Forever Autumn

by Mark Morris

  The Doctor grimaced. ‘I was hoping for more of a Sid Vicious vibe. Hang on a sec.’

  Instead of heading straight for the exit, he dragged her over to the dais, on top of which sat the book. The tangle of roots holding it in place were clenching and unclenching involuntarily like a hand or a claw. The Doctor waited until its ‘fingers’ were fully extended, then he reached in and snatched the book.

  ‘He shoots, he scores,’ he cried, brandishing his prize in triumph. ‘Now let’s skedaddle.’

  He grabbed Martha’s hand once again and they fled through the writhing corridors.

  Abandoned, that was how Etta felt. Abandoned and forgotten.

  She’d woken up an hour earlier in a strange bed, wondering where the heck she was. It was only when she sat up and saw the green mist outside that she remembered about the Doctor and Martha and her cats.

  She was splashing water on her face within a minute and downstairs within three. Eloise Walsh, perched behind her desk like a giant scrawny crow, arched an eyebrow at her.

  ‘Hear you’ve made yourself some new friends, Etta,’ Eloise said, in such a way that she could only be insinuating something.

  ‘So what if I have?’ Etta retorted, puffing herself up.

  ‘So nothing,’ Eloise said acidly. ‘Just making conversation is all.’

  ‘Hmph,’ said Etta. She was about to saunter out without another word when it struck her that her new friends might have left her a note or a message. Deciding that it was worth swallowing just a teaspoon of pride in order to find out, she marched over to the desk and asked.

  Eloise smirked at the question and said airily, ‘The young lady did say something about coming back soon, but that was some while ago. I dare say she’s found something more diverting to occupy her time. You know what young people are like.’

  ‘And the Doctor?’ asked Etta.

  ‘Oh, he left hours ago.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Etta curtly. She offered Eloise a grudging thank you and plodded towards the main doors.

  ‘Oh, Etta,’ Eloise called after her.

  Etta clumped to a halt and turned stiffly. ‘Mm-hmm.’

  ‘I hope he didn’t manage to gain access to your house.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your prowler from last night. Wasn’t that why you were here?’

  Etta stared at Eloise for a good twenty seconds, then gave a noncommittal ‘Mm’ and turned away again. She didn’t look back.

  All the way home she thought about her cats, and hoped that what the Doctor had told her last night was true and that they would be back to normal this morning. She wondered if she’d seen the last of the spaceman and his young friend, whether the two of them had simply vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared. She hoped not. Despite the fact that she’d had to run for her life twice last night, thus exerting her old body more than was probably good for her, she couldn’t remember when she had last felt more alive! Men from space, creatures made of leaves, possessed cats… It all made a welcome change from cocoa by the fireside and a book before bedtime.

  Even so, she was relieved to find her dear old pets back to normal, just as the Doctor had promised, when she arrived home. If they hadn’t been she didn’t know what she would have done – run for her life for the third time probably. She put down food and milk for them, and was just about to fix herself a coffee, when she heard a peculiar rumbling sound. Next moment her crockery began rattling on the shelves, prompting several of her cats to abandon their breakfast and dart away with yowls of protest.

  What on earth was happening now? Was this the mother ship descending from the heavens? Was the ground about to split asunder and swallow them all whole? She went to the window and looked out. Over her rear fence she could just make out the black tree looming through the mist. She was astonished to see it shuddering and jerking, as if in the grip of a giant hand. She was even more astonished to see sparks of green energy skittering along its branches, and then the ground crack open beneath the pressure of a squirming tangle of thick black roots.

  One of the roots, or several, caused her fence to buckle and partially collapse. Etta was still gaping at the black writhing mass, wondering what was going to happen next, when she heard thumping footsteps coming from the direction of her hallway.

  She hurried from her kitchen just in time to see her basement door fly open and the Doctor come bounding out. Martha was a few steps behind him, flustered and rosy-cheeked.

  Although she had been hoping to see the two of them again, Etta’s first response was one of indignation. ‘What were you doing in my basement?’ she demanded.

  ‘Salt!’ the Doctor yelled at her.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Got any salt?’

  Taken aback, Etta could only gesture vaguely. ‘Yes, it’s in the—’

  ‘Kitchen!’ the Doctor shouted. ‘Course it is!’ He bounded past Etta, raced down the corridor and hurtled through the kitchen door.

