Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (29 page)

The faceless creatures had pulled the leather threads of the straitjacket tightly behind his back, before hoisting him up in the air from behind and fastening the final strap of the straitjacket between his legs. His groin ached from the pressure of the strap, making him feel continually light-headed and nauseous.

Mikey was sitting next to him. From his irregular breathing, Jack could tell that his flatmate was crying. Mikey had struggled desperately when the faceless men had separated them from Dennis – soon after they had material-ized in front of the grey man in the underground cavern. Jack could still hear Dennis’s terrified squeals as he had been carried away.

They were going to kill Dennis; the grey man had said so. Moriah was tall and muscular, like a stone golem from a storybook. In a quiet voice, almost a whisper, he had ordered that Dennis was killed. It didn’t make any sense.

Why would any one want to kill Dennis? What reason could anyone have for killing a child?

Jack wanted to say something reassuring to Mikey, but he couldn’t find any words. Everything that came into his head sounded trite and stupid. He wanted to say that the Doctor would come for them, that the Doctor wouldn’t let Dennis die. But they had left the Doctor alone at the Scratons’. Two against one. Jack remembered the last time the Doctor and Carl Scraton had fought, hearing the Doctor’s agonized cries as he was buried beneath Carl’s pounding fists. What had happened then? Oh,
he’d
saved him, hadn’t he? Jack had saved the Doctor, bringing the heavy glass sphere down on the thug’s head.

Blimey, had that really been him?

Feeling stronger, more confident with himself, Jack shuffled across the floor until the side of his bound arm was touching Mikey. Back at Mrs Carroway’s, he had always been careful to avoid physical contact with his flatmate, worried that Mikey might get the wrong idea. At night, when they undressed for bed, Jack would make a show of not looking over at Mikey’s side of the room.

Mikey leant over him, resting his head on Jack’s shoulder, and began to cry.

Horrible deep sobs that made his body shudder as they fought their way out of his chest. ‘What am I gonna do, Jack? What am I gonna do?’

166

Jack’s neck was wet with tears. He wanted to pull Mikey into his arms, suddenly furious that he wasn’t able to comfort his friend. ‘It’s OK,’ he whispered, over and over again. ‘The Doctor will come, he’ll save Dennis, he’ll save us all.’

Perhaps if he said it enough times, then he could will it true.

Footsteps. Coming closer. The light under the door of the cell was blocked by someone standing outside. Someone or something. Jack pushed his back into the soft padding of the wall behind him. Had the creatures come for them?

Voices. One of them was a woman’s – upper class and terribly affected, like an overzealous actress in amateur dramatics. ‘Look Lilly,’ she barked, ‘I said I’d been here before, I did not say I was a qualified tour guide.’

‘Madam,’ a second, male voice growled, ‘would you please stop calling me that.’ Jack thought he recognized both voices, although he couldn’t place them.

‘Ssh, both of you,’ a third voice added, sounding impatient and frustrated.

‘This is supposed to be a covert operation, a rescue. Do you want to bring more of Moriah’s creatures down upon us?’

Jack would have known those rolling R’s and that soft Scottish burr anywhere. ‘Doctor!’ he shouted. ‘Doctor!’

‘Jack?’

The door opened, filling the darkened cell with light. Silhouetted in the doorway was the reassuring outline of a small man, wearing a fedora hat and holding an umbrella with a question mark for a handle. The new light made Jack’s eyes water. Either that or he’d burst into tears. He couldn’t be sure and he was too pleased to see the Doctor to worry about whether or not anyone thought he was crying.

‘You came,’ he said, simply.

‘I’m sure it must be visiting time,’ the Doctor smiled, and gave both boys a friendly hug. Just seeing the Doctor filled Jack with hope. The little man’s ice-blue eyes were alive with interest, darting into every corner of the horrible, stained room. ‘I see they’ve given you their full care and attention,’ he quipped, ruffling Jack’s hair with his hand.

Mother and the policeman, Harris, followed the Doctor into the room and set about loosening the straps of the straitjackets. Of course, the arguing voices had belonged to them. It was strange to see Tilda here – Jack had never seen her out of her club. Why had the Doctor brought her with him? How was she involved with this? Looking at her now reminded Jack of the portrait in Moriah’s quarters. The portrait of Queen Petruska. Tilda was avoiding eye contact with the policeman; someone else, Jack thought, who didn’t get along with the grouchy police inspector.

