Part 6 (2/2)

Now it was Jane's turn to study the Doctor in silence.

Will, too, was quiet; he rubbed his chin in bafflement and wonder, for this was a conversation stuffed with words he'd never heard of.

Finally, responding to the Doctor's serious and unshaking gaze, Jane ventured to speak. 'You're serious, aren't you?' she said.

'Never more so.'

She was still confused, however. 'Very well, then,' she conceded, 'for the sake of argument I'll accept what you say. But how did it come to Little Hodcombe?'

The Doctor hesitated. He looked at Jane's cynical expression and wondered how much apparently irrational argument this schoolteacher would be prepared to accept in one session. Then he shrugged. It had to he said, after all.

'On a s.p.a.ce vehicle.'

That was the last straw. Cynicism changed gear and accelerated towards hysteria. A broad, pull-the-other-one grin stole across Janes face and she had to force herself not to laugh out loud. 'A s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p from Hakol landed here?

Is that what you're trying to say?'

'More likely a computer controlled reconnaissance probe,' the Doctor said earnestly.

'How silly of me not to know.' Jane's voice was heavy with sarcasm.

Suddenly another piece of the jigsaw slipped into place in the Doctor's mind. He jumped to his feet and asked, 'Tell me, was Andrew Verney engaged in any research concerning the Malus?'

'I believe he was.' Jane's smile faded as she recalled her old friend and his enthusiasm for digging up the past.

The Doctor gave a satisfied sigh. 'That's what must have led him to the tunnel, and the remains of the Hakol probe.'

Will nodded enthusiastically and pressed Jane's arm.

'See? I seed the Malus!' he told her eagerly.

The Doctor laid an arm around Will's shoulder and looked closely into his eyes. 'I believe you Will,' he said. 'My sincerest apologies for ever doubting you.' Will glowed with pride.

Jane desperately wanted to restore some everyday reality to this conversation, and haul it back to a basis she could relate to. If she allowed herself to believe even a quarter of what she had heard, she would soon be as mad as everybody else. 'Doctor,' she pleaded, 'the Malus is a myth, a legend! Some mumbo jumbo connected with apparitions or something!'

Now that he had got this far, the Doctor had no intention of letting Jane cling to illusions. This was a time for facts, for unvarnished truth.

'That is precisely what Will saw,' he explained firmly.

'On Hakol, psychic energy is a force that has been harnessed in much the same way as electricity is here.'

'But what has that got to do with the Malus legend?'

The Doctor fixed her with an unyielding stare. 'The thing you call the Malus was on board the Hakol probe.'

Now he had her hooked. He saw it happen he watched the realisation dawn in her eyes. They darkened visibly, and Jane looked uneasily around the church. 'Oh,' she said.

'I see what you mean ... You mean it's still here!'

Her eyes lit upon the crack in the wall and she hurried across to examine it. 'Doctor,' she whispered, in a voice filled with awe, 'that wasn't here the other day.'

Before the alarmed Doctor could warn her to get away from it, the wall groaned loudly again, and this time there was also a cracking noise; which flew around the church like a whiplash, gathering momentum and volume as it went. At the same moment a section of the wall collapsed and caved into the hole. Now it was much wider.

Jane shrieked. She stumbled backwards. Will shuddered and clapped his hands over his ears as a renewed groaning sound squeezed eerily out of the depths of the wall. The Doctor moved forward.

Now wisps of smoke slipped through the crack, oozing out of the wall like bile. Warily the Doctor stretched out his hand towards the wall.

'Don't touch it!' Will yelled. He was very frightened; his shout wailed like a cry of paw, and he was near to tears.

Jane, too, was scared stiff. She felt, rather than heard, faint noises of movements springing from all the dark corners of the church, and there was a smell of gunpowder from the smoke which spilled out of the hole in the wall.

The air had turned clammy and cold, raising goosepimples on her skin. 'He's right, Doctor,' she shouted. 'There's suddenly a very strange atmosphere in here!'

Perhaps the Doctor could not hear her because of all the other noises. Perhaps he wasn't listening, because he was so intent upon these strange developments. Whatever the reason, he paid no attention to the cries of Will and Jane.

And suddenly all h.e.l.l broke loose.

The Doctor was pulling gently at the crack when a huge chunk of plaster came away in his hands. Almost immediately another section blew out of the wall, and now the crack had become a gaping black hole which spouted smoke in billowing, acrid clouds.

'h.e.l.lo,' the Doctor murmured to himself. He tried to look inside the hole and for a moment thought he could see something which made him catch his breath ... it was impossible to he sure, but it looked like part of an enormous mouth. High above that there was something green and s.h.i.+ning.

A plume of smoke almost choked him. 'Come and have a look at this,' he shouted to the others.

The luminous green light was growing larger. Suddenly it jerked forward towards him. A roaring noise began far down in the wall and sped forward too, moving with the light. The Doctor had to leap out of the way as another chunk of masonry exploded from the wall and whistled past him. Jane screamed.

Something was coming, and coming fast. That deep rumble was roaring towards the surface of the wall at great speed. The green light was coming too - and suddenly it was a colossal eye, glaring at them out of the black socket of the hole.

'No!' Will yelled.

'No!' Jane shouted too. And 'No!' she shrieked again as more plaster was blasted out and another eye loomed in the blackness, high above a huge stone mouth which was twisted wide in the most terrifying leer. It was the same grotesque monster which had been carved on the pulpit and on the vestry tombstone, but many, many times bigger. And it was coming to life before their eyes: moment by moment it grew larger, stretching out and up like an inflating balloon and shooting lumps of plaster and masonry out of the hole with noises like cannonfire.

The Doctor was much too close -- right in front of the hole. The noise came screaming to the surface and roared around him like a wind. He clapped his hands over his cars, but it vibrated his eardrums and twisted his face in pain.

'Look out!' Jane yelled - too late, for smoke erupted from the hole, as if the noise had a.s.sumed visible firm. it poured over the Doctor like a waterfall, and he was obscured instantly.

The noise roared and the smoke billowed, and inside it there were exploding noises as if the wall was disintegrating. The Doctor was inside it too. He had disappeared.

'Doctor ... !'

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