  Martha flashed Etta an apologetic look and ran after him. When Etta entered the kitchen herself, five seconds later, it was to find the Doctor emptying a tub of salt onto her dining table. She watched as he grabbed a handful and rubbed it all over the front cover of the book he was carrying. He gave the spine and the back cover the same treatment, then opened the book seemingly at random and chucked a fistful of salt inside before slamming it shut.

  Only then did he allow himself a split second to relax. He expelled a deep breath and said, ‘There you go. That’ll stop ’em nicking it back until we can get it to the TARDIS.’

  ‘Stop who?’ asked Etta.

  ‘Questions are good, but I’ve only got time to answer relevant ones,’ said the Doctor bluntly. ‘I’m working to a deadline here.’

  ‘Why is the book so important?’ tried Martha.

  The Doctor grinned. ‘It’s their starter motor.’

  Etta gave him one of her no-nonsense stares. ‘Whatever are you babbling about?’

  The Doctor snatched the book off the table and waved it in the air. ‘This is their starter motor, and that thing out there,’ he pointed towards the back of the house, ‘is their spaceship.’

  Etta blinked at him. ‘Do you mean the tree?’

  ‘The tree,’ he confirmed.

  ‘What rot,’ she said.

  The Doctor stared at her for a moment as if he couldn’t believe she had contradicted him. Then he said, ‘Do you know, you’re right. You’re a hundred gazillion per cent right. Because that’s not their spaceship. That’s just the nose cone of their spaceship. No, not even that. That’s just the tip… tippety… tip bit.’ He tapped the end of his nose with his finger and swung to confront Martha. ‘What’s that bit of your nose called?’

  She shrugged. ‘The tip.’

  ‘Oh, you’re no use,’ said the Doctor rudely. ‘Call yourself a doctor? Come on!’ Abruptly he ran back out of the kitchen, sweeping past Martha and Etta, the book clutched in his hand.

  ‘Where now?’ Martha shouted, hurrying after him.

  ‘The TARDIS!’ he yelled.

  ‘See you later, Etta,’ Martha called back over her shoulder. She slammed the front door after her, and suddenly the house was silent again.

  Etta stood in the dusty aftermath of the whirlwind that was the Doctor, and turned to Orlando, who had emerged from hiding now that the ‘earthquake’ had stopped.

  ‘It’s true what they say about the Brits,’ she told him. ‘Mad as hatters, the lot of them. Even the ones from outer space.’

  The TARDIS was encased in a crackling, flickering dome of green energy. The Doctor stopped dead when he saw it, then muttered, ‘Right,’ and whipped out his sonic. As soon as he turned it on and pointed it at the dome, the crackling intensified. The Doctor adjusted the setting and had another go, but once again the crackling altered, becoming deeper, more sonorous.

  ‘Oh, now I’m getting cross,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Can’t you get through?’ asked Martha.

  The Doctor
tried again, but although the flickering green dome dimmed and brightened intermittently, it remained stubbornly in place.

  At last he stepped back and raised his head to the sky. ‘I suppose you think you’re clever!’ he shouted. Then he sighed and grudgingly admitted, ‘Which you are. Quite.’

  ‘What’s it doing?’ asked Martha.

  ‘It’s gazumping me,’ the Doctor said, and waggled his sonic in the air. ‘It keeps anticipating my moves, changing frequency before I do.’

  ‘You mean it’s alive?’

  ‘We-ell, not alive exactly, just… a bit brainier than most of the force fields I’ve met on my travels.’ Suddenly he pulled a face. ‘Urgh!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Martha asked.

  ‘The Necris is trying to break through the occult shield I created around it.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Hey, this is me you’re talking to, remember. There’s no need to tart it all up and make it sound impressive. All you did was cover the book in salt like it was a plate of chips or something.’

  ‘Yeah, but I did it brilliantly,’ said the Doctor.

  Martha smiled. ‘So how do you know it’s trying to break through then?’

  ‘Well, to use the technical term, it’s going all yucky and squirmy. Here, catch.’

  He tossed the book to her and she caught it instinctively. Sure enough the cover was rippling, contracting, which made her think of escapologists manipulating their muscles to break free from chains or ropes. ‘Yuk,’ she said.

