‘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 hell 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.
‘Hello,’ 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 shining.
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 assumed 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 ... !’ Jane screamed and screamed
6
The noise of Jane’s screaming echoed around the church until it too was swallowed up by the smoke. At her side, Will Chandler peered towards the wall, which had comc so terrifyingly to life with its noise and gushing smoke and those awesome eyes. He whimpered with fear.
Then all at once the smoke began to clear. The rumbling noise subsided to an ominous, steady droning.
Through the drifting white cloud, which thinned before their eyes, they saw the Doctor again. He was standing in the exact stance he held when the smoke shrouded him: with his head bent forward slightly, and his hands upped over his cars, he looked as if he had been turned to stone.
Ignoring the remaining fumes, Jane and Will ran to him. Jane took the Doctor’s right arm and tried to lead him away from that obscenity in the wall. He looked stunned.
‘Doctor, are you all right?’ she cried; he nodded, but she could see that he didn’t know where he was or what was happening to him. Now he stumbled and she had to hold him steady. She guided him towards the pews; when his eyes focussed on them he staggered forward and sank down, exhausted.
Will ran around the back of the pew. He crouched down behind the Doctor, bewildered, frightened and near to tears. Jane watched the lad with growing concern, for it seemed to her that Will was not far from snapping altogether. Yet the Doctor was her most immediate problem: he looked shattered. And no wonder! she thought. She removed the green jacket from around her shoulders and put it around his. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ she asked him again.
‘Yes.’ He nodded again, to her great relief.
But a crash made her jump as more plaster flew out of the wall behind her; it seemed to be bursting at the seams.
Smoke belched out and the hubbub was renewed, as if the thing inside had got its second wind.
It intrigued Jane as well as repelled her -- curiosity bred fascination, and she found herself walking slowly towards the wall. Stones exploded past her and made her jump and shout with fright, but she held her ground. As the Doctor had been, she was nearly hypnotised by what she saw in there: great grey stone nostrils flaring above a grimacing, gigantic mouth, and high above them the green-white brilliance of the eyes. The whole thing looked as if it was made of stone, and yet it couldn’t be stone at all; this monstrous thing, which looked most like an enormous magnified medieval gargoyle, was alive.
‘It’s a face,’ she whispered.
It was such an evil face, destructive and filled with hate.
As Jane looked at it a feeling of nausea overcame her; her whole being was revolted by the sight and she had to avert her eyes.
‘Look at it,’ the Doctor insisted. Almost fnlly recovered, he was leaning forward in the pew and watching her intently. ‘Does it look familiar?’
Jane shivered. He wanted her to acknowledge a possibility she had been trying to ignore: that this thing could be the fabled Mains, waking up, struggling to be born in Little Hodcornbe of all places, and bringing with it who knew what powers of destruction. Yes, it looked familiar, but she didn’t know why, and she could not hear to look at the wall again.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I ... I’ve seen it before.’
The Doctor pointed at the pulpit with a gesture that was almost triumphant, for there was always some pleasure to be derived from winning an argument, no matter what the circumstances. ‘Look behind you,’ he suggested.
Warily, Jane turned around. She had been standing close to the pulpit and her eyes met the carved figure immediately: it seemed to leap up at her and she jerked back with fright. ‘But that’s a representation of the Devil!’
she cried.
‘Yes. Isn’t it interesting?’ The Doctor folded his arms and leaned back in the pew. He smiled, enjoying his little victory, intrigued by the way his theory was developing and the direction in which another plece of the puzzle was dropping into place.
But his triumph was short lived, for another piece of the jigsaw, which he had quite forgotten, unexpectedly jumped out of the place he had made for it. An uneven, scraping noise further down the nave made him spin round, and he saw again the man who had knocked him down in the street – the strange, hooded figure with his devastated face.
He stood beside the archway leading to the crypt, watching them and holding Tegan’s scarlet handbag clutched to his chest.
‘So there you are,’ the Doctor breathed.
The man moved suddenly. He came forward, out of the archway, painfully dragging one foot. The Doctor discounted the limp now, for despite being lame this fellow possessed an astonishing turn of speed. The man paused again. He regarded them with his single eye and a stern expression, and as the Doctor looked at him, a light which had been flickering deep inside his eye zoomed suddenly to the surface.
