71 - The Deadstone Memorial

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2024-12-08 0 0 760.35KB 256 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
There is no such thing as a good night.
You may think you can hide away in dreams. Safely tucked up in bed,
nothing can touch you.
But, as every child knows, there are bad dreams. And bad dreams are
where the monsters are.
The Doctor knows all about monsters. And he knows that sometimes they
can still be there when you wake up. And when the horror is more than
just a memory, there is nowhere to hide.
Even here, today, tonight... in the most ordinary of homes, and against the
most ordinary people, the terror will strike.
A young boy will suffer terrifying visions...
... and his family will encounter a deathless horror.
Only the Doctor can help – but first he must uncover the fearsome secret
of the Deadstone Memorial.
This is another in the series of adventures for the Eighth Doctor.
The Deadstone Memorial
Trevor Baxendale
Contents
1 The Old Man 5
2 Hazel 9
3 Bedtime 16
4 House Call 24
5 Diagnosis 29
6 Scary Stories 34
7 The Ghost Hunters 42
8 Inscription 46
9 The Travellers 52
10 Home Time 60
11 Dinner 66
12 Closer Than You Think 73
13 Lost 79
14 The Ghost 86
15 Night Terrors 91
16 Plan of Action 95
17 The Cellar 100
1
CONTENTS 2
18 The Dead Ghost 108
19 Dark Dreams 113
20 The Doctor’s Ghost 119
21 Jade 124
22 Quiet Time 133
23 Contact 140
24 Graveside 146
25 Visitors 153
26 Missing 158
27 Interview With a Traveller 165
28 The Hanging of Henry 171
29 Digging the Dirt 177
30 Beast 185
31 Escape 190
32 Extraction 197
33 The Hanged Man 203
34 Ground Force 207
35 One for the Pot 213
36 Deadstone 220
37 Death at Last 225
38 Contact 232
39 Gone 238
CONTENTS 3
40 Still Dreaming 243
Acknowledgements 251
About the Author 252
Credits 253
For Mum
who loved books of all kinds
Avril M. Baxendale
1930–2003
Chapter 1
The Old Man
The old man told ghost stories: creepy little tales full of deathly chills and
cold horror, just the way Cal liked them.
He stood at the gate of the old cottage, where he’d lived for as long as
anyone could remember, and watched the children as they walked home
from school. Some of the younger kids were scared of him, because of the
way his eyes would fix hungrily on them as though he was imagining a big,
hot oven and a tasty meal to follow.
He had a pit bull terrier that was so bad-tempered everyone was scared
of it. Rumour had it that the old man set the vicious little dog on other
people’s pets, and children too, if he could get away with it. Everyone
knew about the time a gang of fifth-formers had kicked the old man’s bin
bags along the road until they broke open. In among the debris was a dead
cat, stiff and skeletal and teeming with maggots. The old man had run
out of his house yelling and swearing, as the boys, laughing, backed away.
The old man had cursed them and picked up his rubbish, muttering and
grumbling.
‘You’ll feel the bite o’ my dog, you little beggars! You’ll see!’
They laughed again and taunted him, but they always steered clear of
that dog.
In fact the old man never did anything about it, and his dog tended to
stay in the front garden, sniffing around for rats or growling at passers-by.
Mostly the old man would just stand and stare and talk to any of the kids
who stopped to chat – the ones who talked to the old man for a dare, or
the ones who just liked to hear his stories, like Cal.
Cal was lively and inquisitive and had what his teachers called ‘a vivid
imagination’. He always tried to come home from school this way, ignoring
the short cut through the park that most of the children used, so that he
could pass by the old man’s house.
5
CHAPTER 1. THE OLD MAN 6
The old man would always be there, waiting, with that strange smile
on his whiskery face and a hungry glint in his eye. It was cold today and
looked like rain and Cal wanted to get home, but he couldn’t resist the
chance of seeing the old man first.
The house had a small front garden overgrown with weeds and bushes.
There was a rusting lawnmower propped up against the front wall and a
stack of crumbling house bricks. The dog prowled around the little patch
of garden while the old man stood at the gate, rolling his own cigarettes
and licking the paper with a trembling red tongue. His fingers were dirty,
the tips ringed with black grime and stained with nicotine. Now that it
was getting on for winter, he wore a long coat with a grubby red scarf tied
around his throat.
He caught sight of Cal as he approached and nodded a greeting as he
finished his cigarette. The dog growled at his feet but the old man dis-
missed it with a cursory grunt: ‘Gurtcha!’
