T

he entity waited, but the hunger was rising once more.  Soon it would be unbearable, but for now it could be ignored.  It hovered at the far edge of the bridge, unwilling to return fully to its own domain.  The longing to cross back in to the physical world was great. It ached for the sensation of movement, and to feel the floor beneath its borrowed feet. Barefoot on soft furnishings, or better still, on gravel with blood tricking from the cuts scored by tiny pieces of stone.  An exquisite sensation.  It also wished to hear the sounds of life around it with borrowed ears.  Life that would scream as it was vanquished from the world. And to smell aromas that it had never smelt before, along with those more familiar. Especially the acrid sickly sweet smell of death.  As for the problems while in the material world, they were few.  The vocal cords were difficult to use by remote, but when it resided in the bridge it learnt fast.  Soon it would be perfect.  Pleasurable though all these senses were, most of all it needed to rip and bite.  To kill.  For now though it needed to be patient. Killing would come soon enough.  Killing and consuming.  It was gaining power for its final push.  This time it would not need to retreat again to the brink of the formless void.

 

The strangers troubled it no longer.  It had now recognised one of them from before.  From one of the other punctures in the fabric of the universe.  Whether it was in the future or past, it was hard to be certain.  It was all the same to a being that existed from beyond space and time.  The recognised one had a different face then, but the disguise had been seen through.  But for what reason was he here?  Why did he interfere with the reward?  The reward that it had been given, and it meant to take.  And why did he play such games?  If the Doctor continued to stand in its way, he too would be consumed along with the others.  It was of no significance that he knew of its real existence, for the information could not be of much use.  The others may not believe him anyway.  Maybe its insistence that it was the Loa would confuse them.  They would not want to hurt a spirit from God.  The bridge had informed it that all men both fear and praise Gods.  So it would be their God for the remainder of all their painful lives.  The smattering of data provided by the bridge’s brain provided no clue as to how his minions had been stopped in the field.  But it was no matter. It had been weak and they had been lucky.  If the entity was strong enough and provided overwhelming odds, it would not be thwarted again.  Soon it would be ready.  Very soon. And then all would be consumed.  It would claim its reward.  In the meantime the hunger grew.

 

* * * *

 

The Doctor thumbed through his five hundred year diary, searching for the correct entry.  He bent the leather bound spine in his weathered hands, and scanned the next page.  Still the account eluded him.  The problem seemed to be his method of indexing his travels.  Some entries were placed in the chronological order of the time continuum.  This had of course caused problems, as often he could only guess at when or where he had landed.  Another more important mistake with this method of record keeping was that the diary only covered five centuries.  For some inexplicable reason he had given the first entry date as 1203 AD, with a brief note on a talk with a goat herder in Nepal on the best way to make cheese. Therefore if entries were filed correctly, the diary would run out in 1703 AD.  Obviously, with the whole span of history to explore, the greater part of his adventures were far outside this small frame of time, but for some reason he had attempted to keep this system running even when it was clearly not working.  Scribbled in the back pages, under a section entitled Contacts’ Names and Planets, lay a lengthy account of the evacuation and relocation of the inhabitants of Earth in the year 8,625,566 AD.  Squeezed in a few inches in front was the Battle of Culloden Moor of 1746 AD, where he had met and befriended Jamie.  Other times he had conveniently forgotten this unworkable method, and placed entries in order of his own age.  An easier and much quicker way of recording, but somehow it didn’t always work.  All too often an event would happen and he would try to file it by his age, but the page would already be taken by chronological order of the time continuum.  So he would put the entry anywhere, and confuse everything that little bit more.

 

Bored with his hopeless search, the Doctor decided on another way to find the record.  He closed the diary.  It thumped shut, causing a small cloud of dust to rise from its pages. Waiting a few seconds, he opened it at random.  The book fell open, displaying neat looped letters.  It was a contrast to his more bohemian writing.  The hand of his previous incarnation.  Yes, this could be it, he thought contentedly.  It was long ago when he had first encountered the Dimensional Entities.  Now it was just a dim memory.  Quickly he read the first few lines, and then broke in to a broad grin.  It was the correct entry, and fortunately he had gone in to great detail.  He settled down to read.  Minutes later the grin had faded from his lips.

