Doctor Who_ Wooden Heart - Martin Day [25]
He grabbed another book from the shelf, opened it, flicked through its pages – more of the same. Amongst the prosaic details he found frequent mentions of the woods that surrounded the village, the fog that came across the lake – and the forbidden island at its heart. ‘Would I be right in thinking,’ he said, casually, ‘that something is going on at the moment? That there is some sort of problem…?’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked the Dazai.
‘Petr told me about the missing children,’ said the Doctor. ‘Anyway, call it bad luck, but when I arrive somewhere… Within five minutes it’s monsters and life ’n’ death and chaos, guaranteed.’
‘Do you precipitate this chaos, or are you merely drawn to it?’
‘I do wonder sometimes,’ said the Doctor, snapping the book shut and replacing it on the shelves. ‘People say you cannot measure something or observe it without altering it in some way…’
‘And by your very arrival you might inadvertently cause some change in your environment?’
‘Either that,’ admitted the Doctor, pulling another book at random from the shelves, ‘or the TARDIS has a real nose for trouble.’
‘TARDIS?’
‘My… ship. It’s thanks to the TARDIS that we’re…’ His voice trailed away to nothing.
‘Is there a problem, Doctor?’ asked the Dazai.
The pages within the volume the Doctor was inspecting were entirely blank. He returned it carefully to its place on the shelf, extracted another book. This one had a few pages of writing towards the back, but otherwise seemed unmarked. A third pulled from its place on the shelves was also empty-until, as the Doctor stared at the page, words began to appear, lines of dark pigment spreading across the surface of the parchment.
‘No,’ he said slowly, rubbing his eyes. ‘No problem at all.’
SEVEN
Saul nodded towards an expanse of shadowed leaves. Branches were shaking; the undergrowth was crackling as if on fire. Something was coming closer and closer.
Martha risked another sideways glance at Saul.
Crouching even lower to the ground, his face a mask of concentration, he had his elegant, short sword in his hand – Martha hadn’t even heard him draw it from his scabbard – and was staring intently at the low bushes. Martha could hear twigs snapping now, whole branches kicked aside – there was no stealth or subtlety here.
The thing – whatever it was – was shrieking, a high-pitched whine that set Martha’s teeth on edge.
She was just about to turn to Saul once more when the creature exploded out of the bush in a confusion of noise and scattered leaves.
It was like the animal that had disturbed her and the Doctor earlier. Martha glimpsed a bristly brown hide, a gaping mouth full of spittle and tusks, and black-button eyes now wide with fear.
Martha almost laughed with relief, only now aware of her racing pulse and the weight of her heart as it thumped like an industrial piston in her chest.
She turned to Saul. ‘We saw one of these earlier. I thought it was…’
Then she saw that Saul’s countenance had not changed. He was making some impatient sideways motion with his head, still staring deep into the trees. It took a moment for Martha to understand what he meant, and then it hit her like a runaway bus. The monster’s still there.
The creature announced its presence with a long, drawn-out cry, like a lamb’s bleat filtered through a huge but broken megaphone. A sapling came crashing to the ground in a splash of silver trunk and mud-coloured leaves. Finally, through a forced break in the trees, a great, purplish creature staggered into the light. A vile, oozing body sat atop several great, twitching legs, multi-jointed like an insect’s but as thick as an elephant’s. Stunted wings covered with barbs and pustules flapped into the surrounding trees, breaking them effortlessly. Martha had to crane her head upwards to see the head, which swayed from side to side atop a sinuous, tapering neck. The ‘face’ was flattened vertically, resembling the jaws of a Venus fly trap, edged by lidless black eyes.
The