Doctor Who: The Many Hands (6 page)

'What was his name?' the Doctor asked McAllister.

'Who?'

The Doctor pointed behind them. The soldier
seemed to be swimming after them, but a strange
stroke somewhere between floating and walking. In
truth, he was more buoyant than his companions,
and would have found it difficult to walk along the
bottom as they did.

McAllister glanced quickly and turned away again.
'Wright,' he muttered. 'Ernest Wright.'

'I'm sorry,' said the Doctor, though no one alive
could hear.

'There! Look!' came a panicked shout. 'They're
ahead of us.'

The Doctor stood immediately. If the creatures had
reached the other side before the raft, then there was
little hope left. Perhaps he could modify the sonic
screwdriver to ignite the pockets of marsh gas floating
above the water, but that would only give them a few
moments of distraction. He peered across the Loch.
The soldiers had stopped paddling. There was indeed
a dark figure looming on the other shore, and not all
that far away.

'No,' the Doctor announced. 'That's a person.'

There was a moment's silence.

'What are you waiting for?' McAllister barked.
'Keep paddling!'

The raft jolted forward again, but the Doctor
remained where he was. They were only seconds from
the shore now, and there was little need to steer. Behind
them, the water bubbled and churned, marking the
steady submarine progress of the creatures following.
It would be close. The Doctor had lost one man, he
wasn't going to lose any more.

'Quickly,' the figure on the shore called. 'Quickly!'

He was a tall man, with a bald scalp pushing up
through a ring of greying hair and a beard that circled
the bottom of his face as if to compensate. He ran into
the Loch, regardless of the water that rose up to his
knees, and reached out to grab the Doctor's hands,
pulling him and the raft into dock. He needn't have
bothered: as soon as the raft was within wading
distance of the shore, the soldiers started to leap off.
By the time the Doctor jumped onto the damp grass,
the soldiers were already looking around like nervous
rabbits being pursued by a fox.

'This way,' the stranger said, waving them up the
shore. 'Follow me.'

'To where?' McAllister asked sharply.

The stranger pointed further up the shore: there
was a path that wound through some trees, and the
familiar spired shape of a church waiting at the end
of it. The church had two large wooden doors that
looked like they could keep out the assembled hordes
of Genghis Khan. McAllister nodded at the stranger,
as if noticing for the first time that he was dressed in a
minister's drab dark robes.

'Sir?' one of the soldiers asked.

McAllister glanced behind him, as did the Doctor.
The creatures were rising again from the Loch, the
water pouring from them like rain. Long green weeds
clung to their ancient clothes. Somewhere on his
journey, Ernest Wright had torn his bright red jacket.

'Follow the minister,' McAllister ordered.

He didn't have to say it twice.

It was a short run along the path and up to the
church, but none of the soldiers said a word as they
ran. The Doctor suspected that each of them was
thinking the same thing: between the path and the
church doors, the graveyard sat. So far, the only
creatures they had seen had all risen from the Loch,
but that didn't mean that it would stay that way. All
it would take was for one creature to appear from
behind the shadows of a grave, and that would be
that.

The graveyard was filled with trees as well as
headstones, and there were plenty of shadows to
choose between. The graves themselves were mostly
decorated with carefully carved skulls laughing out at
the living. The Doctor imagined that more than one
of the soldiers wished that the city's masons had had
a less literal frame of mind.

They hurried through the maze of stones, the
minister shouting encouragement from the Doctor's
side. The creatures were only yards behind them.

'Inside,' the minister called. 'There are others
waiting. Don't worry.'

The Doctor, McAllister and the minister were the
last to enter the church, and the frontrunners of their
pale pursuers almost had their fingers in the doors. It
took all three of them to slam shut the doors behind
them and draw the heavy bolts across. For a moment,
nobody said anything. The minister and McAllister
just stood and panted. Behind them, the church was
silent.

'Don't worry,' the minister said in hushed tones. 'St
Cuthbert's kept our congregation safe when it was the
Pretender at the doors. She'll keep us safe now.'

