Wishing Well

by Trevor Baxendale

  His walkie-talkie crackled and he jumped. Fumbling, he raised it to his lips. 'Hello?'

  'Hello?' said Martha, holding the walkie-talkie in both hands. 'Hello? Doctor? Can you hear me, over?'

  The only reply was white noise.

  'I can't get anything out of it,' Martha said.

  Sadie took the radio and fiddled with it, but the only sound was static now. 'He must've have passed out of range,' she said.

  Martha turned to Angela. 'Do you think we should pull him back up now?'

  'The rope's still going out,' Angela said, nodding at the brake. 'He's still descending.'

  'I didn't think it would be this deep.'

  'There's not much more to go now. We'll play it right out.'

  * * *

  The Doctor pulled a face at the useless walkie-talkie and slipped it back into his pocket. He didn't think he'd come far enough to be out of range. Perhaps something was interfering with the signal.

  He was still descending, which was good. He didn't want Angela to panic and start hauling him back up too soon. There was still a lot to see.

  He waved the torch around the walls. The snails recoiled and the spiders ran. There was a lot of the white weed here; in some places it grew so thickly the brickwork was completely obscured. Now there were lumps of it here and there, like a sudden growth of fungus, with spindly little twigs thrusting out like fingers groping in the darkness.

  The Doctor reached out and touched the twigs. They were warm. He frowned, unable to decide if they were plant or animal in origin.

  There was one particular patch where a number of thick, pallid branches had extended halfway across the shaft in a kind of fibrous web. It was almost as if the weed – or whatever it was – had grown around something. The Doctor took out his glasses and slipped them on for a closer look as he drew level.

  He pointed the torch at the lumpy mass. There was definitely something inside the weed. Carefully he reached out and tugged at some of the fronds, and they came away quite easily. Beneath there was something small and round and dark. The light picked out a tiny face with matted fur and whiskers.

  'Uh oh,' said the Doctor quietly.

  The dead cat was almost overgrown with the weeds. The Doctor pulled some more fronds away, exposing the ginger ears and an old collar with a name tag. Squinting, he pulled the collar around until he could read the name on the little metal disc.

  Tommy,' read the Doctor. 'Barney Hackett's cat. So this is where you ended up, eh, puss?'

  There was silence in the well-shaft as the Doctor stared sadly at the feline remains.

  Then the cat's eyes snapped open and it mewed at him.

  ELEVEN

  'Did you hear that?' said Martha suddenly, waving a hand at Angela to stop her speaking.

  'Listen!' Martha leaned right over the well, straining to hear.

  'I can't hear anything,' said Sadie.

  'Shush,' Angela ordered. 'What did it sound like, Martha?'

  Martha swallowed. 'Well, I can't be sure... but...' She looked back up at the two women. 'Well, it sounded like a cat mewing.'

  Sadie actually laughed. 'Oh, come on! Don't tell me Barney Hackett's been telling you his ghostly cat stories!'

  Angela was smiling too. 'He still reckons his little Tommy's down there, calling back up to him...' She put a hand to her mouth and looked upwards, mimicking someone calling up a well-shaft. 'Miaow!'

  'No, I'm serious,' Martha objected. 'Listen, I'm sure of it.'

  They all listened but there was nothing.

  'Pull him back up,' Martha instructed Angela.

  'Don't be daft,' she said. 'He's nearly reached the end of the rope anyway.'

  'I said pull the Doctor back up.'

  Sadie put a hand on her arm. 'Martha, you're overreacting. It's just a story. Barney Hackett's cat fell down that well months ago. It's dead.'

  'I know, he told me.' Martha ran a hand through her long black hair in exasperation. 'Listen, there's something you should know about Barney.

  They looked expectantly at her.

  'We saw him last night, right here by the well...' Martha looked at the patch of grass where the old man had turned to dust. 'It was horrible.'

  'He's always hanging around the well,' Angela said. 'In fact, I'm surprised he's not here now.'

  'What do you mean, it was horrible?' asked Sadie with a frown.

