GHOST SHIP

Keith Topping

First published in England in 2003 by

Telos Publishing Ltd

61 Elgar Avenue, Tolworth, Surrey KT5 9JP, England

www.telos.co.uk

ISBN: 1-903889-32-4 (paperback)

Ghost Ship © 2002 Keith Topping

Skull motif © 2002 Dariusz Jasiczak

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

‘DOCTOR WHO’ word mark, device mark and logo are trade marks of the British

Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence from BBC Worldwide Limited.

Doctor Who logo © BBC 1996. Certain character names and characters within this book

appeared in the BBC television series ‘DOCTOR WHO’. Licensed by BBC Worldwide

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be

lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent

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similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Contents

Prologue

7

Chapter One

11

Chapter Two

19

Chapter Three

28

Chapter Four

34

Chapter Five

39

Chapter Six

47

Chapter Seven

52

Chapter Eight

58

Epilogue

63

Ghost Ship is dedicated to the very lovely Robert Franks,

David Howe, John Molyneux, Jason Tucker and Michelle Wolf.

And all of the other lost souls on the good Queen Mary.

Past, present and future.

The time is out of joint. O, cursed spite,

that ever I was born to set it right!

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET

PROLOGUE

THE VOID

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass

stains the white radiance of eternity.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, ADONAIS

THE VOID IS VAST.

An eternal and impenetrable, endless, unbroken rolling blanket of

nothing.

No light in the darkness.

No form, no substance, no colours, no meaning.

The Void had become my home. In the philosophical sense, as well as

the literal.

And what a spectacular realm it seemed to this weary and jaundiced

traveller. There were times when it seemed lamenting and mournful, yet it

possessed the curious otherworldly wonder of immaculate symmetry. Like

a fossil, it could not age or wither or die. It simply existed, for all infinity,

in the now. Here was a place where time and space and relativity had no

substance beyond the limits of a fertile imagination. A de facto conceit that

they shared with all those other useless elephantine scientific concepts that

tiny minds, chained by the bondage of polite convention, cannot possibly

dream of comprehending. In the literal sense, as well as the philosophical.

The bewildering beauty of complete insignificance.

Here is a small trick to get you thinking on a whole new level. Imagine

yourself at the centre of an enormous crowd, of one million people. Then

imagine that you are, all of you, trapped within a single grain of sand. One

of millions upon millions of grains lying on a single beach in which every

grain contains a million souls. Now multiply that beach by every other

beach on the planet Earth and the figure that will emerge when all your

calculating is done may be somewhere close to the total number of

inhabited planets that exist in the universe.

Sometimes mathematics can be quite heart-stopping.

Try it. It will, I guarantee, make you feel very small and vulnerable as you

lie in your bed in the early hours of the morning, in the darkness just

before the coming dawn, thinking about whether size is really that

important.

For out there, in the vast unchanging eternity, the great unknown, there

are signs and wonders the like of which most people can only dream

about.

Then there is the silence of the Void. A mirror to the soul. As deep and

dark and mysterious as any of Earth’s many oceans. The silence that, at

this moment, was broken only by my awareness of the sounds of my own

body. My twin hearts beating out an unnatural, jagged and erratic rhythm.

A torch song to my solitude.

Here, for the first time in what seemed to be forever, I was completely

alone.

When you are telling a story, it is often said, you should strive for

lucidity, for elegance and a distinctive voice. This applies to any sort of

tale from an epic saga to the shortest of short verses. From Gothic

romance to a mood piece to an engine of destruction, told around a village

fire to an audience of enraptured children. The rules are made to be

broken, but it is said to be unwise to use a metaphor or a simile that is

also a cliché, and that you should never use long words where short ones

will do just as well, or ten when three are perfectly adequate. I am aware

that I, myself, am guilty of both the latter crimes.

The writer and humorist Hugh Leonard is once said to have described

his profession as less a vocation than an incurable illness. ‘Those who

persevere,’ he wrote, ‘do so not from pluck or determination but because

they cannot help it.’

And so the story begins.

Sometimes I wish that I could take it all back and start again. To be a

fisherman in a Cornish village like Mousehole or Mylor or Mullion Cove

with nothing to worry about except my nets and my lobster pots and the

raging, terrible sea.

To be a trooper in John Lilburne’s Levellers or in the New Model Army

perhaps, to fight for causes that are just. Or to explore Orwellian political

futures. To have the language of poetry and iambic pentameter impinge

upon the voyages of my TARDIS. To go anywhere, to any location, but

here.

What a vile thing it is, to remember, and to regret.

With hindsight, which is always a wonderfully dangerous toy in the

hands of the uninformed, I know now how this catastrophe began. How

these events all fit together and how the whole picture is supposed to look

on the lid of the jigsaw box. But such an awareness does not dissipate the

clinging sense of guilt. On the contrary, it only multiplies it and reflects

it back upon me, engulfing me like a shroud. Condemning me.

Mistakes are a luxury I have never allowed myself in the past.

They are the cause of untold suffering for everyone.

Drifting in the faceless infinity of the space/time vortex, the cracks

between the seconds that help to define the limits of the universe, such as

it is, the TARDIS’s internal telepathic circuits seemed to have detected

my lingering mood of melancholia and introspection after my recent, and

troubled, return to my home. To Gallifrey.

It had never occurred to me, before this moment, just how empty the

TARDIS could seem without the babble of young voices and the clatter of

feet upon smooth corridor floors. For so long, companionship had been

an important and unchanging part of my many lives. Now there was only

the hum of instrumentation as my constant companion.

And the many memories.

Perhaps the old girl herself was looking to be occupied again. To be

complete.

I had been brooding for a long time, I am now compelled to admit, upon

the true nature of fate. Of what it is, what it means and whether it even

exists. And of whether any foreknowledge of the Master’s diabolical

schemes would have enabled me to save the lives of the President or of

Chancellor Goth, that wretched pawn in the Master’s wicked games. It

was not, and is not, and will never be a simple equation, I was forced to

conclude. Such questions as these are never solved easily or without the

price of some personal regret. That, like the Void, is a universal constant.

A necessary constant.

So I sat and stared at the blank canvas of eternity. Lost, mute and blind,

in a never ending pocket universe of my own imaginings.

Until, that is, the TARDIS became intolerant of my self-indulgence and

decided that enough was enough.

Time, it is often said by those who know about such things, or claim to,

looks after itself. I was still thinking about the circumstances that had

drawn me into the web of mystery and intrigue in the Capitol. This

twisting bridle path of morbid self-analysis was abandoned, and suddenly.

The TARDIS was dematerialising.

I sat bolt upright in plain surprise. I had expected to drift aimlessly for a

good while longer.

Subsequently I would, on many occasions, regret not instantly leaping

from my chair and resetting the location controls for somewhere else.

Somewhere specific. Or anywhere but the place to which the TARDIS had

actually brought me. But my lethargy and gloom needed a tonic. That was

certain. And in those following seconds, when I rationalised that a single

random element may have been lust what the metaphorical doctor ordered,

fate sealed itself.

The TARDIS had delivered me to the most haunted place on Earth. I

realised this only with hindsight, of course. And hindsight, as well as being

dangerous, is also something in which I never indulge myself lightly or

wantonly.

For hindsight is a luxury of those who never have the need for the velvet

embrace of adventure.

Ah, sweet adventure. It shall surely be the death of me.

The wood-panelled console shook and juddered, perhaps in anticipation

of what would happen next. It trembled like a nervous mouse approached

by a predator. I wondered, briefly, as I always did at such times, to which

planet or satellite, in which constellation, in which galaxy I had been

delivered. The computer did little to enlighten me, which, again, was not

unusual. ‘Location unknown’ it told me in lurid green symbols. The air

was breathable at least.

The scanner, likewise, told me nothing that I did not already know,

showing only a bare patch of white painted wall. Without another thought

as to the consequences, I operated the door mechanism and prepared to

find out to just where in the universe I had been delivered.

It was just another day in a different place.

My life in microcosm.

Taking a deep breath, as I always did on such occasions, I stepped

outside.

CHAPTER ONE

ONCE UPON A

MIDNIGHT, DREARY

What is a ship but a prison?

ROBERT BURTON, DEMOCRITUS

I HAD NEVER CONSIDERED MYSELF A NAUTICAL COVE. I FELT THE

motion long before my eyes had become accustomed to the dull, funereal

light. It seemed that I had come to a gloomy and mournful place, which

was never, frankly, a good sign. The trace of a smile formed itself, if only

for an instant, upon my lips. The old girl knew me only too well, it would

seem.

But what manner of place was this?

Within seconds my senses had felt the vibration of engines that caused

the movement of the floor beneath my feet, heard the shunting of distant,

well-oiled pistons and the hissing of compressed steam, both smelled and

tasted the atmosphere that was thick with the pungent, caustic aroma of

sea salt, and seen the opulence that surrounded me.

I was on a ship.

A grand, majestic, ocean-going ship.

Through a porthole to my left I looked out to see a huge and sad-faced

moon hovering mere inches above the crashing waves, casting a languid

and rippling silver shadow upon the surface. It was such sights as these

that had convinced the mariners of the ancient past that if one were to sail

too far to the east or the west from the known world then one would

reach the ends of the Earth and fall off into the endless chasm beyond.

And a magnificently imperious conceit it was, held proudly as scientific

fact in the hearts and minds of all men of learning and wisdom, good men

these, and some desperately bad ones as well. Until, of course, that rotten

old spoilsport Ferdinand Magellan led an expedition that circumnavigated

the globe, and everybody suddenly knew so much better.

I hate it when that happens, don’t you?

Are you never tempted by the lie, my friends? Simply to accept what

everyone else believes and never to question with your head what your

heart knows full well to be true?

Life is not about certainties, whatever those for whom doubt is a foreign

land may try to convince you of. It’s a lack of answers that drives the

engines of the mind.

A clock to my left was chiming.

Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

I looked around, observing the shop fronts that occupied the space

surrounding me. My foot clomped satisfyingly on the hard wooden deck

beneath. I took a penlight torch from my pocket and shone it above my

head.

Behold, illumination.

W.H. SMITH & SONS, NEWSAGENTS.

MESSRS ILLBODE, ROMAINE & CLINKER, TAILORS OF

FENKLE STREET, LINCOLN.

J.&D. COOPER, TOBACCONISTS. ESTABLISHED 1894.

FETCHCOCK, AMBLER, BUCKNELL & GRIMES, FANCY

FOODS AND HOSIERY.

FRED MURRAY AND MICHAEL SORE, COBBLERS TO THE

QUEEN.

One of the deck boards, its nails perhaps loosened by the TARDIS’s

arrival, creaked and groaned beneath my feet like the bones of an old and

arthritic man rising, unwillingly, from his chair. I stepped into the foyer

in which the TARDIS had landed and, as the space widened, found myself

on carpeted flooring. Red carpets that had once been deep and lush but

were now, through the passage of countless pairs of shoes, faded and thin.

They led to a stairwell to my left, all bright shining brass rails and velvet-

lined wall panels. I looked back at the TARDIS, which, for once, appeared

to be completely incongruous resting next to the newsagent’s shop in the

main foyer. The light was better here, a distant chandelier banishing the

murky gloom from even the darkest corners.

Something caught my eye on the floor and I stopped to pick it up, my

hand touching the smooth, well-trodden carpet. It was a ticket stub and,

with the information it contained, I knew the exact location to which I

had been brought. The Cunard ocean-going liner the Queen Mary in

October 1963, sailing from Southampton and bound for New York City.

The apprehension that had been growing steadily within me over the

previous few moments that I might be trapped onboard the Titanic or the

Lusitania some fifty years earlier, flooded away.

There were, seemingly, no disasters lying in wait for me here.

The high-pitched scream seemed to rip the fabric of the air in two. A

piercing cry of terror in the depths of the night. As I heard it, the skin on

my arm prickled. A dull, growling voice inside ordered or to get back in

the TARDIS and leave this place at once. An ever-present pessimist who

accompanied me throughout my journeys.

I did my best to ignore him. I always ignored him. Even on the odd

occasions when he was right.

A second scream. Slightly louder. More terrified. More urgent.

It was a woman’s scream.

Racing to what I imagined would be a bold and heroic rescue, I reached

the corner from whence the sound had come, only to find a lengthy

corridor leading away from me, completely empty. I was somewhat at a

loss as to what to do next. Should I begin knocking on doors?

Whilst normally I would have allowed nothing to distract me when

rushing to the aid of what my mind had decided was clearly a damsel in

distress, such was my state of inertia that, for once, I temporarily

hesitated and held back, waiting for something to happen.

As I paused, I felt a presence behind me.

Danger.

There was a sweat on my back. A thin film soaking my shirt and chilling

my skin.

I turned, both hands raised defensively, half expecting to find myself

facing some monster from the worst imaginings of a fevered brain. A

Dalek. A Cyberman. Something green and nasty, dribbling with ooze and

about to kill me.

Instead, there was a small man with dirty blond hair wearing a steward’s

white coat and a rather bemused expression on his face.

I realised, after only a few seconds, that the reason for his perplexity was

standing right in front of him. Me.

This was not an unusual reaction, I am forced to admit. I have not the

faintest idea why I always seem to provoke such abject curiosity amongst

those that I meet on my travels. Perhaps it is just that I am an exceptional

fellow? Who, in all honesty, can tell?

Still, at least he did not seem to wish to do me injury or violence, which

put him several steps higher up the ladder of civilisation than a nasty

green oozy something-or-other.

I withdrew my hand from my pocket and extended it towards him in a

gesture of trust and, hopefully, friendship. ‘Jelly baby?’ I asked.

He waited for a moment, seeming bewildered, and then took a red one.

A man of taste, clearly.

‘You, bein’ a man of the world, will presumably know what they use for

the colouring in the red ones,’ he remarked.

‘I’m sorry?’ Half my mind was still on the scream that had brought me

here.

‘Jelly babies,’ he explained.

‘Yes,’ I replied flatly, ‘cochineal. The dye is made from the crushed

bodies of tiny Mexican beetles.’ It may seem strange now, from a distance,

but at the time this conversation about confectionery seemed to be the

most natural thing in the world.

‘I always thought that was a right old cock-and-bull story,’ the steward

replied, ‘but they all reckon it’s true, don’t they?’ He smiled. ‘Thank you,

sir,’ he said with the traces of a nasal Scouse accent buried deep within a

fine Cockney facade that he had obviously built for the sole purpose of

acquiring a job in such surroundings. ‘I prefer the little boy babies

personally,’ he noted. ‘You get more jelly that way.’

I returned his knowing smile. ‘I’m the Doctor,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe

we’ve met.’

‘Simpkins, sir,’ he replied by way of introduction. ‘You’ll see me

around.’ He paused, and I could tell that he was still trying to make up his

mind about my clothes. ‘The magician from the ship’s cabaret?’ he asked,

clicking his fingers together. It was less a question and more a statement

of fact. I did not reply, so as not to shatter his illusions. ‘Doctor Svengali,

Master of Mesmerism, Prestidigitation, Chicanery and Sleight-of-hand,

right? Go on then, show us a trick . . ’

‘I thought I heard a scream coming from this direction,’ I said, neither

confirming nor denying the identity with which he had provided me.

‘Yes, I heard it too,’ Simpkins confirmed. ‘One of the toffs having a

nightmare, I expect. I wouldn’t worry about it. If they need anything,

they’ll scream again!’

And, at that moment, they did. This scream was loud enough to open the

graves of the dead and persuade them to walk. It was coming from a room

three doors further into the corridor.

‘It’s Miss Lamb’s cabin,’ Simpkins told me, matter- of-factly.

Finally, I roused myself. ‘We should go and see what . . ’And then I

stopped. I didn’t need to say anything else, because both of us were

thinking, simultaneously, the same thing. To see what vile spirit of hell

was causing such demented cries.

Courage is not, I reflected then, something that you can buy at the

newsagent’s. Not even a good one like W.H. Smith & Sons.

Simpkins moved purposefully towards the door, his pass key in his hand.

I followed.

The screaming stopped, suddenly. He looked at me nervously. ‘We

should probably go in, shouldn’t we?’ he asked.

There always seem to be more questions than answers in situations such

as this. Have you ever noticed that?

