Doctor Who BBCN19 - Wishing Well (18 page)

‘No harm in trying.’

‘But what if something happens? What if it opens up again like it did before?’

Gaskin shrugged. ‘Let it try! This is a 12-gauge, my dear. Double-barrelled. At close range it could lop off the branch of a tree. I don’t think it’ll have any trouble with. . . with whatever that is.’

Angela moved in with the dustpan.

‘I really think we should wait,’ Martha said.

Angela put the pan down next to the brain, the edge just beneath it so that she could pick it up cleanly. ‘I need something to push it on with, I think.’

‘Here’s the brush,’ said Sadie, coming over.

‘Just wait!’ Martha said.

‘Carry on,’ said Gaskin firmly.

Sadie brought the brush alongside the brain. She only had to push it along the table and it would roll into the dustpan. She hesitated.

‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

‘No!’ said Martha.

‘Just do it,’ said Gaskin.

‘
Marmalade
!’ yelled the Doctor suddenly.

Everyone jumped.

‘Doctor!’ screeched Martha.

‘Great Scott!’ said Gaskin. ‘I nearly gave it both barrels!’

The Doctor had sat bolt upright. His hair and eyes were both wild.

‘Thick cut!’ he shouted, holding a hand out towards Gaskin.

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Suddenly he was on his feet taking the shotgun out of Gaskin’s hands. Gaskin stared stupidly at him. The Doctor passed the gun to Martha. ‘The most perfect marmalade I’ve ever tasted,’ he announced.

Sadie smiled happily. ‘Oh, thank you! I call it my Thick-Cut Tawny.’

‘Loved it!’

‘I know. You ate the whole jar in one go.’

‘Doctor!’ Martha said, relieved to see the Doctor well again but also rather irritated. She put the heavy shotgun down carefully on top of a chest of drawers. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Telekinetic shock,’ the Doctor said, stretching as if he’d just woken from a long, relaxing sleep. ‘Numbed every synapse in my head, and believe me, that’s a lot of synapses.’ He began running on the spot.

‘Now what are you doing?’

‘Getting my heart rates back to normal.’ He speeded up. ‘Oh yes!

Now we’re cooking!’ He slowed to a stop and then began to touch his toes. ‘One, two, three, four. . . ’

‘It’s OK,’ Martha assured them all. Gaskin, Angela and Sadie were all staring at the Doctor as if they had preferred it when he was lying unconscious on the kitchen floor.

‘Are you sure he’s all right?’ asked Gaskin.

‘. . . ten, eleven, twelve. . . ’

‘Doctor,’ said Martha through gritted teeth.

He stopped where he was, bent double, his fingers touching the tips of his trainers. He looked up at her from his knees. ‘What?’

‘We have a situation here.’

He straightened up, looking blank.

Martha felt it necessary to

prompt him. ‘The brain?’

‘What? Oh, fine now, thanks.’ He grinned brightly at her. ‘How’s yours?’

She closed her eyes and pointed at the kitchen table. ‘I mean that one.’

‘Oh! Yes! That one!’ The Doctor pulled up a chair and sat down, studying the brain intently. Then he took out his sonic screwdriver and everybody tensed.

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Slowly, without taking his eyes off the brain, the Doctor returned the screwdriver to his pocket. ‘Perhaps not,’ he said to himself. ‘Been there, done that, didn’t like it.’

‘Listen,’ began Gaskin. ‘Now that you’re back in the land of the living, perhaps we can get on? I still think we should take the blessed thing outside and blast it into smithereens.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Angela.

‘I agree,’ said Sadie.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘That would be the most foolish and irresponsible thing you could possibly think of doing.’ He slouched back in the chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘But then again, you are only human, I suppose. Total destruction is always the preferred method of dealing with a problem for you lot. Goes right back to prehistoric times, when the first caveman picked up a whopping great bone and bashed his mate on the head with it.’

‘What are you blithering about, man?’

‘Oh, it was the usual stuff: his mate had been fancying his girlfriend, all that kind of thing. Solution: whack ’im on the head and be done with it. Problem solved.’ He looked up at the fuming Gaskin with a puzzled frown. ‘Sorry – that’s not what you meant, is it?’

