Joe’s description was dead on; the pattern of the glass fragments showed how the window had been forced open. Martha didn’t wait for Jenny or the stableman to go first. She saw a spatter of bright blood on the wooden lintel and took the initiative, stepping through into the darkened schoolhouse.
Martha didn’t allow herself to worry that there might be something dangerous in there; bloodstains meant that someone had been hurt, and injured people were her priority. She went in boldly. ‘Hello? Who’s there?’
The blinds had been drawn, making the room shadowy. She stepped around the pieces of broken glass and saw a shape huddled in the far corner, between a desk and the blackboard. Behind her, Jenny and Joe were following.
‘I’m Martha,’ she said, keeping her voice clear and even. ‘Have you hurt yourself? I can help you.’ She spotted dots of blood leading toward the slumped figure. ‘Hello?’
She moved carefully around the desks and saw the shape was a teenage boy. He was panting and shaking, his brown hair plastered to his pale, sweaty face. He was clutching his right hand with his left. Martha recognised the symptoms of a panic attack immediately.
‘Nathan?’ The youth looked up as Jenny spoke his name. ‘This is one of my former pupils. He helps me with the younger children and such,’ she explained. ‘Nathan, what happened here?’
The boy got shakily to his feet. ‘I . . . I cut myself. I’m real sorry . . .’
Martha saw the laceration across the teenager’s palm. ‘Let me see that,’ She took his wrist, and with a handkerchief from her pocket she set to work cleaning up the cut. ‘This looks a lot worse than it is.’
‘Were you here stealing?’ demanded Joe. ‘When your daddy hears about this—’
Jenny held up her hand. ‘There’s no need for that. I’m certain Nathan has an explanation.’
The boy looked up at Martha and she saw fear in his eyes. ‘I came looking for the teacher . . . Needed to find somewhere safe.’
‘Safe from what?’ Martha asked gently, tearing the handkerchief into a makeshift bandage.
Nathan tapped at his temple. ‘I can’t close my eyes, miss. Each time I’m abed, I see ’em.’
Joe shifted uncomfortably. ‘The kid’s addleheaded over somethin’. I’d reckon he’s up to some dare with those other young reprobates, that’s all.’
But Martha knew real terror when she saw it. The boy was deathly afraid of something. ‘What do you see, Nathan?’
He shuddered and Jenny answered for him. ‘It’s the night terrors.’
‘No such thing!’ snapped Joe, but he didn’t sound like he believed it.
Martha shot him a look. ‘Sounds to me like you’re trying to convince yourself, not him.’ She guided Nathan to a chair. ‘You’re having bad dreams, is that it?’ She chewed her lip; she wasn’t trained in psychology, but she’d try her best.
‘He’s not the only one,’ said the teacher darkly.
The boy blinked. She could see grey rings under his eyes from where he hadn’t been sleeping well. ‘The same dreams, over and over. Sounds like shot and shell.’ He took a shuddering breath. ‘Screamin’. And things walking like menfolk, but with too many arms and legs, faces like things from Hades itself. Some made of iron, others like lizards or birds. Lightning spilling outta guns instead of bullets. Blood-red clouds like giant mushrooms, fillin’ the sky.’ Nathan looked away. ‘Like war, it is. War across the world, only it ain’t no world I know.’
Martha’s blood ran cold. Someone from the twenty-first century would have said they had dreamt of laser weapons and nuclear explosions, aliens and robots, but Nathan had no idea what those things were; he was describing things beyond his understanding, trying to express something he had no frame of reference for.
‘Nothing but flim-flam and tomfoolery,’ growled Joe.
Jenny glared at the stableman. ‘You can ignore it all you like, Mr Pitt, but it won’t go away.’
All at once the stableman grabbed Nathan’s arm and tugged him away. ‘Come on, boy! I’m taking you back to your daddy to answer for this damage you did!’
‘Oi! Leave him alone!’ Martha tried to intervene, but Joe was twice her size and pushed her back effortlessly.
‘Stop!’ shouted Jenny. ‘I don’t want him punished!’
‘Too late for that, now!’ said Joe. ‘He’ll pay you back for the window, count on that. His father will see to it.’ He propelled Nathan out of the door, and paused to glare at Martha ‘And if you know what’s good for you, girly, you’ll leave well enough alone!’ The schoolhouse door slammed behind him.
