Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [28]
Laska couldn’t, for the moment, find any mention of the Darnells, so she wasn’t sure how, if at all, she might fit in with these unfamiliar names from still less familiar times. She turned instead to a sheaf of papers, yellowed and crumbling, held together with a ribbon, but found the handwriting – all flourishes and interlocking serifs – impossible to fathom.
Beneath the papers was a large book with a cracked cover of black leather.
As a child she remembered Dad coming back from antiquarian fairs with an array of volumes under his arm and, like Alice in Wonderland, she was continually disappointed that they never seemed to contain pictures. She opened the cracked cover and found that it was a personal diary that went back about a hundred years.
She almost immediately snapped shut the book, wondering if there was something else in the suitcase, something that was easier on the eyes and less invasive of the dead.
But she felt compelled to carry on.
Choosing a page at random she began to read – as the darkness began to swallow the world beyond her curtains.
48
Six
Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity
(Communion)
Extract from the Diary of Dr Thomas Christie Thursday 24th December 1903 (continued)
Yet another tale of Fern’s cruelty and evil was repeated within my hearing (Mary Jones is gripped by many confusions and illusions but, when the moment is right, she recounts recent events with nothing short of startling recall and the sort of precision that leads me to believe she is telling of an actual event, not some spontaneous fantasy). I imagine they may have happened as much as two or three days previously, but I note them here for the benefit of my own chronology and future remembrance.
Mary Jones described Fern closing the cell door behind him and turning the key in the lock. (I can only imagine, if she truly understood what she was seeing, the terror that must have gripped her at that moment.) Doubtless Fern laughed – that awful, throaty chuckle that so chills my soul – and his reputation, I am sure, went before him. The poor, dishevelled young woman pushed herself into a corner, trying to cover her face with her callused hands.
(It seems to me that although Christmas means nothing to such a man, beyond base thoughts of holiday and drink, yet still deep within him some kind of primal clock ticks: a longing for the new year, a desire to turn at last from the cold white heart of winter to the half-remembered power and vigour of spring. He is the sort of basic fellow who feels that seasonal shift, regardless of whatever religious or pagan rituals might be laid over it. He is less preoccupied by the season of Advent than driven by an uncomplicated lust, an earthly desire that niggles at him and is rarely satisfied.
I say this not to excuse his behaviour but to try to understand it the better; to understand why a place such as Mausolus can so swamp a degenerate man’s mind. I have no doubt that each day within its dark walls feels to Fern like a month outside.)
All that followed took place after the end of Fern’s working day: he could have been home already, and how I wished he had simply left Mausolus behind and returned to whatever family he possessed – poor wretches! But this 49
is the nature of addiction, and I have yet to perceive a finite limit to those things to which humans can become captivated and obsessed. When we –
willingly, or in simple weakness – allow ourselves into bondage to any other power or desire, we become mere puppets to other forces, be they for good or ill.
I can see, in the eye of my mind, Fern looking around the cell, his nose wrinkling in disgust. There is no furniture in that room, and the dampness of the walls and floors (which refuse all attempts at treatment) seem immediately to seek out throat and lungs and make breathing harsh and ragged. There are ever-growing spirals on the rough stone walls, the mindless etching of deep layers of fungus.
The window is little more than a castle’s arrow-slit, but what light