 

Still deep in thought, he closed his diary.  A being very similar to the entity had been encountered a very long time ago.  The Doctor had been a novice explorer of the cosmos, not long breaking free from his bond with the Time Lords.  During these early travels, a long forgotten file in the TARDIS databanks had sparked his curiosity, and he had undertaken a trip to deep prehistory.  There he had encountered the Dimensional Entities.  They were primeval beings, bodiless in the framework of the universe itself.  Existing everywhere and nowhere at once.  They were unable to see or hear anything that happened in the material world, unless they broke through and stole the use of a body.  Sometimes the framework became bare, and they could build a bridge using mental power alone.  Mental power from a medium, whose very being they hijacked to build the bridge.  Once the crossing was complete, the medium would become fully possessed and in the end would be the only victim not to die by the entity’s metaphorical hand.  Usually, once all life on the planet had perished, the medium would slowly waste away and die of starvation.  Only then would the bridge crumple, banishing the Dimensional Entity back to its own domain. Although cunning, all their knowledge was gained from the data stored in the medium’s minds.  Back in the void, they had no memories, as they had no brains to store them, so if they returned all that they had learnt would be instantly forgotten.  Therefore, if they entered the mind of a cat, they could only see the world from a cat’s perspective.  But once there, they would consume and destroy, attempting to quench an incredible hunger.  But it was a hunger that could never be satisfied. 

 

When he had come face to face with an entity all that time ago, it inhabited a seal-like creature on the far fringes of the galaxy.  By the time he had found it, the entity had decimated the entire continent. Since the medium was primitive and had never seen a humanoid before, the Doctor had found it straightforward to trap and kill the animal.  The death of the seal creature had caused the bridge to collapse, and banished the Dimensional Entity back to its own domain.  The seal creatures had eventually evolved in to a highly sophisticated race, oblivious to how close they had come to extinction.  But now the entity calling itself the Loa possessed a human brain.   The brain of a sentient being.  Even from such a comparatively primitive era, this made it far more deadly.  Simple tricks, such as those used to kill the seal-like medium, would no longer be of any use.  And there was another problem.  The only way the Doctor knew of to thwart the Dimensional Entities was to destroy their medium.  Without it they remained trapped in the fabric of time.  The promise made to Toussaint rang around the Doctor’s mind, refusing to be suppressed.  The promise to set him free.  How can he liberate the old slave when the only way he could see to save his planet was to kill him?  

 

Shoving the five hundred year diary back in his coat, the Doctor turned to his companion. Victoria lounged on a chair next to him in the dining room.  Yet again she had her nose buried in the book on graphology.  Seeing that he had finished reading, she placed a bookmark amongst its pages, and gave him one of her pretty smiles.

 

‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she asked.

 

‘Yes.  I’m afraid I did,’ replied the Doctor, ‘But I’m still no closer to solving this problem.’

 

‘I thought you had already,’ said Victoria, taken aback.  ‘Surely when Toussaint agreed to stop performing his ritual it prevented that terrible creature from possessing him.’

 

‘I only wish that were true,’ said the Doctor glumly, ‘It was the psychic power exerted during the ritual that was used by the Dimensional Entity to make its bridge.  If that power remains then the path to its world will stay open.  It is even likely that this path is permanent.  You see Victoria, the ritual was simply window dressing.’

 

‘What was the ritual anyway?  And what is a Houngan of Vaudou religion, and all that carbuncle?’

 

‘The translation would be a Priest of Voodoo,’ explained the Doctor.

 

‘Of course, Voodoo.  That explains the zombi then.’