I agreed. We should.

‘It’s all right, Miss,’ soothed Simpkins, as he held the terrified woman’s

shoulders straight and looked into her wildly dilated eyes. ‘There’s

nothing here.’

She was sitting up in bed, the moist cotton sheet still pulled up to her

chin, her eyes still as wide and mesmerised as they had been when we had

burst through the door moments earlier to find her in a state of high

anxiety. She continued to shiver even now, like someone caught outdoors

without an overcoat on an unusually inclement day.

‘It was,’ she sobbed. ‘There.’ A finger pointed in a direction behind her.

A place where she would not look. Towards the cabin wall and the

porthole.

I moved to the spot that she had indicated and looked through the

porthole. Outside, the night was freezing cold and as black as the moon

having vanished behind a thick bank of cloud. A shroud of darkness

seemed to press itself against the glass, threatening to push its way into

the room and suffocate those that it touched. I found that I, too, was

shivering.

The woman’s hysteria was slowly beginning to subside. She had clearly

been the victim of nothing more than a bad dream, I rationalised. As

Simpkins continued to calm and reassure her, I looked at a luggage tag

casually discarded on a small and elegant writing table in the corner of the

cabin. Irene Lamb, it said, followed by a smart address in Belgravia.

I turned, with a half-formed query struggling for release. I looked at the

woman. If I had been human and interested in such aesthetic concepts as

beauty then I would have been obliged to find her strikingly beautiful. She

had short dark brown hair. And her eyes, also deep brown, contained hints

of a hidden loneliness behind them. I asked the obvious question and then

immediately wished I had not.

‘What did you see?’

‘A ghost,’ she replied, in a lucid, tranquil moment amid the maelstrom of

distress within which she was trapped. ‘It was there. I saw through it.’

A ghost? A transparent one at that? Oh, really . .

‘It’s gone,’ I noted, without adding that I did not believe it had ever been

there in the first place. Such rationality was something best left for the

cold light of a new day.

Simpkins stood and picked up a fine woollen cardigan from the dressing

table. ‘You’re ice cold, my ducks,’ he said, slipping the garment around

the woman’s shoulders. She looked up and gave him a watery smile,

wiping the remaining tears from her eyes. ‘Try to get some sleep,’ he

continued, making for the door and indicating that I should go with him.

‘It’ll all look better in the morning.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Better in the morning.’

She did not look at all convinced.

Simpkins stepped outside and I followed, giving Miss Lamb a final,

slightly concerned glance before I left the room. I felt a bit of a fraud,

having been of no help either in calming the woman or in finding a reason

for her traumatic experience. ‘Pleasant dreams,’ I said.

It was a fatuous comment, which did not receive the withering sarcasm

that it richly deserved.

‘That was . . interesting,’ noted Simpkins in the corridor.

‘Who can explain the stuff of nightmares?’ I asked, feeling stupid and ill-

equipped for such a debate, particularly here and now. I spoke the words

simply to ensure that the conversation did not drift to a conclusion on

such a sour note.

‘If it was a nightmare, of course,’ said Simpkins with a cheery grin that

belonged in a different situation entirely. ‘You’ve surely noticed how cold

this ship is?’

Now he came to mention it, I had. But that was something for which I

did have a rational explanation.

‘We’re in the North Atlantic in October,’ I ventured. ‘It’s hardly the

Tropics.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ he replied. ‘At first.’

I was curious. There was an unspoken yet dreadful implication that his

opinion on this matter had now changed. I followed him to the end of the

corridor. He jangled his keys, put them in his coat pocket and cast a

glance in both directions as though what he was about to tell me was a

secret never to be repeated. I drew closer and asked my question in a

conspiratorial whisper.

‘You have another explanation?’ I was keenly aware of just how

ridiculous this query sounded. Rationalism, a good and treasured friend

to me over many years, waved a little white flag of surrender and then

wearily crawled off in search of a bed for the night.

Simpkins nodded, the cheerful smile gone from his face and replaced by

something harder. He gave me an enigmatic look that could have been

surprise at my ignorance or contempt at my inability to grasp the

blindingly obvious. If Simpkins thought that I was a gullible fool, ripe for

a piece of japery, he didn’t show it. ‘There have been many rumours,’ he

began.

‘Rumours?’ I interrupted, incredulity rising within me. I knew exactly in

which direction I was being led.

‘There’s some as say that this ship is haunted, he continued at last. ‘A

ghost ship,’ he added with a slight quiver in his voice.

I was, I am now forced to admit, dismissive. Contemptuous, almost. I

can remember telling Simpkins that I did not believe in such things. In

ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night. And that I never

had. Or would. ‘In my many travels I have witnessed numerous

occurrences for which I can offer you no rational explanation,’ I

continued, before Simpkins had the chance to produce his supernatural-

apologist’s credentials in full. ‘But that does not mean that a rational

explanation does not exist for them.’ It was a terse and unbecoming

statement.

Simpkins said nothing. He merely shrugged in a laconic way that

suggested a lack of interest. Or, perhaps, a mind that was already made up

on this matter.

‘I have never believed in ghosts,’ I repeated. As much, I suspect, for my

own benefit as for his.

‘You will,’ Simpkins said at last as we walked back towards the place

where the TARDIS had landed. In particular he seemed keen to warn me

about a specific cabin on the ship. It took me a moment fully to grasp

what he was saying, and I asked him for further details.

Simpkins seemed lost for words; surprised perhaps, that I did not simply

take what he was telling me at face value. Why should I not believe him?

After all, I was the stranger on board. ‘Don’t go to Cabin 672, in the First

Class area,’ he said at last. ‘Deck four, near the grand ballroom. That

room is never occupied. Even when the ship is full to bursting. Something

terrible happened there once and now no-one will enter it.’

His words seemed to be mocking me. Making light of the difference

between things that are known and things that are unknown.

‘Something terrible?’ I repeated, contemptuously. ‘Would you care to

elaborate?’

‘You know how some places just have a feel about them?’ Simpkins asked

in reply. I indicated that I did. ‘When I was a kid, right,’ he continued,

‘there was the copse near to where I lived in Birkenhead. You didn’t go

there after dark. It’s impossible to explain why, you just didn’t. And

everybody knew this, the old, the young and them that was in-between. It

was a bad place.’ He paused. ‘That cabin’s the same, and all the tea in China

and all the bananas in Jamaica wouldn’t get me in there. Know what I

mean?’

Yes, I did.

We came to a bulkhead door and stopped. I pressed my hand against the

smooth, gun-grey metal.

‘They’ve got razor-sharp edges for a watertight fit when they close.

Obvious when you think about it,’ noted Simpkins. ‘They’re shut at high

speed if a section of the ship has to be isolated, like if we get a hull-

rupture. Back in the war, when the crew did practice sessions, some of the

lads used to play “chicken” with a door, and see how many times they

could jump from one side to the other before it slammed shut. I hear tell

some unlucky sod got caught by the door once and lost his leg. And that’s

not the worst story I’ve heard by a long way.’

There was a resonating sadness within Simpkins’s voice, something I had

not previously noticed in his jovial, cheeky-chappie persona. If he, like

most humans, had a melancholy side to him, he had hidden it well up to

that point. But it was unmistakably there, marbled in his words like a layer

of archaeology, mere inches beneath the surface.

‘Do you ever wonder sometimes if it’s all worth it?’ he asked me,

suddenly. I caught a flash of something darker and troubled hiding behind

his eyes.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You know, the whole kit and caboodle? I don’t know, this place.

Sometimes it depresses me. And there’s no end to it. We sail on and we

sail on, and nothing ever changes or gets any better, do you know what I

mean?’ I was about to sympathise with him when he seemed to pull

himself out of his momentary depression, and returned to the tale of the

notorious Cabin 672. ‘A bursar went mad in the room in 1938, mid-

voyage,’ Simpkins noted. ‘They reckon he was starting to scare the

passengers, so they locked him down in the dark with the engines, until

they reached New York. When they got there, he was found dead, so he

was. He had, literally, been frightened to death.’ Simpkins paused. ‘Not

for all the tea in China,’ he repeated, wagging his finger at me. There was

that hint of sadness, of loneliness, of a troubled, weary man again.

The story was a good one, even I was forced to admit that. Though the

penny-dreadful style of some of its telling left a little to be desired. More

a cod Algernon Blackwood than the chilling skill of an M.R. James at his

peak. Dickens, of course, would have been proud of such a yarn.

‘It’s nonsense such as this that has filled Miss Lamb’s head full of her

notions, seemingly,’ I told him. But despite all my misgivings about

Simpkins’s story, and I had plenty, something about the ship disturbed

me greatly. As I bade my new acquaintance good evening, that nagging

voice inside me was telling me that I had been witness to something

unnatural.

For once, I was ready to listen to it.

CHAPTER TWO

I’LL SAIL THIS SHIP ALONE

We are fools of time and terror.

Days steal on us and steal from us.

LORD GEORGE BYRON, MANFRED

MOODS ARE CURIOUS AND AFFECTING. THEY CAN BE FUNNY

things. Funny peculiar, that is. Having left Simpkins, my mood was one

of sombre introspection. I was distracted by the events of the evening and

by some ill-formed but lingering doubts in the back of my mind as to the

purpose of my being in this place. At this time.

Not that every adventure to which I am party requires a purpose, of

course. Not every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Indeed,

some stories have no meaning, being driven merely by random causality as

the cosmic dice-player takes a break for tea and crumpets and forty winks

at the absurdity of it all.

I wandered aimlessly around the top deck of the Queen Mary in the early

hours of the morning, lost in my solitary thoughts and in the midst of a

howling storm. Perhaps it was just my mood, but it seemed to me that

there was something almost Biblical about the weather at this time, as the

wind and the rain lashed against my face and the ship yawed, dipped and

then rose in the enormous churning Atlantic waves beneath.

A line of poetry, written in iambic verse, about a sailor’s wife and her

shipwrecked husband, from Shakespeare or Marlowe or John Donne, was

lodged in my brain. But I could not, for the life of me, remember who had

written it or, more importantly, how it ended. And that irritated me, as

such lapses of memory were always prone to do.

Too much trivial information in there, do you see? Too much for one

head to hold.

With my eyes fixed on the point in the slate-grey and starless sky where

I believed the distant horizon would most likely be, I stood my ground,

held fast against the elements and waited for the coming of a brand new

day. My coat billowed behind me, and the ends of my scarf, which was

wrapped tightly around my throat, flapped like the wings of a great bird in

distress. I was grateful that, for once, I had left my hat in the safety of the

TARDIS, for it, surely, would have been swept away by the tempest.

I found myself thinking about Henry Purcell. He was an interesting and

jovial chap with whom I had spent many long and pleasant winter

evenings, drinking fine wine from his cellars and eating mature cheddar

from his buttery whilst he fiddled with his violin and wrote ‘Arise ye

Subterranean Winds’. And were they not arising now with their full and

majestic might?

Fiddled with his violin? You must excuse the dreadful pun.

I clung, with all my might, to the ship’s rails, my knuckles bled white by

the force, and stared out at the angry black ocean. The vessel on which I

sailed felt like a small insect, trapped in a sea of tar, trying to escape from

something bigger and more inexplicable than itself.

Here, in this fashion, I brooded for hours. Time lost all meaning in the

darkness, until the first indications of the arrival of dawn brought

something like peace to the raging waters and calmed the savage winds. As

thin streaks of pale, brick-orange light began to filter through what

seemed to be cracks in the sky, my solemn mood was temporarily

banished.

A new day, with a personality of its own.

But the night had seen me in a bleak and desolate place. In more senses

than one.

I was still greatly troubled by those questions of fate and

predetermination and, simultaneously, overwhelmed by the sense of

impending doom that I had felt earlier in the atmosphere of the lower

decks. I could not even begin to explain these feelings, but I had been

particularly shaken by the sight of wooden partitions between the Second

and First Class cabins as I left Simpkins and looked for a way out. Literal

barriers erected to keep out the unwanted. It seemed like a metaphor for

my feelings about the entire ship.

Dawn brought, also, a realisation that my salvation lay in a simple act of

departure. The TARDIS, my oasis, was but one deck below me. Just to

turn my back on the vicious sea and return to a ship of my own. A safe

ship. That was all it would take to banish these feelings of depression

forever.

Perhaps.

Oh, if only it were that simple.

The forward bar was a panorama of red velvet and polished oak and

gleaming brass fittings. Out of the curved picture window, the view was

slightly distorted by a thickening of the glass towards the bottom as

protection against decades of North Atlantic storms. The window, still

splattered with the final onslaught of the night’s bitter rain, offered a view

of grey waters, flat and becalmed, stretching away as far as the eye could

see. A world in dull monochrome.

I needed company. Badly. I needed to meet people who were young and

lively. People who could lift me from the pit of despair and depression

into which I had allowed myself to fall. I looked about the lounge, seeing

groups of people in small knots, eating breakfast and chatting happily

amongst themselves. Those whose faces didn’t betray the pale tint of sea-

sickness wore broad smiles. Perhaps they were relieved to have survived

everything that the storm had to throw at them. Whatever the case, I

needed to reattach myself to humanity.

There was a larger group than most at a central, circular table. Some six

persons, the men in smart suits, starched collars and staid shirts, the

women in bright summer dresses, hair bands and ankle socks. It was only

as I approached them that I realised that one of the group was the lady in

distress from the previous evening.

With a self-consciousness that I had not experienced in some while, I

made eye contact with Miss Lamb. Her wide brown eyes were as lonely

and sad as they had been when we had last met, the morning light having,

seemingly, offered her no salvation or sanctuary from the demons of the

dark that plagued her. She gave a little half-smile, partly in recognition of

me and partly because one of her companions at breakfast, a loud and

ruddy-faced man, was just coming to the end of a story. There was some

ribald laughter from the group.

‘I hope you are feeling better,’ I found myself saying. ‘The night terrors

can seem fearfully real. Or so I am led to believe.’

Before Miss Lamb could speak, the heads of her five companions all

turned, simultaneously, in my direction. I felt like an amoeba under a

microscope.

No one spoke for what seemed like forever but was, in reality, mere

seconds. There was no formal guideline as to how this conversation

should progress. No information. No rules. I felt that I should take the

initiative.

‘I’m very sorry,’ I said. ‘How desperately rude of me. We haven’t been

introduced properly. I am the Doctor.’

‘Ship’s sawbones, eh?’ asked the ruddy-faced man, bellowing a brief and

self-indulgent laugh. It was, somewhat sycophantically, followed by five

others, including that of Miss Lamb. ‘Then we’re obviously in safe hands

here,’ the man continued, patting the seat of a spare chair next to him.

‘Please Doctor, won’t you join us as my guest?’

‘Oh yes, please do,’ added a chorus of voices. Formality had been

established, it seemed. I sat in the empty space between the man and Miss

Lamb. I observed that Miss Lamb did not seem to want to look at me

directly. She had, seemingly, found something very interesting on her

breakfast plate.

‘So, Doctor,’ said the man eagerly. ‘You must tell us of the dire perils

that await us over the next few days.’

‘This is my first voyage on the Queen Mary,’ I answered, truthfully. ‘I’m

as unaware of what the future holds as any of you.’

That brought the conversation to a thoughtful pause.

‘I feel it necessary that I should apologise for my behaviour last night,’

said Miss Lamb, suddenly, and still without tearing her eyes away from

her plate. ‘What must you think of me?’

I was aware of a series of curious glances from the others seated with us.

What could I say, except to tell the truth? ‘I think you’re frightened,’ I

replied. ‘There’s really no need to be. The only thing to fear is fear itself.’

‘Well said, Doctor,’ added the ruddy-faced man, banging the table with

his fork for emphasis. ‘That’s what we’ve been telling the lass all morning.

But would she listen . . ?’ He paused, and smiled with a wholly surprising

gentleness at Miss Lamb. ‘We’ve all suffered that long dark night of the

soul,’ he continued. ‘Human nature, dove. We’re each of us afflicted by

that, even if we spend all our time on this Earth denying it.’

