have some idea what's going on by now. Maybe we can do Vijay spun around, the telescope dish looming overhead, something.'

and took in the devastation. Something extraordinary had 'I think we should find the Doctor.'

happened during the night.

'Yeah. So do I. But let's get away from here first, eh?' Vijay Holly appeared, rubbing her face. She seemed a little hooked his arm around her and held her chin in his other brighter, kissing her lover full on the lips and hugging him hand. 'I love you, you know.'

close. She saw the fence over his shoulder and gasped.

She smiled sweetly, squeezed his hand and set off for the 'Think it was those things?'

Land Rover.

Vijay shrugged. 'Can't have just been them, the whole Vijay pulled open the door and leant across to open the fence is down.' He peered across at one of the posts. 'Hang pa.s.senger side. He stiffened as a low groan murmured on.'

through the air. Holly looked at him through the Holly pulled her blanket tightly around her as Vijay windscreen and shrugged. Vijay got out of the Land Rover.

wandered over to the fence. She watched him feel about in The groan came again, stronger this time. Vijay pushed the heather for a moment then look around himself again.

Holly away from the truck and p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. It was 'Holly!' he called.

coming from underneath the vehicle. Gingerly, he squatted She wandered towards him, stepping over the remains of down and blinked into the shadows.

the fence.

'Christ! Holly! Give me a hand!'

'The ground's uneven,' said Vijay, wonderingly.

He thrust his arm under the cha.s.sis and pulled at the 'Subsidence?'

prostrate figure lying there. The grizzled hair was matted 'Must be. The fence hasn't been knocked down, the with blood and the fierce blue eyes flickered weakly.

ground itself has been disrupted.' He squatted on his 'Dr Cooper!' cried Holly delightedly, shunting her haunches and indicated the heather. 'And look at this.'

colleague into a sitting position against the wheel.

Holly bent down. 'It's scorched.'

Cooper lifted an eyelid. 'Holly?' She inclined her head.

Vijay nodded and swung his arm around in an arc. 'All 'Vijay?' A sigh bubbled from her lips. 'Thank G.o.d.'

the way round, I reckon.'

'We thought you were dead,' said Vijay. Cooper coughed.

Holly frowned. 'Like a giant fairy ring.'

'Should be, by rights. Those beasties...' She shook her head An icy gust ruffled her hair. 'What about Mr Trevithick ...

disbelievingly. 'One caught me across the forehead but I and Cooper?'

managed to get under here. Must've pa.s.sed out.' Holly Vijay sighed. 'Maybe they got away.'

hugged the older woman. Cooper patted her back Holly hung her head despondently.

affectionately.

228.

229.

Vijay stood up suddenly, his keen gaze fixing on York. George Lowc.o.c.k, however, kept the keys in the something. He wandered away towards the fence.

bottom drawer of his desk and that Christmas morning, he 'Hawthorne?' croaked Cooper weakly. Holly shook her opened the ancient doors to convene his meeting.

head. 'The old man too, probably. The Doctor went off to Now the dingy interior was crammed with villagers.

the monastery.'

Lowc.o.c.k had done his rounds late on Christmas Eve, telling Cooper nodded, her eyes closing. 'Holly?' Vijay's voice everyone to be in the church for eight the next morning as cut through the moan of the wind. 'Will you be OK a there was a bit of a flap on. He was shocked to discover how moment?' asked Holly urgently. Cooper nodded, fingering few people answered his knock. It was almost as though the wound on her forehead with some distaste. 'Holly!'

they had all gone away.

Vijay was walking up and down in agitation just beyond Mr Bayles, Crook Marsham's butcher for thirty years, the edge of the fallen fence. Holly ran over to him, the seemed to have upped and left, fresh turkeys abandoned on question on her lips answered by the sight of the great, his counter. Old Mr Pemberton at the post office, who had tumulus-like mound of earth heaped before her.

never been more than thirty miles from the village in his life, The subsidence had opened a gash in the moor some had similarly vanished.

thirty feet across. The soil yawned above a crooked cave It was only when Lowc.o.c.k called on Win Prudhoe that his mouth, with broken stones and clods of earth littering the suspicions became a sick certainty. These people hadn't left entrance. The ring of scorched heather extended right Crook Marsham. They had been taken, consumed, just like around it.

the others they had found.

'What did the Doctor say this place was built on?' said He'd knocked lightly on the door and pushed it slowly Vijay, knowing the answer. Holly nodded excitedly.

open until it banged against the umbrella stand. There was a Vijay turned back to the pitch-black chasm. 'I think we've burnt smell in the air and clouds of what appeared to be just found his palaeolithic quarry.'

steam hanging low under the rafters.

The stones of Crook Marsham's little church had echoed Gingerly, with heart pounding, Lowc.o.c.k walked through to the sound of Christmas Day worship for almost nine the sitting room, looking about at dusty furniture and old hundred years. Rows of creaking pews gave on to an aisle photographs. There was one of Jack Prudhoe and old so worn down that it formed a channel rather than a straight Andrew Medcalfe, shoulder to shoulder on the day they path, making the whole interior resemble a heavily rigged had both gone off to war.

ship, the towering pulpit looking like some ecclesiastical 'h.e.l.lo? Mrs Prudhoe?'

fo'c's'le.

