Doctor Who_ The Nightmare of Black Island - Mike Tucker [49]
‘In between rescuing Rose and Ali, dismantling the transmitters and stopping all this ever happening again. I do love holidays by the sea!’
The tangle of rhododendron bushes and broken brickwork that Billy Palmer had told him about loomed out of the darkness. The Doctor pushed his way through the wet leaves and into the remains of the old coalbunker. The tunnel entrance was only partially concealed. Billy had said that they’d left in a hurry.
The Doctor pulled the sodden plywood to one side, peering into the dark.
‘Cold, wet tunnel. . . just my sort of thing!’
His sonic screwdriver flared into life, casting a bright blue glow into the gloom, and the Doctor dived inside.
Rose ran faster than she could ever have believed possible. She made no attempt at concealment; she just wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and the nightmare in the library. When the thing had opened its eyes Rose had felt such fear and dread and total despair that she thought her legs were going to give way beneath her. As the cold, black gaze had swept over her, every nightmare and every bad moment of her life had bubbled up from the places in her memory where they had been hidden. She had started to shake uncontrollably, too frightened to cry or to scream. All warmth had left her, all hope; she was cold and empty and alone, abandoned, at the mercy of this thing.
She had screwed her eyes up, waiting for the final blow, for teeth and claws to tear into her flesh, but that blow never came. She forced herself to open her eyes again, physically flinching under the silent gaze of the towering monster.
The eyes were dead. Vacant. Nothing had glimmered in those cold black orbs: no intelligence, no life, nothing. The creature was a shell, a vessel. It couldn’t see her, but somehow that made it even more frightening.
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And so Rose had run. She had turned and fled from that room, tearing down the long corridor, throwing open the window and escaping into the night. She had almost broken her neck on the fire escape. The metal was wet and slippery and her feet had slid away from her a couple of times, sending her tumbling down the steep stairs. She had hit the courtyard running and hadn’t looked back, diving headfirst into the tunnel.
Only now, in the cool dark, did she finally start to slow down, aware that if she carried on in her manic flight she was liable to fall headfirst into the mud and brain herself on the wet brickwork. She dropped to her knees, oblivious to the freezing water, her breath coming in great ragged gulps. She hated herself for running, hated herself for being unable to stand her ground. After all she’d been through! But most of the things she had faced somehow paled into insignificance beside the terror she had felt in the library.
‘What are you up to Morton? What the hell are you up to?’
Ali sat in the dark tunnel, banging her torch against the palm of her hand in frustration. The blinking light from the LEDs had been fine when she’d reached the safety of the tunnel, but as she’d progressed further and further into the inky depths it had started to falter. Now she could only get any light if she turned the torch off and then back on again, and even then it only lasted for a few seconds. Hunkering down against the tunnel wall, she unscrewed the back of the little keyring and carefully pulled out the two tiny watch batteries. She clasped them in the palm of her hand, trying to warm them