Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [46]
She felt - lying in an open grave - that she had only just escaped death. If she had escaped... she didn‟t think she could move, she was carved of ice; blood chilled in her veins and flesh turned to stone around it. After a few painful minutes she managed to drag on her jumper and coat with numb fingers that felt like a handful of frozen sausages. The extra layers made no difference: she would never be warm again. She couldn‟t conceive that she had once been so hot she had taken off her jacket voluntarily. Bizarre, ridiculous images leapt into her mind: lying on a giant beach towel, rubbing lotion into her arms and legs, wondering if she could stand another half hour in the sun before she began to redden. Sitting underneath a parasol outside a pub, calling for another fruit drink to cool her down - and make sure there‟s plenty of ice in it. Wandering the streets of Italy in shorts and T-shirt, desperately searching for some shade, eating a half-melted ice-cream cone and licking the drips off her wrist. How could any of that possibly be true? It could never have happened. There wasn‟t warmth like that in the world. But perhaps if she slept she could forget the cold again...
No! She forced her eyes back open, used every scrap of willpower to start digging again, hoping against hope it would bring back the warmth she remembered once feeling - but the blind determination that had got her through the first few hours had gone, and the sleep had emphasised her exhaustion, not lessened it. Now she took a rest every few minutes, and found it hard to care about the task which had seemed all the world to her at the other end of the night. Her eyelids fluttered closed even as she dug. More than once she misjudged her aim, through tiredness and cold, and scraped her own shins - her trousers would never be fit for wear again.
A drop of blood fell on the earth. Inside the ground, something stirred.
Finally, the coffin lid was clear. Only then did the scales of tiredness begin to fall from her eyes. A shivering, nervous energy began to course through her veins, as if she‟d had no sleep at all and a dozen cups of coffee besides. It took several frantic tries before the blade of the shovel - to be used as a lever - was inserted, and in the process the woollen gloves and palms underneath were shredded. Sarah felt the pain, but her mind was on another plane, concentrating on nothing but what was to come, what she would see. Only seconds now, only seconds and she would know, would see the dead face of Harry, the worm-feast that had been her friend. But she would finally know. Seconds now, only seconds, ignore the pain and the blood, because nothing else matters. She didn‟t want to see, was terrified at the thought of the first glimpse, but somehow her eyes wouldn‟t close, were glued open despite the signals she was trying to send to them.
She was opening the lid. Her blood smeared on the once-shiny wood as she scrabbled for a hold, further opening wounds which hadn‟t had chance to heal.
Her blood dripped on the earth.
Now she was pulling the lid away, and she held her breath as the gases and fumes should hit her -
But they didn‟t. There were no gases, no fumes, because there was no body.
She‟d known. She‟d known that Harry wasn‟t dead. If she hadn‟t known that, deep inside, she wouldn‟t have done this (would she? Would the journalist inside her have insisted on the proof, whatever?).
She carefully leaned the lid against the side of the hole, and bent to look further. Inside the coffin were books. She picked up a couple and took them up to the graveside, examined them in the light of the lamp, cursed that she was leaving bloody fingerprints on everything she touched. Were these books a clue? Was there a secret message written inside, or did they represent a code, a hidden meaning?
A handsome bound copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles,
and an obviously well-thumbed Shakespeare, This Edition Published 1899. A code, a clue? Apart from the tenuous connection between