Doctor Who BBCN16 - Forever Autumn (12 page)

He crawled on.

Panting and sweating, Rick, Scott and Thad were helping to carry lengths of timber and unwanted items of furniture from the big woodshed on the edge of Juniper Park to the growing pyramid of flammable material which would form the Pumpkin Man’s funeral pyre at the cli-max of tonight’s festivities. The fire was a Blackwood Falls Halloween 77

tradition. Nobody knew who had started it or where it had come from, but every year the townsfolk made a Pumpkin Man out of paper and straw, sticks and old clothes, which was placed on top of the fire and burned to ashes. Rick knew the British had something along the same lines, where they burned an effigy of some guy who had tried to blow up their Parliament. He didn’t think that happened on Halloween night, though, and he didn’t think the British burned their guy for the same reason the townsfolk of Blackwood Falls burned their Pumpkin Man, which was to ward off evil spirits and keep the town safe for another year.

It was a long walk from the woodshed to the bonfire site – all the way past the bleachers and the baseball diamond, the Carnival marquee and the stalls set up either side of it in a kind of giant horseshoe shape – and by 10.30 am the boys were ready for a rest.

Rick’s dad, who was helping to build the bonfire itself, dressed in construction worker’s hardhat and canvas gloves, put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a ten dollar note.

‘Good work, boys. I think you’ve earned yourselves a soda,’ he said, handing Rick the money.

The boys thanked him. ‘Is it OK if we have a look round before we come back, Dad, see how things are shaping up?’ Rick asked.

‘Yeah, we need to pace ourselves, Mr Pirelli,’ said Scott, palming sweat from his shiny red face, ‘otherwise we’ll be beat by lunchtime.’

Tony Pirelli grinned. ‘Sure, guys. Take a break. Come back when you’re ready. This isn’t an obligation, you know. Any help you give will be gratefully received.’

‘Oh, we’ll be back, Dad. We like helping, don’t we, guys? It’s all part of the fun.’

Scott and Thad both nodded.

‘I wish your brother felt the same way,’ Mr Pirelli said with a frown.

‘Maybe Chris’ll be along later,’ said Rick.

‘Yeah,’ said Mr Pirelli flatly, ‘maybe.’

The boys wandered back through the mist-shrouded park, eager to check out how the other preparations were coming along. The red and 78

white striped marquee had been erected a couple of days previously, as had the Halloween Carnival banner over the park entrance.

The rides were being set up over on the football field, but most of the current action was focused on the stalls radiating out from the central marquee. Each stall fell roughly into one of three categories –games, food and stuff to buy. The games were fun but simple affairs

– coconut shy, tombola, hook-a-duck; the food comprised everything from hot dogs and fries to candy and cakes; and the stuff to buy was mainly second-hand or home-made: jewellery, books, T-shirts, and little knick-knacks that you’d pick up because they were cute, then throw in the trash a week later.

Every year since they had been old enough to help – and Rick’s dad, who was on the town’s Activities Committee had first brought Rick and his friends along to the showground when they were six or seven years old – the boys had ‘walked the walk’ on the morning before the Carnival itself, drinking in the atmosphere, revelling in the anticipation of what was to come.

This year, though, was kind of different. Maybe it was the mist, but there was a flatness in the air, a sense of. . . not doom exactly, but foreboding. People seemed edgy, preoccupied. There was none of the usual laughing and joking and good-hearted banter.

‘Do you think it’s true what that Doctor guy said?’ Scott asked cautiously.

Rick and Thad both looked at him. This was the first time any of them had referred to the events of yesterday afternoon, when the weird guy who’d turned up in Harry Ho’s had accompanied them to Rick’s house, only to find the book had gone missing from under Rick’s bed. It wasn’t, Rick told himself, because they’d been avoiding talking about it, it was just that they hadn’t had the chance.

Now, though, he found his stomach tightening and his shoulders hunching, almost as if he was drawing in his defences. ‘About what?’

he all but snapped.

Scott glanced around. He lowered his voice as if afraid of being overheard. ‘About the mist? About how it’s our fault?’