 

‘Actually, no!  That is simply a coincidence,’ the Doctor disagreed, ‘Forget most of the stories you may have heard about Voodoo.  The press has a lot to answer for.  Basically it’s a fusion of African and Catholic religions, brought about in slave cultures to help them cope with the awful life they suffered.  Toussaint was simply performing a simplified method from his own religion to contact what he believed to be a spirit, or Loa, to guide him.  He must have been so distraught that the Dimensional Entities used his mental energy to break through from their realm.’

 

‘Then why does this entity insist on calling itself the Loa?’ asked Victoria.

 

‘Good question.  If you ask me it’s a little bit childish.  Thinking I’d be fooled by such a transparent attempt!’

 

The door of the dining room swung open, and Jamie returned from his visit to the bathroom. Seeing that the Doctor had finished studying the diary, he sank down in to a spare chair. His question forced a groan of protest from his friend.

 

‘So Doctor, what’s all this Houngan of Vaudou religion anyway?’

 

 * * * *

 

The wire brush scraped the final remains of burnt and blackened grease out of the oven. Straightening his aching back, Toussaint wiped the small beads of sweat from his forehead.  The arthritis in his legs started its usual throb, so the old man rose to his full height as delicately as possible.  He hobbled across to a storage cupboard, replaced the brush and cleaning fluids inside, and then deposited the dirt in the rubbish bin.  He thought intently for a moment, before pushing the kitchen door open a crack.  He had already picked up the groceries from the village, and with all the upset in the household he hadn’t yet been given any more chores to do.  If he was careful, he could snatch some time to himself. Warily he peeked outside.  There was no one there, and no sounds of activity close by.  Toussaint breathed a sigh of happiness, and silently pulled the door shut.  Gratefully he lowered himself on to a chair set by the kitchen table.  As the old slave rested, the pain in his legs subsided. 

 

To Toussaint’s surprise, the stranger had been as good as his word.  There had been no punishment awaiting him for his ‘crime’.  No beating for missing the whole morning of work. In fact Oscar hadn’t noticed his absence at all, although he did have some peculiar looks aimed in his direction from Miss Nash.  It seemed that the Doctor was an honourable man after all.  And if the Doctor kept his word about this, then maybe at last his own freedom was in sight.  His freedom, and that of his granddaughter.

 

The request to suspend his worship did worry him, but he had given his word.  Toussaint was proud.  His word was the one thing that could not be taken from him.  He would keep it. Anyway, if there was a chance that he had contacted a Guede, then he would have to be careful.  They had a malevolent edge, and had to be approached with caution.  It was true, as the Doctor had stated, that they were the Loas who governed darkness, death and debauchery, but they also controlled the preservation and renewal of life and the growth of children.  The Guede’s power was essential, and if the Doctor’s promise proved hollow it may yet aid him.  If necessary he will perform the ritual with Zara present, just like the first time.  The Loa hadn’t contacted him then, so he had become disheartened and took to performing the ritual alone.  It was a dangerous and foolish thing to do.  Next time he would not make the same error.

 

Toussaint hoped that it was not the Loa that had caused the death of his master, but he didn’t grieve his passing.  To his mind it was because of men like Stedman, and his father before him, that slavery existed.  White men believing in their superiority over black. However hard he tried, he could not believe the Doctor’s insistence that this hated man was simply going to let him and Zara walk free.  It was far more likely that the Doctor would have smuggled them out of the house, and taken them in his sailing ship back to their homeland. No doubt he had his own motive to perform this good deed.  Maybe to atone under the gaze of God for previous wrongdoings.  Similarly, he had no reason to believe the Doctor’s insurances that slavery would soon disappear for all.  The white men would never change. All through his life, he had been shown time and time again that nothing that he ever had was his and his alone.  The French slavers in Hispaniola had even changed his own African name to something more acceptable to their European tastes.  There was probably nobody alive that knew his real name.  In fact Toussaint had been so young when it changed that, after all these years of bondage, even he couldn’t recall what it originally was.  They had taken from him his birthright and identity.  The more the old slave thought about it, the angrier he became.  He should have spent his life in freedom.  It shouldn’t be given to him when he was old and being slowly crippled from arthritis. He should have had it always.  It was his right.  His life had been stolen from him, and he could never reclaim it.  It was for this reason that he had originally contacted the Loa.  Gran Met, the creator of the world, sent the Loa so it would help him in his quest. 