‘Girly?’ Martha turned angrily on Jenny. ‘What did you mean about he’s not the only one and it won’t go away? Come on, tell me! Why did Nathan break in here like that?’
The schoolteacher began to pick up the pieces of broken glass. She sighed. ‘Nathan was one of those who fell ill with the smallpox before that snake-oil salesman came to town. Godlove’s medicines healed him and all the others . . . But ever since the boy’s had those terrible nightmares. Visions like hell itself.’ She looked away. ‘I pray for him every day, but the lad’s torture revisits him time and again. I think the schoolhouse gives him some measure of calm. He came here to get away from his dreams.’
Martha’s anger faded. ‘And others as well? It’s not just Nathan who has them?’
Jenny shook her head. ‘Several of Godlove’s patients suffered the same. But they keep silent for fear of the sickness returning.’ She met Martha’s gaze. ‘I ask you, what kind of cure leaves that in its wake?’
Martha had no answer to give her.
The Doctor looked over the large pile of poker chips in front of him and smiled warmly. ‘This is going well for me, isn’t it?’
The last of the other gamblers threw down his hand of cards in disgust. ‘Too rich for me. I quit.’ He got up, leaving just the Doctor and Teague in the game. At the other tables in the Bluebird, people’s attention had slowly come to centre on the Doctor’s unbroken winning streak. All eyes were on him.
He toyed with his cards. ‘So, you were telling me about this Alvin chap and his medicine show.’
Loomis Teague frowned, peering at his own diminishing pile of chips. The Doctor had started off by winning back his sonic screwdriver and hadn’t let up, alternatively taking the gambler’s money and quizzing him about recent events in Redwater. ‘Like I said, first off we were thinking he was just sellin’ snake-oil and promises, but he made good.’
‘How exactly?’ said the Doctor, fanning his cards. ‘And I’ll see your bet and raise you.’
Teague matched his opponent’s ante and shrugged. ‘Him and that Pawnee sidekick of his, name o’ Walking Crow. Went into the sick folk’s houses, gave ’em that patent panacea. Next day, they was well again.’
‘That simple, eh?’ The Doctor raised his bet again. ‘I’d like to meet this Professor Alvin Q. Godlove in person.’
Teague’s mood was turning more surly by the second. ‘Not till we make an end to this,’ he snarled, and pushed the rest of his winnings into the middle of the table. ‘I’m all in. You gonna match that?’
‘In for a penny, in for a pound!’ The Doctor copied Teague’s gesture and put in all his chips. ‘This is exciting!’
Teague’s revealed his cards with a flourish. ‘Four of a kind!’ He went for the pile.
The Doctor shook his head slightly. ‘You know, when Wild Bill Hickok was shot in Deadwood, he was playing cards, and he had a fantastic hand! It’s a shame he never got to play it.’ He smiled and laid down the Aces of Spades and Clubs, followed by an Eight of Clubs, Eight of Spades and Jack of Diamonds. ‘Aces and Eights,’ said the Doctor, with a mock-sinister voice. ‘The Deadman’s Hand!’ He reached for the chips. ‘That would make me the winner, then.’
Teague exploded with rage. ‘You dirty four-flusher! You rigged the damn game, coming on like some Coney when you was a card-sharp all along!’
The Doctor frowned. ‘Cor, sore loser or what? Come on, don’t be a
big girl’s blouse about it.’
Suddenly there was a wicked-looking buck knife in Loomis’s hand. ‘Nobody makes a fool outta me—’
‘Quit it!’ Another figure hove into view, and the Doctor saw a man with a sheriff’s tin star on the lapel of his jacket place a firm hand on Teague’s shoulder. ‘Simmer down.’
‘This crow-bait’s a cheat, Sheriff Blaine!’ snarled Teague. ‘Check his pockets! He’s gotta have a holdout in there, aces up his sleeves or somethin’!’
‘Perish the thought,’ said the Doctor.
Blaine eyed him. ‘So you’re this Doc I been hearing about, eh? Tell me, is Loomis right? You got a deck of cards on you I should know about?’
The Doctor spread his hands. ‘I don’t know. I might have. I’ve got very deep pockets. You never know what you’ll find in there.’