167

‘Dennis. Where is he?’ Tilda demanded, holding Mikey by the shoulders.

‘You simply must tell us.’

‘The creatures took him,’ Mikey started, his face wet with tears. ‘The creatures with no face. I tried to stop them but I couldn’t. We’ve got to get to him, stop them hurting him.’

‘We will stop them,’ the Doctor said, and the certainty in his voice made Jack feel warm inside. ‘But first I need to know what’s going on.’

‘Moriah,’ Jack said. ‘It was Moriah.’

‘Bastard!’ Tilda exclaimed.

The Doctor appraised her carefully as he helped Mikey out of the restraint, as if he were about to ask her a question. Tilda frowned at him and moved to the door, to keep watch on the corridor. The Doctor watched her for a moment, as if considering whether to follow her, but then he turned back to Mikey. ‘Tell me about Dennis,’ he said, softly. ‘He’s not really your brother at all, is he?’

Jack was surprised by this question. Surprised and a little angry. Didn’t the Doctor realize what Mikey had been going through since they had been locked away in here?

Mikey’s reaction to the question was not what Jack had expected. Instead of getting annoyed, he just looked away, embarrassed.

‘I ain’t got no brothers,’ he said, finally. ‘Two sisters back in Kingston, but no brothers.’

The Doctor nodded, as if this was exactly the reply he had expected. ‘Go on. Please.’

‘When I came to London, to England, I was on me own. I don’t get on with me family, but I still miss them, you know? And then one evening I got home from the site – Jack was out with his man –’ Mikey glanced at Jack and then quickly away.

‘And?’ the Doctor asked, his face alive with curiosity. He was standing close to Mikey, peering up intensely at him and making tiny circling motions with his hands, urging the lad on.

‘And he was just there, you know? On the step, crying his eyes out, like a little lost calf. The kid needed someone to look after him, so I did.’ Awkwardly, Mikey met the Doctor’s intense gaze. ‘I always knew that it was too good to be true, but I don’t care. He’s me kid brother now, and –’ he shrugged ‘– and I love him.’

The Doctor grinned, suddenly and naturally. ‘I just love human beings,’ he said and reached out and tapped Mikey on his flat nose. ‘No logic to your behaviour at all, and yet you’re so irresistible. How do you do it?’

Mikey frowned and backed off, wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand. ‘Are you making fun of me?’

168

‘Perhaps just a little and I really don’t mean to. Of course he’s your brother.

Don’t ever doubt it. You wanted him so much that you willed him into existence. The answer to all your prayers sitting on your doorstep, like a birthday gift.’

Jack didn’t like the way the Doctor was talking. It was frightening to think that the Doctor wasn’t human, that he came from somewhere else, somewhere Jack couldn’t imagine. But that wasn’t what really disturbed Jack. While listening to Mikey’s story he had found himself thinking about his own life. Of an afternoon outside Holborn library.

He only half heard the Doctor turn to where Tilda stood in the doorway and say, ‘You arranged for Mikey to find Dennis on his doorstep, didn’t you? For how long have you been planting your little gifts throughout the city. How many? Fifty? A hundred?

Tilda stood in the doorway, hugging her thin arms to her rakish chest. ‘I’ve lost count. My people need friends, Doctor,’ she said. ‘Special friends to care for. To provide what is most needed.’

‘To
be
what is most needed,’ the Doctor corrected.

Jack’s eyes rested on Tilda’s impassive face, but he was seeing an image from his past: the most beautiful boy he’d ever set eyes upon stooping to help him retrieve his fallen library books. Ocean-blue eyes framed by long dark lashes.

What Jack had most needed.

‘Eddy,’ Jack said, tears welling up in his eyes again.

‘Yes, like Eddy Stone,’ Tilda said neutrally.

Jack felt something inside himself die. A little flame of hope and. . . love, snuffed out, leaving him hollow inside.

‘Time for action,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’re not out of this yet.’

The little boy looked like an angel in sleep. Like a cherub. Julia Mannheim had to remind herself that the anaesthetized child was not real but only a mass of cloned cells grown from human tissue. An organic instrument, with as much autonomy as her reflection in the mirror.