 

He looked up as footsteps trampled outside.  When Miss Nash entered, Toussaint was already standing ready to leave the kitchen.  He gave a brisk acknowledgement, as cook held open the door for him.  He strode through with legs that were miraculously free of all symptoms of arthritis.  The intruder had returned.

 

* * * *

 

Wallace moped around the laboratory.  His head ached with the persistent killjoy thump of a hangover.  The scientist hated being awake as he sobered up and the hangover got a grip on his body.  Unfortunately following the mid-day meal, sleep was a luxury that his consciousness refused to give him.  After rushing to the bathroom, he had been violently sick in the small washbasin.  He found himself staring at the remains of his dinner floating in the sink, willing it not to move.  Fortunately, there had been not even the smallest flicker of life.  Still, he ended up studying it carefully, just in case a morsel of meat lay in wait for him to drop his guard.  He had been engrossed in this activity, when he had realised that Oscar was wiping his chin.  Partly glad for the comfort, but partly embarrassed at being found in such a comprising position by a servant, Wallace had shook himself free and stormed away.  His butler had cleared up the mess, before following at a discrete distance.

 

The rest of the afternoon and early evening had been frittered away in his bedroom, demolishing a number of the finest bottles of wine that the late Stedman’s cellar had to offer.  From time to time he became aware that Oscar was outside the door, but he never came in.  Probably the butler spent those moments listening at the keyhole, to make sure his last remaining employer was still alive.  Wallace had ignored the indiscretion, but had felt anything but alive.  On the contrary, his body had felt sick and dead.  The alcohol hadn’t helped as it pumped around his bloodstream, stubbornly refusing to allow his brain to shut down.  It forced him to think about the writhing, wriggling steak.  He knew it was impossible, but he had seen it.  Could he believe the evidence of his own eyes? 

 

Then, as these very same eyes began to see double, the solution had hit him.  He knew that there were not two overlapping doorways in his room.  The drink had caused his eyes to become dysfunctional.  In short, he could no longer believe what they showed him.  If he did then he may well walk in to a wall, or at very least the doorframe.  Conclusive proof that the sense of vision could lie.  He had been under a great deal of strain during the last twenty-four hours.  The death of his colleague and the threatening of his research had been plaguing him.  Added to that, there were the ridiculous notions of Stedman’s guests.  Of course he didn’t mind Victoria’s beliefs.  She was pleasant on the eye, and only a woman. She was expected to see things from an emotional and pointless viewpoint.  In fact, he had a fancy that he might ask her for a walk around the garden tomorrow.  He may be able to get his hands on some of those delectable curves.  But how he had wished he had never set eyes on that damn Doctor.  No doubt it was due to the unusual pressure, coupled with the Doctor’s childish stories of monsters that had caused him to hallucinate.  Perhaps the brandy played a small part as well.  Only a tiny part of course.  He had drunk the sweet liquor many times previously, and never before had he ever felt inclined to believe his steak was trying to kill him.  Not even once!  He had obviously strained his brain.  Perhaps he should undertake some research on the event, and try to recreate the effect in the laboratory.  There might be a scientific paper in it. 

 

After deciding that it was all in his mind, Wallace had set aside the demon drink.  There was very little left in the bottle anyway.  Instead, he went to hunt for Oscar.  His search had been over within seconds.  The butler had sprung up from his knees, as the drunken scientist opened his bedroom door.  Eavesdropping, but once more Wallace had decided to disregard the misdemeanour.  There were more pressing matters.  If Oscar was there, who had been watching the guests?  They could have fled the mansion, which would have been disaster for his research.  He needed time to publish.  The last thing he required was for Stedman’s witch of a sister to make him homeless.  In a slurred voice, he had informed his faithful servant to track them down, but was both surprised and delighted to be told at once that they were happily reading in the drawing room.  It had appeared that they had no intension of running.  Down to his deal naturally.  If they ran, they would be caught and hung. If they remained, then they would escape the noose.  That was assuming they were guilty, but there seemed little doubt that that were.  To be safe, he had dispatched Oscar to keep an eye on them.  He didn’t want any more murders on his hands, and Oscar still had his pistol if there was any trouble.