  ‘Less of the technobabble,’ the Doctor scolded her. ‘Long words only confuse people.’ He tapped his sonic against his bottom lip, brow furrowed as he thought the situation through. Then he grabbed the book from her again and shouted, ‘Come on!’

  ‘Where we going now?’ she asked as he passed her in a blur of motion.

  ‘Somewhere else,’ he called.

  ‘Bet none of your friends have ever been fat, have they?’ she shouted, and ran after him.

  ‘IT’S JUST LIKE in the movies,’ said Scott.

  ‘Huh?’ said Rick.

  ‘You know, those movies where the kids know there’s something weird going on, but the adults don’t believe them?’

  ‘I bet the Doctor would believe us,’ said Thad.

  Scott rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, but the Doctor’s not here, is he?’

  ‘Well, maybe we should go look for him then,’ Thad suggested.

  ‘Oh, great idea, brainiac,’ said Scott scathingly. ‘That shouldn’t take too long. There’s only about ten million places he could be.’

  It was forty-five minutes since Mr Everson’s disappearance. By the time Rick had managed to persuade his dad to break away from his work and come look at the hammer, it had long since ceased its weird light show. Rick had warned his dad about touching the thing, but Mr Pirelli had just given him an exasperated look and picked it up anyway. And of course, nothing had happened. The hammer was just a hammer.

  ‘You be sure to give this back to Dwight when you see him,’ Mr Pirelli said, and held it out to his son as if making a point.

  Rick looked at the hammer as if it was a poisonous snake, but then he stretched out a reluctant hand and took it.

  ‘The thing is, sir,’ Scott said hesitantly, ‘I don’t think we will see him.’

  Tony Pirelli fixed Scott with a look that made him squirm. ‘Really?’ he said heavily. ‘So you think he’s vanished into thin air too, huh?’

  Scott shrugged, too intimidated to respond.

  Thad said, ‘We know something’s happened, Mr Pirelli. We heard him cry out, but when we got here he’d gone.’

  ‘I see. So what’s your theory, Thad? You think Dwight was maybe snatched by a pterodactyl that slipped through from The Twilight Zone?’

  His words were steeped in irony. Now it was Thad’s turn to fall silent. Shaking his head, Mr Pirelli said, ‘You know what I think? I think you guys have got a severe case of the Halloween heebie-jeebies.’

  ‘That’s not it, Dad,’ protested Rick. ‘We did hear Mr Everson cry out. And when we got here five seconds later, he’d gone. How do you explain that?’

  ‘Well now, let’s see,’ said Mr Pirelli, smiling indulgently. ‘How’s about Dwight was fixing up the lights when he caught his thumb a good one with the hammer? You guys heard him yell out, but by the time you got here he’d scooted off to find himself a band-aid?’

  The boys exchanged sceptical looks. ‘So what about all the other weird stuff that’s been going down?’ said Rick.

  Mr Pirelli sighed. ‘Such as?’

  Rick glanced at Scott. ‘Dr Clayton for one.’

  ‘What about Dr Clayton?’

  ‘We heard he’d had an accident,’ said Rick. ‘We heard he was in the hospital and that no one was allowed to visit him.’

  Tony Pirelli shrugged. ‘If that’s true, then what’s weird about it? People have accidents all the time.’

  ‘OK,’ said Rick. ‘Well, what about this mist? You can’t say this is normal.’

  ‘It’s unusual, I’ll give you that,’ his dad conceded, ‘but I’m sure if you asked a weather guy he’d explain it to you like that.’ He clicked his fingers.

  The boys simply stared at him, unconvinced. Sighing again, Mr Pirelli said, ‘Look, guys, I really haven’t got time for this. I have to get back to work. And maybe you should too. Maybe it would help take your mind off things.’

  He stomped off, and a few minutes later the boys followed him. Getting back to work hadn’t helped take their mind off things, however. In fact, the more they talked about Dwight Everson’s disappearance the more convinced they became that strange forces were at work.

  Scott had just made his remark about there being a million possible places the Doctor could be when Rick said quietly, ‘You’re not going to believe this, guys.’

  Scott and Thad glanced at him, then followed the direction of his gaze. The gangly figure of the Doctor was racing towards them out of the mist, the equally slim but shorter figure of his friend Martha at his heels.

  ‘Hey,’ Rick shouted, spotting what the Doctor was holding in his hand, ‘you found my book.’

