Doctor Who_ The Nightmare of Black Island Part 13

'And what might your business be, Mr Morton?' The Doctor dropped down on to his haunches, bringing his face level with Morton's. 'Allying yourself with the Cynrog? Filling the lighthouse with psychic transmitters? oh yes, I've been doing a little digging, turning up all sorts of interesting things, and I really don't like what I'm finding. Not one little bit.'

He leaned closer to Morton, staring him full in the face.

'But what's it all for, eh? You're not doing all this just to terrify a village full of children.'

'It is a. . . necessary evil, Doctor.'

'No, Nathaniel, it is not necessary.' The Doctor's voice was low and dangerous now, all sense of flippancy gone. 'It is very un un necessary. It is a sick, twisted game and it is going to stop.' necessary. It is a sick, twisted game and it is going to stop.'

'You think so, Doctor? You think you have all the answers?' A grim smile flickered over Morton's lined face. 'Well, come and see the prize in our. . . game, as you put it.'

Morton spun his wheelchair and rolled across the landing. Peyne pushed the barrel of her blaster into the back of the Doctor's neck, catching him by the collar and hauling him to his feet. She marched him along the corridor, following Morton and his creaking chair.

'I'm told that your people were well travelled, Doctor.' The old man's voice echoed down the dusty corridor. 'That they roamed the 132 reaches of time and s.p.a.ce, eternally youthful. My own short span has had precious little youth, and the breadth of my wandering has been confined to this one small planet, but look at what we have created.'

He threw open the doors of the library.

'Behold, the great Balor! Dark G.o.d of the Cynrog, Destroyer of Worlds!'133.

[image]

The Doctor stepped into the crackling, electrically charged air of the library and gave a whistle of admiration.

'Oh, now that's impressive. Really, really impressive. I'm gonna give you eleven out of ten for that. Building a big monster in the library. A really big big monster.' monster.'

He pulled out his gla.s.ses and perched them on the end of his nose, peering at the monstrosity that hung among the lightning flashes.

'Doesn't seem quite finished to me, though.

Lacking a few final touches, hm?'

He paced slowly around the creature, squinting through the flickering light, watching as waves of energy rolled across it, modifying its form with every pa.s.s.

'Can't quite make your mind up on the details by the look of it. I mean, I know what it's like choosing a body you're happy with!'

He dived over to a cl.u.s.ter of silver machinery on one of the tables, hefting a bunch of cables in his hands.

'Lot of power being channelled up here.' He sniffed at the cable, then ran his tongue along it. 'Mmm, psych.o.m.orphic radiation! Psych.o.m.orphic! Honestly! Anyone would think that you were trying to 135 manufacture a body.'

He dropped the cables with a bang.

'That's it, isn't it? You're building a body, but that's all it is at the moment a body, a sh.e.l.l, a vessel.' He snapped his fingers at the creature. 'Oil Big fella! Anyone home?'

The creature didn't stir. The Doctor turned back to Morton thoughtfully.

'A decidedly empty vessel.'

Morton clapped his hands slowly. 'Bravo, Doctor, bravo.'

'What's it for, Morton?'

'As you have correctly surmised, Doctor, it is or rather, it nearly is a body manufactured for inhabitation by a new soul.'

'But for whose soul?' The Doctor cast a wary look at Peyne. 'You mentioned the name Balor. I seem to remember a rather unpleasant figure from Cynrog mythology named Balor. Now, let me see if I've got this right. Balor, the general of the Cynrog hordes, left for dead after the battle of Grantran Prime, then revived through one of your questionable accelerated genetic-mutation experiments and revered as a G.o.d. Something like that anyway. I do hope you haven't been having RE lessons from Miss Peyne here?'

Peyne hissed unpleasantly. 'Be respectful in the way you refer to our G.o.d, Time Lord.'

'You have have been listening to Miss Peyne. That's a great shame. . . ' been listening to Miss Peyne. That's a great shame. . . '

'On the contrary, Doctor, Peyne has been a great comfort to me over the years.'

'Nathaniel, listen to me,' The Doctor's voice was urgent now. 'Whatever Peyne has told you, whatever she has promised you, the Cynrog are not to be trusted. They are vicious, brutal killers, they '

'They saved my life, Doctor! My life and the lives of all those in the ward!'

