Doctor Who BBCN16 - Forever Autumn (10 page)

‘He was the thinnest guy I’ve ever seen,’ Chris said, ‘and he had these great big hands with fingers that were, I dunno, maybe a foot and a half long? And a huge head, like. . . like. . . ’ It suddenly dawned on him what the thing’s head had reminded him of. ‘Like a Halloween pumpkin.’

The Doctor raised his eyebrows as realisation dawned. ‘Hervoken,’

he said, and he said it in such a way that it made Chris shudder.

Chris licked his lips. He could barely get his voice above a whispery rasp. ‘Pardon me?’

‘Hervoken,’ the Doctor repeated, then he half-spun round and slapped himself theatrically on the forehead. ‘Oh, I should have realised! Why didn’t I realise? What a prawn!’

Bewildered, Chris said, ‘Hey, don’t beat yourself up about it, man.

So what are these. . . ’

63

‘Hervoken,’ the Doctor said for the third time. ‘They’re –’ He looked as if he was about to launch into a whirlwind explanation, then suddenly checked himself, as if he had belatedly realised the full extent of Chris’s confusion and fear, and had decided that maybe the boy wouldn’t be able to handle it. Abruptly he grinned and gave Chris a friendly slap on the upper arm. ‘Never you mind, feller. You just keep your head down and leave it to me. I’ll sort it.’

‘Will you?’ Chris said, clearly out of his depth. ‘Oh yeah,’ said the Doctor with a confident wink. ‘Do this sort of thing all the time, me.’

Martha was not a happy bunny. After getting back to the hotel the night before, she had generously offered Etta her bed, half-hoping the Doctor would offer her his in return. It was not that she expected him to declare his undying love for her or anything, but a little old-fashioned chivalry at the end of a long day would not have gone amiss.

Instead he had said goodnight seemingly oblivious to her situation, leaving her to make the best of a small sofa, on which she could only lie down if she brought her knees up to her chest. Even then, she was so tired that that might have been bearable, were it not for the fact that Etta’s snoring had kept her awake all night. If she hadn’t heard it herself, Martha would never have believed it possible that someone could snore even louder than her brother Leo after a few drinks. The noise Etta made was like the braying of a distressed donkey – and what was worse was that it never stopped. It went on and on and on. . .

In the end Martha shut herself into the bathroom and tried to doze in the bath with a big fluffy towel half-wrapped round her head.

When even that didn’t work, she got up, grabbed herself a long, hot shower and went off in search of the Doctor and coffee.

But the Doctor’s room was locked and he didn’t answer her knocks.

And when Martha asked Eloise Walsh about him, she was told that he’d headed out, fresh as a daisy, at first light.

‘That’s if you can even
call
this daylight,’ Eloise said mournfully, staring at the thick veil of green mist pressing against the glass-panelled doors of the hotel. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve 64

lived in the Falls all my life. Gives me the creeps, I don’t mind telling you. Hope it passes in time for the Carnival.’

Martha shrugged. ‘Won’t it just add to the atmosphere?’

‘Hmm,’ said Eloise doubtfully. ‘It’s a tad too much atmosphere if y’ask me. After what happened to poor Earl last night, I’m thinking of staying right here this evening – and I haven’t missed a Halloween Carnival since I was a little girl.’

‘How is Mr Clayton today?’ Martha asked.

‘That’s
Dr
Clayton,’ corrected Eloise.

‘Sorry. Dr Clayton.’

‘He’s as comfortable as they can make him, from what I hear. Having to feed him with tubes, though. Poor feller must be scared out of his wits.’

‘Yes,’ said Martha. ‘He must be.’

‘So you and this doctor of yours didn’t find anything last night?’

Eloise asked.

‘Not much,’ said Martha evasively, ‘but we’re working on it.’

Eloise gave her a shrewd look and pointed at the ceiling. ‘So who’s your friend?’

‘Ah.’ Martha and the Doctor had sneaked Etta into the hotel to avoid convoluted explanations. ‘So you know about that then?’

Eloise smiled thinly. ‘I may be old, Miss Jones, but I’m not deaf.’

Martha looked suitably abashed. ‘Yeah, the snoring is a bit of a giveaway, isn’t it?’