  The Doctor and Martha thumped to a stop. Martha was panting, but the Doctor wasn’t.

  Looking at Rick a little wildly, the Doctor cried, ‘I need some iron!’

  Bewildered, Rick said, ‘Some…?’

  ‘Iron! Iron!’ the Doctor shouted. ‘Surely you’ve heard of it? It’s a malleable ductile ferromagnetic metallic element, found mainly in haematite and magnetite. Grappling irons are made out of it, and soldering irons, and… and horses and ages and fists.’

  Rick was too flustered by the Doctor’s urgency, by the way the man was staring at him, to think clearly. ‘What… what kind of iron?’ was all he could think of to say.

  The Doctor did a double-take. ‘Anything! Anything made of iron. A crowbar, a jemmy, an iron… pomegranate. Doesn’t matter as long as it’s iron.’

  Rick suddenly realised that Dwight Everson’s hammer was still in his hand. He held it out. ‘Well, there’s this,’ he said.

  ‘Brilliant!’ cried the Doctor, as if Rick had performed the most astounding magic trick ever. He snatched the hammer from Rick with one hand and lobbed the book carelessly over his shoulder with the other. Martha stepped forward and caught it.

  The Doctor produced what looked to Rick like a thin torch from his coat pocket and turned it on. The torch made a high-pitched warbling noise and a brilliant blue light shone out of the end of it.

  ‘Wow,’ Thad breathed as the Doctor used the torch to reshape the iron hammer. Whatever the device really was, it sliced through the dense metal like a sharp knife through a soft cake. The boys watched in awestruck disbelief as the Doctor melted and shaped the chunk of iron, forming it into a band.

  ‘What is that thing?’ asked Ralph.

  ‘Sonic screwdriver,’ said the Doctor absently.

  ‘How does it work?’ asked Thad.

  ‘Very well, thanks,’ said the
Doctor, and reached behind him. ‘Martha.’

  Martha placed the book into his hand. The Doctor laid it on the iron band, then used his sonic screwdriver to mould the band around it. He made a few minor adjustments, then, when he was happy, sealed the band shut.

  Finally he sat back on his heels. ‘Try getting out of that one,’ he said to the book and slipped the sonic back into his pocket.

  ‘So,’ Martha said, ‘tell us about the Hervoken.’

  ‘The what?’ said Rick.

  ‘They’re… oh, so ancient,’ said the Doctor. ‘When they’re operating at full capacity they have the ability to transform matter, alter perception and shift time.’

  ‘Black magic,’ said Thad.

  ‘Just a different kind of science,’ said the Doctor. ‘They knocked around the universe for centuries, pretty much keeping themselves to themselves, until… ooh, millions of years ago now, they somehow became involved in a war with our old mates, the Carrionites.’

  ‘The Witchy Wars,’ Martha said brightly.

  The Doctor flashed her a huge grin. ‘I like that,’ he said. ‘Aw, I wish my lot had called it that.’

  ‘Your lot?’ said Rick.

  Casually Martha nodded at the Doctor. ‘He’s an alien.’

  There was a beat of stunned silence and then Thad said, ‘Cool.’

  ‘So… these Hervoken guys,’ said Rick. ‘Have they, like, landed here in the Falls? Are they making all this weirdness happen?’

  ‘They didn’t land here exactly,’ said the Doctor. ‘They crashed. But not recently.’ Briefly he told the boys how the Hervoken ship had come down millennia before, how the majority of it was buried deep in the earth, and how the town had been built around it.

  ‘So the tree’s their spaceship?’ boggled Scott.

  ‘Well, it’s the tip… the apex… the crest… the pinnacle… the peak… the—’

  ‘I think we get the point,’ said Martha.

  ‘Hey, how lucky are we to live on top of a whole bunch of aliens?’ exclaimed Scott, then withered at the look the Doctor gave him. ‘Or not,’ he said.

  ‘Luck had nothing to do with it,’ said the Doctor. ‘Your ancestors were drawn here by a psychic pulse. Nothing too extreme, just a gentle suggestion sent out by the ship. It waited and waited for you lot to get clever enough to help it, then it sought you out and planted instructions in your pliable little brains.’ He raised his hands and adopted a ghostly voice: ‘Build here, protect us, tend to our needs.’