The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [9]
From what you tell me, there is something extremely disturbing going on here.’
He turned to Mario, who was standing with his head on one side like a curious parrot, inspecting the TARDIS, which was parked neatly but incongruously in the comer.
‘Signore – I beg your pardon, Barone –’
‘No, no. Is not real, this Barone. Only label, like on empty jamjar,’ he answered, coming to the fire and settling into his big old wing chair, wriggling into the cushions like a dog settling into its basket. ‘I am Mario Verconti, plain.
Plain as nose on face. I am called Barone because I am Esquire. Esquire, is right? I own the Isola di San Stefano 30
Minore, like my father and his fathers before him from the beginning.’
‘And you told the Brigadier, Signore, that you and your forebears have always known the castello to be haunted?’
‘Of course. The lady in white dress, I see her often when I was bambino. But not the little diaboli, the fiends from the pit. They come only now, more and more, the rascals.’
‘And you say you’ve seen them too, Brigadier?’
The Brigadier shifted uneasily. This was the question, wasn’t it? Had he seen them?
‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ he said, ‘and yet, well, I certainly have caught a glimpse of one. At least, I think I have.’ A glimpse! He felt again the full horror of the sight of the – the thing; the slimy tentacles, the blood-red eyes, the razor teeth. He shuddered.
‘Has anybody else witnessed these phenomena?’
‘Eh?’ said Mario.
‘The ghosts, the apparitions. Have they been seen by anybody but you and the Brigadier?’
‘Oh, sure. Our servants, they run away like cowardy custard creams, back to village. Only Umberto to cook, to clean all castello, poor old thing.’
A bit rich, thought the Brigadier, considering the butler could give Mario a dozen years or more.
31
‘Aha!’ The old man leapt from his chair like a startled jack-in‐the-box, tottering a little as he landed.
What now?
‘You hear?’
The Doctor seemed to have heard something too. But the Brigadier was only aware of the wind whistling through the cracks in the ill-fitting windows. ‘What is it?’ he said a little testily.’
‘Sssh!’ The Doctor held up a warning hand. ‘There it is again.’
This time he heard it. A scream? A shout? A voice certainly.
‘Come quick! You see her, the lady in white.’
Out of the hall at a fast clip, down a long dark corridor, round a corner into a vaulted lobby with six exits; back down another passageway, round another corner and another, and still another, through a creaking little door which yet was some four or five inches thick, and out into the night. The Brigadier finally lost the fight to keep his breath as the three of them found themselves in a colonnaded courtyard, thrusting against the aggressive squalls sweeping in through the gap where the wall had collapsed into the sea.
32
Mario, seemingly the least affected, turned dramatically, indicating with an almost operatic sweep of his arm that they had reached their goal.
But there was no phantasm of the night to be seen. A voice could be heard, certainly, but it was the voice of – yes, there was no question – the voice of young Jeremy of all people, as he slithered and tumbled down the heap of stones to the left, desperately trying to reach…
The Doctor saw her at the same moment: lying on the sloping edge where the grass gave way to blackness, the body of Sarah Jane Smith, limp and defenceless. Her short hair was whipping about her face and her denim shirt slapping and flapping on her body as it struggled to get free; surely the next gust would have her over.
‘Jeremy! Keep back!’ cried the Doctor, running across the courtyard.
. Throwing himself full length onto the slippery grass, he inched himself forward, with the Brigadier hanging onto his ankles as he reached out to the unconscious Sarah and seized her by the arms.
With infinite care, the Doctor drew her back from the edge, his firm grasp cheating the greedy wind of its prey, until it was safe to stand