Eloise said nothing, merely raised an eyebrow. She was evidently waiting for an explanation.

Martha sighed. ‘It’s Etta Helligan.’

Now Eloise raised
both
eyebrows. ‘Etta? Well, in that case, would you care to tell me
why
you brought her back here? You and that doctor friend of yours kidnapping our old people?’

Martha couldn’t tell whether Eloise was joking or not. ‘We met her when we were out last night,’ she said. ‘We walked her home, but then we. . . we heard someone outside her house. A prowler or something. We didn’t like the thought of leaving her on her own, so we. . . brought her back here.’ Fearing that Eloise would start picking 65

holes in her rather feeble explanation, she asked quickly, ‘Have you any idea which way the Doctor went?’

Eloise shrugged. ‘Can’t say I have. Guess he just went for a walk to clear his head. Be back soon, I dare say.’

‘Yes, I expect so,’ said Martha. ‘Well. . . see you.’

‘You going for a walk too?’

Martha laughed lightly. ‘I need a bit of fresh air. Well. . . ’ She glanced dubiously at the green mist beyond the doors. ‘. . .
Air
, anyway. After last night I feel a bit. . . you know?’ She pointed meaning-fully up at the ceiling.

‘I hear you,’ said Eloise. ‘You want me to give Etta a message if she shows her face?’

‘Just tell her. . . I’ll be back soon.’

Martha exited the hotel at something of a loss. It would be pointless wandering around town looking for the Doctor, but she certainly couldn’t face sitting in her room, going stir crazy, waiting for him to show up. She looked around, and through the murk hanging over the central square she noticed a flashing neon sign. The words were blurry, but she could just make them out: LEO’S DINER.

Leo. Same name as her brother. That
had
to be an omen. As if spotting the sign had prompted it, her stomach rumbled, and she realised she hadn’t eaten anything since the chocolate fudge sundae she’d scoffed in Harry Ho’s yesterday afternoon.

Right, she decided, breakfast. After the torture of last night’s snore-fest she deserved the full works – bacon, sausage, eggs, beans, hash browns, toast, marmalade. . . and lots and lots of caffeine.

She walked across the street and into the diner. It was warm and smelled of frying bacon and coffee. The mist outside and the con-densation on the windows gave her the impression the building was wrapped in green cotton wool. There was music playing in the back-ground: bland American rock by the sort of group who named themselves after where they came from – Boston, Chicago, something like that. The place wasn’t very full, possibly because it was early, or because the mist was making people reluctant to leave their homes. Like every other place in Blackwood Falls, the inside of the diner was dec-66

orated with the trappings of Halloween – paper ghosts, cardboard witches, glow-in-the-dark skeletons.

Above the counter a row of spiky-furred cats made of black crepe paper reminded Martha of Etta’s murderous moggies. She wondered whether the Doctor had gone back to the old lady’s house, and decided that if he didn’t turn up within the next hour then that was where she would head for.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but having one at all made her feel a little better.

‘Table for one?’ called the grizzled, sweating man cooking food behind the counter.

‘Please,’ said Martha.

‘Sit anywhere you like, sweetheart. We ain’t exactly busting at the seams this morning.’

Martha plonked herself in a booth by the window, where she could look out into the street. Not that she could see much. The slowly swirling mist was like a reminder of how tired she was, how sluggishly her thoughts were moving about in her head.

A grinning girl with bright blue eyes and ash-blonde hair appeared at her table and cried chirpily, ‘Hi, I’m your waitress this morning and my name’s Cindy.’

‘Yeah,’ muttered Martha under her breath, ‘it just
had
to be.’

If Cindy heard Martha’s comment she didn’t let on. Eager as a car-toon chipmunk she asked, ‘What can I get for you this morning?’

Martha gave her order and Cindy went away. Thinking of Leo reminded Martha that she was back on present-day Earth, which meant that she could try giving Tish a ring. She took her mobile out of her pocket and scrolled through her address book until she found her sister’s number. She was about to press the Call button when it suddenly occurred to her that for Tish this wouldn’t actually
be
the present day.

