Part 31 (1/2)

He was surprised to find himself the last to wake. The Doctor paced the room while Trevor sat, minus handcuffs, comforting a clearly distressed Rebecca Baber. Hatch's chauffeur and Bevan, the surgeon, were closely questioning the Doctor about their employer.

'Multiple personality disorder?' asked Bevan. 'I've seen similar cases.'

'No,' said the Doctor. 'Nothing so simple.'

Denman tried to get to his feet.

'Ah, welcome back to the land of the living,' said the Doctor brightly.

'We've got to get after him,' said Denman in a slurred voice, and promptly fell down again. The Doctor helped him to stand.

'We've been unconscious for over two hours,' said the Doctor. 'It's almost dawn. I hardly think another ten minutes is going to make any difference. Hatch will probably be in Hexen Bridge by now. So, just take your time. Psychic energy is a very potent weapon.'

'You talk as if you've seen this sort of thing before,' said Bevan incredulously.

'Oh, I have,' said the Doctor. 'Several times.' He moved across to Trevor and Rebecca and squatted down beside them. 'And how are you, my dear?' he asked.

'b.l.o.o.d.y sore,' said Rebecca angrily. 'Do you know what that man did to me?' she shouted, pointing at Bevan.

'I told him how painful and undignified the process of extraction was,' said Bevan defensively, 'but Hatch insisted.'

'I think it would be best if you both left now,' said the Doctor addressing Bevan and Slater, nodding towards the door. He watched the men leave with grim detachment.

'They're in it up to their necks,' said Denman, his words still having to force themselves out of his mouth. 'You can't just let them go...'

'You're all all in it up to your necks, Mr Denman,' said the Doctor slowly. 'But I cannot afford to be distracted - not by you, your families, even Hatch. Only Jack i' the Green concerns me now.' in it up to your necks, Mr Denman,' said the Doctor slowly. 'But I cannot afford to be distracted - not by you, your families, even Hatch. Only Jack i' the Green concerns me now.'

The scarecrows surrounded the village, a chain of debased humanity. A line of the creatures stretched across the main road into Hexen Bridge, but they parted respectfully as Matthew Hatch approached.

He felt like royalty. Or some kind of G.o.d.

He parked the car in the centre of Hexen Bridge. People were being dragged from their homes and on to the green by the stickmen, and then held in place as Jack consumed them. Their screams did not penetrate the airtight tranquillity of the Mercedes.

Hatch got out, shutting the door behind him. He didn't bother locking the car. With scarcely a glance at the villagers, swamped by foliage and frond-like limbs, Hatch strolled into the Green Man. The door was hanging open in the breeze.

The pub was in quite a state. Stools had been smashed, and broken gla.s.s was strewn across the damp floor. The body of a young girl was jammed into one window, as if she had tried to escape from something, only to slit her throat on the jagged gla.s.s.

The body twitched. A stickman was trying to pull the corpse through what was left of the window frame.

Hatch walked behind the bar, his fingertips brus.h.i.+ng over the mahogany case of impaled b.u.t.terflies. As he busied himself with the trapdoor, paper-dry wings fluttered under gla.s.s.

'You said you'd seen psychic energy like that before?' asked Rebecca as Denman drove them through the dawn into Wilts.h.i.+re.

'Yes,' said the Doctor. 'At a place called Little Hodcombe.'

'I know Hodcombe,' noted Trevor. 'It's about twenty miles from Hexen Bridge.'

'What happened?' asked Rebecca.

'Oh, the usual nonsense. Alien reconnaissance probe crashed there in the seventeenth century. Became walled up in the local church and was mistaken for the Devil. Finally revived in the 1980s, and tried to kill everyone. That kind of thing happens to me rather a lot, you know.'

Denman gave a snort of derision from the driving seat, but Trevor and Rebecca in the back were transfixed by the Doctor's story.

'You defeated it?' asked Trevor.

The Doctor nodded. 'It was destroyed. The link with its human conduit was severed when the poor man was killed, and the craft blew up. It was quite a sight. We stayed for a few weeks. Tegan, Turlough and I.' The Doctor paused, as if wondering how much of this made sense to complete strangers. 'Well, first I had to get Will Chandler back home to 1643 - And what a right how-do-you-do that that turned into. turned into.

Anyway, after I'd brought Jane back to 1984 -'

'Jane Hampden?' asked Rebecca.

'Yes. Lovely girl. She asked a lot of questions, too!' The Doctor looked up to see if Rebecca was going to interrupt him again, but she remained silent so he continued. 'Anyway, being in the local teaching community, she helped to get me on to the board of governors at the Hexen Bridge school. I've kept an eye on the village ever since.'

'So you've known about Hexen Bridge for a while?'

The Doctor was rummaging for something in his pockets, a distracted look on his face. 'Centuries.' he said simply. 'Until the incident at Little Hodcombe, I'd almost forgotten about Hexen Bridge. I first stumbled across the place back in 1971 -'

'That wasn't centuries ago,' said Rebecca, but the Doctor seemed not to hear.

'- and when I discovered the Malus creature just a few miles down the road... Well, I hoped there wasn't a link. But the psychic powers exhibited by Hatch seem to prove a connection.'

Rebecca shrugged. 'If you say so.'

'I should pop in and see Jane when all this is over,'

announced the Doctor suddenly.

'She taught at Hexen Bridge for a term when I was there,'

said Rebecca. 'I idolised her.'

'I'll bet not many of the other children did.'

'No,' said Trevor. 'She was an outsider. We tolerated her for her intellect, but despised her for not being one of us.'