They were, I was forced to admit, and despite some initial misgivings,

quite interesting people. First impressions are often deceptive, I have

sometimes found to my cost. The ruddy faced man was called Bryce. A

northern industrialist from impoverished lower-class roots who had made

his vast fortune in coal or steel or something that required a process of

extraction, purification and production. Despite a boorish laugh,

desperately poor table manners and some colourful language, he possessed

a gruff, down-to-earth charm that was surprisingly endearing. It was,

however, difficult to escape the obvious conclusion that the man was

trying to be something that he was not. And, similarly, it wasn’t hard to

imagine how those to whose position in society he aspired would have

regarded him. As a charlatan. A rich vulgarian with New Money, a few

acquired social graces and an obscenely obvious pretence towards

sophistication. But people who hold such views are the kind that one

usually crosses the room to avoid at swanky dinner parties.

I, on the other hand, liked Bryce enormously. He called a spade a spade.

Two of his fellow travellers, Deekes and Illingsworth, were members of

his company board. Young and eager sharks. Bright university boys with

cunning minds who knew when to laugh at the boss’s jokes, when to shut

up and when to strike like a cobra. I would have hated to have done

business with either of them. Both had wives, Jessica and Rachel,

respectively, decorated like Christmas trees with ostentatious jewellery.

Glittering prizes, to be shown off to the watching world. Yet they, like

their husbands, had the keen intelligence to know when to say the right

thing. And when to say nothing at all.

And then there was Miss Lamb, as seemingly out of place in this

company as I was.

They were all going to New York to strike an important deal. They

could have flown, they admitted. Air travel would actually have been

cheaper and certainly a much quicker and a more efficient use of their

company resources. I was forced to wonder why they were spending such

huge amounts of money and time on the journey. ‘It’s a once in a lifetime

experience,’ Bryce said. Something about the phrase caused me to begin

shivering again.

‘You value that which is unique, singular?’ I asked.

Bryce nodded eagerly. ‘Life and how you live it,’ he noted obliquely.

‘You’re put on this Earth for a damned limited time and you’re full of

misery for most of it. Like a flower you riseth up, says the prayer, and like

a flower you’re cut down.’

‘In the midst of life, we are in death, et cetera,’ Illingsworth added quickly,

seeming to know this gospel according to Raymond Bryce like a well-

rehearsed play.

‘But, First Class?’ I ventured, taking a bite from a bread roll. ‘A symbol

of status rather than taste, I’ve always found. Wouldn’t you agree?’

Illingsworth seemed surprised by the question. He started to say

something, stopped, and then looked at Bryce as if seeking his mentor’s

guidance. With a slight inclination of the head, the older man encouraged

his protege to continue.

‘Money is the root of all evil,’ he said with a thin smile. ‘At least that’s

what it says in the Good Book. But, you can’t take any of it with you, can

you?’

It wasn’t at all the answer that I had expected. If truth be known, I

wasn’t sure exactly what I had expected to hear in reply. ‘Then why . . ?’

The question was only half-formed when Bryce interrupted.

‘The differences?’ he asked pointedly.

‘Yes.’

‘Ah, well,’ there was a long pause and something of a sharp intake of

breath, as though this was a conversation he had been engaged in on more

than one occasion. Perhaps, usually, with himself. ‘That’s the way the

world spins round. It doesn’t revolve around us you know, lad. The world

goes around the Sun – this bloke called Galileo proved that.’

A philosopher and renaissance man, clearly. Bryce that is, not Galileo.

I smiled, ‘Then let me put it another way,’ I asked. ‘Why should First,

Second and Third Classes of berth exist in a post-Galilean society?’ It was

only after I had said it that I realised that “berth” might also be heard as

“birth”. Bryce had spotted it too, and had a ready answer for me.

‘Now that’s a question worthy of Conditions of the Working Classes in

England,’ he noted. ‘Oh, I’ve read my history, Doctor. Not to grammar

school standard, maybe, but afterwards. Always dead keen on the Romans,

so I was. They knew how to build decent real-estate, them lads. Provided

full employment for the people too. That’s something your average

socialist like me can never manage to do outside of the confines of his

head, and that’s a fact.’ He paused. ‘And, do you know why? Because the

world will never be rid of lazy people and scum no matter how much we

like to think that it will. Choices, that’s what it’s all about.’

‘The choice to do nothing isn’t a valid one?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been described as a self-taught intellectual, usually by John and

Jerry here and their college-pudding mates on the board,’ replied Bryce.

‘But it’s not true. Not in the slightest, because, do you know what, in my

own mind I was an intellectual when I were but six years old. I just didn’t

know what the word meant!’

Clever. Again, I smiled warmly, indicating that he should continue.

‘My old dad, now, he was a riveter in the shipyards. He worked on

tankers and big cruise liners like this one, grafting away on the causeway

in all bloody weathers. In the winter, he used to come home and have to

sit in a tin bath for three hours in near boiling water just to thaw out. Big

man. Big hands. Good heart. Spent all his life building ships that went all

around the world but he, himself, never went anywhere. Except for France.

Fought for his country in a war that he didn’t understand the causes of,

and didn’t much care about. Him and his brothers and all their cousins.

They just pointed their guns in the direction that the generals told them

to, shot lots of Germans, survived the gas attacks and the hand grenades

and the barbed-wire and the mud. Then they all came home to “a land fit

for heroes” to live in one bedroom tenements with the wife and ten

children.’ He paused. ‘I know just how lucky I am to have been born when

I was and where I was. And I know how lucky I am to have left behind

what I did.’

It was an impassioned speech, and a good one. ‘You don’t like wars,’ I

observed, and Bryce shook his head, sadly.

‘No lad, I don’t. People get killed in them.’

Another point in his favour, clearly. ‘Did you serve yourself?’ I asked.

Bryce was expecting the question and nodded with a resigned sigh. ‘If

you can call it that. North Africa. Desert tank division, Monty’s boys, you

know. We fought against Rommel’s Panzers. When I say we, I didn’t do a

lot of it. I was nineteen and scared. First day I saw a German tank

lumbering into view I dropped my load and ran away like buggery. But I

came back. God knows why. I didn’t understand what it was all about. Oh,

for sure, I knew that we were fighting against a bunch of goose-steppers

who wanted to kill me and rape my sister and drink my beer. At least,

that’s what the propaganda told us. But I’ll tell you something, I said at

the end of all that malarkey, “Never again”. And I meant it, too.’

‘Not all wars are worthless,’ I suggested.

‘No, you’re right there,’ Bryce said with a heavy regret. ‘And to be fair to

the lads we were fighting against, they probably thought the same way

about us. First coloured chap I ever met were in the desert. A Sikh lad. I

asked him why he’d come all the way from one desert to another to do

some fighting when he could have stayed at home and done it there, and

he said it was because he wanted a world where his ten year old son didn’t

have to get up at four o’clock in the morning and go to work in a mill, or

a mine or something. I forget what it was now. We’re back to Conditions of

the Working Classes in England again, aren’t we?’

‘What happened to him?’

Bryce shrugged. ‘Haven’t got a clue,’ he replied. ‘Never saw him again.

Probably got killed. Lot of us did. Not me though.’

He was trying to sound cynical and dismissive, but Bryce, I knew, was as

affected by the ramifications of his own private war as much as every man

is. ‘Engels ran a factory in Manchester that employed mostly child labour,

you know,’ I noted.

‘Aye, he were a hypocrite and a scoundrel that lad, and no mistake,’ Bryce

said. ‘And anybody who isn’t both of them things at least once in their

life, well frankly, they’ve never lived!’

‘My point is one of perception rather than experience.’

‘Yes, I agree with all that,’ he answered. ‘The real question should be

why is it that those in Third Class, for example, are happy to be in Third

Class when they could be up on top with us? It’s a moribund argument,

you know. Like the Amateur Sprint and the Gentlemen versus the Players.

As obsolete as warships in the Baltic.’ Then Bryce paused again, aware

perhaps that his voice was rising slightly. He immediately apologised to

the ladies for having brought grim politics to the breakfast table.

‘Sometimes I forget I’m not in the boardroom all the time,’ he told me,

turning his attention momentarily away from his colleagues.

I placed my napkin on the table and stood, bidding them all good day.

‘A pleasure, Doctor,’ Bryce noted through a mouthful of bread-crumbs.

Once again my eyes came into contact with those of Miss Lamb, which

were filled with involuntary tears. Without another word, I turned my

back on them all and left.

Some time later, I found myself returning to the forward bar after the

breakfasts had all been served and the place was virtually deserted. The

weather had continued to take something of a turn for the better and

most of the passengers who would normally be spending their entire trip

in this place, faces pressed miserably to the glass watching the churning

waves, had clearly decided to make the most of what little ocean sun they

were likely to see.

As many passengers strolled on the decks, I found a quiet corner, took a

seat and picked up a discarded copy of The Times that I found lying nearby.

It was from two days ago, the day of embarkation. And, judging by its

dog-eared and shiny state, it had obviously been read many times by many

different people.

I lost all track of time as I read items of varying degrees of interest.

Discussion of the resignation announcement of British Prime Minister

Harold Macmillan. The aftermath of the disastrous bursting of a dam in

the Piave Valley, Italy. Obituaries of Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf.

Eventually my eyes fell upon a small article on page nine concerning the

latest British scientist who was, it said, about to join the so-called brain

drain to America. Doctor Peter Osbourne, a maverick quantum physicist,

was, the report continued, looking for a financial backer in the United

States to help him build an ‘experimental time machine’ after his

government grant in Great Britain had been cut. I must admit, the

paragraph amused me greatly. Not particularly the bit about the time

machine but, rather, the arbitrary and very pointed use of the word

‘maverick’. I knew from a lifetime of personal experience exactly what that

was supposed to mean in this context. Such a phrase had been used often

enough about me on my home world and elsewhere. ‘A pound to a penny,

he’s a very brilliant and very lonely man,’ I muttered to myself.

After an hour of so of pleasant distraction, I was leaving the lounge when

I had another brief encounter with Simpkins. He gave me a jovial, if

somewhat conspiratorial, smile, which managed to irritate me, and

introduced a fellow steward named Jarvis. He was a thin and sickly pale-

looking man with a sharply pointed face and lank black hair that flopped

in a fringe over one eye.

‘No more emergencies like last night then, Doc?’ Simpkins asked.

‘No, indeed. I had breakfast with Miss Lamb. She seemed much

improved,’ I lied.

Simpkins nodded. Jarvis did too. They clearly came as a double-act. ‘So,

did you encounter any more visitations around and about the ship?’

Simpkins asked

I sighed, deeply. ‘I thought I had made my position on such phenomena

clear when we last spoke,’ I began, but found that I didn’t have the heart

to continue ranting at him. I felt weary, as though the exertions of the

dead of night had finally caught up with me. I slumped into a chair beside

the door, the energy in my body sucked from me like the juice from a

lemon. Simpkins sat beside me. ‘Terrible things have happened on this

ship over the years,’ he said. ‘ Many terrible things. Suicides. Mysterious

deaths. One time, right, an explosion ripped through the lower decks,

killing dozens of soldiers when it was being used as a troop transport

during the war.’ And on, and on, and on he went, hardly pausing for

breath whilst his friend, Jarvis, occasionally butted in with an affirmation

that it was all true. Every word of it. Simpkins was fascinated by death.

My head was spinning with information. Horrible, overwhelming, useless

information. After a few moments I could stand it no longer.

‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ I said, dismissively, as I stood up. ‘Such

stories have no basis in reality. They’re full of sound and fury but they

signify nothing.’ I paused, and in that second, I felt something within me

grip me by the throat. Something deep and long-buried that had been

suppressed by centuries of logic and reason and dogma. ‘I don’t believe in

ghosts,’ I repeated in an almost inaudible whisper.

Nevertheless, when I left the lounge, I was chilled to the bone. Literally,

as well as metaphorically.

Outside, in the lengthy and empty corridor, I stood with my back to the

polished, oak-panelled wall and closed my eyes, breathing in and out

slowly and relaxing, trying in vain to clear my troubled mind of appalling

images of burning soldiers, slashed wrists in tiny bathtubs and bodies

hanging limply from light fixtures. After several seconds of welcome

isolation, I opened my eyes again, hoping that all these imagined horrors

might have packed up their kit bags and just gone away.

Instead, to my amazement, an ill-defined apparition floated through a

cabin wall in front of me.

And that was very odd because I don’t, actually, believe in ghosts.

CHAPTER THREE

DEAD SOULS

For it is a ghost’s right, his element is so fine,

being sharpened by his death, to drink from the wine-breath,

while our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

W.B. YEATS, ALL SOULS’ NIGHT

THE APPARITION’S VISAGE WAS EXACTLY HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED

to appear from within the realms of popular fiction. Of urban myths and

oral folk tales of phantoms and ghosts. From down the aeons on many

worlds and in many cultures. Spectral, indistinct, almost like an image

drawn by fingers in smoke.

I was, I freely admit, terrified, if only momentarily. A repulsion from the

hard-headed scientist within me rose to a shouting crescendo of outraged

disbelief. ‘This is not real,’ I found myself saying. That is often the last

refuge of the foolish. But if this were an hallucination, which was the only

alternative, rational explanation available to me, then it was as vivid and

real as any I had ever witnessed or heard about. I repeated my assertion of

the unreality of the situation several times, like a mantra. Like a stylus

stuck and locked into the groove of a gramophone record.

Denying reality was, I reasoned, something that had worked successfully

for me in the past.

But I was convincing no-one. Least of all, myself.

And a part of me desperately wanted to know more. The adventurer. The

dreamer.

Perhaps I am over-exaggerating my wish to know more at this point – it

is difficult for me to be certain that I was merely curious, because I

expected that I should be curious. I am the Doctor, after all. This is what I

do.

My trembling hand stretched out towards the spectre and, in the fraction

of a second between me touching it and it being touched, it vanished as

suddenly as it had arrived. I stood motionless, rooted to the spot and

staring at the place just two feet from me where it, whatever it was, had

once been. Finally I roused myself from my stupor and crossed the

corridor to touch the wall where my ephemeral visitor had first appeared

and then disappeared.

It was just a wall.

Solid.

Tangible.

Utterly real. My knuckles scraped over smooth hard wood, polished

daily. I could see my face reflected in it. My puzzled, bemused face.

The wood was, I noticed, cold to the touch. Like the ship itself.

Just as the immediacy of the experience was beginning to fade in me and

I was attempting, with some initial success, to rationalise the entire

experience as a by-product of an overactive imagination, I turned. And, in

the half-distance, I saw the unmistakable form of my visitor floating down

the middle of the corridor away from me.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight to attention as if

affected by static electricity. This time, I could not only see the spectre

but also feel its presence. My skin reacted badly to the invasion of my

personal space, and I shivered.

‘What are you?’ I asked in a voice that was unsteady and emotional.

There was no reply.

I repeated the question, feeling strange and inarticulate. What was I

expecting in reply, I now wonder?

It is what it is, and was, and shall be.

Once again, the vision was gone in a blinking.

To a bare patch of corridor I repeated my demand for the third time.

‘What are you?’

A terrible, lonely silence was my only reply.

The visitations then continued all over the ship wherever I wandered, and

my apprehension increased with each successive sighting. Sometimes they

were very ill-defined, almost wisps of cotton-wool cloud passing briefly

through the periphery of my vision either to left or right, to become lost

in the labyrinth of corridors and rooms. On other occasions there were

forms that I could almost recognise as human. With arms and legs, torsos

and faces. Still little more than afterthoughts, like the negative image

from a photograph, two-dimensional and translucent, but with substance.

With meaning.

And, also, with a curious, disarming smell. A caustic, pungent, sickly

sweet aroma that reminded me of burning rope and rotting skin, but also

rosemary and oranges and wet autumn leaves. Not unpleasant, exactly, or

disgusting, but unsettling in the way that a strange smell in an unusual

context can often be.

Whatever that meaning was, I had to know more.

The dam had now been breached and I was a party to this reality.

As I wandered down corridors, occasionally passing real flesh-and-blood

passengers, barely acknowledging their presence as I withdrew into my

own head, there were questions that I could not help but ask myself.

Was this, perhaps, an after-effect of my experiences within the Matrix

on my recent visit to Gallifrey? Those images, too, had seemed

frighteningly real at the time, but had subsequently proved to be illusory.

