Doctor Who_ The Nightmare of Black Island - Mike Tucker [53]
Sprawled out on the bed, arms folded behind his head, was the Doctor.
He sat up unhurriedly and gave her a quizzical look.
‘Room service, I hope. I’d love a cuppa.’
Snarling, Peyne raised the gun.
Beth Hardy looked up from her work as she heard the heavy rumble of her husband’s Range Rover in the car park. She placed the glass 126
she had been washing back on the bar and wiped her wet hands on her apron.
She had taken down every single glass from the shelf above the bar and washed them, one by one, then polished them until they gleamed and put them back again. The job had taken hours. It was stupid, but it was the only thing she could think of to take her mind off Ali. After the Doctor’s speech, the bar had emptied quickly, everyone hurrying back to their homes to wake their children and their neighbour’s children. Outside, the village was now a cacophony of music and air horns. Someone had even found a box of fireworks from somewhere – Eric Molson from the corner shop probably – and the occasional bang from some of the bigger rockets was still rattling the windows in their frames. In among the noise was something that had not been heard for a long time in Ynys Du: the sound of children laughing.
A few had returned to the pub, their children in tow. Tables all across the bar were scattered with board games hauled from Ali’s bedroom, and the restaurant had been turned into an impromptu dance floor. Parents and children alike jiggled and danced to a collection of 1950s classics. Somewhat appropriately, ‘Rock Around the Clock’ was playing at the moment.
Beth watched as a young boy, the youngest of Bob Perry’s kids, slumped into a chair in the corner of the lounge bar, rubbing at his eyes with the sleeve of his dressing gown and giving a huge yawn. Almost immediately his mother was at his side, hauling him back to his feet and twirling him out on to the dance floor. Beth could see the determination in her false smile, hear the strain in her laughter. Most of the children were young and already tired by week after week of troubled sleep. They simply weren’t going to be able to keep them all awake for ever. Sooner or later one of them was going to give in to their fatigue, and then the things would start to appear again. Beth closed her eyes and whispered a silent prayer. She had realised almost immediately the connection between the monsters and the children. She had seen things that Ali had drawn in her sketchpad and written about in her notebook stalking down the high street, all 127
claws and teeth and childish colour schemes. These things hadn’t been real creatures; they were children’s monsters, combinations of every dark fairy tale, every schoolyard horror story, every half-glimpsed latenight movie. What had scared her more than the monsters was the thought of some government agency arriving to investigate, some faceless bureaucrat bundling Ali into the back of a van and taking her away. Beth had also been having nightmares since all this had started, but hers were not of monsters. In hers her daughter lay in a sterile hospital room, tubes and needles littered across her skin, faceless men in white coats prodding and pulling at her. She wasn’t going to let that happen.
And so she had kept her fears to herself, not talking to her friends, not talking to her husband. She was sure that most if not all of her neighbours suspected the same as her. Half-finished conversations, furtive nods, smiles of sympathy, but no one with the courage to do anything. They had made the monsters part of their normal lives, fitting them into their nightly routine, as familiar as brushing teeth or putting the cat out.
Beth almost laughed out loud. It was ludicrous. The entire village had tried to convince itself that nothing was wrong, but the truth was that everything was horribly, terribly wrong, only they were powerless to stop it. If the Doctor was right, then they were being manipulated, controlled by the machinery in the lighthouse, chained to the village, kept afraid