Doctor Who BBCN16 - Forever Autumn
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Authors: Doctor Who
It is almost Halloween in the sleepy New England town of Blackwood Falls. Leaves litter lawns and sidewalks, paper skeletons hang in the windows, and carved pumpkins leer from front porches.
The Doctor and Martha soon discover that something long-dormant has awoken, and this will be no ordinary Halloween. What is the secret of the ancient tree and the book discovered tangled in its roots? What rises from the churchyard at night, sealing the lips of the only witness? Why are the harmless trappings of Halloween suddenly taking on a creepy new life of their own?
As nightmarish creatures prowl the streets, the Doctor and Martha must battle to prevent both the townspeople and themselves from suffering a grisly fate. . .
Featuring the Doctor and Martha as played by David Tennant and Freema Agyeman in the hit series from BBC Television.
Forever Autumn
BY MARK MORRIS
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Published in 2007 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.
Ebury Publishing is a division of the Random House Group Ltd.
© Mark Morris, 2007
Mark Morris has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One Executive Producers: Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner Series Producer: Phil Collinson
Original series broadcast on BBC Television. Format © BBC 1963.
‘Doctor Who’, ‘TARDIS’ and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009.
Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.co.uk.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 84607 270 3
The Random House Group Ltd makes every effort to ensure that the papers used in our books are made from trees that have been legally sourced from well-managed credibly certified forests. Our paper procurement policy can be found at www.randomhouse.co.uk.
Series Consultant: Justin Richards
Project Editor: Steve Tribe
Cover design by Lee Binding © BBC 2007
Typeset in Albertina and Deviant Strain
Printed and bound in Germany by GGP Media GmbH, Poessneck
For David and Polly,
who share that Saturday feeling.
A Doctor to call your own.
Contents
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13
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149
When the bell finally rang, Rick Pirelli almost burst with excitement.
Now there was nothing standing between him and the monsters.
He spotted his best friends, Scott Beaumont and Thad Steiner, in the school yard. From a distance his buddies always reminded him of Laurel and Hardy, one tall and wide, the other short and skinny. He ran up to them, swinging his bag around his head in sheer exhilaration. ‘Hey, you guys!’
They turned to him. Scott, who played quarter-back in the school under-13s football team, had a wide grin on his chubby, red face.
‘Ricky baby,’ he boomed. ‘How’s it going?’
Rick thumped to a stop. The cool air felt great on his hot skin. ‘Man, I thought today was going to go on
forever
,’ he said.
‘Yeah, me too,’ said Scott. ‘It was like we were stuck in a time zone or something.’
‘Warp,’ said Thad quietly.
‘Huh?’
‘It’s time warp, not time zone. A time
zone
is just like whatever time it is in whichever part of the world you’re in. There are twenty-four time zones on the planet. But a time
warp
is like a time distortion, so it seems as if –’
Scott rolled his eyes at Rick, who grinned back at him. ‘Yeah, Thad, what
ever
,’ he said.
They set off home, Rick – medium build, tousled chestnut hair, a
‘cute nose’ according to Beverley Masterson, who sat behind him in Math – strolling between his two friends. Scott, on his right, seemed almost to bounce as he walked. For a big guy he was full of energy, and deceptively athletic. Thad, by contrast, was like a mouse, a little blond mouse with specs, which were constantly slipping down his nose. He was studious and precise and he read truck-loads of books, mainly science fiction, but all kinds of other stuff too. Maybe for that 1
reason he told the best stories – at camp it was always Thad’s ghost stories the other guys wanted to hear. He could also be side-splittingly funny, though half the time he didn’t even seem to realise he was being funny, and in a way that made him funnier still.
Rick was feeling good – great, in fact. It was Friday afternoon, school was out, and tomorrow was Halloween, which meant all the usual fun stuff – dressing up, trick-or-treating, bobbing for apples, eating candy. Then later, when it was dark, he and his friends would head down to the Halloween Carnival, which was always a big deal in Blackwood Falls, where they would eat as many hot dogs and go on as many rides as possible, and watch the ceremonial burning of the Pumpkin Man. And then, later still – if Scott hadn’t thrown up and gone home, like he did last year – they would head back to Rick’s and spend what was left of the night watching scary movies in their sleeping bags until they fell asleep.