Cal stopped and waited politely for the old man to light up. He always
used a match struck on the rusty hinge of his garden gate. ‘On yer own?’
the old man asked at last.
‘Yeah,’ said Cal. It was Wednesday, so most of his school mates were
staying behind for football practice. But something made him add, ‘My
sister will be along soon, though, I think.’ He looked back along the lane to
check, but there was no sign of pursuit just yet. Cal was ten, and his mum
seemed to think that he needed looking after by his older sister. He was
supposed to wait for her outside the school gates, but Cal did his best to
avoid her because she didn’t like the old man much.
The old man blew a perfect blue smoke ring and they both watched it
disintegrate in the chilly grey air. Occasionally the old man would reach
up and scratch his neck, and sometimes Cal thought he could see scabs
beneath the red necktie. The other week, the old man had reached out and
ruffled Cal’s dark, untidy hair with fingers that felt like dry sticks. Cal had
remembered the dark scabs and ever since then made sure he stood just
out of reach.
‘Gettin’ colder now,’ said the old man. ‘Cold as the grave.’
This was what Cal loved. He stayed silent, knowing the old man would
continue.
‘I dug graves once,’ he said, ominously.
Cal felt a shiver run across his shoulders that was only partially due to
the cold weather. The old man was staring at him. His eyes were the colour
of dishwater, and the black pupils were very small, as if they were just little
holes made with a knitting needle.
‘Nasty business, diggin’ graves.’ The old man took a long drag on his
CHAPTER 1. THE OLD MAN 7
cigarette. ‘Specially if yer know who’s goin’ to fill ’em.’
Cal glanced quickly back towards school. Still no sign of his sister. He
looked back at the old man eagerly.
‘This grave I dug was for a woman. Up there, in the woods. All legit,
like, but in the woods. That was what she wanted, see. Didn’t want to be
buried in no graveyard, as she was special. Or so she said! Didn’t matter to
me, I just dug the grave. Six foot deep an’ it was rainin’, so I was knee-deep
in mud an’ worms by the time I’d finished. I dunno what the woman died
of, I never asked, but they put the coffin down there good an’ proper like,
except for one thing.’
Here the old man paused again, dramatically, to take another puff on his
ciggie. Then he licked his lips and, leaning forward slightly and lowering
his voice, said: ‘No service. They didn’t give the woman no proper service,
see. Didn’t bury her like a God-fearin’ Christian at all. Weren’t natural, I tell
yer! Said so at the time, I did. “This ain’t right,” I said, “this ain’t natural!”
But they didn’t take no notice of me, lad. I was just the digger, see. None
of my business, they said. Well... I reckon I had the last laugh, in the end.
Not one of them that buried her up there, in the woods, is still alive today.
Everyone of them’s dead as a damned doornail. And each man was found
dead in his bed, with the breath squeezed out of him like a strangled rat
and muddy handprints all over his neck!’
Cal had practically stopped breathing himself.
‘Now I don’t believe in ghosts, mind,’ said the old man quietly. ‘But I
never reckoned on that woman lying peaceful in that grave, on account of
the way she was buried. I still remember watchin’ that coffin sink into the
filthy water, an’ the worms a-crawlin’ all over it as it went down. An’ I said
then that I didn’t agree with it. An’ maybe, just maybe, the old bird inside
it heard me, and that’s why she’s never come for me.’
‘Cal!’
Cal jumped guiltily at the sound of his sister’s voice.
Jade was running down the path towards him, shooting a brief look of
disdain at the old man before grabbing Cal by his anorak and dragging him
along. ‘Mum said no stopping,’ she said. ‘And you were supposed to wait
for me at the school gate, not start off on your own!’
Cal’s sister was older than him and a lot stronger. She was blonde and
tough and didn’t like having to watch out for her brother. There was no
resisting her in this mood, but Cal managed to twist around to look back at
the old man. He was watching them with his hungry eyes. ‘I know my own
way home,’ Cal said, and yanked his arm free of Jade’s grip. He stomped
off ahead of her to prove it.
‘Suit yourself, stupid,’ Jade called after him. ‘But I’ll tell Mum.’
摘要：

Thereisnosuchthingasagoodnight.Youmaythinkyoucanhideawayindreams.Safelytuckedupinbed,nothingcantouchyou.But,aseverychildknows,therearebaddreams.Andbaddreamsarewherethemonstersare.TheDoctorknowsallaboutmonsters.Andheknowsthatsometimestheycanstillbetherewhenyouwakeup.Andwhenthehorrorismorethanjustamem...

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