Martha had got so used to rattling back and forth through the centuries with the Doctor that a few months – or even a year or two

– before or after that spring day she had originally stepped aboard the TARDIS seemed neither here nor there to her. But calling Tish might change all that, might prove totally disastrous, in fact. What 67

if, for instance, this was a few months into Martha’s future (and she was ashamed to say she was only assuming this was 2008; she hadn’t actually
checked
) and she called home only to find that something terrible had happened? Or what if, when she rang Tish, her future (or past) self was actually
there
with her sister in the room, and Tish was so freaked out by the experience that it led to. . . to what?

The Doctor had once told Martha how the same person from different time lines should never come into contact with themselves because it would unravel the web of time or something. She had never really thought about that until now, but all at once she realised how tricky and complicated and dangerous the consequences of time travel could be. Not because of the monsters you might meet along the way, but because of what you yourself, with an act of thoughtlessness, might unwittingly set in motion.

With a shudder, she switched her phone off and put it back in her pocket. Then, as she waited for her food, she thought about how the Doctor must have had to think about this stuff all the time for hundreds of years, and of how brilliant and special and lonely he was.

And thinking about that gave Martha a renewed tingle not simply of excitement but of sheer, unadulterated joy. It gave her a sense, not for the first time, of how incredibly privileged she was to be travelling with him – of how, in fact, regardless of the sleepless nights and the frequent terror and the almost incessant bumps and bruises, she was the luckiest girl alive.

Deep beneath the earth the Hervoken were communicating.

Theirs was an ancient language, subtle, instinctive and complex.

They conveyed meaning not through conventional speech, but via thoughts, feelings, symbols, incantations. To a human being, they might have appeared to be praying, or casting spells, or twitching involuntarily, or at times simply waiting, perhaps even sleeping as they drifted like phantoms on the air. But in truth they were doing none of these things. They were conveying information, formulating a plan.

They knew – through a mysterious fact-gathering process of their own that humans might (only partly correctly) have labelled mind-68

reading or remote perception or even witchcraft – that the man with the blue energy was a danger to them, and that he had an emotional link to the girl who accompanied him.

And they knew too that the girl was currently alone.

And vulnerable. . .

Martha was halfway through her mega fry-up when the hairs started prickling on the backs of her arms. She looked out at the street.

Was the mist suddenly thicker and darker? She had been able to see the cars parked by the kerb pretty clearly before, but now they were hazy blocks of dimness. And the vague outline of the buildings across the square had disappeared completely, to be replaced by an almost solid bank of mist that was deepening to the murky green of over-ripe olives.

All at once her breakfast didn’t seem so appetising. Because now, as well as the hairs on her arms, Martha felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickling too. Plus her stomach was starting to churn with nerves. She tried to tell herself there was nothing to be afraid of, nothing concrete, nothing she couldn’t rise above. Like the Doctor had said, it was just alien chemicals, or psychic oojamaflips, or whatever it was they put in the mist, that were making her feel this way.

Determined to return to her breakfast – even though her appetite had almost completely gone by now – Martha suddenly realised the music that had been playing in the diner had stopped. Tearing her gaze away from the scene outside the window, she turned her head –and gasped.

The room was full of mist! It was suffusing the place with an eerie gloom, obscuring the counter, the surrounding tables, the Halloween decorations, Martha’s fellow diners. . .

She jumped to her feet, her heart thumping hard. It was difficult to tell where the mist was coming from. It seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. It seemed simply to be
there
, filling the room. And it seemed to be deepening even as she looked, turning solid objects into murky blobs, transforming day into night.

69

Martha felt suddenly alone in the dank silence. Alone, isolated, removed from reality.

‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Anyone around?’ She was alarmed at how flat and muffled her voice sounded, how the marshy mist seemed to swallow it.

Suddenly sensing a presence behind her, feeling cold breath on the nape of her neck, she spun round. . .

There was no one there.

‘Hello?’ she called again, annoyed at the rising panic in her own voice. ‘Will someone please answer me?’

Once again the mist stifled and seemed to gulp down her words.

And once again there was no reply.

Right, Martha thought.
Right.
What would the Doctor do? What would he do if he
didn’t
have his sonic screwdriver?

He’d make for the door, that’s what. He’d try to find out what was going on.