Was it a delayed reaction to the stress and strain that my mind had been

forced to endure? Was it, perhaps, even more serious than that? Had I

even left the Matrix at all?

But an idea even more horrible than these possibilities was percolating in

the back of my mind. There was an old Time Lord myth, a chilling

bedtime tale for children, about a surfeit of time travel causing a diseased

mental state akin to the human condition of delusional or hallucinatory

schizophrenia. Could it be that this was something other than a story?

That it was actually true, and that I was becoming a victim of it?

Could it even be, I wondered painfully, that my many travels thus far in

my lives and times could have, literally, brought me to the brink of

madness?

To indulge in such forced introspection is most unlike me. I am, I

believed then and still believe now, afraid of very little, in real terms. But

it is a foolish man indeed who is afraid of nothing. We all need something to

be scared of when the lights go out.

So, the apparitions continued wherever I ventured on board the Queen

Mary. While some appeared as mere fleeting spectral flashes, others were

powerful and terrifyingly strong images. Screaming skulls that loomed

suddenly at me from out of the walls and from the shadows of the dark

corridors. The first such appearance made me cry out in terror. I pressed

my sweating hands against the smooth-panelled corridor walls, which felt

even colder to the touch now. Suddenly the whole ship was like an ice box.

A damp and tangible chill wrapped itself around me, refusing to relinquish

its tight grip upon me.

I breathed out slowly, trying to recover my composure, and my breath

was visible to me, like a thick cloud of fog.

And there the terrors finally found my breaking point. I was reminded,

briefly, of an incident in a darkened, shadowy French church in the 14th

century. Of fleeing from frighteningly strong visions of devils and

demons summoned to plague me by a particularly powerful narcotic

present in the dye in the drapery. Deliberately so, it had turned out. But

there were no Knights Templar on this ship, playing evil mind-games with

my psyche.

I ran. Blindly, wildly, away from things that I cared not to speculate on

the origins of. I could ponder on the whys and the wherefores later, I told

myself, but for now, I had to be rid of these terrors that dogged my every

step.

Until, in a corridor on the third deck, alone and afraid, I was overtaken

by the visions. They trapped me, cornered me in a cul-de-sac from which

there was no escape.

A skull swam before me, inches from my face. It seemed to me that its

dead eye-sockets, black and vacant, were staring back at me with curiosity

and some pity. Again, I wanted to touch it, to feel its substance sliding

beneath my certain fingers.

I resisted the urge.

Communication seemed to be the obvious next step. The only step.

I tried to converse with it verbally.

‘Hello! I’m the Doctor,’ I said. It felt inadequate and rather pathetic.

There was no reply.

‘Please try to talk to me,’ I said, a degree of panic evident in my voice. ‘I

mean you no harm. I only want to help.’

‘DOC-TOR?’ The voice was in my head rather than external and from

the apparition. It was low and guttural, and seemed stripped of any

corporeal existence. A voice from beyond the grave. From the very depths

of Hell itself.

The fact that the apparition could communicate with me at all made me

jump. I gave a strangled yelp of surprise. But there was satisfaction in my

cries too. This was a step forward.

‘Hello,’ I said again, as brightly as I could under such circumstances.

‘Can you tell me who you are?’

‘DOC-TOR?’ repeated the skull, seeking confirmation or assurance of

my identity.

‘That’s right.’

I was calm by now. Calm, lucid and balanced. Surprisingly so, given the

shock that I had initially felt. But this was what I was supposed to be

good at. First contact. Being friendly. Doing the right thing.

My mind was suddenly in another place. Several different other places in

fact. Having a lengthy bedside conversation with Emile Zola concerning

remorse, redemption and regret. Standing on a jagged and windswept

rocky shore with William Golding, looking silently at an angry ocean.

Scrambling across a blasted planetscape as menacing, fox-like creatures

scurried around me. Spending a day in Calcutta with William Thackeray,

observing the decadence and snobbery of the English abroad and finding,

in humour, something to celebrate in it. Gazing at glorious incandescent

rainbows in Malmesbury with Thomas Hobbes. Enjoying a Hong Kong

sunset, on a stone wall overlooking the shallow harbour with a group of

semi-drunken sailors, all happy to be alive after a cannonball had pierced

the hull of their ship and threatened to sink it. Discarded, scattered

memories. Frozen moments. Fragments, like photographs from someone

else’s album that had somehow found their way into my own.

Why was my mind playing tricks on me like this? Or was it that someone

else was rooting around in the hidden cupboards and dark places of my

subconscious?

‘Please,’ I continued, as much to myself as to the ghosts. ‘I really would

like to help if I can. You seem much troubled.’

‘No help,’ replied a woman’s voice, less harsh and dreadful than the

previous one. Were two entities occupying the same space? ‘No light. No

sound. No end.’

Now I was really confused.

‘Would you care to elucidate?’

The skull seemed to regard me for an eternity. ‘No escape,’ the female

voice finally continued. ‘No light. No sound. No end,’ it repeated.

‘You are trapped?’

It was a wild and pleading stab in the dark. The skull seemed to be

telling me that it was imprisoned. But where? ‘On the ship?’ I asked,

remembering Simpkins and his friend and their gory chamber of horror

tales of ghosts being absorbed into the very fabric of the ship itself.

Perhaps that was the explanation for Simpkins’s well-disguised sadness?

‘No sound,’ repeated the skull in what seemed to be a third different

voice. This one was male, older, with a distinct West Country accent. And

then it was joined by others. A trickle at first. And then a rush, a deluge,

as if a tap had been opened. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands of screaming

voices filling my head to the point of bursting. All telling me different

things, and yet the same thing. All of them shouting above the incredible

cacophony in a vain effort to make their single voice heard. The

penetration was deep and wounding and, as it reached my larynx, I found

myself mouthing the words that were bombarding me.

‘No light. No sound. No end.’

‘Where?’ I managed to gasp in the cracks between the voices. There was

no answer. ‘Tell me, please. I can’t help you otherwise,’ I shouted. ‘You’re

killing me.’

A picture formed in the depths of my subconscious, and I was seeing the

world through the dead eyes of the skull. Or rather, of the skull and a

multitude of its companions, too numerous to count. All showing me

variations on the same view, but from thousands upon thousands of

marginally different perspectives. They came to me simultaneously and I

had to cry out, the pain was so great. Reality shattered. I was caged,

imprisoned behind an impenetrable barrier. I felt crushed and broken as a

melange of multiple identities, all trapped under glass, merged together in

me. The fractured, mutated shades of light, seen through the glass, were

unmistakable.

The world was warped. Bent out of shape.

For a second I thought that I was in the forward lounge again, looking

across the bow of the ship and out to sea.

But this glass enclosure was thicker. And smaller. Shatter-proof. I felt

the airlessness, the claustrophobia, the terror that saturated the air around

me. I was on the inside of a glass prison.

‘Where?’ I gasped again, as the visions retreated and my grateful brain

cried out in relief at being released from this bubble-world. The skull

remained, hovering, but now the corridor was filling with blood. Rivers of

blood, oceans of blood. Drowning me. I closed my eyes, tight, against the

assault.

‘Help us.’ It was a different voice and, when I opened my eyes again, the

skull had gone, replaced by the figure of a child, a girl of no more than

five or six years, wearing a tattered dress and standing before me with a

look of bewilderment on her face. ‘Help us,’ she repeated, and I found

myself unable to look away from her pleading eyes.

‘How?’ I asked, and the girl pointed to the far corridor wall where the

most truly horrifying vision of all was waiting for me.

A message, written seemingly in the blood that had rushed towards me,

was scrawled across the cream wallpaper and onto the door of one of the

cabins. ‘We are damned,’ it said. ‘We are lost. We are forsaken.’

‘You’re not helping me very much,’ I cried. ‘If you don’t tell me what ails

you, then I’m not going to be able to suggest a cure.’

The child disappeared and a disembodied male head, terrified eyes

bulging in their sockets, replaced her. He was of rough-shaven face and

with a severe crew-cut. A soldier, I guessed. ‘I can’t feel my legs, Sarge.

I’m scared. It’s dark in here and I can’t feel my legs,’ he whispered at me,

as if in confirmation of my suspicions. ‘It’s dark, and it’s cold and we’re

all going to die. I don’t want to die.’ Then he, too, was gone and the child

was back, this time clutching a translucent teddy bear to her see-through

chest. ‘You have to help us,’ said the little girl. ‘You’re the only one who

can help us. We are lost.’

‘Where?’ I asked, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

The message written on the wall had changed. My hearts skipped a beat,

sank, slipped to the floor and shattered to smithereens. It was the answer

that I had been expecting, indeed dreading, for some time.

‘672,’ it said.

CHAPTER FOUR

CABIN 672

If the doors of perception were cleansed,

everything would appear as it is. Infinite.

WILLIAM BLAKE, A MEMORABLE FANCY

EVERY INSTINCT WITHIN ME TOLD ME NOT TO GO TO THE CABIN.

My body resisted with every nerve, every fibre, every sinew. But, despite

that, despite rationality and common sense and all the other things that

are supposedly designed to stop us from doing stupid, illogical things,

still I went.

Why? Put simply, I felt compelled by overwhelming forces beyond my

control. Silly, isn’t it? I was drawn to Cabin 672, bodily, like a moth to

the flame. I had tried to walk in the opposite direction. Really tried. To

get up onto the ship’s deck and see if the fresh air and the daylight would

help to banish these non-existent ghosts from their haunting of me.

Because I knew, knew for certain, that none of this was in the slightest

bit real. At least, not in any sense of reality that I believed I understood.

But every step just seemed to lead me closer, closer, closer to Cabin 672.

Even when I knew I was drawing near to the cabin, I was unable to stop

myself. Eventually, with a stony lack of enthusiasm, I found myself at the

head of the very corridor that led to the cabin. It was similar to the

corridor in which I had experienced the earlier onslaught of visions: a U-

shaped trap from which, once ensnared, there was no escape.

I shambled unwillingly. Slowly. My feet dragging through the carpet like

those of a small schoolboy on his way to the headmaster’s office.

The ship’s architecture seemed to mock me and my sorry plight. Taking

on almost hallucinatory properties, the corridor elongated, stretched out

before me to infinity and beyond. I was accompanied, as I had been all

day, by a thumping sound. At first I believed it to be nothing more than

the ship’s massive steam engines in close proximity to me. But now I

deduced, through a process of elimination, that it was the sound of my

own heartbeats.

I finally reached the door of Cabin 672. It looked so desperately

ordinary. No looming beasts. No entrance-guarding demons. No alien

tentacles snaking from under the door. Just a room, like any other room.

That was, until I inspected it more closely.

I placed a hand, somewhat nervously, on the door’s brass knob and felt

the sensation of thousands upon thousands of tormented souls, screaming

at me simultaneously. All urging me to leave this place. To turn, to run

and never to return. I removed my hand, quickly, with a startled cry.

Looking down at it, I found that it was still shaking. Tingling, as if with

the after-effects of an electric shock.

I tried again, this time touching the wood of the door frame rather than

the knob. The effect was exactly the same. Indeed, if anything, it was

stronger. A terror-inducing ride through dimensions of agony and torture.

The voices were all indistinct, but you do not need to be an expert in

unknown languages to understand when someone really wants you to

know what it is that they are saying. I backed off to the solid comfort of

the far wall and stared at the locked door for a long time, thinking about

Edgar Allan Poe and The Tel -Tale Heart and dreading what manner of

fiend, what monster, what thing could be hidden behind there.

I was trapped in amber. I could not go forward and I could not go back.

My legs turned to treacle and I watched, bemused, as they seemed to melt

into the floorboards.

I tried to speak, but my tongue was tied. Was this to be my eternal

prison too?

A disembodied face appeared in the doorway of Cabin 672. It seemed to

drift through the solid matter and, once outside, to congeal, with a

sucking sound, into a recognisable shape. Solidity from the mist.

Ordinarily, I would have been startled by such a manifestation, impressed

even. I considered applauding the trick. But I was getting quite used to

such occurrences by now and passed it off with a shrug.

The ghost was berating me for my cowardice.

I stared at the pinched and sour-looking face, and it stared back at me

defiantly, eyes wide, mouth leering, a grin of sadistic satisfaction etched

upon it. It appeared to be a woman in her forties, wearing severe spectacles

and a look of manifest discontent.

‘Men are all a bunch of weak and helpless bastards,’ she said, angrily.

‘Never prepared to make the right decisions. Always willing to look for

easy answers.’

I didn’t disagree. Indeed, given my present situation, that sounded like a

pretty good idea to me.

‘I hate you and all your kind and every solitary little thing that you all

stand for. All three billion of you in your male Kingdom of Right and

Majesty. I spit upon your tarnished, beer-stained throne. What else can we

expect from a disgusting collective mass of lowlife, no-conscience

gangsters like you? You and your whole sex. I’d throw you in the sea for

all the decent world to watch you drown and cheer as the bubbles rise and

your thrashing stops. Men with your groping and drooling and enslaving

and laughing, indulging the same tired and worn-out misogynist urges

until the final second of time.’

‘Have you quite finished?’ I asked the woman, who merely scowled back

at me. Her face, beneath her jet-black hair drawn back in a tight bun, was

red, angry and agitated.

Not being human, I didn’t feel the need to defend mankind. But, within

a blinking, the woman’s face was replaced by another. A man with a deep,

gaping wound in his neck, livid scarlet against the white of the rest of his

manifestation. ‘You don’t belong here,’ he told me. ‘No-one belongs here.

Except us.’

‘Who are you?’ I asked again, my voice cooperating with me at last.

‘We are many,’ he said. ‘We are endless. We are we.’ I shook my head in

confusion. ‘We exist,’ he continued, ‘to tell you what you are doing is

wrong, even if it is right. We are the ones who whisper to you in the night

as you drift between the waking and the dreaming. We are the spiteful

piece of grit in your shoe that cannot be shaken free. We are the lying

thieves who steal your peace and quiet and continue to torment you until

you can take no more. We are the dirty and unstoppable accusations that

cannot be silenced or sued.’

Briefly the angry woman’s face reappeared. ‘Remember whose fault this

all is,’ she shouted accusingly. ‘Remember our faces when you close your

eyes each night and weep your piteous head to sleep. Remember at whose

door the blame lies. It’s yours.’

‘Oh, go away you silly woman,’ was all I could say, annoyed that her

interruptions for nothing more than spite had stopped the flow of,

potentially, some real information. But I felt very satisfied when I said it

and it seemed to have the desired effect.

Now there were more faces, dozens of them. And they all said the same

thing.

‘Go.’

Reluctantly, I went.

Actually, no, that is a lie to which I am now fully prepared to admit. I

went with total willingness, glad to be away from these hideous, twisted

spirits with their hidden agendas and unspoken identities. Angry, jealous

tormentors with no thought for the hurt they caused with their hatred

and mockery.

I backed away from the door, slowly at first, and then with purpose. I

turned and raced away from Cabin 672 as fast as my legs would carry me,

heading for the TARDIS.

My sanctuary.

As I tore blindly through the twisting corridors, I passed people,

chatting amongst themselves. Or were they, too, ghosts whispering about

my ultimate doom and destruction?

Nothing was real, anymore. The whole ship seemed to have taken on the

perspective of a malevolent circus show, with grinning clowns and tinkling

sinister music. Of sour-faced and bitter people whose anger had not had a

proper outlet until now. I felt engulfed by inertia, trapped by a

combination of my own reckless curiosity and the most damning thing of

all, the sin of arrogance. And of, unforgivably, being in the wrong place at

the wrong time.

The ship had become a huge and frightening environment of dark

corners, secret places, of half-heard laughter from behind three-quarter

closed doors. Shuttered rooms, empty and dank. It was easy to get lost

within the maze of its corridors and function rooms. There were times

when, sick with paranoia, I thought that I heard someone in the distance

calling my name, but I didn’t turn around or break my stride. I just kept

on going at pace, my lungs aching from the exertion. My breath came in

many painful spasms as I neared an area that I recognised and rounded a

corner to find the TARDIS before me, welcoming and serene amid the

carnage and the horror on board this ship.

This ghost ship.

I fumbled with the key, my hands shaking, my fingers numb with the

chill in the air. Finally the key sank, satisfyingly, into the lock and turned.

