Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [37]
At the bottom was a brick alley that smelled of old dust. We were in a twilight zone of grey light on the edge of illumination from an electric bulb not too far away. To one side there was a red door that looked brand new. We approached it cautiously and listened. There were faint echoes of machinery, but nothing more.
The Doctor reached out for the door handle, but then hesitated. 'What is it, Doctor?' asked Ben, anxiously.
'Well ... I do think we may be going into this Just a little ... mobhanded,' the Doctor replied. 'Five sets of tramping feet isn't really ideal, if we want to proceed in caution.'
Under duress, Ben, Polly and Stimson agreed to hang back. The Doctor took the handle firmly and swung open the door. We stepped over the threshold.
My tripping mind first told me I'd woken up from a bad dream. The light was unbearably bright, but it was only after the semi-gloom of the alley and because the walls and ceilings were a pristine white. We were in a clean, modern corridor with strip lights overhead. Numbered doors lay on either side and at the end was a T-junction.
'Curioser and curioser,' the Doctor said.
We spent what seemed like hours wandering around that place, though I guess that was my warped time perception. My senses were flying; I felt like a ghost, like I could walk through walls. I dreamt I knew everything there was to know about life, and it was good. We were in some kind of laboratory. Occasionally – or perhaps only once – we'd come upon long windows giving a view into rooms filled with shimmering glass testtubes bubbling with golden light and machines that hummed like cats in the night.
At one point voices came up like cascading waves. The Doctor grabbed my arm and pulled me round a corner where we couldn't be seen. I had to stifle a giggle; I wanted to step out and show myself.
Four men passed by at the end of the next corridor and my laughter was sucked away from me. They had faces like cemeteries, sloping in dark suits, white shirts, dark ties; creeps. I recognised the guy who almost lost his mask at Mathilda's party. The Doctor watched them go, rigid and dark.
I heard it long before I saw it. No, that's not quite right: I felt it, in my head. Whispering, quiet and gentle like the wings of a butterfly. Then came the colours on the walls, ceiling and floor, migrating slowly as if they had a life of their own. Miniature mandalas that swirled with so many complex shades it made my head spin. The Doctor couldn't see them.
As we progressed, the colours took on form, became like water lapping all around, like columns of fire, like skin rippling in the sun.
And then we came to a door, a white door, and it felt like a way through to another universe. The Doctor put a hand on my shoulder to steady me and we entered.
In the centre of a large vault was the Colour-Beast. The impression of it on my mind was like hitting a brick wall; I felt terror and wonder in equal measure and it was only the Doctor's steadying hand that kept me from running out of there, screaming.
It was twice the size of a man, with enormous batwings folded behind it; the face was a mass of ridges and horns, like some horrible demon from a medieval painting. And across its surface, those astonishing colours swirled and mutated hypnotically. Yet more than its appearance, it was the feel of it that disturbed me the most, as if I was recoiling from the sheer alien-ness of it on some level beyond the five senses.
Yet despite its terrifying appearance, it was shackled to the floor by huge chains. This confused me for a moment until something squirmed