So, why do I always sweat when I do this? Julia looked up to see Moriah’s dull grey eyes on her as she prepared the instruments for surgery.

The director had explained everything and of course it made perfect sense.

The unconscious boy had ended up at the Institute due to an unfortunate mistake at Chelmsford General Hospital. The Doctor was a patient left over from the project. What else could explain his bizarre behaviour and strange stories? Moriah had asked. Julia had already begun to admonish herself for being taken in by a patient’s delusions. She was supposed to be a doctor after all.

169

Quickly, she found the glands at the base of the Toy’s throat and marked the points where she would make the incisions with a thin black crayon. The two glands which secreted the empathic fluid were deep below the surface of the Toy’s body. Remove them and it would quickly cease to function.

And the little boy on the theatre table in front of her would die.

She shook the thought out of her mind and picked up a scalpel from the instrument tray. Julia Mannheim could feel the director’s presence, his eyes burning into her as she worked.

‘Is there a problem, Doctor Mannheim?’ Moriah enquired softly, from a position close to the door.

She glanced over at him, only his grey eyes were visible above his surgical mask. She shook her head, ‘No, director, everything’s fine.’

‘Not getting sentimental?’

Julia forced a smile. ‘About one of the Toys? Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Good. You understand how important it is for all the rogue therapeutic instruments to be deactivated. I will leave you to your work. If you should need me, I will be in my study.’

She felt rather than heard him leave the huge, shadowed operating theatre.

Julia exhaled slowly and felt her body relax. His presence always made her feel claustrophobic, hemmed in, as if she were under constant surveillance. It was something to do with his eyes, they looked so old and tired.

She would finish up here and then go and have a lie down.

Pulling the Toy’s skin taut between her fingers, she prepared to make the incision with the scalpel. She pressed the blade to the Toy’s throat, felt the skin begin to part.

Someone made a tutting noise behind her. Julia froze, a tiny scarlet line appearing in the scalpel’s wake.

‘What kind of Mother would I be if I let you do that to one of my boys, hmm?’ The woman’s voice was hard, and filled with judgment and contempt.

Julia whirled round to see a tall woman standing near the door to the theatre. The woman was tall and rakishly thin. She was holding her chin tilted upward, her dark eyes fixed on Julia, like an eagle targeting its prey. Julia thought she looked like English grandeur personified.

‘
Your
boys?’ Julia could only stutter in reply. The aristocratic woman intimidated the hell out of her.

The woman ran long fingers through her severely combed back black hair, before striding across the room to where Julia stood. She plucked the scalpel from between Julia’s fingers and put it firmly back in its tray.

Julia could only watch as the woman lifted the anaesthetized Toy from the table. As she gathered the boy in her arms a look of recognition passed between them.

170

‘I know you,’ Julia murmured, trying to remember where she had seen this mysterious woman before.

The woman nodded, curtly. ‘It’s time we had a little talk, gal.’

Tilda Jupp lit a filterless cigarette and pulled heavily upon it as she walked through the forest of dormant Toys which were scattered through the abandoned ward. She left clouds of hazy smoke behind her in the room’s stale air.

Julia had watched the woman hand the little coloured boy to the Doctor.

Somehow Julia hadn’t been at all surprised to see the little man again. The Doctor had sat the unconscious boy on his hip, as if he’d been looking after children all his life. Julia wanted to say something to the Doctor, but he lingered at the doorway, content merely to watch the proceedings.

Two teenagers entered the room soon after that. Julia recognized one of them as the juvenile male from the mortuary. The Doctor had said that the boy was his friend. The other was a tall, lanky West Indian, who cried out with joy when he saw the coloured boy in the Doctor’s arms. Julia knew the expression on his face all too well; she’d seen that aura of bliss many times before in her work at the Institute. The West Indian was bonded with the Toy.

Her professional curiosity was aroused – she had only ever seen Toys interact with people with severe mental illnesses. She found herself wondering what needs the Toy was reflecting in the young coloured man. That the Toy had been transformed into a child was an indicator in itself. Perhaps the West Indian desired to be needed, to be depended upon, to be necessary.

There wasn’t time to explore this interesting clinical development. The whole project was over and this incident needed to be sorted out, and quickly.