Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [104]
She couldn’t be sure the creature had meant to force Dr Smith into contact with the bright tear that still gleamed in the darkness of the mausoleum.
Perhaps it had been as surprised as Laska had been by Smith’s sudden and complete disappearance. But Laska had no intention of finding out. With her back to the doorway, she edged away from the creature – although she didn’t have the first idea what she would do if the thing suddenly leaped at her.
‘Think positive,’ she found herself saying – perhaps to drown out the tiny voice in her mind that kept reminding her that such optimism hadn’t done Dr Smith any good. ‘ Think positive.’
But she couldn’t think – not while the hound stared at her with its baleful eyes. She couldn’t picture anything other than the great stoved-in skull, the flesh that writhed with alien influence, the grey, exposed muscle that clung to its ivory-white bones.
She closed her eyes.
This had better work.
She remembered a birthday, when she had been six or seven years old. Her father had told her that they simply couldn’t afford a party, but that she’d get her presents after school. Laska had spent the day furiously glowering, drawing pictures of stick men with arrows in their heads and big drops of blood oozing from severed limbs.
When Dad picked her up from school he waved aside her queries about her presents. He apologised: some business had come up. ‘I’ve got to see a man about a dog,’ he said – his stock answer to everything.
He drove to a building in the middle of nowhere, either a farmhouse or a converted barn, Laska couldn’t remember which. He’d disappeared inside and 193
seemed to have been gone for ages. Laska was so cross with him she didn’t even look up when she heard the scrunch of footsteps on gravel.
The car door swung open. A puppy – a perfect, pale, Andrex puppy with floppy ears and wet nose – leapt immediately into her lap, licking Laska’s face and managing high-pitched, squeaking barks of delight.
‘Happy birthday, darling,’ Dad had said, before driving her to a local pub.
The skittle alley was decorated with Happy Birthday banners and already full of her friends. Everyone wanted to talk to Laska – to Caroline – and pet the puppy. It piddled in the corner, ruining the special paper plates that Dad had intended to put the party food on, but nothing could ruin the most perfect birthday.
She remembered – exhausted from the evening’s fun and games – dozing in the back of the car on the way home. Dad had carried her to her bed, and – as if the final treat of the day – let her drift to sleep with her clothes on. Her final memory of that day was his arm around her tiny body, protective and warm.
Laska forced open her eyes. She half-expected to be eyeball to eyeball with the creature, or see it only as a blur through the air as it latched on to her throat with its teeth.
Instead the dog was resting on the floor, its head between its forelegs, as if induced into sleep by the lullaby of Laska’s memories.
Laska crept through the doorway, ducking down under the planks that Smith had torn away.
Unbidden, another memory flashed across Laska’s mind – another birthday, a suicide attempt – and she heard the hound stir, a half growl at its throat.
She shook her head, bringing the happy party back to mind: memories of little Simon Jones OD’ing on chocolate and going a very unusual shade of puce.
Eyes half-closed, Laska ran out of the mausoleum.
The flames took hold almost instantly, springing up to form a wall of red and orange just in front of James Abel. Behind him the grotesque dark centaur began to fade from view, but James seemed energised by its momentary appearance. He strode forward, through the wall of fire, and grasped Liz’s terrified face in one outstretched hand.
‘Who first, Liz?’ he asked.
Fitz launched himself at James. James turned calmly – as if time were slowing down for his benefit – and reached out with his spare hand. He deflected Fitz