I stumbled, falling gratefully, if painfully, to my knees down the short

flight of steps and onto the hard wooden floor of the secondary console

room. As the doors closed behind me with a pleasing whoosh of

compressed air, I gave an agonised upwards glance at the scanner above my

head. It showed a patch of ship’s corridor and, in the fraction of a second

before they disappeared appeared, I observed a gaggle of ghostly images

hovering around the doorway shouting incoherent things at me. They may

have been mocking my retreat or they may have been pleading with me to

stay and not to abandon them to their fate. For possibly the first time in

my many lives, that was a mystery to which I had no wish to find an

answer.

I tried to stand. My knees were bruised from the fall, my hands red from

friction against the wooden floor. I picked myself up, an inch at a time,

and rested against the console, my chest and limbs aching from the chase.

At last, my deliverance was at hand.

‘Relocate,’ I murmured aloud, and prepared for take-off.

One switch. Two. Three. I pressed the dematerialisation nodule and

grasped the sides of the wooden console, preparing for the wheezing and

groaning of departure.

I looked at my face in the shaving mirror attached to the centre of the

console. I hadn’t realised just exactly how afraid I had become until that

moment.

I looked like someone who had seen a ghost.

Nothing happened.

I initiated the dematerialisation sequence again, as I had done a thousand

times in the past, only this time more slowly and deliberately to make

absolutely sure that the TARDIS would do the simple task that I was

asking of her.

Still, nothing happened.

I hit the Fast Return switch, in irritation, for the first time in what

seemed to be a lifetime or three.

Not a flick or a tick. The TARDIS, simply, would not work for me.

I began pressing and jiggling switches almost at random, trying to get

the old girl to work, my hands moving in frantic patterns. The TARDIS

was lifeless.

Alone in the console room, I began darkly to speculate on what terrible

force could have infested the ship in such an all-encompassing manner,

held her in this place, against the dramatic and apocalyptic forces of time

and relative dimensions. The TARDIS should have been able to break

through any force field, any barrier, any obstacle. It was, after all, a space

and time machine, a craft capable of travel to the farthest reaches of

whatever concepts of universal laws the mind could imagine, and then a

bit further, if needed.

‘I do not believe in ghosts,’ I said, aloud. I think I was speaking to the

TARDIS, now. Trying to encourage her to get a grip on herself and get

me out of this place. ‘I do not believe in ghosts, I do not believe in ghosts,

I do not believe in ghosts . . ’

Still we remained, marooned on the Queen Mary, pinned, like a butterfly

in a display case. I sank to my haunches, hugging my knees to my chest,

my hands bunched in front of my face, tightly. I felt as miserable then, at

that moment, as I have ever felt.

‘I do not believe in ghosts,’ I repeated. ‘They always, always turn out to be

the result of timeslips or anomalies or somesuch.’ They had always done

in my past experiences, that was perfectly true. ‘I do not believe in ghosts.’

But I did not sound at all reassured.

This was different from the manifestations at Auderley House, the pulse

spirits in the Cave of Horrors on Cassuragi III or haunted castles on the

planet of Kambalana.

Vastly different.

With escape no longer a viable option, at least for the time being, I

decided that this was clearly fate’s revenge on me for ever doubting its

existence.

Once more, with a heavy heart or two, I opened the TARDIS doors and

returned to the ship of ghosts.

CHAPTER FIVE

ATLANTIC OCEAN DRIFT

Alone, alone, al alone, alone on a wide, wide sea!

And never a soul took pity on me, my soul in agony.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT

MARINER

FRUSTRATED, I WAS LEFT TO WANDER THE SHIP AGAIN, WONDERING

if, like Coleridge’s Mariner, I was to remain trapped within a nightmare of

my own imaginings for all eternity. Alone and vulnerable on this ship

upon a wide and pitiless painted ocean.

I found myself, once again, at the ship’s bow, watching the waves. An

unrelenting darkness was encroaching on the horizon, threatening to

smother the twilight. Another night of troubles and storms was heading

our way.

The sky was bleeding, streaks of scarlet scoring the distant horizon

beneath banks of swirling cloud. Under this angry, vicious sky came the

ocean, the setting sun’s reflection spray-painting the lapping waters gold.

I was in a highly alert, nervous state that I had experienced on only a few

occasions before. There was a slight trembling of the fingers, a quickening

of the pulse. Words seem inadequate when describing it now. Perhaps the

total response would find its best expression in the chords and harmonies

of dramatic music. In a condition such as this, all the senses tend to

become heightened. Behind my back I heard the faint noise of pursuit. It

was simultaneously the feather-light tread of the panther, the hiss of the

blade, the soft and deadly flap of the wings of an angel of death.

I somehow managed not to turn around. To do so would, in ways that

border on the ridiculous, have cheapened the clinical perfection of the

moment. Made it less beautiful in its completeness.

‘Here’s a penny for your thoughts,’ said a bright female voice from

behind me.

So transfixed had I been on the surging, frothing and foaming ocean that

I had momentarily forgotten that there were, in fact, other people around

me. Real people. Living people.

‘Thank you, but I’m afraid I don’t have any change to give you.’

I heard soft laughter and finally turned – a little light-headedly, so long

had I been staring at the azure ripples and spit-white spray. I squinted, my

eyes momentarily blinded by the brilliant dying sunlight. Haloed within

its luminescence, Miss Lamb smiled back at me and my discomfort. ‘You

seemed lost in thought, Doctor.’

‘Lost?’I asked, and then coughed, my throat dry and tasting of salt. I was

a little surprised at such a perceptive observation. I gave her a half-hearted

smile of confirmation. ‘I was looking at the sea.’

‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Untamed. A slave to no-one.’

Another interesting observation.

‘Actually, I was thinking about Samuel Coleridge,’ I continued.

Miss Lamb joined me at the gnarled whitewashed iron railings

overlooking the ship’s deep bow, and below that, the angry waves. ‘Water,

water everywhere yet not a drop to drink?’ she misquoted with a soft and

gentle hint of laughter that was carried away on the wind. Beneath us, the

sea seemed to join in with the merriment, its waves swishing and leaping

as the ship cut straight through them.

Psssht, fssschwt, psssht, fssschwt.

Psssht, fssschwt, psssht, fssschwt.

Psssht, fssschwt, psssht, fssschwt.

I cleared my salt-lined throat. ‘“Like one that on a lonesome road doth

walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round walks on, and no

more turned his head,”’ I replied. ‘Less famous, I know, but more

imaginative. Or more applicable perhaps.’

‘Social comment, surely?’ asked Miss Lamb. ‘Coleridge was interested in

romance and revolution, which is a delightfully dangerous combination at

the best of times, wouldn’t you agree? He wanted to create something he

called a pantisocracy. Which was all fine and dandy, but it came to nothing.

Then he got himself involved with all the opium, of course. And that

didn’t do him an awful lot of good at all.’

I did not reply, merely resting next to her on the rails. I returned to

watching the crashing waves. But I smiled at her from the side of my

mouth, indicating that if I had been feeling so inclined, I could have

debated 19th century literature with her for the rest of the voyage and

well beyond.

A moment of silence followed, broken, again, only by the sounds of the

sea.

Psssht, fssschwt, psssht, fssschwt.

Psssht, fssschwt, psssht, fssschwt.

Psssht, fssschwt, psssht, fssschwt.

I glanced at the woman. For the first time, I noticed that she was wearing

a bathrobe and cap and carrying a large, fluffy white towel monogrammed

with the ship’s initials. I wasn’t usually anywhere near so unobservant.

Clearly, I had other things on my mind. ‘Thinking of taking a dip?’ I

asked, incredulously.

‘Not in that, thank you,’ she replied, looking at the sea. ‘There’s a First

Class swimming pool on deck four that is very beneficial to general health

and beauty. Or, at least, that’s what all the brochures say.’

‘Never believe what’s in the brochures,’ I said, speaking from weary

experience. ‘They always tell you lies. It’s their raison d’être, so to speak.

You seem . . ’I paused when changing the subject, aware that some delicacy

might now be required if I were to continue with this line of conversation.

‘Somewhat less insane than I was last night?’ she suggested with

seemingly needless cruelty. ‘And somewhat more cordial than I was this

morning?’

I hastily gave her a hot and embarrassed denial as she turned away from

the sea and slipped a pair of expensive looking sunglasses onto the bridge

of her nose. The sea breeze ruffled what little of her hair was peeking out

from beneath the white rubber of her cap. ‘It’s amazing what a day of

sunshine can do for you,’ she continued. ‘You leave the darkness behind,

so to speak. In more ways than one. Don’t worry, I was just acting like a

very silly little girl last night. A flibbertigibbet. Raymond Bryce would

have called me a right soft tart.’

Yes, I could just imagine Bryce saying exactly such a thing. It amused me

almost as much as it seemed to amuse Miss Lamb. ‘And I’ll tell you

something else, Doctor, he’d be just about damn right too,’ she noted.

‘It’s time to grow up, clearly.’

‘Time,’ I noted, ‘is an abstract concept. I’ll accompany you to the pool,’ I

continued, pointing in the direction of the steps down to the lower decks.

‘I could do with a little cheering up.’

‘Poor Doctor,’ said Miss Lamb, running a sympathetic hand down my

arm and taking my hand. ‘Afflicted by the madness around him? A case of

physician heal thyself, isn’t it?’

‘Ah, but if only it were all that simple,’ I told her. That seemed to be

becoming my catch phrase.

‘What would Coleridge have said about that?’

‘“Never a soul took pity on me, my soul in agony”?’ I suggested,

somewhat fatuously.

Miss Lamb wrinkled her nose as we reached the bulkhead and began to

descend the clanking metal steps. ‘Miserable, rotten spiteful old so-and-

so,’ she said. ‘No fun those poets. Except for Shelley. He knew how to

show a girl a good time. And he did. Often. He was an anarchist, you

know.’

I nodded. ‘Indeed. An idealist. A romantic and a dreamer. A man of

vision who lived his life in almost unbearable sadness. And he drowned on

a pitiless sea just such as this.’

‘Oh, your gloom is outrageous, dear Doctor,’ Miss Lamb said, squeezing

my hand tighter. ‘Cheer up, it may never happen.’

Strangely, I did cheer up.

‘Baudelaire was a particular favourite of mine,’ I confessed, failing to add

that I had spent much time down by the Seine and, come to that, down in

the Seine, with the poet and Manet and Delacroix on a hot Parisian

summer night of shooting stars, lightning and other, stranger, lights in

the sky.

‘Another flaming junkie,’ said Miss Lamb with a cunning smile. ‘And a

pretty macabre one at that!’

‘He was just misunderstood,’ I suggested. ‘What about Tennyson?’

‘Now, he was good,’ she noted, eagerly. ‘Liked him. But, you know,

you’ve got be in the right sort of mood for it, haven’t you? All those

cannons to the left, right and centre. Not exactly what you want for a

quiet night in with a cheese sandwich and the cat. And he had some very

grotty ideas about a woman’s place in the world.’

She knew her stuff, did Miss Lamb. I was hugely impressed.

‘Wordsworth?’ I asked.

‘Too flowery,’ she suggested, and giggled at her unintentional joke.

‘Blake?’

‘Mad as the moon. There are some nice metaphors in The Sick Rose but,

you know, odd chap!’ She paused. ‘Miss Franks, my English Lit teacher,

would be so proud that I’ve actually remembered all this nonsense. She

could barely get me to stay awake most days.’

‘Byron?’

‘Oh please,’ she said, scowling. ‘Come the revolution, he’d be the first one

I’d have lined up against the wall, given a last cigarette and then, you

know, horsewhipped to death.’

‘He would probably have quite enjoyed that, you know?’ I noted,

speaking from a keen personal knowledge of the man.

We continued to enjoy a pleasant conversation about the ship and its

many features, and about art and culture and the delicious uncertainties of

life, as we strolled through numerous decks and passageways. She was a

bright and charming, witty girl, Miss Lamb; a personal assistant to Bryce,

which seemed to mean, from her description, a secretary, a sounding-

board, an occasional big sister and, more often than not, a surrogate

mother.

‘Takes a lot of looking after, does he?’ I asked.

‘I think you’d be surprised,’ she replied. ‘A quite remarkable man, is

Raymond. With all the childish foibles that such a man is to be allowed in

the great scheme of things.’

I understood. ‘He likes to be right?’ I asked.

‘Yes. And usually, he is. But he’s the kind of person who has to be right,

even if he isn’t, if you know what I mean.’

I did.

‘My mother once told me that I should try not to fall in love with the

geniuses. The problem there is that they never want to go to sleep.’

As we approached the swimming pool, I felt something that I had not

experienced since my earlier confrontations with the apparitions. A sense

of impending dread.

I looked quickly around but I could see no ghostly images anywhere.

‘We’re here,’ Miss Lamb said. ‘Thank you for walking with me this far,

Doctor. And thank you for being so nice to me last night. It really was

appreciated.’

I turned to face her and found myself looking into dead eyes. Hollow

sockets, filled with maggots. I gasped, and took a horrified step

backwards.

Water, water everywhere . .

Miss Lamb was drowning before me. Her arms thrashed about wildly in

churning, lush-green waters as her face submerged and then momentarily

burst through the surface to gasp precious air, before falling back into the

suffocating blanket of water. I was helpless, glued to the spot as she

fought valiantly to cling to life, as she gulped in lungfuls of the killing

water, breathed her last breath, and died.

‘No —’

‘Doctor?’

I felt as if I had been struck, hard, across the face. I slumped to my

wounded knees and sprawled on the carpeted deck, drained of all energy

and will.

‘Are you ill?’ A gentle hand was laid on my shoulder, and I snapped my

head up to look at Miss Lamb. Alive and well.

Alive and well.

‘Don’t go in the water,’ I shouted, far more loudly than was necessary.

‘What?’ asked Miss Lamb, startled and taking a step backwards.

I repeated myself. I tried to stand, stumbled and fell, rose again and

grabbed Miss Lamb by the shoulders, shaking the woman to try to compel

her to listen to me.

She looked terrified. I dread to think what I must have looked like to

her.

‘Don’t go in the water,’ I said again. I could feel my eyes bulging, such

was my insistence.

‘Why?’

‘It’s dangerous. I’ve just had . . ’

What, exactly, could I tell her? How could I best describe the experience

without sounding like a lunatic? A precognitive vision in which she was

drowning? A flash of extreme future-shock? A warning to the curious?

I tried to recover my composure, to back away rapidly from the wild-eyed

mania that I felt. I wanted to scream at her. To tell her to turn and run to

her cabin, to lock the door and not to come out until we arrived in New

York. I resisted the temptation. Instead, I walked past her to the cerulean

blue double doors to the pool and stood there barring her entrance.

‘Please do not go into this place, I beg of you,’ I said. ‘I cannot explain

why you mustn’t enter, you simply have to take my word for it that . . ’ I

could say nothing further. I sighed, shook my head, and let my arms drop

to my sides. I looked at her, pleadingly.

After a long pause, Miss Lamb shivered. ‘This is a bad place, isn’t it?’ she

asked, echoing exactly what Simpkins had told me earlier.

‘You feel it too?’ I asked.

‘I’m sensitive,’ she replied, a double meaning that certainly didn’t seem

out of place. ‘I’ve been deluding myself for too long. Trying to ignore my

feelings.’ Then, she looked at me closely, curiously, and with an accusing

stare. ‘You’ve seen them all too, haven’t you?’ she demanded. ‘The ghosts?

They’re all over the ship.’

My reply was slow in coming and deliberately worded so as to be as non-

committal and oblique as possible. ‘I have seen things that I cannot readily

explain.’

I felt like a charlatan as I said it. And like a coward when I said no more.

‘Here?’

‘Yes.’

She nodded. What she was thinking at that moment, I can only

speculate. Betrayal. Fear. Uncertainty. A combination of all three,

perhaps? ‘You said you believed that it was all in my mind,’ she noted at

last. ‘That such things do not exist.’

‘I may have been precipitous in my assessment of the situation.’

‘Meaning?’ she asked in a harsh whisper at my deliberate gobbledegook.

I shrugged. I really didn’t know. Or, at least, I pretended to myself that I

didn’t. ‘Meaning that I’ve seen things that may have changed my mind,’ I

replied, with as much truth as I could manage at that moment. And that

was not much.