'What?' The Doctor eyed Peyne suspiciously. 'What possible reason could you have for getting involved in human affairs? What are you doing with those people downstairs?'

'You understand nothing, Doctor.' There was contempt in the Cynrog commander's voice. 'You are so typical of your race, blundering in 136 with your high moral stance, acting as judge and jury to the universe. We are well rid of your kind.'

'Doctor, listen to me!' Morton's voice was pleading now. 'Listen to the reasons for this. Perhaps then you will have some understanding of what we have had to endure. Of what I have had to endure.'

The Doctor fixed Morton with a piercing gaze. 'Tell me.'

Morton leaned back in his chair, his eyes misting with remembrance. 'I was ten years old. My cousin had come to Ynys Du with my aunt and uncle, a holiday by the sea.'

The Doctor did a quick calculation. 'The 1930s?'

'It was 1935. A glorious summer. We were full of the joys of youth, Doctor. Seven of us, good friends, happy children, not so different from those that play in the streets of Ynys Du today.'

'Except that you and your friends weren't tormented by creatures.'

'Oh, but we were, Doctor. Tormented by a creature more terrible than you can imagine.'

'What happened to you, Morton?' The Doctor's voice was gentler now. 'What did you see?'

'The seven of us had left our parents in the village. They were too busy with their gossip and their shopping. And my father and uncle were far too interested in the local beer to pay any attention to their errant offspring. We made our way up towards the cliff top Ynys Du was a good deal smaller then, the woods closer, a haven of cool shadows. My cousin was never a good influence. He had stolen half a dozen cigarettes from my uncle's jacket pocket. It had been our intention to hide in the woods and smoke them.' Morton gave a grim smile. 'They say that cigarettes are bad for your health. If I had known the consequences of that particular illicit cigarette. . . '

He closed his eyes, as if willing the past back to life. 'We sat on the edge of the wood, smoking our cigarettes, laughing at the younger ones coughing and spluttering, watching the sun on the waves. And then we saw it, low on the horizon, a blaze of light, pulsing, throbbing. At first we thought it was just light glinting on some great s.h.i.+p in the far distance, but the closer it came, the more we realised that this was no earthly s.h.i.+p.'137.

'A s.p.a.cecraft.'

Morton opened his eyes. 'It was just magnificent, Doctor, a vast disc of copper and bronze skimming over the sea. We sat watching it approach, mesmerised by its beauty, realising only far, far too late that the occupant of this magnificent machine had no control over his craft and what danger we were in.'

'It crashed?'

Morton nodded. 'We thought that it would smash into the cliff face, but at the last moment it lurched skyward, skimming the tree tops so close that I thought we would be able to reach out and touch it. We watched it arc overhead, and then it started to fall. We ran, terrified, as it smashed through the trees, the sound of tortured engines ringing in our ears. And then it exploded, throwing us all to the ground, splintering trees like toothpicks. We were lucky that day, or so we thought. We survived the explosion. If we had picked a slightly different spot for our nefarious activities. . . ' Morton shrugged. 'Then perhaps things would have ended then and there and none of this would be necessary.'

'But things didn't end then and there, did they, Nathaniel? This story doesn't end with the explosion of a s.p.a.cecraft on a remote stretch of Welsh coast, does it?'

'No, Doctor. As I said, we were young, inquisitive. We thought that the world was ours and that we were indestructible. We picked ourselves up and made our way carefully through that shattered, smouldering wood, determined to see where the saucer had crashed. You know the new estate on the hill overlooking the village?'

The Doctor nodded.

'All that was once woodland, razed by the fire from that doomed s.h.i.+p. The crater was vast, a great ragged gouge in the earth. Through the smoke we could see sections of the saucer: the metal, twisted and scorched, huge lumps of it, and machinery scattered as far as the eye could see. The flames were tremendous, the air like an open oven, but nonetheless we went as close as we dared, s.h.i.+elding our faces from the heat with our arms. It seemed impossible that anyone or anything could possibly have survived that terrible carnage, but we 138 had to know.'

