by Doctor Who
Pleased with her logic, Rose set off at a brisk pace, trying to get some warmth back into her bones. It wasn’t raining but the air was damp and the wind off the sea was threatening to bring more bad weather as the day went on. The sooner she found those kids and got back to the warmth of the pub the better.
The road winding up from the village was steeper than she remembered and soon she had to unzip her heavy parka despite the chill air.
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She crested the hill panting. God, you’d have thought with all the corridors she’d had to run down over the last few months she’d be fitter than this!
Catching her breath, she wandered towards the cul-de-sac where the Doctor had frightened off the monsters the previous night. It all looked so different in daylight. A normal, boring housing estate, the same as thousands of others across the country; well kept, quiet and disappointingly free of the sound of children playing.
Rose cursed under her breath. A man out in his driveway, cleaning his car, was watching her suspiciously. She smiled at him in what she hoped was a disarming and friendly way and kept walking. She’d do a quick circuit of the area, just in case.
A gust of wind sent a ripple through the trees at the edge of the estate, dead leaves swirling across the road. Rose struggled with the zip of her parka again. Daylight had had no friendly, softening effect on the wood, which still clung to the hillside, dark and ominous. Rose peered into the darkness. Surely the kids weren’t stupid enough to be playing in there?
She turned away, intending to head back down to the village, when she caught the sound of laughter through the trees. The kids were playing in the woods!
Suddenly the prospect of exploring the lighthouse with the Doctor seemed the better option to Rose. Wishing that she had a couple of his everlasting matches with her, Rose stepped into the wood, straining to hear where the laughter was coming from. She crept forward, wincing at each rustle of leaves or crack of dead branches. The laughter had been replaced by whispered conversation and loud ssshhs now, and Rose could smell wood smoke.
A loud crack made her jump and, in an explosion of wet leaves and thrashing undergrowth, a figure in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt burst from the trees in front of her, tearing through the wood and vanishing into the safety of the estate. From where the figure had emerged, Rose could see a jumble of corrugated-iron sheets, badly camouflaged with dead branches. A wisp of smoke curled into the air from behind it before being whipped away by the wind.
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Rose peered over the corrugated iron and five frightened faces looked up at her. She gave a deep sigh of relief.
‘I told you it wasn’t a monster!’ One of the girls punched a boy on the shoulder, the boy Rose had seen Ali with earlier. ‘I told you! They only come out at night, don’t they?’
The boy glowered at Rose before saying, ‘Nearly gave us a heart attack.’
Rose laughed nervously. ‘You and me both! Who was doing the world speed record?’
‘That was Dai Barraclough.’ Ali was smiling. ‘I think he wet himself.’
The kids dissolved into giggles. Rose slipped round the corrugated-iron sheeting and crouched down next to Ali. The kids had made a crude shelter in the lea of a tall oak tree. A small pile of wet twigs smoked fitfully and the floor was strewn with sweet wrappers and drinks cans.
‘This is where you all hang out?’ asked Rose.
Ali nodded. ‘It’s our hideout. We’re a gang. You’ve got to do the dare to join.’
‘Well, it looks like I’m a member, then.’
Ali’s eyes widened. ‘You went into the house?’
Rose nodded. ‘Uh-huh, Saw Mr Morton and his creepy nurses.’
‘Really?’ Ali was obviously impressed.
‘Yeah, really. And if I’m a member of your gang, then I hope you don’t need to keep secrets from me.’
Ali regarded her for a moment, then stood up. ‘We’ll need to take a vote.’
She motioned to her friends to follow her and the five children went into a huddle on the other side of the clearing. There was a lot of loud whispering, then Ali turned and came back to where Rose was sitting.
‘We’ve decided you can join. I told them that you’re OK, that we can trust you.’
‘Thank you.’ Rose smiled.
‘But not your friend. He’s too old.’
Rose giggled. ‘You’re more right than you know!’
The other children joined them.