  Martha took a deep breath. 'Something happened here last night, something terrible. You've got to believe me, the Doctor could be in real danger. Pull him back up!'

  Confused, but seeing the genuine fear in Martha's eyes, Angela released the handgrip on the winch. 'All right,' she said. 'I'll wind it back up...'

  But the winch wouldn't budge. 'It's stuck,' she said.

  Martha joined her and added her own strength, but the mechanism might as well have been carved from solid rock.

  Angela reached across the well and touched the rope. 'Ye gods, it's as taut as a bow string,' she said. 'Something's pulling on it – hard!'

  Martha looked back at the frozen windlass and then back down the well. 'What are we going to do? Doctor!'

  The cat's eyes closed again, and for a long moment the Doctor just stared at it. When the animal still didn't move, the Doctor reached out to touch it. It was cold and stiff. There had been no life in the dry, cracked eyes. The thing was dead and had been for a long time. Or at least it should have been. What was keeping it going? The weed?

  Something touched his leg and he aimed the torch down at his feet. There was a large mass of the white weed spread out below him like a gigantic cobweb stretched across the well-shaft. His plimsolls were touching some of the strands. He tried to pull his legs back up away from the tangled growth, but the uppermost fronds had somehow wound themselves around his feet. He kicked out but found the weed had got quite a grip.

  'Not good,' he murmured. 'Not good at all.'

  He shone the torchlight down and, to his mounting consternation, saw that the milky tendrils were actually moving, feeling their way over his ankles and up his shins. They crept under his trousers and over the material, increasing their grip.

  Hurriedly he pulled out the walkie-talkie and pressed the transmit button. 'Hello? Martha? Can you hear me?'

  There was nothing, not even static now. He shook the radio and tried again. 'Martha? Angela? Anyone?' With a hiss of annoyance he stowed the walkie-talkie again, but in doing so lost his grip on the torch and the lanyard slipped free of his belt. The beam of light whirled briefly as the torch fell and disappeared into the web below. For a moment the light shone directly upwards, illuminating the Doctor as he hung in the air like a puppet on a string. The weed had crawled up over his knees now, and was beginning to exert pressure – pulling him down.

  And then the light faded. The Doctor couldn't tell if the torch had died or if it had fallen deeper into the morass below until the light was completely lost – but either way, it hardly mattered. Because suddenly the Doctor was plunged into complete and utter darkness. He couldn't see a thing.

  And the weed was still pulling him down.

  'It's working!' announced Angela suddenly as the winch rattled into life. 'It must have got caught on something again.'

  Martha peered down the well, but she couldn't see anything. The walkie-talkie was useless. She tried calling down, but her voice just seemed to fall away into nothingness inside the shaft.

  The winch was winding the rope back onto the drum at a good rate. Any minute now...' said Sadie, and they all looked down the well, waiting for the first sign of the Doctor. The rope grew thicker on the drum as it slowly revolved and the blue line that dangled down into the shaft began to snake back and forth.

  'I don't like the look of this,' said Angela after a moment.

  Then they saw the end of the rope as it ascended the shaft, and something dangling from it. Martha almost choked as it came into view.

  It was the Doctor's climbing harness. And it was empty. Martha grabbed the webbing harnes
s and inspected it quickly. Through the tears stinging her eyes, she could hardly see if it was damaged or not. But it hardly mattered.

  The Doctor was gone.

  TWELVE

  Angela looked ashen-faced at the empty harness. 'It's not possible,' she said, taking off her hat. All her usual brio had vanished, and suddenly she looked like the old woman she really was.

  'Don't forget the bucket,' said Sadie. 'Something took that too.'

  Angela was shocked. 'Are you trying to say something's taken the Doctor?'

  'Let's all just stay calm,' said Martha. Out of the three of them, she was the most composed. Perhaps she was more used to this kind of thing with the Doctor, but she knew she had to stay in control. Panicking was the last thing they needed. Instinctively, she felt gripped by a desire to do the right thing, the practical thing. She had done it all her life, after all.

