Doctor Who_ Wooden Heart - Martin Day [44]
‘It shows me every living thing on this ship,’ said the Doctor. He pointed to the intermittent, contradictory reading. ‘This signal’s puzzling. The systems can’t get a lock on it, as if it doesn’t really exist in this universe.’
‘When I was wandering around,’ said Jude, ‘I kept seeing something out of the corner of my eye. I’d hear movement, but there was no one there.’
The Doctor looked up and down the long, bare corridor. Was it his imagination, or was it starting to become dark? Shadows seemed to be pooling at either end, and the doors recessed into the walls were much less clear now.
He turned back to the screen. He followed the signal along a corridor, tracing its path with his finger.
‘Whatever it is,’ said the Doctor, a note of anxiety creeping into his voice, ‘I think it’s coming this way.’
Martha, Petr and Saul returned to the village as quickly and as calmly as they could. Saul, not surprisingly, kept glancing over his shoulder, as if he thought he might catch some glimpse of his departed daughter. Martha didn’t blame him; she wished there was more they could have done, but she had to admit she was glad to be leaving the dark trees and the sounds of gathering beasts far behind,
All three skidded to a halt when they finally emerged from the trees, amazed and disturbed by what they saw. Martha had encountered nothing like it before; down below them the village was entirely shrouded in fog. It had rolled in towards the clustered buildings from the lake and surrounding fields, and coagulated and coalesced in every space. Great blocks of mist pressed tightly against every window, every door; from a distance it appeared to be a solid, seemingly impenetrable bank of cloud, about three storeys high and almost exactly the same size and shape as the village. Above the village, and around it, the air seemed relatively clear and open.
Martha suppressed a shiver; Saul and Petr exchanged a glance, then began to jog down the path and towards the blanketed buildings.
They made their way to Saul’s house. The fog was so thick Martha could only just make out her own hands in front of her face when she raised them. Thankfully Saul’s instincts were unaffected, and Martha grabbed a fistful of his clothing from time to time for fear of losing him completely in the mist. But Saul’s house was both empty and in darkness – and, now they looked more attentively through the fog, they could not see a single light burning against the grey fog.
‘They’ve all gone!’ exclaimed Petr, but Saul wasn’t so quick to come to a judgement. He knocked loudly on his neighbours’ homes – no response – and then set off down the mist-shrouded streets. Sighing, Martha and Petr ran after him.
They passed numerous silent houses, each a solid block of darkness that loomed suddenly out of the grey mist like a geometric creature of nightmare; the fog was so thick it soaked up every footfall, every sound of exertion, and even Saul’s bold cries.
Suddenly, Petr stumbled over something – Martha wasn’t surprised, even their feet and the ground on which they ran were barely visible. She bent down to help the village leader to his feet. Ignorant of their plight, Saul continued on and had soon disappeared into the grey, writhing void.
Something brushed against Martha’s back. She turned instinctively.
A child stood some metres away, the fog surrounding him like a protective cocoon. Martha was about to cry out to the others when she suddenly noticed that the child’s eyes were blank and lifeless, the colour of tears and slate and rain. The child’s skin was pallid, but the entire figure was so pale you could hardly tell where skin ended and clothing began. If it were possible to sculpt a human form from fog, this would be the result.
The child extended an arm and reached out for Martha, its mouth opening soundlessly.
‘Thorn!’ exclaimed Petr. He stumbled forward, almost falling to his knees again, but, like Martha,