'And something had survived, hadn't it?' said the Doctor. 'Something alien.'

Morton met the Doctor's gaze. 'Alien and terrible. We were all straining to see into the crater when it appeared, rising up out of the flames. Huge, unimaginably powerful. It was screaming in pain, flames over every part of it, its body torn almost to pieces in the crash. The noise it made overwhelmed us. It was in our ears and in our heads, enveloping us, consuming us with its pain, its anger, its will to survive.'

Morton wiped a trembling hand across his brow.

'I staggered back from the crater, desperate to get away. My head felt as though it would burst. I could hear things, see things in my mind, terrible alien things. Ancient things from the depths of s.p.a.ce. I could hear my cousin and the others screaming too. We were. . . connected somehow, sharing the death of this creature. It tried to claw its way from the crater, but the flames and its wounds were too much for it. It fell back into the wreck of its burning s.h.i.+p, its death throes sending me to my knees. I could feel it burning me, burning my soul. And then it stopped.'

Morton took a deep breath. 'That was the start of it, Doctor. With the death of that creature, the start of a life of torment. We hurried away from that place. Already we could hear the jangle of bells from the fire engines and people were hurrying over to see what had happened. We made a pact that night, the seven of us, never to tell of what we had seen, never to speak of it outside our group. But we left that place with more than we had arrived with. The echo of that creature was still inside our heads.'

The Doctor leaned close to Morton, peering into his eyes, his brow furrowed. 'And it's still in there, isn't it? Trapped inside you, struggling to survive, to get back out.'

'Not all of it.' Peyne stepped closer to Morton's side, running her gloved hand almost tenderly over the old man's head. 'Just a fraction, a portion of the whole.'

'Those people in the ward downstairs!' the Doctor exclaimed. 'They 139 are the other children that witnessed the cras.h.!.+'

'Each of them holding part of the mind of Balor.'

'And you've promised to remove those pieces. Well, you've been taking your time! Seventy years or more to track down seven children. Not exactly rus.h.i.+ng things, are you?'

Peyne hissed angrily. 'We traversed sixteen star systems looking for Balor. The Brintepi had laid a trap for him on their home world, bound him with their technology and cast his s.h.i.+p out into s.p.a.ce and time.'

'Ah yes, the great battle of Monson Daar. Not your finest hour.'

'The cowards made a pre-emptive strike. Ma.s.sacred our defences.'

'So now you intend to bring Balor back to life.'

'Balor is the G.o.d of our people! It is written that we must free him and he will lead us to victory.'

'Careless of you to lose him, then.' The Doctor c.o.c.ked his head to one side. 'So, come on. How did you find him? Doesn't sound as though he had much of a chance to send you a postcard after he crashed. And I'm a.s.suming that everything was covered up here fairly quickly. s.p.a.cecraft crashes do tend to stir things up a little.'

Morton gave a spluttering laugh. 'Indeed. But governments had secret departments even in the 1930s, and it's extraordinary how a few threats and a lot of bribes can silence a community. The remains of the saucer vanished almost overnight, the crater was filled in and the entire incident forgotten. . . '

'And you and your friends?'

'Things were different back then, Doctor. Children were to be seen and not heard. No one knew what we had witnessed, no one bothered to ask beyond a cursory interview with the local policeman. We were persuaded to believe that the crash was a military aircraft, patted on the head and sent on our way. Forgotten, unimportant.'

'But with a fragment of creature still within each of you. That must have been hard.' There was sympathy in the Doctor's voice.

'Some of us coped better than others, Doctor. My cousin spent fifteen years in an asylum; his sister was imprisoned for the attempted murder of her mother; one became a monk and never uttered a word in the rest of his life. Each of us carried a different aspect of the 140 creature, each of us reacted to it differently, was controlled by it differently.'

'And no one realised that anything was wrong? No one tried to help you?'

'The world had other concerns, Doctor. War was looming. What were the problems of a handful of schizophrenic children when the n.a.z.i hordes were poised to sweep across Europe? By the time I was old enough to realise the danger I was in, my mind was already being swamped by the creature within me. Balor kept me from harming myself, tried to keep all of us from succ.u.mbing to anything that could endanger the fragment of him in our minds. Even so, I doubt I would have survived the war if it had not been for the Cynrog.'