  'But what can we do?' Angela asked. 'If he's fallen and hurt down there... Martha, it doesn't bear thinking about.'

  'Wait a second. We don't know what's happened yet. We need to think.' For want of anything better to do, she tried the walkie-talkie, but it was useless.

  'You said something happened to Barney Hackett, too,' Sadie said to Martha. 'Last night, here. Something terrible, you said. What was all that about?'

  Martha took a deep breath. 'It must be connected, but I don't know how, right? We were talking to Barney here last night, just by the well. Yeah, he was telling us about his cat and the story of the highwayman. But then he sort of...' She trailed off, not really wanting to go on.

  'Let me guess,' said Sadie. 'He had one of his funny turns.'

  'Well... It was a bit more than a funny turn, actually.' Martha tried to explain what had happened, up to and including the old man's collapse into a pile of dust.

  When she had finished, Angela and Sadie simply stared at her.

  'I see...' Angela said slowly, as if considering in minute detail what she had just been told. But Martha could tell that her whole attitude had changed, and so had that of Sadie. They weren't making any eye contact with her any longer. They thought she was crazy.

  'Look, I know it seems impossible,' Martha said, trying to sound reasonable, 'but it's all true, I swear. The Doctor knows about these things. It's not easy to explain. I wouldn't have told you if it wasn't important... but now...' She tailed off again, fingering the Doctor's climbing harness.

  'So the Doctor's seen this kind of thing before, has he?' said Sadie.

  'Yeah.'

  'I thought he was from the council,' Angela said. She took off her old bush hat and ran her fingers through her hair. 'I don't know if I can believe you or not, Martha...'

  'But...?' Martha added hopefully.

  'But there's something very odd going on here,' Angela continued, 'and I'm damned if I know what it is.'

  'If what you said is true,' Sadie offered, 'then that means Barney Hackett is dead.'

  'Yes,' said Martha.

  'Which would be a very serious thing indeed.'

  'I'm not joking.'

  'Why didn't you go to the police? Or tell anyone?'

  'Well, d'uh!' Martha finally began to lose patience. 'Do you think I enjoyed telling you two? Just think what it would have been like telling a policeman!'

  Angela pursed her lips. 'She's got a point, Sadie.'

  'Are you trying to tell me you believe her?'

  'She's got nothing to gain by making it up, has she?'

  Martha cleared her throat. 'I am still here, you know.'

  'Unlike Barney Hackett,' Sadie remarked drily.

  Somewhere near the bottom of the well, the Doctor was upside down in complete darkness.

  He had been dragged into the white weed like a fly into a spider's web. The more he struggled, the more deeply he became ensnared. The strange, fibrous roots weren't sticky, but they still managed to hold on to him, slowly curling tiny little shoots around his ankles and wrists until he was well and truly caught.

  The web analogy wasn't one of his favourites. It implied that, at the centre of the trap, there would be a large spider. And that he was lunch. He didn't care for either notion.

  Besides which, the tangle of white, fleshy roots didn't feel like something that had been constructed in the manner of a deliberate trap; it was more like something that had grown haphazardly, without any real design or purpose. The shoots had sprouted and crawled and clung to the shaft walls and eventually criss-crossed the empty space between. It was just his misfortune that he'd got tangled up. Now he was hanging upside down in the darkness, wondering what to do.

  He'd already tried the sonic screwdriver. Apart from taking a few readings which had only confirmed his previous analysis that the roots were neither animal nor vegetable in origin, there was a distinct danger: every time the sonic energy waves made contact with the web, it tightened its grip. The reaction seemed involuntary, but it was there nonetheless, and after a while it began to get painful. He'd switched the screwdriver off and stowed it carefully away. Being upside down, he didn't want it falling out of his pocket.

  He'd stopped struggling, but apart from that all he could do was hang. He kept thinking of Martha and the others at the top of the well. They'd be wondering what had happened to him. He was wondering what had happened to him.