 

All that had all been some time ago, and now the alcohol was having its revenge.  As the sun began its descent, Wallace drew the heavy laboratory curtains shut to keep the darkness away.  He then lifted the glass cover of an oil lamp and lit its wick.  Replacing the glass, he turned the fuel supply up, bathing the room in gentle light.  Rubbing his aching forehead tenderly, he strode to the mortuary slab.  On it rested the body of Stedman.  Already it was displaying signs of rigor mortis.  The hangover helped him to shove all emotional feelings in to an empty void in his mind.  In his usual scientific manner he studied the corpse.  One arm - the right – was completely missing.  The left hand was also severed, and lay on the corner of the mortuary slab as if it was little more than a paperweight.  Reaching for a scalpel, Wallace cut the clothing around the shoulder blade to expose the full extent of the injury to the right arm.  The ball and socket joint had been splintered as if it was a twig.  The scientist furrowed his brow.  Whoever had inflicted this wound on poor Stedman was very powerful indeed.  He doubted very much that either the Doctor or Jamie possessed such brutal strength. 

 

Swiftly his attention turned to the damage under the rib cage, snipping the tight bonds that the Doctor had tied on the arms and legs so he could get a closer look without hindrance. The liver and one kidney had been literally torn out.  He shook his head sadly.  The committer of such a terrible crime must have been a madman.  The more he looked at the body, the more convinced he became that both the Doctor and Jamie were after all innocent.  This revelation surprised him.  He had been so sure of their guilt.  Now he knew of their innocence, he could almost see the crime in his mind’s eye.  The two guests must have stumbled on a lunatic who had broken in and attacked Stedman.  As he was covered in blood from extracting his colleague’s organs, they had jumped to the illogical conclusion that he was a zombi.  He was mildly surprised that the Doctor, being a man of science, had come to that assumption but he supposed it was understandable.  Straining the brain does strange things, he thought.  In fact, it wasn’t long ago that that he himself believed that his lunch was out to get him.  The laugh that accompanied this reflection hurt his head, so he forced himself to stop. 

 

In full grip of the hangover, Wallace’s throat felt dry and parched.  He longed for a steaming cup of tea.  Wallace was about to pull the bell-pull to summon Oscar, when suddenly his sobering brain produced a wave of embarrassment.  What must the man think of him?  His master screaming at a plate of steak, potatoes and boiled veg as if it was a tiger.  His hand relaxed on the bell-pull, and instead the scientist turned on the Stedman Gas Flamer.  Gas hissed through its pipes, and a red flame burst forth when Wallace offered a match to its end.  A beaker full of water was placed above, and it started to heat up.  A tray containing a small silver teapot, a milk jug, a tea caddy, and a bone china cup with saucer was whipped from a cupboard and set on the workbench.  Tea making in the lab was a process that had been a normal state of affairs during his long nights of experimentation, and was often his only activity unrelated to work.  Now it saved Wallace from further embarrassment in front of his servants. 

 

Whilst the water bubbled softly away, his scrutiny was returned to the corpse. This time, his inspection focused on the vicious gash in Stedman’s neck.  It was here that he found something unexpected.  Hurriedly he went to his medical instruments, and grabbed a pair of long tweezers.  With practiced skill, his hands moved in and plucked a small white object from deep in the lesion.  Taking a few steps towards the oil lamp, he held it up in the light.  It was a human incisor.  Decayed with blackened enamel at the root, but definitely a human tooth.  What was such a thing doing in Stedman’s wound?  The answer seemed obvious. The lunatic must have taken the killing blow using his mouth.  Nevertheless, the scientist found it hard to accept this logical answer.  His upbringing found it extremely difficult to believe that a human being, however mad, would stoop so low as to attack a gentleman in such a manner.  Maybe the uncivilised natives in far off Africa would be so barbarous, but such things certainly would never happen in Great Britain. 