‘No, it is not.’

‘Let me spell it out, then.’ The Doctor pointed at the brain. ‘This thing is totally alien to the Earth, and horribly dangerous. It’s destructive and highly intelligent. Its one and only purpose is to propagate and kill. A single Vurosis is more than capable of spreading over this entire planet if given the opportunity. This one has been growing slowly underneath the village for hundreds of years and is now fully matured and ready to strike. All it needs is that.’ The Doctor pointed at the stone. When he spoke again, his voice was very quiet. ‘For a second back there my mind touched the mind of the Vurosis, and I can assure you that, as dangerous as that stone is now, it will be a hundred times worse if it’s reunited with its host body at the bottom of the well.’

‘What can we do?’

asked Martha.

Everyone else seemed too

shocked to say anything.

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The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Well, you saw what it did to me when I gave it a poke with the sonic screwdriver. I’d hate to think what it would do if you started shooting at it.’

‘We have to do
something
,’ insisted Gaskin. ‘It can’t stay on my kitchen table for evermore.’

‘It seems pretty inert now,’ commented Martha. ‘Can we move it?’

‘Where to?’ wondered Angela.

‘An asteroid field. A star. A black hole. Anywhere,’ said the Doctor, never taking his eyes off the thing. ‘We’ve got to get it away from Earth.’

Gaskin turned to Martha. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but do you have any idea what he’s talking about?’

‘I’m afraid so. It may sound odd, but the Doctor knows all about this sort of thing.’

‘Mr Gaskin,’ said the Doctor, ‘do you have something I could put it in?’

‘What? Oh, yes, of course. Wait a minute.’ Gaskin crossed to one of the kitchen cupboards and rummaged inside. ‘Will this do?’

He handed the Doctor a plastic Tupperware box. The Doctor looked at it in dismay. ‘Actually, I was thinking of something metal. Lead-lined, if possible.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

‘But I’ll keep this just in case I ever come across a ham sandwich threatening to take over the world.’

Somebody tittered. Angela had a hand over her mouth and Sadie was biting her lip. Within seconds everyone was laughing.

And then Martha pointed at the brain and yelled for them to be quiet. ‘Look!’ she said. ‘It’s moving!’

They all fell silent and stared. A hundred tiny filaments were moving on the surface of the stone.

‘That’s disgusting,’ remarked Sadie.

The brain stirred on the table as the cilia grew into waving, worm-like fingers groping for something in the air.

‘What’s it doing?’ asked Angela.

‘It’s reacting to something,’ said the Doctor.

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‘Us?’

‘I doubt it.’

They all heard Jess suddenly barking, loud and clear, outside. A warning.

‘Something’s coming,’ said the Doctor.

The barking reached a sudden, panicky crescendo and then dropped to a whimper.

Gaskin headed for the back door. ‘Jess!’

The Doctor grabbed his arm. ‘Don’t go out there!’

‘But that’s my dog –’

There was a terrific noise from outside, a huge crunching sound as if a tree was being uprooted. Everybody stood still, listening.

‘What is it?’ whispered Angela nervously.

‘I can’t hear Jess any more,’ said Gaskin anxiously.

‘What’s happened to her?’

There was a rustling noise outside as something approached the house. Sadie yelped as the kitchen window suddenly cracked as if hit by a stone. Something pushed against the pane like the branch of a tree, and when the Doctor raised the blind the window was full of white weeds crawling all over the glass like worms, probing for some kind of opening.

‘Doctor!’ exclaimed Martha. ‘Back door!’

They all turned to see the kitchen door suddenly shake as something struck it hard. The glass panel cracked and then shattered, sending broken shards right across the kitchen. A thick arm covered in luminous white weeds followed the glass, the big hand thrusting its way inside, grabbing for the door handle.

‘Get back!’ roared the Doctor, grabbing Sadie and pulling her out of the way.

Sadie screamed as the large, clawed hand suddenly withdrew and something struck the door a second time, rattling it in its frame. Then, under a third impact, the door itself splintered and broke from its hinges, flying into the room with a loud crash.

