Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [14]
in that way, just... well, something a bit odd going on somewhere. And thinking she was hurt, and the oak and ash safe for now, I chased off after her. And it wasn‟t very long before I found I was totally, hopelessly lost again. Well, remembering last time, and not wanting to wander around for a good few hours more, especially with screaming women and dread-inspiring voices and so on around, I suddenly had a brain wave. My shotgun! Why hadn‟t I thought of it before?
If I were to let off a few shots into the air, the local formers, alert for any attempts on the lives of their sheep, would be bound to hear and spring into action.‟
„So I raised the old shooter, pointed it up into the leaves, and pulled the trigger. There‟s the expected bang, but before I know it I‟m being attacked from all sides. Branches thumping into me, knocking me off my feet, wood and leaves and what-have-you coming from all directions, and all I really remember is rather a lot of pain, and that‟s it until this morning. When I woke up I was aching like I‟d gone twenty rounds in the ring. The sunlight was coming through the trees, which let me see that there was a good deal of blood around the place, all of it, I am quite certain, mine. But when I tried to get up, I found it wasn‟t that easy. Not because of the aches and the pains, but because while I was knocked out a bramble bush had grown over me.‟
„Don‟t look at me as if I should be in St Sebastian‟s. If you‟ve believed everything I‟ve told you so far, there‟s no cause for you to be doubting me now. A bramble bush. Not there when I went off to bye-byes, very definitely there when I woke up J tried to move. The slightest shuffle tore the thorns into my tender flesh. And, when it did so, I kid you not, there came a sort of rustling from the bush. Not made by my movements I mean, but as if it had a life of its own. A sinister sort of rustling it was too. Now, that finished me off. Bramble bushes coming to life when I‟m in the middle of them was not the best start to the day, and to be perfectly frank, I lost it. I tore out of that bramble bush as if my life depended on it, not caring what damage it did to the Stanton flesh, and ran as fast as I could. If I ran and ran, I reasoned, as much as I was reasoning at the time, I‟d have to come out of that wood eventually. And so I did. And I didn‟t stop running until I got here to this very doorstep. And now perhaps one of you would be good enough to hurry upstairs and tell Lucinda she need feet no more for my absence, while I wrap myself around every sausage and kidney in this place.‟
There was a silence. Harry knew he had no place here, not when news of this sort had to be broken. He got up and started to retreat, his subtlety slightly hampered by his falling over his chair on the way. Apologising all the while (and having become the centre of attention), he backed out of the door.
He would fetch his coat from the bedroom, and go back to the wood. Investigate this attacking trees business, and wait for the TARDIS to arrive.
But as he was approaching the front door, duffel-coated and ready to go, he heard a scream. Then another, and another. No unearthly screams these, but full-bodied earthly yells from someone definitely of this world. Harry dashed towards the noise. In the kitchen he found the girl who‟d brought him tea; no longer calm and self-possessed, she was wailing on to a shoulder. A velvet-clad shoulder. Not needed there, Harry passed on to see the source of her agitation.
Through the open back door, he could see nothing but green, and he stepped outside cautiously.
The air was filled with the scent of sage and rosemary and chives. Creepers