We walked slowly back to Miss Lamb’s cabin in a stony silence broken

only by the occasional greetings that we received from passing fellow

travellers. These were pointedly ignored by both of us. As we reached her

cabin door, I thanked Miss Lamb for trusting me and told her that I

would see her again in the morning.

Miss Lamb looked at me, silently. It was as if she had something that she

desperately wanted to tell me but, equally, she was wholly unable to do so

and was, thus, trapped between two worlds: the spoken and the unspoken.

Finally, with an almost painfully hoarse whisper, that seemed to have

dragged itself from the pit of her stomach and fought its way to her

throat, she bade me good night.

She reminded me at that moment of a poem I couldn’t remember or

song I’m not sure even existed, heard in a place I may never have visited. ‘I

will see you in the morning,’ I told her again. She leant and quickly kissed

me on the cheek, before turning and closing the door without another

word.

She did not believe me, I knew, and, more worryingly, I did not believe

myself either.

Some hours later, in the dead of another wild and terrible night of the

soul, I once again wandered into the area close to Miss Lamb’s cabin. The

TARDIS had offered a temporary sanctuary from the constant whispers

and cries of so-called ghosts lurking around each and every corner. But my

mind would not allow me simply to stay there and try to shut out the

horrors of the ship. Therefore, once the initial relief at being away from

the oppressive atmosphere of the decks had gone, I found myself back on

board the Queen Mary. Facing my fears. This time, as I left the TARDIS, I

took my hat with me. Somehow the situation seemed to require it.

Apparitions occasionally appeared to me as I walked purposefully

towards First Class. I did my best to ignore them and the almost

meaningless words and phrases that they mouthed to me. I had something

more important to worry about than these invaders from the borders of

reality.

Something was wrong. Desperately wrong. I knew that, several moments

before I rounded the corner that led to the corridor containing Miss

Lamb’s cabin and saw Simpkins and Jarvis, outside the door, furiously

banging upon it and calling out to her.

I sprinted towards them and, as I did so, the whispering, chanting,

cajoling voices of the manifestations around the ship became clearer. An

instantaneous realisation as to what they had been trying to tell me for all

these hours came to me. A repetitious statement of intent.

Too late.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

Jarvis turned to me with fear in his eyes. ‘Miss Lamb rang for a sandwich

half an hour since, but she isn’t answering her door.’

Water, water everywhere, yet not a drop to drink . .

I reached Simpkins and Jarvis and we, the three of us, looked at each

other for a moment in a bemused, uncertain triangle. Not a word was

spoken, or needed to be, for we all knew what had to be done next.

‘We’ve been knocking and calling to her for ten minutes,’ Jarvis said at

last. ‘No reply.’

‘You have a pass key?’ I asked, wondering why Simpkins and Jarvis were

not already in the room doing what needed to be done.

‘It’s been locked from the inside and the key’s still in the lock,’ Simpkins

told me, banging on the door once more. ‘It won’t budge. I’ve got a really

bad feeling about this.’

Without waiting to hear what, exactly, his premonition was, I put my

shoulder to the door. It didn’t move an inch. I tried again and Simpkins

joined me. We tumbled through as the door burst inwards in a cascade of

wooden splinters.

‘Miss Lamb?’ I heard Jarvis ask behind me. Neither Simpkins nor I

spoke. We could see.

Miss Lamb’s pale white and naked body lay at the bottom of her

bathtub, her still-open eyes glaring at me accusingly through the clear,

motionless water. ‘Why didn’t you come sooner?’ she seemed to be asking.

‘You said it would be all right.’

‘Oh sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ said Simpkins, crossing himself and

stumbling backwards into Jarvis. Behind him Jarvis, trying to peer over his

friend’s shoulder, saw the body, and let out a brief and girlish scream of

terror.

Instinctively, I removed my hat and clutched it in my trembling hands.

‘She’s drowned,’ continued Simpkins – somewhat pointlessly, given the

circumstantial evidence before him.

‘Clearly,’ I noted. For a moment, I genuinely could not decide what I

should do next. Examine the body for signs of foul play when I knew,

knew for certain, that there would be none?

No.

Not for her.

I had been confused at first, when I had seen the body. My initial

reaction had been that the ghosts, or whatever the manifestations were,

had got to her and killed her for merriment and japery. That was a

possibility but, just as tragic, if not more so, was the more likely

probability that it was simply an accident. An accident of which I had been

made aware, before the fact.

Had my vision been a warning, like the writing on the wall earlier? Had

they, whoever they were, tried to warn Miss Lamb, through me, not to go

near water?

Water, water everywhere yet not a drop to drink . .

I gave poor, lonely, doomed Miss Lamb a final and lingering look. I tried

to imagine the terror that must have gone through her mind as she

experienced the last woeful seconds of her short and, perhaps, painful life.

It was all too easy to do so.

In the midst of life we are in death, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The water was so still now, that it was almost like looking through a

sheet of glass. Tiny air bubbles had formed themselves around Miss

Lamb’s body, sticking to her skin the way that limpets cling to submerged

rocks. Her lips were slightly parted, her clean white teeth just visible. It

was almost as if she were smiling. Almost, but not quite.

The ship lurched in the waves at that moment and the bath waters

rippled gently, sending the bubbles floating upwards to the surface, and to

freedom.

Anguished by the sight of the dead woman and her maddeningly accusing

eyes, I turned away and left the two stewards alone with the body.

CHAPTER SIX

A WARNING TO THE

CURIOUS

Out flew the web and floated wide, the mirror crack’d from side to side,

‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried the Lady of Shalott.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, THE LADY OF SHALOTT

I EXPERIENCED THE AFTERMATH OF THIS TERRIBLE, TRAGIC

event in a state of quiet numbness. I felt the bitter taste of bile in my

mouth as I reached the corridor and spent several fruitless moments

searching for a place in which to be sick. It was unusual for me to react

that way to death, that occupational hazard of my way of life, but there

are moments when even Time Lords retch at the horrors of existence.

This was such a moment.

I had run out of all the easy options. And most of the difficult options

too. But there was one thing that I could do, one thing that would satisfy

me and make me feel real and honest again, at least to myself.

I returned to the TARDIS and, finding in the old cloisters a bare brick

wall that hadn’t seen any light in decades, I proceeded to beat my fists

against it, cursing the universe and fate. Cursing evil and stupidity.

Cursing and swinging out at everything wildly, though sometimes

accurately; but, chiefly, cursing myself and my well-developed ability to be

occasionally, totally and utterly wrong about everything. With fatal

consequences.

Fortune is always hiding, they say.

I took a long, hard look at my own bad fortune. It was not a pretty sight

in the slightest.

I felt hollow and sickened by my failure to help poor Miss Lamb. To

stop the inevitable process that led to her demise. It was such a simple and

easy thing to do. Just one solitary life to save.

Not a state or a world this time or a solar system, nor the entire universe

itself, but just one woman. One lonely and helpless woman. An intelligent,

charming and fascinating woman who had depended, for her life, on me.

No complications, no concerns about changing the timelines or creating

imperfect futures or alternate pasts. Just a straightforward piece of

common-or-garden, everyday heroism. And I couldn’t even manage that.

I wept.

For the first time in many long years, I cried selfish, angry and

inconsolable tears.

Again, I tried to leave the ghost ship, and all the horrors that it

contained, far behind me. Again, the TARDIS simply refused to comply.

It was as if I were being punished for my numerous inabilities; for the

way in which I had become so wrapped up in trivia that I was missing the

obvious. The TARDIS was telling me that what was going on upon this

ship was now my problem. And that any solutions would have to be my

solutions.

So, once again, I was forced to leave my bubble-pack world and walk up

onto the top deck, my chest heaving with the exertion as I climbed the

stairs to feel the thick and heavy sea salt in the air, a hand clamped to my

head to stop my hat from flying off into the sea. To watch another

Atlantic sunrise.

Another dawn from the same sky.

I vaguely remember shouting out in my anger and frustration,

proclaiming in the gathering light that I was ready to surrender to

whatever forces were present on the ship. My words echoed back to me

from the relentless, cruel sea. I knew, finally, what I had to do.

It was what I should have been doing all along.

Facing my fear for real this time.

Searching for the heart of truth and messing around in things that did

not concern me.

Being myself, in other words.

Following the apparitions in a twisting route around the ship, up stairs

and down stairs, was relatively straightforward. It was clear that they

wanted me to go in a particular direction, and it soon became apparent

just which direction that was. Down.

Down towards the middle decks.

Down to Cabin 672. And to whatever destiny awaited me. Again I

allowed myself to be drawn, this time willingly, to this benighted place.

I thought, as I went, about all the despicable people that I had met in my

lives and on my travels. Not the real twenty-four carat lunatics bent on

universal domination or all that nonsense, but everyday, common-or-

garden evil. Lying, thieving people with poisoned minds, uttering cruel

and hurtful words. Those who had no excuse with which to mitigate their

spiteful, critical ways.

It was small evil, perhaps, but in many ways far more pernicious than

something on a much grander scale. There was small evil at work in this

place. I felt it. I knew its distasteful smell. Small evil, conceived by small

minds.

Once more I felt the twin thump of nervous hearts, saddened and

petrified, and the light-headedness of a breath being caught and then not

released nearly soon enough. It felt odd and uncomfortable, yes; irritating

like a wind catching a loose filling on a cold winter’s day. I stopped in my

tracks and turned around, starting to walk back in the direction from

which I had come. But as soon as I turned the next corner, I realised that I

had, unconsciously, doubled back upon myself and was still heading,

relentlessly, for Cabin 672.

I considered the nature of ghosts as I walked. But, I do not believe in

ghosts.

Once again, I heard the sound of a distant screaming carried on the ether

for anyone who cared to listen.

My belief system took a considerable blow and, winded, squatted on the

floor trying to make itself inconspicuous.

Was I the only one who could hear it? The only one who cared what was

going on upon this ship?

Seemingly I was, as no-one else seemed inclined to accompany me on my

inevitable path to Cabin 672.

I didn’t touch the door this time when I arrived, despite the urging

inside my head that I should do so. I had made that unwise mistake once

already, and it was one that had cost a precious life that could not be

replaced. A needless death. I wasn’t prepared to repeat it no matter how

much it might have seemed like the right thing to do. Instead, I moved to

one side and knocked loudly on the door of the neighbouring cabin, 673.

The sound of my knocking echoed down the corridor. I paused.

After waiting for an age, and receiving no reply, I knocked again, more

urgently this time, my knuckles rapping in a quick, rhythmic staccato on

the wood. Nothing. I put my hand carefully on the doorknob of Cabin

673 and turned. This time, at this door, there was no tingling sensation

and no voices. Only silence.

The door opened, slowly, with a squeal of protest as rusted hinges and

warped, damp wood rubbed up against each other and howled like fighting

cats.

I entered the room.

Apart from long-abandoned furniture, stacked, mildewed towels on a rail

and some thin cobwebs that disintegrated when touched, the room was

completely empty.

I looked around the cabin with no little surprise. I cannot say for certain

what, exactly, I had expected to find inside this room. At least, not with

hindsight. But at that particular moment it seemed extremely ordinary to

me. Frighteningly so. Having geared myself up for a date with hell and

damnation, this was more like Stoke Newington railway station on a wet

Wednesday afternoon in November.

The same small, bland, neatly laid out bed as in every other cabin stood

against the back wall. The same bath tub, its white enamel surface

chipped away here and there, leaving tiny black memories of accidental

moments from the past, was positioned behind the door. The black spots

looked like spy holes in the snow. I touched the smooth rim of the bath,

perhaps hoping that something of the ship’s dreadful history had been

recorded for posterity within the surface.

Nothing.

This room held absolutely no secrets. At least none worth sharing. My

interest in it waned and died. There was nothing for me here. Except . .

I turned my attention to the wall connecting this room to Cabin 672,

drawn by some distant voice in the back of my mind that told me that it

was something worth investigating. Again, the dull, off-cream wallpaper

and dirty, poorly painted wainscoting suggested nothing out of the

ordinary, apart from several decades of neglect. This room, like its more

notorious neighbour, seemed not to have been occupied for a very long

time.

Slowly, cautiously, I approached the wall. I listened from a few inches

away to see if I could hear any sound emerging from behind the paper-thin

barrier, but once more, there was only silence.

This entire detour had, I decided, been a waste of time.

In something approaching anger, I placed my hand on the wall and put

my ear to it, almost daring the ghosts to speak to me.

Oh, what a foolish old Doctor I can be.

What I heard was the sound of people. More people than I could

possibly count in a dozen lifetimes. Thousands of them, all sobbing and

wailing in misery.

The sound of the damned.

The power of their voices was utterly overwhelming and I collapsed to

the floor, clutching my head, which was full of the screams and the pleas.

As I lay, feeling dizzy and sick on the dusty carpet, the wall seemed to

distort and bend out of shape. It appeared that the faces of the screaming

people were all pushing at it simultaneously, trying to break out of their

prison and have their freedom through me. I groaned, wearily, closed my

eyes, and slumped into a blissful unconsciousness.

When I came to, some hours seemed to have passed, judging by the

shadows cast through the porthole by the now setting sun. This would be

our last night at sea before New York came into view in the dawn’s early

light. If we ever got there, of course. Such feelings had been with me since

the moment I had first stepped from the TARDIS, just three days earlier.

It seemed more like three years.

I ignored my, by now almost overwhelming, terror and fought back an

urge to turn and run away again. That would do no good. I knew that for

certain. I picked myself up from the cabin floor and left the room, giving

it a final, disgusted glance. The only secret this cabin would now have to

tell was how I had been brought to my knees by a lack of judgement and

by my own limitations.

Finally, now, I was going to open the door to Cabin 672. I spent some

time preparing myself and gathering my fluctuating courage for the initial

shock that I would feel when I touched the doorknob. My hand reached

for it and, even from the distance of several inches, I could feel the

electric sparks, spitting and kicking out to me. I froze and almost

withdrew my hand. Then, summoning up the final vestiges of my waning

courage, I grasped the bronze knob and, howling in miserable pain,

twisted it.

The cold hit me first as the door opened and my hand flew to my side.

An icy blast rattled through my bones, shaking me to my very core. Then,

a wind. A mighty hurricane that battered my face and almost swept me

from my feet.

A screaming, leering skull rushed towards me from out of the tempest.

This time I really did have nowhere else to go, so I stood my ground and

closed my eyes.

‘I do not believe in ghosts,’ I mouthed, as if some redundant self-defence

mechanism inside me had clicked, effortlessly, into gear. ‘I do not believe

in ghosts. I do not believe in ghosts.’

The wind stopped, abruptly. For a second there was a total silence.

And then I heard the tiny chinking sound of a tea cup and saucer.

Opening my eyes, I looked into the cabin. Instead of, as I expected, a

room crammed from ceiling to floor with piles of rotting corpses and

embittered angry souls shaking their fists at me and demanding to know

just what I thought I was playing at, there was a rather unprepossessing

man in his mid thirties sitting at a writing table, surrounded by sheets of

paper, some written upon, others screwed up into little balls and

discarded.

He was drinking from a china tea cup with white-gloved hands. Seeing

me, he smiled. It was not a cruel or sadistic smile, but rather an enigmatic

and inscrutable one, rather like the smile on the face of the Mona Lisa.

This man, I sensed, knew many things that were hidden to me. And that

seemed to please him greatly.

‘Tea?’ he asked, as if he had been expecting me all along.

CHAPTER SEVEN

BEHIND THAT

LOCKED DOOR

Death, old captain, it is time,

let us raise the anchor.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, LE VOYAGE

THE MAN WAS SO UTTERLY UNREMARKABLE IN EACH AND

every conceivable way that, for the briefest of moments, I wondered if I

had come to the wrong room entirely. I did a double-take and checked the

number on the back of the door to confirm that this was, indeed, Cabin

672.

Usually I use moments of buffoonery like this to try to buy myself a

little time or to put my adversaries off their guard. I cannot, in all

honesty, say for certain that this was my intention on this particular

occasion.

I turned to face the object of my quest.