With a shock of horror Jane saw it come right out, breaking out into the air and shattering into fragments, like stars. These too divided into points of light which moved around the man’s head and shimmered and twinkled in a constantly changing pattern. ‘Who’s that?’
she breathed, and backed away.
‘A psychic projection,’ the Doctor explained cryptically.
He was on his feet and moving swiftly across to her. ‘Over here, Will,’ he called. His tone was quietly urgent; Will needed no second telling but ran quickly to the Doctor’s side. He stood close beside him, watching the man and the flickering lights, and he was quite ready to run right out of the church, and the village too. It seemed to Will that suddenly there was not a single thing which had not got quite beyond him.
Jane looked intently at the man: how could something so solid be a projection? ‘He looks so real,’ she whispered.
‘To all intents and purposes he is real,’ the Doctor replied, but before Jane could argue further the nave was filled with a sound like a wind blowing through from the fields outside. It rose all about them as the man stared in their direction, yet it was not a wind at all. As the light had done, the noise broke into fragments. Splinters of sound stabbed at them from all directions – and they were sounds of battle.
There were trumpets, and fifes and drums. There were guns firing and people shouting; horses squealed with pain. Will started to shake. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Terrified, he looked up at the Doctor for comfort and reassurance. ‘I heard that before,’ he cried. ‘Battle’s cumin’!’
And before the Doctor could give him the reassurance he so desperately needed, Will cracked. He ran, driven by an all-consuming fear, scuttling to the door at the back of the church as fast as his legs would carry him. The Doctor shouted, ‘No, Will! Come back!’ but Will took no notice.
He dragged the door open and looked back at them for an instant. ‘I’s not goin’ to war again!’ he wailed.
The noise of battle boomed through the church.
Harness jingled, men screamed. The half-blind man glowered with his single staring eye and a pattern of lights shimmered around and through him. It was too much for anybody to stand. ‘No!’ Will shouted at the top of his voice, and then he was gone.
The lights were now dancing all around the half blind man. They circled, they writhed like snakes, they built up into a dazzling display. Standing beside the Doctor, Jane was mesmerised by them. Then she caught her breath, unable to believe her eyes, for the figure behind the lights dimmed and then faded away completely. In his place, the image of a soldier appeared and hardened into reality.
He was grey as death. His stance was arrogant and threatening – his right hand rested on his hip and his left gripped the hilt of his sword. His clothes were all grey, as if drained of colour, and his broad hat with its plumed leather was grey too; the skin of his face was pallid and grey-white like parchment.
He stood there, a big, threatening man, watching them from dead eyes.
From the moment he had separated from Tegan, when the horsemen caught up with them, Turlough had been on the run in the village, docking behind walls and hedges and fences, dodging in and out of gardens, orchards, alleyways, all the time avoiding troopers.
Something was up: they were arriving in ever-increasing numbers, soldiers on foot and troopers on horseback, all going the same way. Turlough was heading in the same direction now, for he was determined to discover what was going on.
He turned the corner of an empty street, ducked down and ran commando-style below the high stone walls of a building which seemed to he the village school. The day had grown hotter than ever. The cloudless sky swelled with the cries of birds, and the air was heavy with the musky scent of the roses festooning garden walls and the thousands of gaudy flowers in the gardens.
Just beyond the school, a sycamore tree overhung a garden wall and shaded the road. Turlough edged towards the tree with the greatest possihle stealth, for the road ahead divided to encircle the Village Green; from this he could hear the noise of horses’ hooves softly clattering, and a murmur of men’s voices. He pressed against the ivy-covered wall and peered around the sycamore to have a look.
The Green was a broad area of grass, which had been burned brown by the sun. There were pools of shade under spreading chestnut trees. It was surrounded by old cottages with warm, colour-washed walls and thatched roofs – and it was bustling with activity. At one side a tall white maypole had been erected; its long ribbons wafted in the breeze. Not far away from it soldiers were bringing armfuls of brushwood and building this into a huge pyre. Mounted troopers patrolled the area.
Turlough frowned: that growing heap of tinder-dry brushwood looked ominous. But while he was still absorbing it all, a hand touched his shoulder. He turned.
In the instant of turning he glimpsed the rough, bearded face of a burly trooper, before a fierce blow in the stomach from the man’s fist caused him to buckle forward and see only the ground spinning below his eyes. The next moment he had been imprisoned in a searing armlock, and then he was twisted around and frogmarched towards the Green with a vice-like arm pulled so tightly around his throat it was nearly throttling him.