Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [81]
The roses shook. Then a shoot inched out, and another, and another. A few minutes later, a passer-by would have seen no body in front of the Charnock house, just a mound of sweet pink roses.
Caleb Johnstone kept a water butt for the rainfall, and he used it to water his little vegetable patch when the weather was dry. He hadn‟t needed it for some months, and it was always full to the brim in the winter time. He hurried through his garden, once his solace and his pride and joy, now a place of fear.
Something grabbed at his ankle. He shied away, startled.
Something grabbed at his other ankle. He looked down. The vegetables were fighting back. Marrow vines and pea runners tangled his feet, crawled up his shins. Winding stems from runner beans entwined his wrists. Somehow, miraculously, the vines and creepers and stems lifted him off his feet, plucked him from the ground like a ripe pumpkin. He was dangling in mid air, swinging to and fro. He found himself dangling over his own water butt. And then the plants let go.
Amos Wetherham called himself a man of the soil, and was proud of it. But tonight he wished he lived in the middle of a city, at the top of a block of flats with no plants or animals to see for miles. He slowly made his way back to the pub. So what if he‟d had a pint or two, or three, already that evening, so what if his missus was waiting at home, probably hidden under the bed by now, he needed another drink. After what he‟d seen that night, he never wanted to be sober again.
He never was. The wolf caught him as he crossed the village green. The grass wrapped itself round his body, and pulled it down into the earth, a true man of the soil to the last.
By the duck pond, William Hodges sat with his head in his hands. He‟d watched a beautiful woman turn into a wolf, and trees come to life, but it was seeing a man shot that had bothered him the most. William was remembering the last war, and a young German boy who had cowered in front of him, begging for mercy. But William had been serving his king and country, and hadn‟t listened to the pathetic pleas.
Now all he could see was the boy‟s face, and all he could hear was that sobbing broken English.
The pond weeds slowly crept from the water. They curled around William‟s ankles, around his waist and his wrists.
And then they tugged. William rolled into the pond with barely a splash. When the wolf arrived, there were just a few bubbles on the surface.
But despite that disappointment, all in all the wolf killed six villagers that night.
The Doctor and Sarah sat at the foot of the dryad‟s ash tree.
Sarah had told the Doctor that Harry was still alive, that they had gone - would go - back in the TARDIS to rescue him. The Doctor, to her great relief, accepted this.
The Doctor in turn had told Sarah what Harry Sullivan had done next. What he‟d been told had happened.
Sarah sighed. „So Harry thought he‟d put the earth back to sleep. But he hadn‟t. Typical Harry, leaving a job half done.‟
„He banished evil from the land,‟ said the dryad.
Sarah turned. The tree spirit, the beautiful woman in green, had crept out again. Sarah considered her words. „OK, actually, that sounds fairly impressive.‟
„You‟d think the land would be grateful,‟ put in the Doctor.
The dryad shrugged „But the land is not evil. Nor is it good.
It just is.‟
„So,‟ said Sarah, getting up and pacing around as she worked this out, „all of the magic stuff with Hester Stanton -
creating barriers, strangling people, swallowing them up -
was using the land for evil, and that was stopped. But the land was still awake because of the werewolf and the blood and whatever spells had been cast, it just wasn‟t actively trying to harm people any more.‟
„The wolves left. No more blood was spilled.‟
„Right,‟ said Sarah. „So it settled down a bit and it seemed like it had gone back to sleep, but actually it‟s wide awake down there