Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [22]
And the transformation didn't stop there. The sinew unravelled, the circulatory system grew lighter, faded away, until the bone beneath shone through, gleaming different colours in the psychedelic light show. Two words escaped from his throat, and I could have been mistaken, but they sounded very much like, 'Colour-Beast.' It was as if he could see right through me, through the walls, miles away.
The last thing I saw was his hideous skull gaping at me for help, the huge eyes staring at me in dismay, and then Mathilda's cronies bundled him back through the door.
Mathilda had clearly turned the event into a joke, for the hangers-on were giggling, but her gaze was fixed coldly on us. We couldn't deny we had seen something out of the ordinary; we were all pale with shock, frozen in one spot.
After a second, Ben tugged at my arm. 'Come on,' he hissed. 'We'd better get out of here:
As we hurried away, I was convinced some of the masks broke away from their conversations to follow.
We found the Doctor deep in conversation with Timothy Leary. For his experiments with altered states and the way he preached the spiritual side to the mainstream, Doctor Leary was a bigshot in the Haight – lots of people still wore their Timothy Leary is God buttons. 'Interesting,' Leary was saying. 'So it activates this God Centre in the mind.'
'It's just a matter of tuning in,' the Doctor said.
Leary took out a notebook and scribbled in it. 'I think I might use that, if you don't mind.'
Ben caught the Doctor's eye. He made his excuses with Leary and came over. 'Quite a visionary,' he mused.
Before Ben could explain what we'd seen, we were suddenly surrounded by several of the masked party-goers. The Doctor grinned at them and attempted to play the fool again, but I could see from his eyes that he was alert to the situation. 'If I'd known it was a masked ball I'd have come suitably attired,' he said. 'As it is – '
One of the masked men took hold of the Doctor's arm forcefully. 'Do you mind?' the Doctor said indignantly. Ben stepped in and there was a brief scuffle. A mask was knocked free and the party-goer abandoned the fight to replace it quickly. I saw his face, though, and it was surprisingly ordinary. In the Haight, where everyone was a freak, a crew cut and clear, cold eyes stood out like some alien race.
'I think they would like us to accompany them,' the Doctor said ironically. 'Best not to cause a scene.'
Ben plainly wasn't in agreement, but he restrained himself at the Doctor's word. The masked men led us back to the room where Mathilda held court – the Doctor gave her a little wave and a smile – and then we were taken through the mysterious door.
If the house had been weird and intense, what lay beyond the door was even more powerful. The room and the ones beyond it were lit by rotating red and green lights through a slowly changing filter that sent disturbing patterns playing continually. I could feel it affecting me subconsciously, putting my nerves on edge. The door had been soundproofed, for Tomorrow Never Knows blared out loudly on a permanent loop with Lennon repeating his lines from the Tibetan Book of the Dead; it was hypnotic and the repetition gave it a whole new frightening feel. His suggestion to turn off your mind and drift away, to lay down your thoughts and surrender to the void sounded uncomfortably like an order. All around, figures were slumped in various stages of doped-out bliss. At first I thought they were dead, but occasionally they'd twitch in time to the music or mutter some comment that made no sense.
We were herded through to a private room, still garishly lit, where the masked men stood in a line in front of the door. 'Come on, Doctor, let me have a go at them,' Ben said above the music, but not so loudly that the guards could hear him.
'I don't think so. They're carrying guns