Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [41]
Then Ricky and his friends came round to wash the car and she’d joined in. When she’d gone into the kitchen with Ricky to fetch Cokes and he’d brought up the subject of the family secret she’d seen her opportunity to hurt Creed.
So, she simply told her son the truth. But she shouldn’t have.
She should have spoken to Creed first. She’d dropped a bombshell on their family life and she hadn’t even consulted him. And what if Ricky gave the game away?
He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be that stupid, would he?
Creed would be furious. Justine had no idea what he might do.
But Ricky wouldn’t tell him. He’d promised.
Now Justine could hear Ricky’s voice, quiet in the kitchen below, then Creed’s voice, even quieter. Then Ricky again, then the sound of the front door slamming.
She got up off the bed and ran to the window. She saw the car reverse out of the garage into the driveway, Creed at the wheel. He backed the car swiftly into the street, gunned the engine and took off, heading west.
Justine felt her heart sink as she watched the car disappear.
The sun was going down. The shadows were falling long and angular through the trees in Gaines Woods. Creed had driven this route a thousand times, and even without engaging the car’s computer he could do it with hardly any conscious thought. Now, while he drove, automatically making turns, speeding up and slowing down, his mind was on other things. His mind was on Amy Cowan.
For months he’d been resisting her. He’d been building sand-castles in a tropical lagoon to keep the tide out. Now in his mind he let the sand-castles melt away. Now that warm tide began rushing in, sweeping away the barriers, sweeping away his resistance.
The car phone began to ring.
Creed switched it off.
He stepped hard on the accelerator, and the car sped through the deepening shadows of the woods as the sun went down.
He relaxed behind the wheel of the car. Racing through this August evening towards the Agency offices, he let Amy come flowing in towards him on an inexorable warm tide.
Chapter 16
‘It’s starting up again,’ said Benny.
Her arms were covered with goose-bumps. She leant against the library window, peering out into the night, the Doctor beside her. They stood together, staring out through the old, leaded-glass pane. Outside in the Kentish night the noise rose and fell in eerie shimmers. It had been coming and going for hours.
Benny shuddered. She couldn’t read the expression on the Doctor’s face as he stared out.
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Yes, it appears to be getting nearer.’
‘That’s not exactly what I wanted to hear.’ Benny could feel the sound getting to her, the way it had earlier. She had felt so vulnerable out in the garden that she virtually had to run indoors. Now the same spiralling fear rose in her with each swelling of the noise. Benny fought the fear. She forced herself to say something.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the Doctor.
‘It gets to me. I mean, I find it quite...’
‘Frightening.’
‘Yes, in a quick-panic kind of way. I mean, there’s no thought involved. My mind is trying to tell me that there’s nothing to worry about, but my body tells me to run and hide.’
‘Maybe your body knows something your mind’s forgotten.’
The howling rose and fell beyond the window, drifting eerily in the night air above the thick, rich orchards.
‘You mean the sound triggers a response in me? On a physical level?’
‘Yes. It touches on some ancient atavistic fear in you.
Something deep in the communal human psyche.’
‘You’re talking about a race memory,’ said Benny, feeling the fear ebb as her mind locked on to the discussion. ‘And race memories are a load of cobblers. Sub-Jungian nonsense. You can’t actually carry memories in your genes.’
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘But the human body still retains the same structures it had millions of years ago. And so does the mind.’
Despite the eerie sound outside Benny found herself smiling.