And then the creature was inside – a boiling mass of writhing weed in the shape of a man, long spines standing up from its head and 139

shoulders. There was soil and dirt all over it, but that wasn’t what Martha noticed first.

What she saw first was that the monster was still wearing Duncan Goode’s clothes.

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There was pandemonium; everybody ran for the door leading out of the kitchen as the monster burst through. Weed writhed and flailed like prehensile twigs, snatching at anything within reach, tearing down cupboards and scattering crockery everywhere.

‘It’s after the brain!’ yelled the Doctor. ‘Don’t let it get the brain!’

Martha was still nearest; without hesitation she scooped the stone off the kitchen table and tossed it to the Doctor. He caught it, just as the creature’s heavy fist smashed through the table, splitting the top into firewood. It roared with anger and surged forward, bludgeoning the remains of the heavy table into jagged splinters as it came.

The Doctor ran out of the kitchen after the others, still clutching the stone. Gaskin was urging Angela upstairs, with Sadie and Martha following.

‘Don’t go upstairs!’ warned the Doctor.

‘We need the high ground, man!’ bellowed Gaskin.

There was no time to argue. The monster crashed through the doorway into the hall, sending wood and plaster flying through the air. Its distorted bulk was too large to fit through without causing damage, but it didn’t seem to care.

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The Doctor gritted his teeth and raced up the stairs after the others.

‘It’ll trap us up here!’ he told Gaskin as he reached the first landing.

‘Then we’ll have to barricade ourselves into one of the rooms.’

The creature wrenched the entire banister rail off the stairs and charged after them. Its clawed legs bit deep into the carpet as it swung itself up towards the first storey.

‘That might not be as easy as it sounds.’

‘For goodness’ sake,’ Angela said, ‘if it wants the wretched stone that badly, give it the thing!’

The Doctor scrambled out of the way of another blow which gouged deep scratches into the stairs behind him. ‘That wouldn’t be a good idea, Angela!’

‘Why not? It might let us go then!’

‘It’s going to kill us otherwise, Doctor!’ added Sadie.

They mounted the next flight of stairs with the monster close behind. On the second floor, Gaskin led them down the passageway to the main bedroom at a run. ‘In here!’

They all piled inside and he slammed shut the door behind them.

Within a second he had turned the key in the lock.

‘That won’t hold it for long,’ said the Doctor.

‘It’s all I could think of,’ snapped Gaskin, desperation making his voice ragged.

Angela sat down in a chair, panting for breath. ‘That’s twice I’ve had to run for my life today,’ she gasped. ‘I can’t say I’m enjoying it.’

‘Dammit,’ spat Gaskin. ‘I left the shotgun in the kitchen!’

He glared at the Doctor. ‘That’s your fault! You took it off me!’

‘We don’t need a shotgun,’ said the Doctor. ‘We need to
think
!’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Angela clearly, ‘I’d feel a lot better if we did have a shotgun!’

The stout bedroom door shook in its frame as Duncan hurled himself against it. The second attempt was so powerful that the wood split right down the middle and picture frames jumped off the wall.

‘It’s going to kill us,’ Sadie whimpered. ‘Why don’t you just give it the stone like Angela said?’

‘It might be the only way to save us, Doctor,’ agreed Gaskin.

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The Doctor looked at them all in turn. Martha could see the fear etched in their faces, knew how they must be feeling. She was terrified herself, her stomach in knots, her heart racing. And she, like everyone else, found herself looking back at the Doctor, waiting for an answer.

‘If the Vurosis gets hold of the brain,’ the Doctor warned them, ‘there will be no way to stop it.’

‘Surely there’s no way of stopping it now!’ Gaskin shouted.

The door bulged, cracked, split in two.

A huge arm crunched

through the gap, tearing away long staves of varnished wood. Weeds groped their way through the gap like a hundred thin worms, tearing more timber away, making the hole bigger.

‘We can’t let it have the brain!’ argued the Doctor, almost pleading with them to understand. ‘If it gets it, we’ve lost.’