The Doctor opened his mouth to say something.

But he was drowned out by the sound of hammering
on the doors.

The creatures had arrived.

Martha stood blind in the sudden darkness, her
back pressed tight against the hidden door. She
could hear the disembodied hands scuttling all around
her. She told herself calmly that they were probably
moving back to the murky light from the window,
and not to panic. Her heart pounded roughly in her
chest. She blinked hard and often, trying to get her
eyes used to the darkness again. All she could see was
the flicker of the oil lamp that was no longer lit.

Something brushed against her arm, and she let
out a yelp and jumped to one side. She banged her
elbow against the wall as she moved, and a tingling
numbness shot down to her fingers.

'Stop it,' she told herself sharply. 'Just... stop it.' She
closed her eyes for a moment, and breathed deeply.

When she opened them again, her eyes had grown
more accustomed to the darkness. She could see
the strange grey hands had lost interest in her and
were indeed scuttling back to worship at the greasy
window. She could see them as little pale shapes,
thronging here and there, trying to climb the wall to
reach the light just as they'd tried to climb her. So she
was right: they were attracted to the light.

But there seemed to be more to it than that. The
way they moved, slumping as if tired but frantically
scrabbling to climb the cold walls; the way that some
of them fell from the walls and lay on their sides
for a few moments, as if they were trying to decide
whether it was actually worth getting up again. As
she watched, Martha realised that she wasn't the only
one being kept in the room against her will.

'Erm, hello?' she said, taking a step forward.

She felt more than a little stupid: what kind of
response exactly was she expecting when the hands
didn't seem to have ears, eyes or mouths? But the
Doctor would have tried to communicate with them.
As a doctor, so should she.

'Can you understand me?' she asked in a clearer
voice.

A small knot of hands on the floor seemed to turn
and look at her. She knelt and looked at them, stopping
short of holding out her hand to theirs. They each had
a wart growing at the base of their index fingers... the
base of their necks, she imagined. The fingers were
criss-crossed at the tips with a multitude of tiny white
scars where the skin had been nicked and healed
a thousand times over the years. The pattern of the
scars was identical from one hand to the next. They
were all the same hand.

'Can you . . ?' she stopped herself. If they couldn't
understand her, there was no point in asking. 'I don't
know what you are: I've never seen anything like this
before. But I've got this friend, the Doctor. He'll know
what's going on. He'll lend... he'll be able to help you,
I mean.'

Martha felt her cheeks flush a little.

The hands turned away and redoubled their efforts
to try and reach the tiny window in the corner.

Martha knew that she could reach it if she went
over there. Perhaps she could clean it with her sleeve
and see whatever it was that it overlooked. Perhaps
a whole platoon of soldiers who'd be quick to break
the door down and rescue her. More likely a gang
of drunken medical students laughing at their old
teachers who hadn't even heard of the miraculous
properties of leeches.

If she let the hands crawl up her body, they might
even be able to break the glass themselves. Then at
least they could escape and perhaps, like Androcles'
lion, they'd find some way to help her in the future.
But somehow she couldn't quite bring herself to do it.
Something about the way those fingers scurried and
danced, something about how closely they resembled
overgrown spiders.

Instead, she stood by the wall and tried to think of
something clever.

Martha didn't know how long she stood there,
but it felt like it might have been days. The hands in
the corner of the room still scampered and climbed,
but none of them had yet managed to get within
jumping distance of the window. She'd noticed that
they seemed to be taking it in turns, one group trying
whilst another huddled together in the darkness and
seemed to sleep. Still she didn't step over to help
them.

The tapping came quietly, from the wall behind
her.

The hands didn't react.

'Hello?' she said.

'Step away from the door,' came a muffled voice.

Martha's heart skipped at the thought that it might
be the Doctor, somehow come to save her, but his
voice she would have known even through the vaults
of the Bank of England. No, this must be one of the two
Mr Monros, come to do whatever it was they'd had in
mind when they locked her in here in the first place.
She couldn't tell if it was the older or the younger. She
wondered if it really made a difference.

