Doctor Who_ The Nightmare of Black Island - Mike Tucker [57]
‘Except that you and your friends weren’t tormented by creatures.’
‘Oh, but we were, Doctor. Tormented by a creature more terrible than you can imagine.’
‘What happened to you, Morton?’ The Doctor’s voice was gentler now. ‘What did you see?’
‘The seven of us had left our parents in the village. They were too busy with their gossip and their shopping. And my father and uncle were far too interested in the local beer to pay any attention to their errant offspring. We made our way up towards the cliff top – Ynys Du was a good deal smaller then, the woods closer, a haven of cool shadows. My cousin was never a good influence. He had stolen half a dozen cigarettes from my uncle’s jacket pocket. It had been our intention to hide in the woods and smoke them.’ Morton gave a grim smile. ‘They say that cigarettes are bad for your health. If I had known the consequences of that particular illicit cigarette. . . ’
He closed his eyes, as if willing the past back to life. ‘We sat on the edge of the wood, smoking our cigarettes, laughing at the younger ones coughing and spluttering, watching the sun on the waves. And then we saw it, low on the horizon, a blaze of light, pulsing, throbbing. At first we thought it was just light glinting on some great ship in the far distance, but the closer it came, the more we realised that this was no earthly ship.’
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‘A spacecraft.’
Morton opened his eyes. ‘It was just magnificent, Doctor, a vast disc of copper and bronze skimming over the sea. We sat watching it approach, mesmerised by its beauty, realising only far, far too late that the occupant of this magnificent machine had no control over his craft and what danger we were in.’
‘It crashed?’
Morton nodded. ‘We thought that it would smash into the cliff face, but at the last moment it lurched skyward, skimming the tree tops so close that I thought we would be able to reach out and touch it. We watched it arc overhead, and then it started to fall. We ran, terrified, as it smashed through the trees, the sound of tortured engines ringing in our ears. And then it exploded, throwing us all to the ground, splintering trees like toothpicks. We were lucky that day, or so we thought. We survived the explosion. If we had picked a slightly different spot for our nefarious activities. . . ’ Morton shrugged. ‘Then perhaps things would have ended then and there and none of this would be necessary.’
‘But things didn’t end then and there, did they, Nathaniel? This story doesn’t end with the explosion of a spacecraft on a remote stretch of Welsh coast, does it?’
‘No, Doctor. As I said, we were young, inquisitive. We thought that the world was ours and that we were indestructible. We picked ourselves up and made our way carefully through that shattered, smouldering wood, determined to see where the saucer had crashed. You know the new estate on the hill overlooking the village?’
The Doctor nodded.
‘All that was once woodland, razed by the fire from that doomed ship. The crater was vast, a great ragged gouge in the earth. Through the smoke we could see sections of the saucer: the metal, twisted and scorched, huge lumps of it, and machinery scattered as far as the eye could see. The flames were tremendous, the air like an open oven, but nonetheless we went as close as we dared, shielding our faces from the heat with our arms. It seemed impossible that anyone – or anything – could possibly have survived that terrible carnage, but we 138
had to know.’
‘And something had survived, hadn’t it?’ said the Doctor. ‘Something alien.’
Morton met the Doctor’s gaze. ‘Alien and terrible. We were all straining to see into the crater when it appeared, rising up out of the flames. Huge, unimaginably powerful. It was screaming in pain, flames over every part of it, its body torn almost to pieces in the crash. The noise it made overwhelmed us. It was in our ears and in our heads, enveloping us, consuming us with its pain, its anger, its will