  'Bucket,' he said aloud. His outstretched hand had just touched something hard and wooden and curved, and he recognised it instantly. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it. So this was where it had ended up. Something had pulled it down here and pulled it hard. It was all but smothered in the white weed.

  Not a comforting thought. But it did give him an idea – the sound of his voice had echoed around the well, and helped define his immediate surroundings.

  He quickly went through all of his senses: it was something to do, anyway, and you never knew what you might pick up from an unexpected source.

  Hearing – if he slowed his hearts right down and stopped breathing altogether, there was total silence; there wasn't even the noise of any insects or snails this far down, and he suspected they were instinctively staying clear of this very unnatural phenomenon. Wise move, probably.

  Touch – he knew the thing holding him was warm, fibrous, not sticky. But if he moved, it seemed to grip harder. Nothing much more to be learned there.

  Smell – damp, cold, and a faint, underlying odour of decay with just a hint of ginger. That was probably Tommy. There was something else, though, something he couldn't identify. Something totally alien to Earth. Smell me something I don't know, he thought.

  Taste – he opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, waggling it energetically in the darkness. This didn't tell him much more than his sense of smell, fortunately.

  Sight – nothing, just blackness. In fact, he could see more with his eyes shut. The Doctor was just about to start going through his extra senses, starting with his sixth sense, when something made him stop. Wait a minute, he thought. Go back one.

  He opened his eyes again and this time he actually saw something. 'Ha!' he shouted. He could see! Not much, but there was something – the faintest of green glows, right below him, and indeed all around him.

  The white stuff was glowing in the dark. 'Bioluminescence!' announced the Doctor happily. 'Oh, very good. I like that. Handy, too...'

  He hung in the semi-darkness, looking at all the faintly glowing strands which held him there.

  Now what?

  'Whatever happened to Barney Hackett last night,' said Angela, 'makes very little difference to what's happened to the Doctor today.'

  Martha frowned. 'How come?'

  'Well, in its broadest sense, it doesn't matter a jot if Barney Hackett transformed into a monster and then turned to dust, or ran around and disappeared into thin air, or was abducted by space aliens, or simply went away to spend some time with relatives. What matters is what we know happened here today – the Doctor went down the well and hasn't come back up.' Angela had regained some of her old spirit now. 'In other words, he's st
uck down there and he needs our help.'

  Martha felt a surge of relief. 'You're absolutely right.'

  'You mean let's just forget all about Barney Hackett,' said Sadie accusingly.

  'No!' Angela waved a hand irritably. 'I mean, yes. Look, there's precious little we can do about him now – that's what I mean. But we can help the Doctor.'

  'How, exactly?' Sadie nodded at the rope drum and winch. 'Send someone else down? Don't be ridiculous.'

  'I'll go,' said Martha.

  'No you won't,' Angela told her firmly. 'We're not about to lose someone else down the infernal thing. We'll call the fire brigade. They'll know what to do.' She fumbled in her pockets and found her mobile phone. Martha rather liked the idea of an 83-year-old lady having a mobile. Somehow, with Angela Hook, it wasn't a surprise.

  'I've got a better idea,' Martha said. 'There's no point in calling in the emergency services yet. They'll take ages to get here and we don't really know what we're dealing with. At the very least they'll just send someone else down the well, eventually.'

  'Then what do you suggest?' asked Sadie.

  Martha took a deep breath. 'You're not going to like it,' she said.

  THIRTEEN

  The Land-Rover screeched to a halt in front of the gates and Angela sounded the horn. 'I can't believe I let you talk me into this,' she told Martha. 'I still think we could have just phoned him.'

  'This sort of thing is better face to face,' Martha said. She was in the passenger seat, her fingers still digging deep into the worn upholstery. Angela's mood hadn't helped her driving. She had nearly run over a local man walking his dogs on the short trip from the well to the manor.

  'Come on, come on!' yelled Angela, hitting the horn again. A series of peremptory honks came from the Land-Rover's radiator grille, but the gates remained shut.