Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [106]
‘I’m OK,’ Susannah was saying, though her forehead was already swelling with a purplish bruise.
James turned his attention to the body of William Butler, the patient who had committed suicide. He strode over to the corner where the body had been placed and hoisted the corpse over his shoulder like a rag doll. Liz wanted to intercede, to preserve some final dignity for the dead man, but felt powerless against the awesome power that seemed to be coursing through James’s body.
Indeed, as she watched, she glimpsed a dark figure towering over James’s form. Behind the many-legged creature she could just make out some sort of tunnel, and within that tunnel other living things were coming into focus.
The mirage around James Abel began to fade once more.
He walked
through its shimmering remnants with the patient’s body and returned to the flames. The fire now had a grip on about a quarter of the chapel; pews and a number of bookcases were black outlines in the flickering mass of searing yellow.
Although one arm seemed unnaturally twisted, James hoisted the corpse over his head, then hurled it into the heart of the conflagration.
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Fitz struggled to his feet. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked blearily.
‘I don’t think you want to know,’ said Liz.
She made herself watch, though. She saw the fire beginning its work of stripping skin and muscle away from the bones. Then the entire area began to glow, enveloping what was left of the body in a golden haze.
Despite the heat, Liz edged closer. The haze became stronger, seeming to eat away at the burning body.
There was a hideous, rending crash from the far side of the room. A beam had fallen from the ceiling, just where most of the people stood. The chorus of screams grew louder as the confused mass tried to find safety.
‘Look.’ Fitz was pointing back to the centre of the room. Another portal was appearing, this one more solid than any they had glimpsed before.
And at its heart a huge, deathly pale creature was taking form.
Laska ran through the corridors of the Retreat, trying to find the source of the fire.
She glanced into rooms as she passed by, and saw nothing but overturned tables and chairs, discarded clothing, and smashed lamp stands. In the ceiling of every room and corridor there were smoke alarms and sprinklers; she could not understand why these hadn’t kicked in to dampen down the fire and alert the authorities.
Then she remembered the problems they’d all been having with the phones.
There was a payphone just around the corner; she lifted the receiver but there was no dial tone.
Laska scrabbled in her pockets for her mobile. If only she could get a call through to the fire brigade. . .
‘Bollocks,’ she muttered under her breath. Still no signal.
She skidded to a halt outside the dining room, but found the room empty, with barely a sign that anyone had gathered there less than an hour previously.
A miasma was beginning to gather just below the ceiling; she followed the smoke, watching it become blacker and thicker, until she reached the stairs down to the basement.
She stripped off her coat and her long-sleeved T-shirt, turning the latter into a makeshift mask to filter out the worst of the fumes. Now dressed in just a vest top and her combats she shivered involuntarily.
But it was unlikely to be cold where she was going.
James stared at the inchoate figure at the centre of the room. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ he breathed.
That wasn’t quite the word Liz would have used. The creature had little of the bearing, the stature, of a centaur from legend, but its pale grey skin, its 197
eyes like two dark orbs, gave it a grotesque, haunted demeanour. Its many-jointed legs held it high in the air; the humanoid torso turned from side to side to survey the scene, to revel in the destruction.
As Liz watched she gained the faintest impression that, beneath the skin of the creature, writhed many smaller bodies, hands and legs, grotesquely screaming faces. But her imagination seemed to be running away with her.
She blinked, and the skin