‘Let’s take a look-see.’ The lawman bent forward and plucked a thin wallet out of the Doctor’s coat. ‘What have we here?’ He flipped it open and his expression darkened.
‘What does it say?’ demanded Teague.
The sheriff tossed the wallet back to the Doctor with a scowl. ‘It says he’s a Pinkerton Agent, that’s what. A private investigator.’
The Doctor picked up his psychic paper and nodded sagely, playing along. ‘That’s right. I’m just passing through. Doing, you know, investigating.’
‘How can y’all be an investigator and a doctor?’ snapped Teague.
‘I wear many hats,’ he replied. ‘Well, obviously at the moment, I’m not wearing a hat at all, but you know what I mean.’ He picked up the poker chips. ‘Maybe I should get a hat, actually.’
But his emerging smile froze when Blaine leaned closer and gave him a hard, threatening stare. ‘I don’t give a horse’s backside what you are,’ he growled. His voice was loaded with menace, and low so only the Doctor could hear him. ‘But if you and that little missy keep asking questions and buttin’ in where you ain’t wanted, nothin’s gonna stop me runnin’ you outta town.’
FIVE
MARTHA LEANED AGAINST the TARDIS central console with her arms folded across her chest. ‘Nathan was terrified,’ she concluded, coming to the end of her description of what had happened in the schoolhouse. ‘And that big lunkhead Joe didn’t help matters any by dragging him off.’
‘Mmm.’ The Doctor nodded, his concentration on the computer screen extending out of the console panel. He fiddled with the dials and switches underneath it.
Martha pouted. ‘Have you been listening to me?’
‘I pay attention to everything you say and do, Martha Jones,’ he replied, without looking up at her. ‘I don’t even need to look at you to know you’re doing that face.’
‘What face? I’m not doing any face.’
‘Yes you are. The moral indignation, how dare they do that, just wait ’til I get my hands on them face.’ He glanced at her and nodded. ‘Yeah. That one there.’
She sighed. ‘OK, I am feeling indignant. But I’ve got a right to. First that loser Hawkes and then that smelly stable-guy . . .’
‘What about me? I had a bloke waving a knife at me and an unfriendly sheriff in my face.’ He sniffed. ‘Mind you, that sort of thing does happen to me a lot. I suppose I should be used to it by now.’
‘But maybe he’ll leave you alone if he thinks you’re a . . . What did you call it? A pinky-something?’
‘A Pinkerton,’ the Doctor corrected. ‘From the Pinkerton Agency.’
Martha grinned. ‘Sounds like a dating service.’
‘Private investigators and bodyguards, actually,’ he told her. ‘The Agency is still around centuries from now, in hundreds of solar systems. They had a bit of a rep back in the West, y’see. They always got their man.’
‘I thought that was the Mounties.’
‘Yeah, them too. But I get the feeling the old psychic paper could tell Sheriff Blaine I was President Grover Cleveland himself, and he’d still give me the bum’s rush.’ He finished working the controls and stood back, staring at the screen. ‘There. That should do it.’
She moved so she could see what he was doing. The screen showed a topographical map of the local area, with clusters of dull yellow dots that had to be people, shifting around like glowing ants.
‘What’s this?’
‘Psychic resonance scan,’ announced the Doctor, tweaking a dial to fine-tune the display. ‘Looking for telepathic waveforms or esper field projections. Any abnormal phenomena.’
‘Like mind control? Is that what you think is going on around here?’
He blew out a breath. ‘Small community, unfriendly natives, weird happenings. In my experience it usually adds up to the same kind of thing. Sometimes there’s an alien thingy buried under a church or giant cockroaches on the prowl or—’ He broke off. ‘Well. Let’s just say, I’m covering all the bases.’ The scanner gave off a desultory ping and his face fell. ‘Eh? That’s not right.’
Martha tensed. ‘You’ve found something?’
‘No. That’s just it. I haven’t found something. Anything.’ He frowned and walked away, over to the panel where the brown medicine bottle was standing. ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’
‘So what’s making Nathan and the other healed people have those nightmares?’
The Doctor picked up the bottle and studied it closely. ‘I have no idea.’ A crooked smile appeared on his lips. ‘Isn’t that interesting?’
