Doctor Who_ The Hollow Men - Keith Topping [86]
„You‟re all in it up to your necks, Mr Denman,‟ said the Doctor slowly. „But I cannot afford to be distracted - not by you, your families, even Hatch. Only Jack i‟ the Green concerns me now.‟
The scarecrows surrounded the village, a chain of debased humanity. A line of the creatures stretched across the main road into Hexen Bridge, but they parted respectfully as Matthew Hatch approached.
He felt like royalty. Or some kind of god.
He parked the car in the centre of Hexen Bridge. People were being dragged from their homes and on to the green by the stickmen, and then held in place as Jack consumed them. Their screams did not penetrate the airtight tranquillity of the Mercedes.
Hatch got out, shutting the door behind him. He didn‟t bother locking the car. With scarcely a glance at the villagers, swamped by foliage and frond-like limbs, Hatch strolled into the Green Man. The door was hanging open in the breeze.
The pub was in quite a state. Stools had been smashed, and broken glass was strewn across the damp floor. The body of a young girl was jammed into one window, as if she had tried to escape from something, only to slit her throat on the jagged glass.
The body twitched. A stickman was trying to pull the corpse through what was left of the window frame.
Hatch walked behind the bar, his fingertips brushing over the mahogany case of impaled butterflies. As he busied himself with the trapdoor, paper-dry wings fluttered under glass.
„You said you‟d seen psychic energy like that before?‟ asked Rebecca as Denman drove them through the dawn into Wiltshire.
„Yes,‟ said the Doctor. „At a place called Little Hodcombe.‟
„I know Hodcombe,‟ noted Trevor. „It‟s about twenty miles from Hexen Bridge.‟
„What happened?‟ asked Rebecca.
„Oh, the usual nonsense. Alien reconnaissance probe crashed there in the seventeenth century. Became walled up in the local church and was mistaken for the Devil. Finally revived in the 1980s, and tried to kill everyone. That kind of thing happens to me rather a lot, you know.‟
Denman gave a snort of derision from the driving seat, but Trevor and Rebecca in the back were transfixed by the Doctor‟s story.
„You defeated it?‟ asked Trevor.
The Doctor nodded. „It was destroyed. The link with its human conduit was severed when the poor man was killed, and the craft blew up. It was quite a sight. We stayed for a few weeks. Tegan, Turlough and I.‟ The Doctor paused, as if wondering how much of this made sense to complete strangers. „Well, first I had to get Will Chandler back home to 1643 - And what a right how-do-you-do that turned into.
Anyway, after I‟d brought Jane back to 1984 -‟
„Jane Hampden?‟ asked Rebecca.
„Yes. Lovely girl. She asked a lot of questions, too!‟ The Doctor looked up to see if Rebecca was going to interrupt him again, but she remained silent so he continued. „Anyway, being in the local teaching community, she helped to get me on to the board of governors at the Hexen Bridge school. I‟ve kept an eye on the village ever since.‟
„So you‟ve known about Hexen Bridge for a while?‟
The Doctor was rummaging for something in his pockets, a distracted look on his face. „Centuries.‟ he said simply. „Until the incident at Little Hodcombe, I‟d almost forgotten about Hexen Bridge. I first stumbled across the place back in 1971
-‟
„That wasn‟t centuries ago,‟ said Rebecca, but the Doctor seemed not to hear.
„- and when I discovered the Malus creature just a few miles down the road... Well, I hoped there wasn‟t a link. But the psychic powers exhibited by Hatch seem to prove a connection.‟
Rebecca shrugged. „If you say so.‟
„I should pop in and see Jane when all this is over,‟
announced the Doctor suddenly.
„She taught at Hexen Bridge for a term when I was there,‟
said Rebecca. „I idolised her.‟
„I‟ll bet not many of the other children did.‟
„No,‟ said Trevor. „She was an outsider. We tolerated her for her intellect, but despised her for not being one of us.‟
„The story of Hexen Bridge in a nutshell,‟ said the Doctor,