The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [93]
That painter guy, she thought. What was his name?
Something-or‐other Bosch. He must have been to N-Space himself.
‘Hieronymous Bosch,’ said the Doctor, having to pitch his voice up to top the din from below. ‘Quite right. I shouldn’t be surprised if Maximilian knew him before he…
Are you all right?’ He put out a hand to steady her.
‘I think so,’ she said. But she was lying. This was no painting, this panorama of torment lit up by the great cave of roaring fire at the other end of the valley, her mind was shrieking at her, these were real people being tortured.
That man screaming as he was crushed beneath a cart-load of gold coins was probably a husband and a father.
That half-naked woman being torn into two pieces by half-human satyrs was as needy for love as any weeping child.
Those shivering – yes, shivering! – skeletal figures waiting in a docile supermarket queue for their turn to be pitchforked into the everlasting flames were her sisters, her brothers.
‘If it’s what they believe…’ said the Doctor gently.
‘Look; and look again,’ he added, pointing above the maw of the great furnace to the rocks which formed its roof.
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Just as she had learned to see the ghosts when she first came into N-Space, now she saw – and realized that she had seen all along, but not taken it in – but how could that be?
All of twenty feet tall – no, more like thirty – even seated as he was on his throne of molten gold (as it seemed), the unmistakable form of Maximilian leaned back at his ease, surveying the entertainment set before him, picking at the delights on offer as at a buffet, chuckling with sadistic pleasure when he lighted on some offering which was to his particular taste.
As the Doctor had predicted, he was wearing the robe of a medieval monarch, over a suit of golden chain-mail, with a gold chain of S’s around his neck (like Olivier in the movie of Henry V, Sarah recognized with a little dissonant shock) and a bejewelled crown of the magnificence one might expect to see on the Emperor of Hell.
Surrounding the throne, like a pack of diminutive courtiers (diminutive? they were at least fifteen feet tall) were six or seven sinister figures with hunched shoulders and glowering eyes, wrapped in black cloaks or robes which they hugged close to themselves. Were they monks, like Nicodemus? Or were they… And Sarah realized that they weren’t even human. They were fiends, of a sort she’d not seen before, and their apparent cloaks were simply leathery 325
wings wrapped around them like bats. They were more a bodyguard than a court.
Sarah turned back to the Doctor, who was digging into his inside pocket.
‘Well that’s it, isn’t it?’ she said, trying to hide the way she was shaking. ‘He’s won.’
The Doctor was muttering to himself. ‘Surely I wouldn’t have been so stupid… Ah! Here it is! What did you say?’ he said, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and peering at the calibrations on its shank.
‘There’s nothing to be done,’ said Sarah.
‘Stuff! One might even go so far as to say gammon!’
‘But what can you do?’
‘Do?’ he said, looking up from his adjustments. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Sarah Jane Smith. I’m going to challenge him to a duel.’
Mother Goose having proved to be a more efficient soporific than Tanglewood Tales, Mario had thankfully fallen into the innocent sleep of second childhood, a light doze as free of dreams as any three-month‐old babe’s.
Certainly nightmares were not an option.
So when he opened his eyes at the touch of a bony finger, he was merely irritated to find a drooling mouth with dagger-sharp fangs inches away from his face. He stared 326
into the bloodshot eyes, seeing his own reflection staring back at him.
‘Go away,’ he said firmly.
As he had expected, it backed away, staring at him and shaking its shaggy head as if bewildered. It was a medium-sized two-legged creature not unlike a werewolf that hadn’t managed the full switch. It gave a tentative growl.
Its movement had revealed that it wasn’t alone.
Swarming