Doctor Who_ The Nightmare of Black Island - Mike Tucker [58]
Morton wiped a trembling hand across his brow.
‘I staggered back from the crater, desperate to get away. My head felt as though it would burst. I could hear things, see things in my mind, terrible alien things. Ancient things from the depths of space. I could hear my cousin and the others screaming too. We were. . . connected somehow, sharing the death of this creature. It tried to claw its way from the crater, but the flames and its wounds were too much for it. It fell back into the wreck of its burning ship, its death throes sending me to my knees. I could feel it burning me, burning my soul. And then it stopped.’
Morton took a deep breath. ‘That was the start of it, Doctor. With the death of that creature, the start of a life of torment. We hurried away from that place. Already we could hear the jangle of bells from the fire engines and people were hurrying over to see what had happened. We made a pact that night, the seven of us, never to tell of what we had seen, never to speak of it outside our group. But we left that place with more than we had arrived with. The echo of that creature was still inside our heads.’
The Doctor leaned close to Morton, peering into his eyes, his brow furrowed. ‘And it’s still in there, isn’t it? Trapped inside you, struggling to survive, to get back out.’
‘Not all of it.’ Peyne stepped closer to Morton’s side, running her gloved hand almost tenderly over the old man’s head. ‘Just a fraction, a portion of the whole.’
‘Those people in the ward downstairs!’ the Doctor exclaimed. ‘They 139
are the other children that witnessed the crash!’
‘Each of them holding part of the mind of Balor.’
‘And you’ve promised to remove those pieces. Well, you’ve been taking your time! Seventy years or more to track down seven children. Not exactly rushing things, are you?’
Peyne hissed angrily. ‘We traversed sixteen star systems looking for Balor. The Brintepi had laid a trap for him on their home world, bound him with their technology and cast his ship out into space and time.’
‘Ah yes, the great battle of Monson Daar. Not your finest hour.’
‘The cowards made a pre-emptive strike. Massacred our defences.’
‘So now you intend to bring Balor back to life.’
‘Balor is the god of our people! It is written that we must free him and he will lead us to victory.’
‘Careless of you to lose him, then.’ The Doctor cocked his head to one side. ‘So, come on. How did you find him? Doesn’t sound as though he had much of a chance to send you a postcard after he crashed. And I’m assuming that everything was covered up here fairly quickly. Spacecraft crashes do tend to stir things up a little.’
Morton gave a spluttering laugh. ‘Indeed. But governments had secret departments even in the 1930s, and it’s extraordinary how a few threats and a lot of bribes can silence a community. The remains of the saucer vanished almost overnight, the crater was filled in and the entire incident forgotten. . . ’
‘And you and your friends?’
‘Things were different back then, Doctor. Children were to be seen and not heard. No one knew what we had witnessed, no one bothered to ask beyond a cursory interview with the local policeman. We were persuaded to believe that the crash was a military aircraft, patted on the head and sent on our way. Forgotten, unimportant.’
‘But with a fragment of creature still within each of you. That must have been hard.’ There was sympathy in the Doctor’s voice.
‘Some of us coped better than others, Doctor. My cousin spent fifteen years in an asylum; his sister was imprisoned for the attempted murder of her mother; one became a monk and never uttered a word in the rest of his life. Each of us carried a different aspect of the 140
creature, each of us reacted to it differently, was controlled by it differently.’
‘And no one realised that anything was wrong? No one tried to help you?’
‘The world had other concerns, Doctor. War was looming. What were the problems of a handful of schizophrenic children when the Nazi hordes were poised to sweep across Europe? By the time I was old enough to realise