Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [18]
I spent days and nights in my bed, crushing Denny's shirt to me. It still smelled of him, as if he'd only just taken it off and gone out to make a coffee. If I dreamed hard enough, I could almost believe that – until I saw the blood. My grief even fractured the memory of what had happened to the young girl in the Goblin's house; what I had witnessed was so inexplicable it had become like a dream, so much more unreal than the harsh reality of life and death.
The worst thing was that Denny's killing made no sense. All I could see was a good man, an honest, plain individual who had never harmed anyone, murdered. Not only was it such a painful injustice, I couldn't begin to comprehend why anyone would want to kill Denny.
It felt like the heart had been ripped out of my world, but towards the end of the fifth day I knew I had to replace it with something before I fell apart completely. And that was the beginning of the end.
I'd been in the I-Thou for an hour, sitting over a cold coffee making plans, when Ben and Polly slipped into the booth opposite me.
'How are you, Summer?' Polly took my hand sympathetically.
'Okay.' I think they could both see the lie in my face.
'We came round the house a few times,' Ben said awkwardly, 'but your mates said, you know, you weren't ... up to it.'
'Thanks for being so concerned.'
'We didn't want to leave you ... after what happened.' Ben's eyes were everywhere apart from on me. 'But, you know ...'
'You had other responsibilities. I understand. How is the Doctor?'
They looked at each other. 'Giving us a bit of grief,' Ben said.
'He's not himself,' Polly continued. 'He's so wrapped up in this business ... more than he normally is.'
'He's obsessed,' Ben grunted. 'Thinks it's some kind of game.'
'And you don't?' I asked.
Ben leaned across the table conspiratorially. 'We do, but we reckon it's working on two different levels. Whoever's behind this obviously knows the Doctor – knows how he thinks and what'll get him intrigued. And is using all this stuff to pull him in.'
'Why?' I asked.
'To lure him into a trap.' Ben sat back in his seat, nodding adamantly.
'You've told him what you think?'
'Oh yeah. It's like talking to a brick wall.'
'Ben's right, though,' Polly said. 'Whoever is doing all this knows the Doctor well. Just yesterday, a boy delivered pieces of a computer ... an electronic brain. And the same thing happened. The boy ran off like he'd just woken up, and after a moment the computer parts just disappeared.'
'But they weren't parts of just any computer,' Ben broke in. 'The Doctor recognised that they came from a sort of super-computer called WOTAN, which we had a bit of trouble with a while back.' Polly smiled at a secret joke. 'That was it – he was gone for good. Fiddling with his little tinker toys, ignoring us whenever we spoke. We just left him to it.'
'You're trying to take my mind off Denny, aren't you?' I couldn't help but smile at their sheepish expressions that I'd caught them out. 'You don't have to worry about me, really. I've got something important to do. I was just sitting here, making sure I was up to it.'
'From what I've seen, I'm sure you're up to anything, Summer,' Polly said.
'I don't know.' I chewed on a nail, stared into the oily reflection in my coffee. 'I've thought about myself a lot over the last few days ... about who I am ... about why I am who I am. And the thing that keeps coming back is seeing the President get shot. That changed everything in the
world, and it changed me inside, too.'
Clouds of steam hissed from the gleaming coffee machine at the counter while someone hummed a Beatles song. There was a mellow mood to the place that made me feel safe for the first time in a week.
'There's one real reason why I was drawn to the Haight,' I began. 'There's a war