Martha made the face again. ‘The word I would use is disturbing,’ she said firmly. The Doctor was so fascinated by anything out of the ordinary, but sometimes he needed reminding that normal people were caught up in it. ‘If that potion is as fake as you say it is, then something freaky is definitely going on here.’
‘There you go, straight to the heart of the matter as usual,’ he nodded briskly, slipping the bottle into his pocket. He pointed at her. ‘So, on the spot, then. Pop quiz, Doctor Jones. You’ve got your patients, you’ve got your mystery symptoms. Grab your stethoscope and tell me what’s next.’
She hesitated, following his suggestion. Martha thought it through, as if it was a problem case turning up at the Royal Hope Hospital where she studied. ‘Examine the patient. Determine the nature of the illness. Look for vectors of infection. Make a diagnosis.’
‘Bingo!’ called the Doctor. ‘So what we need to do is—’
A sharp double knock at the TARDIS doors sounded out, stopping him in mid-speech. He twirled the monitor and tapped a button so the screen displayed an image of the scene outside. Over his shoulder, Martha saw Jenny Forrest standing in the alleyway in the fading daylight. As she watched, the schoolmarm knocked on the doors once again. Jenny looked concerned.
‘Company!’ said the Doctor. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘We can’t let her inside!’ retorted Martha. ‘She’ll never get her head around it!’
‘You did.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve seen lots of sci-fi movies! She’s just a—’
‘A what? A nineteenth-century yokel?’ He eyed her. ‘Prejudice can cut both ways, you know. Just because these people don’t know what a cell phone or the internet is, it doesn’t mean they’re dumb.’
‘It’s not that,’ Martha said hotly. ‘I just think she’s got enough to deal with without having to handle the whole dimensionally transcendental thing.’ She gestured around at the control room.
‘Hmm. Good point,’ he agreed, slipping his long coat back on. ‘Come on, then.’
Jenny admitted defeat and walked away from the odd blue shack, back down the alleyway toward the street. Perhaps Mr Vogel in the general store had been mistaken about seeing Martha enter the little outhouse. She resolved to go across to Lapwing’s boarding house, in case the Doctor and his companion had followed her advice to take rooms there.
‘Jenny!’ She turned at the sound of her name to hear a door slam and saw Martha and the tall man approaching. She blinked. Had they both been in there all along, inside such a small accommodation? The shack was a strange thing,
faint pearly light illuminating the windows around the top, and the soft glow of the lamp atop it throwing cool colour about the darkening alley. Even with the chill coming in as the sun began to set, there was something strangely warm about the little building.
‘Doctor, Martha,’ Jenny greeted them with a nod. ‘I came looking for you.’
‘Something we can help you with, Miss Forrest?’ he asked.
The teacher hesitated. She had since learned from Vogel, who fancied himself as the town gossip, of the Doctor’s meeting with Mr Teague and the sheriff, and the rumours abounding from it. People were already talking about the two new arrivals; no one seemed to have seen them ride into town, and Pitt’s livery was not caring for any visiting horses. But Jenny had been the subject of similar discussions in the past and, despite the fact that these two were new to her acquaintance, the schoolmarm couldn’t shake the undeniable sense that they seemed trustworthy. She sighed. ‘It’s young Nathan. I am very concerned about his wellbeing. When Martha found him today . . . I had never before seen him so shaken. I fear a firm hand is exactly not what he requires at this moment.’
‘Nathan has the dreams,’ said the Doctor, rolling the boy’s name over his lips. ‘Was he the first one to get them? Was he healed first?’
She nodded. ‘Right after the Lesters, yes. He took the cure before the rest of the townsfolk.’
‘Longest incubation period, maybe?’ The Doctor offered the words to Martha.
She nodded back at him. ‘How about making a house call, Doctor?’
‘Can you show us the way?’ the Doctor asked the teacher.
‘I don’t think that will be possible,’ Jenny replied. ‘The boy’s alone at home. His mother passed away many years ago, you understand. And his father . . .’ She gestured in the direction of the street, where the makeshift festival was still in full swing.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘I don’t want to talk to his dad. I want to talk to him.’
‘But with his father out, we won’t be able to enter,’ she protested.
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