Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [96]
He began tugging the boards from the doorway, showing a strength that seemed at odds with his slender frame.
Before Laska could even volunteer to help he’d pulled away enough boards to allow them to enter, bent double like pilgrims entering a temple.
Laska expected darkness and gloom inside the mausoleum. Instead there was radiance and illumination. An intense, twinkling point of light, almost too bright to gaze upon, hung as if suspended in the centre of the chamber.
Despite the sudden brightness, Laska felt herself drawn to the star. Ignoring the caskets, the stones, the cobwebs and the dirt, she stared continually at the burning light. It pulsed, grew, shrank back again. Occasionally it pushed against yet more of the darkness, and seemed to reach back further into the room – or into some other reality. It opened like a flower, revealing a shifting, almost organic tunnel. Shadows flitted by – shadows of movement. Shadows of something less than human.
‘A tear in reality,’ said Smith, gently turning Laska’s head to one side with his finger. ‘Don’t look at it for too long. You might not like what you see.’
‘Where did it come from?’
‘It’s one end of a tunnel. Or one expression of it, rather. Did I mention that the Sholem-Luz are like spiders with tunnels throughout space and time?
This tunnel, this outer fragment of web, was caused by the events of 1903. I 176
imagine there might be another rip somewhere in the chapel, perhaps hidden from view. Or perhaps it only occasionally comes into plain sight.’ Smith shivered. ‘I never did like that place.’
Laska looked around at their dank and threatening environment. ‘You prefer a mausoleum?’
Smith smiled. ‘Odd, isn’t it?’
‘This rip,’ said Laska, still mesmerised by the light. ‘Why here?’
Smith paused. ‘I’m just speculating,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s a quiet place, full of the dead. And, at points in the past, full of emotion. . . ’
Suddenly Smith grasped Laska’s arms, staring deep into her eyes with unexpected urgency.
‘Tell me about something positive. Tell me about your father. Something nice.’
‘Nice?’
‘Yes.’
Laska made as if to look around her but Smith held her fast. ‘Please,’ he said.
Laska remembered Smith’s earlier comment on everyone thinking positively. Perhaps he was concerned that, in the midst of the darkness, Laska’s depression would drag them all down.
‘I suppose, for a while, I blamed Dad for dying, for leaving me on my own,’
she said. ‘Like I said earlier – even though I had to accept he had every reason to take his life, I still felt resentful.’
‘No one likes feeling lonely.’
‘But, just recently. . . I’ve been thinking more and more about him. You know, I had to try so hard not to keep blabbing about him, he was on my mind so much.’
‘You succeeded very well,’ observed Smith.
‘I suddenly realised that all the bad memories of him. . . All the times we’d argued. . . Even the anger that I felt when he died. . . They’d all gone. All I had left was positive memories.’
‘That often happens. That’s a good thing, Laska.’
‘I really loved my dad,’ said Laska, suddenly, unbelievably, on the verge of tears. In a moment all her barriers had been brought down, all her defences destroyed. She was naked and vulnerable. It felt good to admit that she didn’t have all the answers – that sometimes even Caroline Darnell was looking for love and affirmation.
‘And he loved you,’ said Smith. ‘It’s obvious from the way you talk about him: He risked a glance over Laska’s shoulders, but kept his hands on Laska’s arms.
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‘He loved that pendant,’ said Laska suddenly. ‘I can’t believe that it contains something so evil.’
‘One should never trust appearances.’
‘I remember we had a picnic one day. We were both milling about the house, not doing much – it must have been a Saturday – and out of the blue Dad suggested we get a hamper, fill it with fattening