Doctor Who_ The Nightmare of Black Island - Mike Tucker [22]
Billy shook it solemnly. ‘Hi.’
‘What sort of stuff did you see?’
Billy shrugged. ‘Just vans at first, delivering stuff. Equipment. Computers and things. Then the people in the masks appeared. Didn’t see them arrive. . . They were just there one morning. Me and Dai had snuck into the courtyard at the back, were trying to see through the window into the cellar. They nearly saw me. Had to hide behind the bins. That’s when I saw the bad stuff.’
‘Bad stuff?’ Rose felt the hairs on her neck stand up. ‘What sort of bad stuff?’
Billy looked nervously round at his friends. ‘Bags. Black bin bags. But there was a smell and. . . red stuff. One of the bags was leaking and I saw red stuff come out.’
‘Blood?’ Rose thought back to the pools of blood on the shore, the Doctor’s suspicion that someone was ‘cleaning up after their pet’.
‘I think so. We didn’t hang around to find out. We legged it for the tunnel.’
‘Tunnel?’
‘We found it,’ announced Ali proudly. ‘None of the grown-lips know it’s there. Going down the tunnel’s another dare.’ Her face fell. ‘Only Billy and Dai have been brave enough to go down it so far.’
Rose’s mind was racing. She wasn’t certain that Ali was right about them being the only ones who knew about the mysterious tunnel. Parents did tend to know more about what their children got up to than they let on. But whether Morton knew about the tunnel was 53
another matter. He certainly had no interest in the upkeep of the house and the fact that the kids were able to get into the grounds via some secret entrance probably meant that he had even less of an interest in the history of the property.
It seemed the perfect way to get a closer look at the house without Morton knowing.
‘Can you tell me where this tunnel is?’
‘Sure.’ Ali caught hold of her hand. ‘It’s this way. Come on. I’ll show you.’
The Doctor trudged down the shingle towards an extraordinary tangle of rubbish piled up on the beach. From a distance it looked like a heap of flotsam deposited by a particularly high tide, but as he drew closer he could see that there was some kind of method to the madness, glimpses of what must once have been some sort of large beach house or holiday home protruding through the debris.
Tarpaulins stretched out over the roof were held in place with clumsy clusters of knotted rope, walls were patched with pieces of driftwood and the sides of packing crates, window frames were splintered and rotten, and from a tall metal pipe towering over the structure a thin trail of smoke emerged, whipped inland by the offshore breeze.
Behind the house what had once been a sizeable fenced garden was now a jumble of salvage from the sea. Oil drums, plastic buoys, fishing nets and lobster pots lay among huge piles of driftwood, with brambles snaking through them. A wreath of lifebelts hung on the twisted remnants of a children’s swing, and underneath everything the Doctor could just make out the shape of what looked like an old Triumph Herald, its bodywork rusted and corroded after years in the sea air.
From inside came the sound of singing and the smell of cooking. The Doctor stepped up to the shabby front door, straightened his coat and knocked firmly. There was a muffled curse from inside, followed by the sound of movement. A few moments later the patched and battered door swung open and Bronwyn Ceredig peered out at him 54
suspiciously with those brilliant grey eyes of hers. She was wearing a long floral dress, with a striped apron tied around her waist. Her long grey hair was pulled back in an untidy bun and little half-moon spectacles perched precariously on the tip of her nose.
‘Yes?’
The Doctor smiled his broadest smile.
‘Good afternoon! Bronwyn, isn’t it? I’m the Doctor. We met at the pub last night. Bob over at the harbour said that you might be the best person to talk to about hiring a boat!’
She gave a disdainful sniff, threw the door open and vanished back into the house. ‘You’d better come in. I’m just making some Welsh cakes.’
The Doctor followed her, closing the door behind him. The inside