The man was slight of build, and prematurely balding. He wore thick,

black, horn-rimmed spectacles, and his face, with its sad, hooded eyes and

a prominent nose, seemed intelligent and placid. He had a deeply

furrowed brow that spoke of many hours pondering upon the whim and

caprices of outrageous fortune. Certainly he appeared to spend a lot of his

time thinking about something or other. His clothes however – all

polyester and tweed, with black leather sew-on elbow pads on his ginger

jacket – spoke of a lack of any real interest in conventions or mores or of

what anybody other than he thought about himself. Or of anything else,

come to that.

He looked like a stereotypical representation of a mad scientist.

He looked, if truth be told, a little like me.

All right, then. A lot like me.

‘Hello,’ said the man flatly, without standing or even looking at me

directly. He sucked a pencil end and began to scribble something in an

indistinct, spidery hand on one of the yellowing bits of paper in front of

him. ‘You’ve come at last to see me. I knew that you would, do you see? I

don’t know how I knew, I just knew, you know?’ He paused in his writing

and took a brief sip from his tea cup which, judging by the expression on

his face, was either clay cold or scalding hot. And then, finally, he looked

up at me with what might have been an intense curiosity in his eyes. Or

perhaps it was something else entirely. Something wicked and dangerous.

I thought, again, about the concept of small evil. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to

excuse the mess,’ he continued. ‘Never seem to get room service in this

blooming cabin, for some reason or other that I haven’t fathomed out yet.

But I will, given the time.’

‘Time?’ I asked. ‘It’s always a question of time, is it not?’

‘An abstract concept,’ the man noted. ‘Any old fool knows that.

Somebody said that once. It might have been me, actually.’ His words

were a rapid-fire stream of consciousness. Wooden wheels chattering over

a cobbled stone road. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Nervous, agitated and

only vaguely interconnected with each other, like atoms whirling around

in magnificent isolation. A perfect metaphor.

He seemed bored by our conversation now, and changed the subject.

‘Have you ever said something really witty and fantastic that you wanted

everyone to hear and then completely forgotten you’d said it? And then,

later, you’ve quoted it to somebody saying “as someone once said” and

then only later again, you’ve realised that it was actually you that said it in

the first place?’ He giggled lightly, and quite madly, and then seemed to

lose all interest in me, returning his attention to his notes.

‘Possibly,’ I replied, but he wasn’t listening anymore. I was confused as

to why he was in this cabin at all. Simpkins had told me earlier that it was

never occupied. ‘I had been told that this room was always unoccupied,’ I

said.

‘You were misinformed,’ came the simple reply. ‘It’s amazing what ten

pounds can buy. Especially from ship’s crew open to bribes. I sensed the

vibrations, didn’t you?’

I nodded. ‘Something terrible has gone on in this place.’ I left it at that.

‘The other thing that people do that really annoys me –’ he began, as

though our previous conversation had never happened, ‘not that you’re

annoying me you understand, but just say you were – is when they say

something horribly offensive to someone and then add “no offence” at the

end, as though that somehow wipes out all the hurt and the spite in the

original statement.’ My host was talking through gritted teeth now, as if

from a bitter and long-standing personal experience. ‘That gets me so

angry. Doesn’t it get you angry?’

He hadn’t taken his eyes from the page in front of him all the while. His

cold and measured tone was a million miles away from the uncontrollable

raging and frothing that might have been expected. I politely ignored this

loaded question and looked around the room. The cabin interior, on the

surface, looked just like all the others that I had seen during the voyage.

Except that this one contained, resting on the night-table beside the bed,

a large bell-shaped jar with a cork lid. I cautiously approached it and

peered at it closely. The glass had a rich, slightly blue tinge that I

recognised from looking through the eyes of the ghostly manifestations.

Wires led away from the jar towards various pieces of electrical

equipment strewn randomly around the floor of the room and all linked

together by bulldog clips and thick copper wiring wrapped around with

sticky tape. It was a chaotic and eccentric contraption built, seemingly,

from a metronome, an electrical pulse generator, two tin cans soldered

together to form a primitive tachyon particle accelerator and, most

horrifying of all, the large glass jar sitting at the centre of the wires like a

big fat spider at the heart of its sinister web. The invention seemed to

have been cobbled into shape from odds and ends, knick-knacks of every

shape and description.

With my more than elementary knowledge of tachyon physics I realised

instantly that this machine would, given the right conditions, function.

As a death-trap, at the very least.

‘Be careful with that device,’ a dismissive, almost parental voice told me

from over my shoulder. I turned, but the man still hadn’t raised his head

from his work. ‘It’s a somewhat delicate contraption. My life’s work, such

as it is. Did I ask you if you would like some tea? I’m becoming so

forgetful these days.’

‘No, thank you,’ I said, declining his offer. ‘Wait a moment. Don’t I

know you from somewhere?’ Realisation came to me as I recalled the

newspaper article and accompanying photograph that I had briefly

glimpsed a couple of days earlier in the forward bar. ‘You’re Professor

Peter Osbourne, the man who’s supposed to be building a time machine.’

Can I note, here and now, that I managed to say all this without breaking

into hysterical laughter; which was, I consider after the event, to be a feat

well worth boasting about. ‘Is that what this is?’ I asked, suppressing the

merest hint of a snigger on my lips and waving my hand over his

collection of radio ham amateur electronics. ‘That is what all this is

supposed to represent?’

‘A time visualiser,’ corrected Osbourne, with a big-toothed grin. ‘The

purpose of this invention of mine is to allow a view into the past or the

future. I don’t want to travel to different times, I want to see them. Of

course, I’m at a very early stage in the development of it,’ he noted. ‘But,

I’m sure you’ll agree that the progress so far has been . . outstanding.’

Then, it seemed to sink in that I knew who he was. He stood up from

his table and came eagerly towards me, clearly delighted to be meeting

such a fan. ‘You’ve heard of me and my work?’ he asked. ‘How flattering.’

‘Only what little I’ve read,’ I replied as dismissively as I deemed

appropriate. This seemed to deflate his ego. ‘No offence,’ I added,

deliberately.

‘Then you clearly have me at something of a disadvantage,’ he said,

rapidly losing any vestige of interest in me or my opinion.

‘I’m the Doctor,’ I told him. ‘I’m delighted to meet a man of your

immense reputation.’ I held out my hand to him, but the scientist merely

gave it a cursory glance and then turned away from me, wounded,

snubbing my invited handshake. ‘Time travel,’ I continued. ‘An impossible

dream for many throughout the ages.’

‘For those who have lived their petty lives in monochrome perhaps,’ said

Osbourne arrogantly, as he sat back down. He looked at me curiously.

‘And, you’re a doctor of what, exactly?’

‘Oh, this, that and the other,’ I told him, ‘but, of particular relevance to

this conversation, quantum and tachyon physics. Jelly baby?’

Osbourne ignored the question. He seemed to be weighing me up with

his eyes, trying to decide which side of the fence I was on, so to speak.

‘Where do you stand on the issue?’ he asked, presumably meaning that he

had not been able to decide for himself.

I shrugged. ‘What is, was. What was, shall be,’ I replied. ‘Time is only a

dimension. It’s nothing to write poetry about.’

‘And a dimension that can be conquered?’ Osbourne queried.

‘You do not conquer time,’ I said, shaking my head and trying not to

sound like the authority on the subject that I was. ‘Time conquers you. It’s

an eternal and very unequal battle.’

‘I like you,’ said Osbourne, seemingly satisfied with my answer. ‘Most of

the people I meet are rascals, stupid idealists or absurd cynics when it

comes to time. You seem to be none of those things. A black one, please,’

he asked, rooting around in my bag of confectionery.

Oh, but that said so very much about the man on so many levels. ‘On the

contrary, that is not true in the slightest, I’m sorry to say,’ I confessed. ‘I

am frequently all three. Sometimes simultaneously.’

Now he asked me a question that surprised me. ‘Do you believe in God?’

I took far longer to answer this than I felt comfortable with. It was a

question that I had been asked several times before, although never in

anything like these circumstances. My answer was usually couched in

riddles and abstract sentiments. I saw no reason to change the habits of a

lifetime and replied with a question of my own. ‘Do you mean as a

spiritual and moral centre within the individual? As a concept to define

whether free will is merely an illusion after all? As a theory to explain the

delicious ironies of nature? Or as an old man with a white beard who lives

in the sky?’

Osbourne thought about this for a moment. ‘As a reality to the presence

in which you find yourself,’ he finally replied. ‘I am become God,’ he

continued. ‘I hold all the power of the universe at my fingertips. It’s quite

a humbling experience, as I’m sure you can imagine.’ He paused for my

reaction and, getting only a small exhalation of breath and a curious

inclination of one eyebrow, he went on with his revelation. ‘I once met a

man who thought he could count a million angels dancing on a pinhead by

using cosmic radiation and a big magnifying glass,’ Osbourne said,

straight-faced, his words again coming in rapid bursts of gunfire from his

mouth. ‘Spent decades trying to perfect the technique. It was his life’s

work. Poor chap, completely mad, of course.’

‘Science and religion are often much closer than you might think,’I said

after a moment. ‘Look at it this way; nothing, light, then the universe.

They’re pretty much in agreement about that. It’s just when you get to all

the burning bushes and the Whore of Babylon that they go off on

different roads.’

‘I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt worship no other God before

me?’ he queried.

‘Yes, well, we all like to be at the centre of everyone’s attention, don’t

we? It’s only natural.’

He indicated that I should sit, which I did. I was still trying, without

much success, to determine whether he was merely a fast-talking and

rather eccentric lunatic with a silly messiah complex or something

infinitely more dangerous. Again, I looked at the bell jar, and that helped

me to reach my decision far more quickly than I should have liked.

‘Part of the process you’ve perfected?’ I asked.

Osbourne smiled at me. An odious, calculated, self-satisfied little grin.

‘The final part of the process,’ he announced proudly. ‘The culmination of

a seismic and unstoppable chain reaction. It does this.’ The scientist leaned

over to the nearest tangle of wires and circuitry and flicked a trigger-

switch. The instrumentation hummed into action as, across the room, the

metronome began to tick hypnotically backwards and forwards, backwards

and forwards, backwards and forwards.

Coils whirred, spools of magnetic tape looped and sang, electricity

flowed through valves in the makeshift particle accelerator, which

spluttered to life like a bronchial old man rising unwillingly from a deep

sleep. An electric current connected with the jar, which began to hum

softly and glow a faint translucent yellow. ‘Behold,’ said Osbourne like a

conjurer producing the Ace of Spades from up his sleeve to a startled

audience, ‘the miracle of the resurrection. This, what happens now, is the

real y impressive bit.’

The glass glowed brightly and I could see the ghosts within it, pressed

against the glass, tormented faces sealed in miniature. Trapped within the

confines of the jar. Their suffering was, I imagined, almost unimaginable.

For the universe runs on such contradictions as this and lots more

besides.

Osbourne was talking, now, of the specifics of his theories and of the

possibilities of time displacement for practical and recreational use.

Replacing television with a device that enabled one to see, in one’s own

living room and at the flick of a switch, the Crusades or the Crimean War

or, even better, events yet to come. But his manic bleating held no real

interest for me. All I could focus on was what terrible things were going on

within the bell jar.

I reflected then that some people do terrible things to others because

they have been the victims of traumatic, life-changing events in their own

lives, and this has warped their morality. Or, they do terrible things to try

to understand the process that makes others do such deeds in the, usually

mistaken, belief that such understanding will as a matter of course make

the world a better place. Some people blame their environment or the

circumstances of their early lives for making them the way that they are;

and, in the final analysis, there may be something to be said for each being

a contributory factor. Still others do the things that they do as an

intellectual exercise, as part of a game they play with their own rationality.

It’s a tough world, the argument goes, and you’ve got to be tough in it.

But there are some people who, simply, do terrible, wicked things to

others because they like doing them.

‘That’s why I’m going to America, do you see?’ he chattered on. ‘They’re

reasonable people, they’re absolutely loaded and they appreciate genius.

They’ve got the sun and they’ve got the palm trees. I mean, I could have

stayed in London, of course. If only those fools at the Ministry had

actually been interested in something other than new uses for toxic nerve

gas or how to get radium to power television sets or whatever nonsense

they want from us this week. Well, I ask you . .’ He shook his head in

annoyance. ‘I could have built my time visualiser there and marketed it.

“Watch your own future from the comfort of your armchair!” Companies

were interested. I can’t disclose who, but I’m sure you’ll know them. It

would have made me a millionaire. I could have, dare I say it, ruled the

world. If only I’d been eligible for the government grant.’

‘Are you quite finished, you very silly man?’ I asked, irritated when he

finally ran himself dry of rhetoric. It was as clear as crystal that Osbourne

was completely insane. He had become, as many scientists are prone to,

obsessed with his creation. And by his own insecure vanity. ‘What you’re

doing is fantastically dangerous,’ I told him. ‘You’re playing God and you

aren’t doing it very well, I have to tell you. They say that the line between

outright genius and outright madness is a thin one,’ I continued, sadly.

‘And you seem to be living proof of that.’

Osbourne began to laugh at me. A callous lunatic chuckle that turned

into a snigger and seemed to go on and on and on for hours, rattling in

his throat. And, as he laughed, so he plucked the cork from the bell jar

and the ghosts began to appear. All of them, surging out from their

enclosed world and filling the room with the sounds of their despair.

‘See what I’ve done, Doctor,’ Osbourne shouted above the rising

crescendo. ‘See what I’ve been and gone and done!’

I looked around myself and I saw it.

A terrible thing.

CHAPTER EIGHT

DISPOSSESSED

O soul, be changed into little water drops,

and fal into the ocean, ne’er be found.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, DOCTOR FAUSTUS

THE NOISE OF THE RELEASED GHOSTS REVERBERATED AROUND THE

room. It was awe inspiring, like the release of a vast, ceaseless wind into a

long valley. The shockwaves hit me at the same time as they hit everything

else in the room, and every atom in my body was affected by it. The cabin

porthole threatened to shatter and let loose the ghosts from their prison

but, I suspected, even that eventuality would not see them leave.

They were trapped here, on this ship. Bound by circumstances and by

bonds too tight ever to break. Here, terribly, they would remain for as

long as the ship remained.

After a moment, the wailing, caterwauling sounds reduced to a more

sedate and sane level, and I stole a glance across at Osbourne. He sat amid

the swirling torrent of ill-defined shapes in a circle of ethereal light. He

was still smirking with an undisguised glee at just how clever a little boy

he was. It sickened me. There was something beyond amoral about this

man. Beyond any concept of science as sanity. Desperate, tragic,

overwhelmingly small evil.

But now, at last, I finally understood the nature of the manifestations

that had been lingering around me, haunting me for the past days, and

which filled the room around me even as I worked it all out. I could give

their suffering a name, at least. ‘You’ve been randomly trapping within

this jar the essences of people who have been or are or will be on board the

ship when some terrible tragedy has befallen them or when they have been

feeling sad or lonely or depressed. Am I right?’ I asked Osbourne, angrily.

If he was surprised that I had discovered the exact nature of his cruel

experiments, he didn’t show it. He maintained his bland mask of a casual

lack of interest in everything going on around him. ‘Ghosts of the past,’ I

continued when he refused to answer me, ‘ghosts of the present and

ghosts of the future. These essences, although only fragments or echoes

of true reality, nevertheless do possess a measure of human consciousness.

And an understanding of their plight. And the process only works on

negative energy because it requires such huge levels of adrenaline and

brain activity to give it a kick-start.’

It was something that I had dreaded ever since the first apparition had

made itself known to me. Osbourne’s machine wasn’t just capturing

people at the point of their death. After all, how many people had died, or

would die, on board the Queen Mary? A couple of hundred at most,

perhaps? But there were many tens of thousands of spirits in here. What

Osbourne was trapping in his obscene experiment, like some grotesque

butterfly collection, were snapshots of the essence of people. Of

passengers, crew, visitors, stretching from the moment that the ship’s first

rivet was cast to the inevitable point, perhaps several thousands of years in

the future, when the last piece of the iron hull would have rusted and

rotted into oblivion. Essences from the point in time when all these lost

souls were depressed or frightened or lonely or sick of life. A tiny

fragment of virtually everyone who had ever been or ever would be, on or

in or near the ship. Past, present, and future. The bell jar fed on negative

energy, and there was always plenty of that around. The skull, a universal

symbol of fear and depression, was an obvious representation of this. I

shuddered that it had taken me so long to work out something so simple.