‘I don’t see how it
can
be,’ said Thad a little whinily.

79

‘He said it came up out of the hole we dug,’ said Scott, ‘like poisonous gas or something.’

‘Who says it’s poisonous?’ said Rick quickly.

‘Well, OK, not poisonous then, but. . . I dunno. It’s not
natural
, is it?’

Rick scowled. ‘Yeah, well. . . what makes this Doctor guy such an expert? I mean, we don’t know anything about him. He seemed pretty crazy to me.’

‘I thought he was kind of cool,’ said Thad quietly.

Rick made an exasperated sound. ‘You think
Einstein’s
cool.’

‘Well, he is,’ said Thad.

Scott shook his head sadly, as if there was no hope.

‘Look,’ said Rick, ‘the guy wanted the book and the book wasn’t there, which pretty much means that this whole situation is out of our hands now, right?’

He thought briefly about his nightmare (which had somehow seemed
more
than a nightmare) last night, in which the eyes of his Halloween costume had seemed to glow. But he quickly clamped down on the memory.

Scott looked as if he wanted to say something more, but was reluctant to do so. Rick wasn’t about to encourage him, but then Thad said, ‘What’s wrong, Scott? You look as though you need the toilet real bad.’

‘I heard some weird stuff happened last night,’ Scott blurted.

‘Like what?’ said Thad.

‘Something happened to Dr Clayton. He had some kind of accident.

Something no one seems to want to talk about.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said Rick. ‘And who told you this?’

‘I heard my mom talking to Mrs Fisher on the phone. And she heard it from Mrs Walsh. Apparently, Mrs Walsh says that whatever happened to old man Clayton, she’d never seen anything like it.’

‘Is he dead?’ Thad asked, eyes wide behind his spectacles.

‘No, he’s in hospital. But no one’s allowed to visit him.’

‘Aw, he probably just got drunk and fell over and cracked his stupid head open,’ Rick said, then immediately regretted his use of the word 80

‘stupid’. Dr Clayton wasn’t stupid, he was just sad. Tragic even.

‘From what my mom was saying, it was freakier than that,’ said Scott.

‘Yeah? Well, sometimes dumb rumours get spread around that aren’t true. Come on, guys, let’s get that soda.’

The boys trooped past the stalls to the park entrance, each of them silent now. Rick was scowling, out of sorts. Not even the thought of the fun they’d be having that evening could cheer him up. In fact, there was a part of him that wished the Halloween Carnival wasn’t happening at all, a part of him that would be glad when it was over.

They passed beneath the banner at the entrance. A voice hailed them as they did so: ‘Hey, you guys, how’s it going?’

Rick jumped, at first unable to identify the source of the voice. Then he realised it was coming from above his head and looked up. One of his neighbours, Mr Everson, was at the top of a tall ladder, fixing some coloured lights to one of the wooden stanchions, across which the banner had been hung. Mr Everson was a big, bearded guy with long straggly hair, which flowed from beneath the brim of his Boston Red Sox cap. He had a hammer in his right hand and a bunch of six-inch nails sticking out of the breast pocket of his green and black lumberjack shirt.

‘Hey, Mr Everson,’ Rick shouted. ‘We’re just going for a soda. You want one?’

‘Mighty kind of you, Rick, but I got myself a flask of coffee right there in my bag. So, you boys going trick-or-treating tonight?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Scott.

‘I guess,’ said Rick with rather less enthusiasm.

‘Well, you have a good time, y’hear?’

‘Yes, sir, we will,’ said Rick. ‘See you later, Mr Everson.’

The boys turned out of the gate and set off up the road towards old Mr Mackeson’s corner store. Mr Mackeson had a dog that used to scare them with its barking when they were younger, but which was a blind, mangy old thing now, barely able to raise a growl.

They had gone no more than twenty metres when they heard a cry from behind them, abruptly cut off, and then the clatter of something 81

falling to the ground. The three of them glanced at each other in alarm.

‘That’s Mr Everson,’ said Rick.