She stepped away from the door.

It slid open silently, and for a moment the light
blinded her. The hands suddenly scurried for the
opening, a mass of fingers and thumbs all dancing
over the stone floor.

Then the light was gone. Martha didn't think any of
the little creatures had escaped. She had an afterimage
of Mr Monro the elder standing in the room, carrying
a clay jar with two metal prongs coming from it and
wearing an apologetic look, but then the darkness
took it.

'I am sorry,' Monro said. 'Please believe me, we
mean you no harm.'

'Really?' Martha said. If her sarcasm had been water,
it would have filled the hidden room and drowned
them both. 'You locked us in here for our own good,
did you?'

Monro at least had the decency to be embarrassed.
'The goal we are working towards...' He stopped.
'You are right, of course. It is inexcusable. You may go
free at once. Alexander is away collecting... He will
not know that you are gone, I promise. I will not ask
you to keep what has happened to you here a secret.
If you choose to return with the bailies, that will be
your decision.'

'Bailies?' Martha asked. As far as she was concerned,
Baileys was a drink you had with ice or coffee.

Martha's eyes were adjusting to the darkness again:
she could just make out Monro looking at her with
understanding.

'You are from London,' he said, as if sorry for her.
'They call the magistrates bailies hereabouts. By the
time you return, we will have completed our work, I
hope. But if we have not, perhaps that is as well.'

'And what exactly is your work?' Martha asked.

Monro gave her a look.

'You should leave without delay,' he said. 'Alexander
will not be long.'

Martha took a step back and folded her arms firmly
across her chest. She didn't much want to spend the
rest of her life trapped in this dark room with a load
of disembodied hands, but if Monro was saying that
whatever he and his son had planned would be done
by the time she got back with the Doctor... She'd seen
enough old horror movies to know that mad scientists
were very rarely working to reduce global warming
or feed the starving masses of the world.

'I am sorry,' he said softly. 'But I cannot delay for
you.'

Martha didn't move.

Monro shrugged and stepped forward, setting his
clay pot on the ground and looking around him for
a moment. It was clear that he was looking for the
hands, but with the door shut they had gone back to
trying to climb for the window. He nodded to himself,
as if this was only to be expected, and reached down to
pull at the pot's two prongs: they came away, revealing
themselves to be the ends of two dirty copper wires.
It was only then that Martha realised that Monro was
wearing thick leather gloves.

Copper wires and protective clothing. Martha
realised that the clay pot was some sort of eighteenthcentury
battery. She was going to question whether
they even had electricity that long ago, but then she
remembered the stagecoach's passenger: Benjamin
Franklin, who had famously flown a kite in a
thunderstorm to collect electricity from the lightning.
If he was doing it, then there was no reason why
Monro couldn't be as well. Perhaps the jar contained
bottled lightning drawn down during some recent
Edinburgh downpour.

Monro leant over a stray hand, and touched the
two wires to it.

Martha let out a gasp as the hand suddenly went
into a spasm, its fingers stretching out with a crack
that left it lying flat on the floor. The reaction was so
violent, that Martha wouldn't have been surprised if
one of the fingers or more had been broken. Monro
didn't flinch, just picked up the twitching hand and
dropped it into a rough sack at his side. Then he
repeated the process with another hand.

'Stop it!' Martha shouted.

'I assure you, there is no harm,' Monro said, turning
to her as he bent to pick up the second hand. 'There is
no brain to feel the pain: I have dissected them to be
certain. They recover within moments, without any
sign of permanent—'

Monro stopped abruptly. While he had been
looking at Martha, one of the hands had taken the
opportunity to creep closer to him, unnoticed. Then,
suddenly, it had tensed and sprung. It bounced up
to Monro as he crouched, and gripped his shirt so
tightly that the fingernails were drawing tiny droplets
of blood into the white fabric. The hand was holding
itself tightly over Monro's heart.