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Ali pointed at each in turn. ‘That’s Baz Morgan. He lives in one of the new houses. We play football at his house sometimes. The girls are Sian and Jane Evans. Their mum runs the baker’s. Dai is the boy who ran off. You talked to him this morning.’
Rose nodded. The blond kid with the attitude. She wasn’t sad to see the back of him.
‘Yeah, didn’t think he liked me.’
‘And this is Billy Palmer.’ Ali pushed her friend forward. ‘He saw stuff at the rectory.’
Rose held out her hand. ‘Hello.’
Billy shook it solemnly. ‘Hi.’
‘What sort of stuff did you see?’
Billy shrugged. ‘Just vans at first, delivering stuff. Equipment. Computers and things. Then the people in the masks appeared. Didn’t see them arrive. . . They were just there one morning. Me and Dai had snuck into the courtyard at the back, were trying to see through the window into the cellar. They nearly saw me. Had to hide behind the bins. That’s when I saw the bad stuff.’
‘Bad stuff?’ Rose felt the hairs on her neck stand up. ‘What sort of bad stuff?’
Billy looked nervously round at his friends. ‘Bags.
Black bin bags. But there was a smell and. . . red stuff. One of the bags was leaking and I saw red stuff come out.’
‘Blood?’ Rose thought back to the pools of blood on the shore, the Doctor’s suspicion that someone was ‘cleaning up after their pet’.
‘I think so. We didn’t hang around to find out. We legged it for the tunnel.’
‘Tunnel?’
‘We found it,’ announced Ali proudly. ‘None of the grown-lips know it’s there. Going down the tunnel’s another dare.’ Her face fell. ‘Only Billy and Dai have been brave enough to go down it so far.’
Rose’s mind was racing. She wasn’t certain that Ali was right about them being the only ones who knew about the mysterious tunnel.
Parents did tend to know more about what their children got up to than they let on. But whether Morton knew about the tunnel was 53
another matter. He certainly had no interest in the upkeep of the house and the fact that the kids were able to get into the grounds via some secret entrance probably meant that he had even less of an interest in the history of the property.
It seemed the perfect way to get a closer look at the house without Morton knowing.
‘Can you tell me where this tunnel is?’
‘Sure.’ Ali caught hold of her hand. ‘It’s this way. Come on. I’ll show you.’
The Doctor trudged down the shingle towards an extraordinary tangle of rubbish piled up on the beach. From a distance it looked like a heap of flotsam deposited by a particularly high tide, but as he drew closer he could see that there was some kind of method to the madness, glimpses of what must once have been some sort of large beach house or holiday home protruding through the debris.
Tarpaulins stretched out over the roof were held in place with clumsy clusters of knotted rope, walls were patched with pieces of driftwood and the sides of packing crates, window frames were splintered and rotten, and from a tall metal pipe towering over the struc-ture a thin trail of smoke emerged, whipped inland by the offshore breeze.
Behind the house what had once been a sizeable fenced garden was now a jumble of salvage from the sea. Oil drums, plastic buoys, fishing nets and lobster pots lay among huge piles of driftwood, with brambles snaking through them. A wreath of lifebelts hung on the twisted remnants of a children’s swing, and underneath everything the Doctor could just m
ake out the shape of what looked like an old Triumph Herald, its bodywork rusted and corroded after years in the sea air.
From inside came the sound of singing and the smell of cooking.
The Doctor stepped up to the shabby front door, straightened his coat and knocked firmly. There was a muffled curse from inside, followed by the sound of movement. A few moments later the patched and battered door swung open and Bronwyn Ceredig peered out at him 54
suspiciously with those brilliant grey eyes of hers. She was wearing a long floral dress, with a striped apron tied around her waist. Her long grey hair was pulled back in an untidy bun and little half-moon spectacles perched precariously on the tip of her nose.
‘Yes?’
The Doctor smiled his broadest smile.
‘Good afternoon! Bronwyn, isn’t it? I’m the Doctor. We met at the pub last night. Bob over at the harbour said that you might be the best person to talk to about hiring a boat!’