And so cruel.

Suddenly, everything became clear to me. ‘That’s why this room has

always had such a reputation. Because it’s the psychic centre of the ship.

The second that you started your obscene contraption a few days ago,

ripples were created in time in both directions, as it sucked in all the

negative energy that it could find. It’s not a wonder that people have gone

mad in this place.’

Osbourne inclined his head to one side, a look of absolute and cynical

disdain on his face. A look that told of some harsh truths about to be

spoken, perhaps. ‘So?’ he asked, half-standing and parting the ghostly

forms in front of him like someone wafting away unwanted cigarette

smoke with a dismissive, arrogant wave of the hand. ‘What is your point?’

The implication was simple and obvious. He just did not give a damn.

‘They’re alive in there,’ I shouted. ‘Those poor people, they know what’s

going on, what stupid games you’re playing. They tried to warn me. They

tried to warn Miss Lamb that she was going to die. And now she’s in there

with them, a part of them. You don’t care, do you?’

I was reminded of a deep and lengthy conversation I had once shared

with a Roman centurion, at a settlement near Condercum, about the

morality of what amounted to ethnic genocide of the barbarian

Caledonians. And I remember still the horror and the shame that I had

felt at the time, and subsequently, that I could neither affect the outcome

nor, perhaps more pertinently, his judgement in the matter. For

intelligent men are always prone to the belief that they can change the

world for the better if only they can get everyone else to think and act as

they themselves do.

It happens. It has happened. It will happen again.

And that was where I came in. What’s the point, I was forced to ask, of

being able to live outside of time itself if all it allows you to do is to

watch the same mistakes being made over and over and over again?

For history repeats the old conceits, the glib replies and the same

defeats.

‘What you’re doing here is something that almost defies belief,’ I told

Osbourne, knowing that they were wasted words but saying them anyway

because my conscience would not allow me not to do so.

‘Thank you,’ he replied, beaming.

How like politicians scientists can be. Show them a wheel if they’d never

seen one before, and they would believe that they had invented it.

‘It was not well meant.’

The scientist shrugged as though unable fully to grasp the point that I

was trying to make. Perhaps he genuinely could not. It is possible that my

arguments were simply beyond his comprehension, so far removed was he

from the realm of sanity. ‘I fail to understand your concerns, Doctor,’ he

confirmed, with a seemingly sincere air of befuddlement and an

exasperated sigh. ‘You appear to be an intelligent man. A man of science.

Yet these sentiments you glibly throw at me, they are neither valid nor

scientific. They are sentimental nonsense. Are you not impressed by the

significant advances that I have managed to achieve in my work thus far?

This could change the very future of mankind.’

‘That’s not the point,’ I replied, astonished at this man’s hubris and the

fact that he couldn’t grasp something so simple, so basic.

‘Oh, but I very much think that it is the point,’ Osbourne snarled.

‘I didn’t get where I am today by backing down to lily-livered and

namby-pamby concerns about consequence. My conscience is clear.

Always. Where would science be if every time someone reached a point of

breakthrough they stopped and spent all their effort wringing their hands

in consternation and asking if they had the right to do it? It’s

preposterous. We’d get nothing done and all be flapping about like the

dodo, waiting for our extinction to come.’

‘But you must ask those questions,’ I argued. ‘You have that

responsibility. All those of learning do. It goes with the territory.

Unbridled curiosity is as dangerous a driving force as ambition or greed or

lust.’

Osbourne tutted loudly, his scowling face turned away from me. Clearly,

he was going to have none of it. ‘Did Einstein wait to check which way the

wind was blowing before he calculated the velocity of the speed of light?

Did Oppenheimer’s research into electron-positron pairs stop for tea and

twenty questions with the local women’s guild? Did Kelvin’s second law

of thermodynamics have to await a rubber-stamp by the procurator fiscal?

And I suppose that Fracastoro’s work with contagion and germ warfare

was subject to approval by the Inquisition?’

Actually, I felt like observing, Fracastoro’s work was subject to approval

by the Inquisition. I let the matter pass. ‘Have you finished?’ I asked.

But he had not. ‘This machine of my creation has done something that

no-one else has ever achieved,’ he said, proudly pointing to himself with a

trembling finger. ‘What do you expect? A great wailing and gnashing of

teeth? No, Doctor, not from me.’ He was shaking with anger now and,

perhaps, a touch of excitement. ‘Don’t you find the achievement in the

least little bit impressive, Doctor? Because, I’ll tell you something for

nothing, I do.’

I could not believe this man’s callous conceit and disregard for the most

basic human compassion. And I could not understand it either. I had tried

to, but now I had given up trying. ‘What’s it for?’ I shouted, angrily. ‘Why

did you invent something that causes nothing but pain and misery and

suffering? What reason can you possibly have for making such an

abomination?’

‘Why?’ asked Osbourne. ‘You want to know why? Because I can!’

‘That’s . . ’ I paused, shocked. ‘A crime,’ I finally added.

‘Then write to your MP,’ suggested Osbourne cynically. ‘Have the

authorities put a stop to my wicked ways . . ’ He held his hands together

in mock surrender. ‘I’ll come quietly.’

‘Oh, grow up,’ I told him. I stood, and the ghosts parted for me like a

pair of heavy draped curtains drawing back. For a second I thought about

thanking them.

Some of the shapes I could vaguely recognise from my experiences

around the ship, but there were many, many others that were new to me.

One, in particular, caught my attention. It was, perhaps, the most

horrifying image of all: the torso and head of Simpkins, seemingly cut in

half and screaming in anguish. I looked at the shimmering, barely

comprehensible visitation and my anger rose to levels that, even now,

frighten me. At that point, in that room, with that man sitting opposite

me with a smug expression on his face, I could easily have killed.

‘That hasn’t happened yet,’ I argued, pointing at the Simpkins ‘ghost’,

‘This man is still alive and working on the ship at this very moment. You

could have used this invention to try to save that young man’s life from

some future tragedy instead of damning his spirit to an eternity of

imprisonment.’

‘You are a weak and feeble wretch,’ Osbourne said from within his

shroud, his carnival tent of souls. His words echoed out to me, magnified

and distorted by the curious phenomena that had engulfed him. ‘I thought

you were not like all the others, Doctor, but you are. Your mind is so full

of concern for everyone else that you have no time to think of yourself.’

Osbourne was clearly proud of his achievements. ‘The soul,’ he

continued. ‘What is “the soul”? I should argue that it doesn’t exist. I’m

prepared to stake my reputation upon it.’

‘Now, that is not something to be given up lightly,’ I replied sarcastically.

Osbourne ignored my barbed comment. ‘There is no such thing as a

soul,’ he repeated. ‘There is only a life-force, which is mine or anyone

else’s for that matter, to use as I or we or they see fit.’

‘You are a brilliant man,’ I told the scientist, truthfully. ‘And that

brilliance has corrupted you. You’re beyond help. Given time, I could have

. . ’

He would not allow me to finish. ‘Time?’ he interrupted. ‘An incestuous

whore. A plaything, just like the atom, to be split, dissected, cut up into

fragments and studied. I shall master time and that achievement will be

my immortality.’

I could stand the shocking, venal lack of moral conscience in this man no

longer. In a rage, I strode across the room, kicking aside the metronome

and approaching the bell jar with only one intention.

Osbourne was on his feet now as, in that split second, he saw what I was

planning to do. ‘Stay away from that jar,’ he warned. ‘You have no right.’

Strangely, he did not try to stop me. I gave him a dismissive glance. ‘I

have every right,’ I shouted amid the rising cacophony of voices in the

room. Now, I did not take my eyes from the jar as I picked up the wooden

frame of the metronome and brought its full weight down upon the top of

the glass, smashing it to smithereens with one mighty blow.

A flood of psychic energy filled the room, and me with it. Completely

overwhelmed, I again found myself collapsing to the floor; but, unlike last

time, there was a smile on my face as I did so. This simple act of

destruction was my release from the choking constraints of the last few

days. From the pain and the misery and the self-doubt and all those other

things that I thought I had left behind on Gallifrey and on Skaro. A

feeling of being helpless to change the course of events, of not having the

right answers when the cogs that turn the wheels of the universe asked of

me that I should be the one to do their dirty work for them.

The time is out of joint, oh cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it

right.

This felt like the right thing to do.

It felt like a taste of freedom at last.

It felt, in fact, like victory.

EPILOGUE

OH, HOW THE GHOST

OF YOU CLINGS

My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,

is driven, I know not whither.

JOHN WEBSTER, THE WHITE DEVIL

I AWOKE SEVERAL HOURS LATER, DISORIENTATED AND EMERGING

from a lucid dream in which I was sitting on a tartan blanket on the newly

mown grass lawn of Christ’s College, Oxford. The smell of the freshly cut

grass lingered with me for several seconds as I remembered that I was

having a jolly picnic of ham and cheese sandwiches, fairy cakes and lemon

tea, and that my most charming and affable companions were Le Rol Soleil

Loius XIV, Joseph Goebbels, Bertrand Russell and Sir Kenneth Clark.

The Marquise de Pompadour had just turned up after getting delayed in

heavy traffic on the M3, and things were starting to get really interesting

with a juggling jester playing a banjo whilst sitting on top of a small wall,

when – boom – I threw myself bolt-upright from the floor.

‘Bizarre,’ I told anyone who might have been listening. But there was no

reply.

I was quite alone in the room. Beyond the shattered wreckage of the jar,

tiny shards of glass surrounded me in every direction like a castle moat.

Quite how I had not been cut to ribbons was a question best left for

another day. Carefully, I stood, shook my jacket free of the offending

materials and looked around the room again.

Osbourne was nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps that was for the best.

The room was silent and still, even the dust having settled down quietly

to wait for the next blast of wind to disturb its rest.

‘Not quite what I expected to happen,’ I told the same no-one in-

particular as I crossed the floor to the door, the glass splinters crunching

loud beneath my feet. I picked up my hat from where it had fallen in the

confusion, jammed it back on my head, and left Cabin 672. As I closed

the door, I smiled broadly, happily, feeling as well and satisfied and

unconcerned as I had at any time since the TARDIS had brought me to

this terrible place.

I searched the ship for over thirty minutes. It was free, seemingly, of the

haunting that had plagued me since my arrival and infested the ship for

who-knew-how-long before that. It was as though a huge weight had been

lifted from my mind. But there was one more tragedy for me to face, and

it was made all the worse for me by the fact that I knew that it was

coming.

As I reached the second deck, and hurried along the corridor towards the

central stairwell that led up to the TARDIS, and to my freedom, I saw a

group of ship’s personnel shouting through a locked hatch. My heart sank

as I recognised one of them as Simpkins’s friend, Jarvis.

‘Come on now, matey,’ I heard him cry through the bulkhead. ‘Open it

up and let’s have a nice cup of tea and a chat about this. It’s bloody

madness.’

‘No,’ came a muffled cry from the other side. ‘This ship’s damned, you

know that. You all know that. We’re never gonna get off it alive. I’m

taking the only way out that I can.’

‘Don’t be a coward and a fool, Simpkins,’ an officer barked in reply,

nudging Jarvis out of the way and speaking directly to the solid grey door.

I hid behind a nearby corner and watched the tragedy unfold before me

with a terrible feeling of dèja vu. ‘Come on, son,’ the officer continued, in

a much more conciliatory manner. ‘Let’s have a bit less of all that

“Goodbye cruel world” nonsense, there’s no need for you to be doing any

of this. Your mate here’s right, come on out and we’ll talk about it.’

A red emergency light above the door, and the screeching of a warning

siren told their own, sad story. Simpkins had opened the exterior

bulkhead. I could not hear exactly what his final reply to his crew mates’

pleadings was, but the meaning of it was clear enough from the tone.

Seconds later, there was the crash of the bulkhead slamming shut and the

scream of Simpkins as it sliced him cleanly in two. Killed by a fate that

had fascinated him but which perhaps he could never have foreseen, but

which I could. And did.

I headed back to the TARDIS with heavy hearts and a brooding sense of

failure that lingered around me like a blackened thunder cloud. It was the

feeling of helplessness that hurt more than of not having done the right

thing. Had I been manipulated, cruelly, by fates in which I had ceased to

believe seven hundred years earlier? Perhaps. I had been used as some

greater power’s puppet before this, but usually, I had reconciled such

situations with the inevitability that we, the fates and I, shared similar

aims. On this occasion, however, I could not help but feel that nothing

had been accomplished or gained for anyone, except some amusement for

the wretch Osbourne. Wherever he was now.

And that was another good point. What, exactly, had happened to

Osbourne? My initial feeling had been that he had been destroyed when

his creation exploded but, the more I thought about it, the less likely that

scenario seemed to be. I finally understood why that was, when I rounded

the corner and stood facing the TARDIS to find a mass of glowing white

energy surrounding it.

The spectres were still on board the ship, after all. As I suspected they

always would be. They were everywhere, having formed themselves into

one vast collective gestalt of psychic energy that was woven into the very

fabric of the ship. No longer trapped by the jar, maybe, but now they were

truly stuck here forever.

I could see individual faces within the mass – the angry woman, the

child, Simpkins – all bursting to the surface occasionally and then dipping

back into the rippling collective beneath. But they all spoke with one

voice. One booming, thundering, outrageously loud voice.

They told me to leave, and in the blink of an eye they faded and

vanished.

But Osbourne was there, standing by the TARDIS with that same

infuriatingly smug expression on his face. I was baffled.

Why, I found myself asking, had all the essences not simply departed the

ship now that they were free from their prison? But I knew the answer

even before the words had left my lips.

‘Where else has there ever been for us to go?’ asked Osbourne. Then, I

understood. All these echoes of the past, the present and the future were

still trapped. Having created the problem, Osbourne was now, had always

and would always be a part of it. And I realised this as he too vanished

before my eyes like a puff of smoke.

Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea

The author would like to thank his publishers, David Howe and Stephen

James Walker, for giving him the tremendous opportunity to write Ghost

Ship and for their generous support and encouragement during the

creation of this novella.

My sincere thanks to two of my oldest, dearest and most long-suffering

friends Ian Abrahams and Martin Day (true gentlemen and dudes, both).

Rave on. Also, to Suzanne Campagna, Paul Cornell, Tony and Jane

Kenealy, Diana Dougherty, Alan Lamb, Mike Lee, Shaun Lyon, Steve ‘The

Hat’ Purcell, Dave McIntee, Kathy Sullivan, Jim Swallow, my excellent

proof-reader Susannah Tiller, GeoffWessel ( geezer), successive English

teachers Alice Burnside, Mick Lovell, Billy Maxwell, Mick McCann and

Anne Fulton who got me to a level of, you know, vague literacy. And my

family, for everything else not covered elsewhere.

About the Author

Bohemian womaniser, revolutionary spirit and general all-round sleazeball,

Keith Topping is a journalist and author of over twenty books including

two editions of The Guinness Book of Classic British TV, numerous guides to

TV series as diverse as The X-Files, Star Trek, The Avengers and Roswel for Virgin Books, four BBC Doctor Who novels (including the award-winning

The Hol ow Men) and the best-selling Slayer: An Unofficial and Unauthorised

Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Inside Bartlet’s White House. He has

written for many TV and genre magazines including Starburst and Shivers

and is a former Contributing Editor of DreamWatch, specialising in

coverage of US series such as Buffy, Angel, Stargate SG-1 and The West Wing.

Keith was born on sunny Tyneside on the same day in 1963 that his

beloved Newcastle United lost 3-2 at home to Northampton Town.

Things have improved a bit since then. He began his journalistic career

whilst he was still working for the civil service (he has since escaped),

writing for music, TV and football fanzines. He regularly appears on local

radio and also contributed to the BBC television series I ♥ the 70s. He is

currently co-scripting, with Martin Day, a proposed TV series for an

independent production company. His hobbies include socialising with

friends, foreign travel, very loud pop music, trashy British horror movies,

current affairs and military history. His autobiography, I’ve Had Her, will

be published posthumously.