Could life get any better, he thought. As the three of them tromped through the quiet, tree-lined streets, Scott yakking about some old movie he’d seen on cable the night before, something about a guy who shrank to the size of an ant and had a fight with a giant spider, Rick looked around, taking in the sights, drinking it all in. It seemed to him that everyone in Blackwood Falls loved Halloween. Maybe, he thought, the Mayor or the town committee or whatever wouldn’t let you live here if you didn’t. Wherever he looked, front porches were bedecked with Halloween pumpkins, trees were hung with rubber spiders and bats, and windows were festooned with spray-on cobwebs, paper skeletons, cardboard witches and leering rubber masks.
The air even
smelled
right, of dry leaves and wood smoke and damp, mulchy earth.
This was gonna be the best Halloween
ever
, he thought.
Rick’s house was one of the biggest and oldest in Blackwood Falls, a sprawling colonial residence surrounded by a picket fence, flanked by well-established trees and fronted by a long porch. When the boys were hanging out, it was where they usually ended up, mainly because it was the closest of all their houses to the school, and also to the town’s main square, which – once they’d dumped their stuff and 2
grabbed a snack – was where they were imminently headed.
They clattered through the front door, dropping bags as they went, and into the kitchen.
‘Hi, Mom!’ Rick shouted.
‘Hi, honey!’ came a voice from upstairs. Half a minute later, Mrs Pirelli appeared. She was a willowy, dark-haired woman, with a nose even cuter than Rick’s.
‘You boys doing OK?’ she asked.
‘Sure,’ replied Scott, his mouth stuffed with an almost entire Her-shey bar.
‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Pirelli,’ said Thad.
She smiled at them. ‘Betcha can’t wait till tomorrow. You picking up your costumes today?’
‘Yep, Mom, right after this,’ said Rick.
‘You all got your money to pay Mr Tozier?’ They nodded.
‘OK, well here’s an extra ten dollars to buy yourselves some ice cream afterward. If you like, I’ll run you guys home later.’
‘Wow, thanks, Mrs Pirelli,’ said Scott, his enthusiasm drowning out Thad’s grateful murmuring.
‘Yeah, thanks, Mom,’ said Rick.
Her smile widened. ‘My pleasure. Have fun, guys. I’ll leave you to it.’ She exited the room with a little wave.
‘Your mom is
so
cool!’ said Scott.
‘You’ve just got the hots for her,’ Rick teased.
Scott’s face turned an even deeper crimson than usual. ‘Have not!’
‘How come you’re blushing then?’
‘I’m not!’
‘Are so.’
‘Hey, guys,’ Thad said quietly, ‘look at this.’
He was standing in front of the big window over the sink that looked out over the long back garden.
‘What is it?’ asked Scott, glad of the distraction.
‘It’s the tree. There’s something weird about it.’
Rick and Scott joined Thad at the window. At the bottom of the garden, in front of the high fence that separated their property from 3
that of old Mrs Helligan, was the most famous tree in Blackwood Falls.
It was, in fact, the tree which had given the town its name – although, oddly, no one seemed to know what
kind
of tree it was. All Rick knew was that its gnarled trunk was as black as charcoal, and that it was ugly and twisted and had never, as long as he’d been alive, sprouted either buds or leaves. He wasn’t sure whether the tree was actually dead, but it certainly looked as though it was. It looked like it had been killed by a disease or something, because its branches were covered in lumpy black growths, like boils or tumours. When he’d been a little kid, Rick had thought the growths were the tree’s eyes, watching him.
‘I don’t see anything weird,’ Scott said now.
‘There was a green light,’ said Thad. ‘Like phosphorescence.’
‘Phosphor-what?’
‘It’s a light produced during a chemical reaction, like when fungus is rotting.’
Scott sniffed. ‘So the tree’s covered in rotting fungus? Big deal.’
‘No, but this was different. Strange.
There, look!
’
All three of them saw it this time, a peculiar green glimmer that seemed to flash up from the dark earth at the base of the trunk.