He knew, with a dread that made his head reel, that she Attendance had dwindled to such an extent that the was no longer alive. Easing open the kitchen door, he church had been closed for all but the most special occasions.

noticed at once that the kettle had boiled itself dry on the Those villagers still devoted enough took the bus over to stove, little tongues of gas flame licking at its blackened 230 231.

underside. Then he glanced down at the bundle of rags in The Doctor's head brushed against the trap door and he the corner and failed to stifle a scream.

stood up, pushing against the wood with the flat of his 'Mrs Prudhoe, then?' Jill asked him as he ushered the last hands until it gave, crashing against the stone floor of the of a depopulated village into the church. Lowc.o.c.k nodded attic chamber.

heavily. 'Same as the others. Withered. Decomposed.' He He poked his head through and peered into the gloom. A slammed shut the church doors. 'You sit yourself down, moaning wind, accompanied by a beam of weak, diffused love. You've done enough.'

sunlight, was blowing through the gla.s.sless window. All 'I'm all right,' said Jill determinedly, resenting his else was shadow.

patronising tone in spite of her experiences.

The Doctor hauled himself through and, with a grunt, The confused residents of Crook Marsham, some fifty or slammed shut the trap door.

sixty people, were conversing in low, frightened voices.

He walked to the window and gazed out on to the moor a Lowc.o.c.k strode up the aisle and mounted the pulpit to hundred feet below. The light made him wince and he make the most difficult speech of his life.

turned back to the room. Tears sprang to his eyes. Just the light, he told himself, just the light.

The Doctor was running blind, the curved walls of the Sliding down the wall, the tails of his duffel coat folding tower blurring past him. He forced himself to concentrate under him, the Doctor breathed in deeply. He'd been on the steps under his shoes, stone by stone, as he rose ever through so much. Ridden so many of the waves of Time.

higher. The Abbot's landing appeared and then was gone.

Yet, for all those years, he'd put his own feelings to one Stone by stone. Stone by stone.

side, tucked them away as if they were of no importance.

Up and up he ran, his legs wracked with pain and his Now the full weight of his troubles was becoming clear.

mind reeling, a succession of confusing images glittering Instead of trying to confront his insecurities, like any before his eyes.

rational being, he had buried them deep in his psyche.

Susan.

He was the Doctor, after all, and expected to be immune Susan but... not Susan. Why did it have to be her? As if the to such things. Above such trivial matters as emotion and thing were focusing in on his darkest thoughts, exacerbating longing and... love.

the very feelings which had brought him to such a crisis.

It was only a matter of time before all those repressed It knew. It knew.

feelings flooded his system like poison from an untreated With a cry, the Doctor banged into the trap door which wound.

led into the attic chamber. He sat down wearily, wheezing Something glinted in the hard winter sunlight and the for breath, and buried his head in his hands. The steps up Doctor reached out a trembling hand to pick it up. It was a which he had run remained dark and silent. There was no flat, coiled metal object, cool to the touch. With a start, the sign that the apparition had followed him.

Doctor recognised it as the earring Ace had picked up on 232 233.

[image]

their visit to Segonax. The one she had taken to wearing in her left ear.

'Ace?'

She was here then, or had been. The Doctor stood up, sensing movement in the dusty shadows.

Twin oak beams dominated the far corner and, between them, a shambling figure was stirring.

The Doctor recognised Billy Coote from their encounter in the Great Hall. But there was something different about him now.

As the Doctor moved closer, Billy emerged into the light, stumbling forwards on his knees as though in great pain.

His face was deathly pale and clammy with little beads of sweat.

The Doctor shuddered as tiny particles of skin fell away Ace jammed her feet into the guttering and clung on to from Billy's face like old plaster, allowing radiant points of Robin. He responded by nudging closer, placing his warm light to shine through the pock-marks.

hand over hers.

The Doctor put out his hand with some trepidation.

They had been lying against the slates in this way for Billy Coote's eyes snapped open and the Doctor gasped.

some time. It was freezing cold and Ace would rather have There was no colour in those orbs now, not even the opaque attempted escape, but without her rucksack it seemed black which had so scared Ace and Robin. Billy's eyes were impossible. Still, she could wait. And as soon as that bloke utterly transparent, like two spheres of aspic jelly, a strange, in the attic got out of the way...

dull light exposing every capillary and nerve.

Ace remembered suddenly that her rucksack might contain something even more useful, that was, if she'd bothered to pack it. She looked up at the featureless sky.

Any attempt to negotiate the frost-covered roof would be suicidal, so they had remained perched on the sheer slates, clinging together for dear life and bodily warmth. Under different circ.u.mstances it would have been a delight, thought Ace, tightly gripping this lovely bloke, feeling the pressure of his warm body against hers. But circ.u.mstances 234 235.

weren't different. They were the same as they always were and a chunk of light, solid as a film beam in a dark cinema, when travelling with the Doctor. b.l.o.o.d.y dangerous.

poured out.

Ace checked her watch. It was well after eight in the The Doctor moved back a little.

morning.

Some sort of mental link, he thought.

'Ace?'

Possession?

She jerked alert as the Doctor's voice sounded from the Billy Coote's wizened chest began to heave. From deep, room below.

deep within his ribs came a rustling sound. He began to 'Robin!' she hissed. 'It's him. The Doctor! He's in there!'

mouth noiselessly, his lips splitting and cracking as light The boy craned his neck to look at her. 'What can we do?

flooded through.