She gave a disdainful sniff, threw the door open and vanished back into the house. ‘You’d better come in. I’m just making some Welsh cakes.’
The Doctor followed her, closing the door behind him.
The inside of the house was, if anything, more of a mess than the outside. Books, ornaments and photographs covered every surface, while the floor was piled high with newspapers and magazines, and pictures hung on every wall. Among the chaos protruded furniture, the covers faded and torn. The pleasant smell of cooking filled the air from a small kitchenette.
Bronwyn waved at him from in front of the stove.
‘Clear yourself a space and sit down. Watch out for the duck.’
The Doctor stepped warily into the room. A large mallard eyed him from its position on the couch. Moving a box of shoes, the Doctor sat down carefully next to it.
Bronwyn bustled out of the kitchenette, a plate of Welsh cakes in her hand. She thrust the plate at the Doctor, taking one herself.
‘I remember you now. Said that you were here to help.’
‘That’s right.’
She glowered at him. ‘How?’
‘Well, for starters I wanted to ask you about Nathaniel Morton. You don’t seem to have much time for him.’
‘He’s messing with things best left alone.’
‘You mean the creatures?’
‘I know what I mean.’ She took another mouthful of cake. ‘You said Bob sent you over? So you’ll be wanting to hire the boat?’
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‘That’s right. Want to get out to the island.’
‘Why do you want to head out there?’
‘Erm. . . To see the seals?’ The Doctor took a bite of his Welsh cake, ignoring the greedy eye of the duck.
Bronwyn nodded, as if that explained everything.
The Doctor went on, ‘I gather that the island is the best place to see them.’
‘That’s true. And you’re in luck. I was planning on heading out there myself.’
She undid her apron and threw it into the corner, then fed the remains of her Welsh cake to the duck, which swallowed them greedily.
‘You wait there, Dr whoever-you-are. I won’t be a minute.’
She pushed her way through the tangle of boxes to another door on the far side of the room. Hoping that she wasn’t collecting any shampoo, the Doctor picked up a stack of photos from the table alongside him and started flicking idly through them.
Almost all of them were in black and white, showing the village as it had been. From the look of things, not that much had changed over the last fifty years or so. The harbour was just the same, the seafront dominated by the imposing Victorian facade of the pub, the street leading up the hill still lined with the same cluster of small shop fronts, only the signage in the windows and the price tags visible on stalls giving the age of the photographs away. There were shots of the lighthouse in the bay, the paintwork clean and fresh, the lighthouse keepers posing proudly on the rocks at its base. There was even a photo of the rectory, its gardens neatly kept and the shrubbery that now grew wild trimmed and orderly.
As the Doctor looked through the photographs he realised that a lot of them featured Bronwyn as a young woman. She had been attractive in her youth, with long auburn hair cascading over her shoulders and a smile on her face in every picture.
One photograph showed her standing outside the beach house, a young man at her shoulder, a baby in her arms. The house was tidy and whitewashed, a line full of clean clothes hanging alongside it.
Another showed the three of them on the beach, only this time the 56
baby had grown into a small boy in shorts, his knees covered in sand, a bucket and spade being waved enthusiastically at the photographer.
The Doctor put the photographs down and stared around the room.
Nearly all of the photos on the walls or in frames on the top of cupboards featured the boy. He must have been five or six years old at a guess.
Hauling himself out of the sagging sofa, the Doctor slipped on his glasses. A jumble of photographs of the boy in a smart school uniform sat propped up against a vase on one of the groaning shelves. He picked them up, peering at them one by one. The boy had the same bright eyes and slightly crooked smile as his mother.
‘Where are you now, I wonder?’ he murmured.
Plucking one of them from the pile, the Doctor slipped it into his jacket pocket.
At that moment Bronwyn bustled back into the room. She was now wearing a huge battered oilskin and had a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. The Doctor hurriedly tried to put the rest of the photographs back in their place, fumbling and dropping several on to the floor.
Flashing her a guilty grin, he gathered them up.
‘Sorry. Butterfingers.’