He glanced up at Peyne. 'They came for me during the Blitz. I was living in London at the time, working for a patent office, invalided out of the armed services because of my supposed "mental aberration". I thought that a bomb had landed on the house, but they had used the bombing to conceal their landing.'

Peyne gave a thin smile. 'An exhilarating flight. I had forgotten the pleasures of a simple, old-fas.h.i.+oned world war.'

'How did you find him?'

'Through meditation and patience. The Synod sent operatives to every corner of the universe, scanning the ether, looking for signs, scouring the psychic planes with our minds. The conflict on this planet attracted our curiosity, and it led us to discover Morton.'

'Who led you in turn to the others.' The Doctor nodded slowly. The long, sad history was now dropping into place.

'Eventually.' Peyne sighed. 'It took a long time to piece Morton's mind back together until he was of use to us. He was closest to the crash, so he holds the greatest part of Balor.'

'A lifetime's work, Doctor.' Morton sounded tired now. 'Year upon year tracking down the others, stealing them one by one from under the noses of the authorities, taking them against their will if necessary. Bringing them back here. Preparing them for this moment. Bringing them home.'

'To the rectory.'141.

'Yes. The crash site area holds a residual psychic trace that is beneficial to the Balor ent.i.ty.'

'And keeping them in a vegetative state, that was beneficial too?'

'For the protection of Balor, yes,' snapped Peyne. 'Their primitive minds struggle with the fragments they contain. One of the females had attempted suicide. We cannot risk losing a single part of his essence before we have renewed him.'

'And that's what all this is about!' The Doctor waved expansively around the library. 'Renewal. Removing all the pieces of Balor back out of the minds of the children that witnessed him crash all those years ago and putting those pieces. . . in here!' He spun, staring up at the monster that hung before him. 'Putting them back in a great big specially constructed body. A body constructed from psychic projections, from the nightmares.'

He turned back to Peyne. 'Why? Why go to all the trouble of using the children, eh? Why not just use the memories of Morton and his friends to reconstruct the body of Balor as he was?'

'We're too old, Doctor, too weak,' Morton sighed. 'I still have some strength, but the others. . . '

'Besides,' Peyne said, circling the Doctor slowly, 'why stick to his old form when we could create something so much better? The children of this planet were perfect for our needs. It surprises me that the planet has survived so long. Do you know that they actively encourage their young to make war a game? Their culture is riddled with it. Toy pistols, toy rifles, toy grenades, war comics, action figures that hold knives and swords. Even when they avoid war, the young of this planet are exposed to horror comics, monsters under the bed, bogeymen, vampires and werewolves. Their nursery stories are full of demons and goblins and witches and kidnapped children. They enter the world screaming, and as soon as they can read or listen or learn they are made to scream again and again and again, before they finally realise that they have been lied to all their young lives. We didn't need to influence the minds of these children at all, Doctor, we just needed to harvest their boundless imagination.'

'Take them young, before they become tainted, is that it?' The Doc142 tor spat the words.

'Exactly! Have you listened to the adults of this planet, listened to the endless trivia they spout? Mindless, pointless, endless conversations about nothing. They lose everything that they have as children, ground down by the reality of the world they have created. But catch them young ' Peyne turned to the creature, arms stretched wide 'and see what they are capable of creating.'

'So you scour their dreams, sifting through their nightmares and taking the parts that suit your purpose. To create this. The ultimate body.'

'Precisely. In a few hours we will have attained full solidity, a fully functioning creature. And when it is filled with the mind of Balor. . . '

Peyne stopped, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with antic.i.p.ation, before concluding triumphantly, 'then you will see what nightmares are really about.'

The Doctor grasped the arms of Morton's chair. 'Nathaniel, you must stop this. The Cynrog are using you. If they extract the creature from you and the others and put it inside this abomination, then nothing will stand in their way. They will be unstoppable.'

'But I want to be free of this, Doctor. Don't you see! I don't want this thing inside my head any more. I want my life back.'

'What life?'

The Doctor shook his head.