 

Still unsure of his conclusions, Wallace turned his attention to the body of the smallpox victim.  He looked at the corpse, hands and legs trussed together with a piece of curtain.  To most people it would have been a horrendous sight, but to Wallace it was a glorious step on the path to fame and fortune.  On impulse, he bent down and angled the face of Edgar Wells towards him.  Using one hand, he forced the lower jaw open.  The man hadn’t looked after his teeth during life, and the proof was shown in the rotten jaw.  Even so, only one tooth was missing.  An incisor.  Slightly shaking, with the pain in his head forgotten, Wallace leant forward.  The tooth found embedded in Stedman’s neck was an exact fit.  Jerking upright in alarm, Wallace backed away from the body.  It must be a coincidence, he told himself repeatedly.  Just a simple coincidence.  There are no such things as zombi.  And then he felt something snap under his foot.  Glancing down, he saw Stedman’s missing arm, plucked free of white flesh.  It had lain hidden behind the mortuary slab until his shoe had disturbed it.

 

Feeling physically sick for the second time that day, Wallace swung around and looked at the body of his colleague.  The Doctor’s tall tale almost made him expect Stedman to rise from the mortuary slab, except he knew that it couldn’t.  It was impossible.  He was a man of science that knew such things were superstitious tales with no basis in reality.  Even so, he took an involuntarily step backwards, away from the corpse.  A gentle tug at his trousers caused him to freeze in fright.  A tiny rip of cloth accompanied by a cold sensation sent goosebumps over his body.  Again he looked towards his feet.  The mouth of Edgar Wells was opening and shutting, nibbling at his well-tailored trouser leg.  The chomping blackened teeth were only a hair away from his ankle, while the rest of his body lay tightly bound and immovable on the floor.  His decayed eyeballs rolled to stare towards him, and the hideous dead tongue slithered against Wallace’s well-polished shoes. 

 

The scientist panicked.  He tore himself away from the bound corpse, and spun towards the shelter of the exit.  His heart beating at an alarming rate, he nearly ran straight in to the obstruction before he realised it was there.  Stedman stood between him and the way out. However, this was no reunion of lost friends.  This was a nightmare given form. His colleague’s features no longer reflected the kind but shy person he was in life, but were instead a ghastly parody.  Warped and bloody, with a cold evil stare behind his lifeless eyes.  The ragged remains of his blood stained shirtsleeve flapped as the zombi lunged at his former partner. 

 

Life preserving instinct pumped adrenaline in to the scientist’s body, giving him the energy to fling himself behind the mortuary slab.  Stedman’s blooded stump of an arm swiped vainly after him.  The impact of Wallace’s leap knocked the breath out of him, and he lay on the floor panting for air.  Knowing that he didn’t have the time to indulge himself with such a basic need, he scrambled to his feet.  Before he could flee, the slow moving corpse lunged for Wallace yet again.  This time, Stedman’s arm hooked around the scientist’s neck and attempted to pull him towards waiting teeth.  Without a hand to grip hold of him, Wallace easily shook himself free and took flight. 

 

Now the monster was on the far side of the mortuary slab, he had a free path to the sanctuary of the laboratory door.  Arms flailing in desperation, the scientist scrambled towards it, leaping over desks and apparatus in his haste.  So intent in reaching safety, Wallace failed to observe the still lit Stedman Gas Flamer fall to the floor.  Some of his anatomy notes were knocked on top of it, and were instantly set ablaze.  The paper blackened and shrivelled under the intense heat, until all that was left was charcoal.   The flame rapidly spread to the carpet, bringing forth choking fumes.   Wallace did not linger for one second to look back at the infant fire.  With his scientific beliefs shattered, he fled the laboratory, leaving the heavy oak door wide open behind him.  Out of the clouds of billowing smoke shuffled the shape of Stedman. Following his former friend.  Ready to consume.