Bronwyn snatched the photographs from him, putting them back in their place. The Doctor watched as her fingers ran gently over the pictures.
‘Good-looking boy.’
A flicker of a smile started to cross her face, taking years off her.
‘Yes. . . ’
The smile vanished as suddenly as it had arrived and she shot the Doctor a suspicious glance.
‘We’d better get a move on if we’re going to catch the tide,’ she said.
‘Absolutely. Don’t want to keep those seals waiting.’
Bronwyn bustled out of the room, muttering to herself. The Doctor took off his spectacles and fingered the photograph in his pocket.
Something dark had happened in Bronwyn’s past, of that he had no doubt. Something to do with her son. It could not have been a coincidence that Rose had seen a child in her dream. It could also not 57
have been a coincidence that there was history between Bronwyn and Nathaniel Morton. The problem was that he was still no closer to finding out what.
He tapped his teeth thoughtfully with the arm of his glasses.
‘Jimmy,’ he murmured.
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Thereyouare!’ Alipointedproudlyatalowpileofruinedbrickwork that emerged from under a sprawling holly bush.
She and the others had led Rose through the wood until they came to the high, imposing wall that bordered the back of the rectory grounds. Then they had followed the wall until they reached what had once been outbuildings serving the main house. Here the kids had scrambled enthusiastically underneath the foliage.
Rose pushed her way forward through the tangle of branches to where Billy Palmer and Baz Morgan were clearing leaves from a sheet of rotten plywood. The ruined building had obviously been a coal house or storeroom of some kind. The remains of bunkers could be seen among the vegetation and ancient rusted rail tracks snaked off through the wood, vanishing in the undergrowth, evidence of the in-dustry that must have thrived in the area in the past.
Grunting with effort, the two boys pulled back the plywood, exposing a dark hole at the base of the wall. Woodlice scuttled away from the light as the board was pulled back and Rose could smell the damp muskiness of decay. She peered into the tunnel. It was made of brick, about a metre wide, with a stream
of murky, rust-stained orange water 59
running down a drain in its centre.
Ali hunkered down next to her and peered into the tunnel, wrinkling her nose.
‘It smells a bit, but it’s quite safe.’
‘Yeah! Like you’d know,’ snorted Billy. ‘You’ve not been down there.’
‘But you have?’ Rose looked at him.
Billy nodded. ‘Like I said, it goes under the wall, comes up at the back of the house, in a kind of courtyard next to the cellars.’
‘How long is it?’
Billy shrugged. ‘Dunno. Not far.’ He paused. ‘Do you want me to show you?’
Rose smiled at the nervousness in the boy’s voice. He obviously didn’t want to go down the tunnel again, but equally he didn’t want to lose face with his friends. She shook her head.
‘Nah. It’s OK.’
‘I’ll go with you!’ piped up Ali.
‘No! I want you to stay here. All of you.’ She looked around the little group. ‘I need you to make sure no one comes in behind me.
And if I don’t come back out in about half an hour, go and find the Doctor back at the pub. All right?’
The kids nodded, relieved that Rose hadn’t asked them to go with her.
Ali pouted and crossed her arms. ‘It’s not fair!’
Rose looked at her sternly. ‘I mean it, Ali. I need you to keep an eye on things at this end.’ She squeezed her arm. ‘I’ll be ten minutes, OK?’
Ali nodded.
With more bravado than she felt, Rose gave the watching children a reassuring smile, took a deep breath and ducked into the tunnel.
There was a moment of panic when she realised that she wouldn’t be able to stand up straight, but the floor was so slippery with moss and slime that that wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway. Instead she pressed her hands against the roof and walls to keep her balance and started to edge her way forward.
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The tunnel was dark and with every step she took away from the entrance the blackness deepened. She strained to make out any shapes in the gloom ahead of her, but there was nothing. She glanced back over her shoulder. Five faces framed the tunnel entrance, watching her progress. Determined not to let them or the Doctor down, Rose headed deeper into the darkness.
