe.
Should he have said more? Had he said too much already?
He paused, a sudden brightness stabbing into his soul like pillars of sunlight through storm clouds. So used was he to unrelenting depression that he barely recognised the glimmer of hope that - quite without prompting - gripped him.
Baber got unsteadily to his feet, rheumatism nagging at his joints. For all his cries into the shadows of eternity, searching for the unknowable Light in the dark of the world, he felt better now than when he first came into the church. And he could not find any explanation for it.
Baber managed a smile as he turned to the sheet held in place over the shattered window. It was twitching again, the wind billowing it like a sail.
Baber leaned down to pick up a tiny sliver of glass that