Monro gave a cry of pain. Without thinking, Martha
rushed forwards and grabbed the two copper wires
from Monro's hands. There was a slight tingle and
nothing more, so these clay batteries couldn't exactly
be high power. But the reaction when she brushed the
wires against the hand was dramatic: Monro gave a
loud cry and fell to the floor, and the hand twitched so
violently that it pushed itself off the old man's chest
and across to the far side of the room.

The other hands scuttled to avoid it, forming a
ring and craning their index fingers towards it. Then,
almost as one, they all turned to point at Martha and
Monro. Martha, crouching by the old man's side and
checking his heart, suddenly felt very aware that the
door was shut.

'The lintel,' Monro gasped. 'The switch.'

Martha stood, not turning her back on the hands
while she ran her own over the top of the hidden door.
She felt an invisible button depress, and suddenly
the door swung inwards, narrowly missing Monro's
bare head. Martha grabbed him by the shoulders and
tugged him swiftly out of the doorway. His hand was
still clutching the sack, and two disembodied hands
struggled and fought inside it. The rest of them flung
themselves in Martha's direction. She told herself they
were just after their freedom, but it was too hard to
believe that they weren't trying to reach her.

She pulled the door shut just in time.

Then she slid to the floor with her back against
it, panting hard. Monro lay at her feet, his eyes open
but his breathing ragged. Behind her, she could hear
the sound of the hands flinging themselves against it,
one after the other. It sounded like raindrops falling.
She told herself that they only wanted their freedom.
She told herself that if she knew how, she would have
turned and opened the door to help them.

She didn't move.

***

The colour had drained from Monro's face, but he
managed to pull himself upright and catch his breath.
He looked so bewildered that Martha couldn't help
but feel sorry for him. It also served as a prick to her
conscience: instead of sitting against the door doing
nothing, she knew that she should be checking the
old anatomist over to see if the attacking hand had
done any serious damage.

'They... it...' Monro stammered, holding a hand to
his heart.

Martha leant over and gently took his arm.

'Don't worry,' she told him. 'You've had a shock,
but you're safe now.'

He turned to her, surprise in his eyes. 'It learnt,' he
said.

Martha didn't say anything, just began checking
Monro for injuries: the hand's fingernail had dug
fairly deep into the skin of his chest, but other than
that it seemed just to be the shock of it. The five halfcrescent
punctures that surrounded his heart were
already drying, looking like some kind of ill-judged
tattoo.

'Don't you see?' Monro asked her, his hand gripping
Martha's arm tightly. 'It learnt. It
learnt
!'

Martha gently prised her arm free. 'Learnt what?'

'The first hand,' he said. There was a catch in his
voice that Martha thought might be asthma. 'I had
to sew it to Arthur King's chest and even then it
struggled. But now... that hand clung on itself. It
learnt how to take hold of a body. It tried to... I could
feel it, in my mind. Such a...'

Monro looked through Martha: she wasn't even
there.

'The two hands have never been in contact,' he
whispered. 'But the one learnt from the other. This
is...'

Martha didn't want to speak, afraid that she might
break the spell and Monro would see her again. But
staying quiet wouldn't help anybody. There were
questions that needed to be asked, things she needed
to know. If they were going to stop whatever this was,
they couldn't just sit back and say nothing.

'You sewed the hand to a dead body?' Martha
asked.

'If you'd seen the miracles it had already
performed...' was Monro's only answer.

'You brought that man back to life?' she pressed,
leaning in close. 'And made him attack the
stagecoach?'

'No no. It escaped. I have no idea why it
attacked—'

There was a sound from further down the
corridor, a sharp metallic scraping. Monro heard it,
and suddenly his eyes cleared. Now he was looking
at Martha, and he was seeing her. She looked at him,
another question on her lips, but it was too late. He
was already on his feet, clutching the rough sack in
one hand and looking down the corridor in panic.

'Alexander has returned,' he whispered. 'You must
hide. The auditorium is at the end of this corridor.
You can stay there until you can escape.'