Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [24]
wolfhound with a dodgy left eye and a penchant for barking during the theme tune to Coronation Street, had gone missing. One minute she’d been behaving herself, as impeccable as ever, the next she pulled on the lead so hard that Bernard fell to the ground. He let go of her lead; she hurried towards the folly, just off the footpath, then started jumping around, saliva-flecked jaws snapping at nothing but fresh air. Her growling, as she landed momentarily before another leap into the air, was unlike anything Bernard had ever heard in all his thirty years of keeping abandoned dogs.
Bernard had tried to reassure Betsy, calling out to the hound to encourage her back to his side, but she seemed blind and deaf to anything other than whatever it was that she thought she saw.
Suddenly Betsy stopped jumping, and Bernard hoped that she would return to him, but moments later, and with an earsplitting, shrieking howl, she ran straight towards the weeds and brambles at the back of the folly.
For all her odd behaviour, it wasn’t until Betsy became eerily quiet that Bernard had become truly worried. By the time he padded over to the undergrowth he could no longer see or hear her. Bernard had called and called for the best part of an hour, pacing up and down differing stretches of the footpath, all the while expecting Betsy to suddenly come charging out of the hedges and brambles, perhaps with a freshly killed rabbit in her jaws.
But Betsy never returned. Bernard went home, then visited the Retreat the next day, asking if he could search all the grounds. The doctor in charge –
a nice young woman with distracted eyes and a beautiful smile – had made arrangements, but neither Bernard nor Farrell, the security guard who accom-panied him, could find a trace of dear Betsy.
Since then Bernard and Marion had come up to the public footpath near the Retreat every afternoon, but Bernard’s expectation of finding Betsy again was beginning to fade. Marion in turn was behaving oddly at home, hiding behind the sofa and chewing on one of Bernard’s slippers when she thought he wasn’t watching.
Bernard was just considering the relative cost and merits of placing posters in the shops and pubs of the surrounding villages when they came upon the folly. It was a squat, ugly building with a domed roof and recessed areas that might once have contained urns or statues, though most of these had long since been destroyed. There was graffiti on one of the walls, bragging about some sexual conquest or other, but elsewhere twisting vines showed that nature wasn’t far behind man when it came to denigrating the grey stone building.
Bernard paused, pulling up the collar on his coat, the recent memories still fresh in his mind. Marion, too, seemed suddenly nervous, knocking into Bernard’s legs from time to time as if needing the reassurance that he was 42
still there.
‘It’s all right, girl,’ he said soothingly. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
All the same, he gripped the leash tighter.
Bernard and the retriever stood motionless for some time, listening intently.
He sensed nothing, bar the wind, which was picking up. The weatherman had predicted storms later. Perhaps it was time to be getting back.
Just as Bernard turned he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.
A hint of light, twinkling like a star, from the folly itself. And, like the stars at night, it faded a little as he looked at it head-on, but if he turned his face away it glowed brightly, a tiny white bead of brightness from somewhere deep inside the building.
Intrigued, Bernard approached the folly, his head half-cocked to one side.
The light was seeping through a minute gap between thick wooden boards that had been nailed over the doorway.
Marion was fidgeting at his side, but Bernard pressed on, making loud, confident noises, even if, inside, he felt anything but self-assured.
He placed a hand on the wooden boards, then carefully pressed his face against the gap. Before he could see anything he felt – or imagined? – the