They ran back in the direction they had come. Although they had only walked a little way up the road, the park entrance had already been swallowed by mist. After a few seconds, however, it came into sight, and Rick scanned the ground, expecting to see his neighbour lying injured or unconscious, having fallen off his ladder.

But there was no sign of him. Rick looked up. He wasn’t at the top of his ladder either.

‘Where’s he gone?’ asked Scott pointlessly.

‘Dunno, but his hammer’s there,’ said Thad, pointing. ‘That must have been what we heard hitting the ground.’

Rick approached the hammer, mystified. Questions ran through his mind. If Mr Everson had fallen, why wasn’t he here? If it was only his hammer he’d dropped, where was he now? Why hadn’t he picked it up? Even more disturbingly, why had he cried out? And why had the cry been suddenly cut off?

He bent and reached for the hammer – and suddenly, as though alerted by his proximity, spidery threads of green light began to flicker around it, to dance up and down its handle and its metal head. Rick snatched his hand back, alarmed.

‘Whoa!’ cried Thad. ‘Did you see that?’

Scott’s eyes were wide with fear. ‘Where is Mr Everson? What’s happened to him?’

‘I think he’s been taken,’ said Rick.

‘Taken? Taken where?’ bleated Scott.

But Rick could only look at him with eyes as fearful as Scott’s own and shake his head.

The Hervoken that had disappeared was gone for maybe thirty seconds. When it returned, unfolding from a bilious mass of glowing energy which formed in the air, it was not alone. It was accompanied by a bearded man in a baseball cap and lumberjack shirt, whose mouth was open in shock. The man staggered forward, as if shoved 82

from behind, his head turning rapidly from left to right as he looked around him. He spotted Martha, and goggled at her in bewilderment.

She was only sorry she couldn’t smile or wave or offer him any words of encouragement. Then the man seemed to register his surroundings and Martha saw the shock turn to fear on his face. It was several seconds, however, as though his mind could only handle one thing at a time, before he seemed to notice the Hervoken themselves.

As soon as he did he yelled out in panic and broke into a stumbling run. He clearly wasn’t running with any particular goal in mind, but merely following his instincts and trying to get as far away as possible from the creatures around him. He had taken only a few steps when the Hervoken leader reached out a hand and sketched an intricate shape in the air. Instantly the man froze in mid-step, held immobile.

Martha saw the utter panic on his face and tried to convey calmness to him with her eyes, but he didn’t even look at her.

The Hervoken leader then drew a circular shape in the air before quickly spreading its taloned fingers in what Martha thought of as the kind of gesture that might be used to describe an explosion. Instantly, threads of green energy looped around the man like shimmering coils of rope and propelled him towards the wall of writhing black roots.

To Martha’s horror, the wall suddenly opened up like a huge, toothless mouth and the man disappeared, screaming, inside. The hole closed behind him, like that of a massive predator closing on its prey, and his scream was abruptly cut off. A moment later Martha heard another sound, a sound that – though she remained upright – turned her legs to jelly.

It was the splintering crunch of bones.

83

It wasn’t long before the tunnel widened out, enabling the Doctor to stand up. He brushed off the knees of his suit, stretched, and spat out the torch, which he caught neatly in his right hand. He was in-trigued to see that, beyond the spot where the rotting timber cladding petered out, the walls, floor and ceiling appeared to be moving. He shone his torch on them and strolled over. Thick, black vines, knobbly and glistening, were writhing over and around and in between one another, thousands and thousands of them.

He poked one and it did two things: it flashed briefly with green light and it gave him a mild electric shock.

‘Ow,’ he said, and waggled his fingers in the air to get the tingly numbness out of them. He put on his black-rimmed spectacles and examined the vines more closely.

‘Kinetic binary fusion,’ he murmured with a soppy grin. ‘That’s beautiful. In an icky, slimy, creepy sort of way.’

He was about to move on when something happened. First the vines clenched; then they shuddered; then they began to move more quickly. At the same time a renewed surge of green light rippled through them, bathing the tunnel in a virescent shimmer.