Free Wishing Well by Trevor Baxendale Page B

hand through her long black hair in exasperation. 'Listen, there's something you should know about Barney.
    They looked expectantly at her.
    'We saw him last night, right here by the well...' Martha looked at the patch of grass where the old man had turned to dust. 'It was horrible.'
    'He's always hanging around the well,' Angela said. 'In fact, I'm surprised he's not here now.'
    'What do you mean, it was horrible?' asked Sadie with a frown.
    Martha took a deep breath. 'Something happened here last night, something terrible. You've got to believe me, the Doctor could be in real danger. Pull him back up!'
    Confused, but seeing the genuine fear in Martha's eyes, Angela released the handgrip on the winch. 'All right,' she said. 'I'll wind it back up...'
    But the winch wouldn't budge. 'It's stuck,' she said.
    Martha joined her and added her own strength, but the mechanism might as well have been carved from solid rock.
    Angela reached across the well and touched the rope. 'Ye gods, it's as taut as a bow string,' she said. 'Something's pulling on it – hard!'
    Martha looked back at the frozen windlass and then back down the well. 'What are we going to do? Doctor!'
    The cat's eyes closed again, and for a long moment the Doctor just stared at it. When the animal still didn't move, the Doctor reached out to touch it. It was cold and stiff. There had been no life in the dry, cracked eyes. The thing was dead and had been for a long time. Or at least it should have been. What was keeping it going? The weed?
    Something touched his leg and he aimed the torch down at his feet. There was a large mass of the white weed spread out below him like a gigantic cobweb stretched across the well-shaft. His plimsolls were touching some of the strands. He tried to pull his legs back up away from the tangled growth, but the uppermost fronds had somehow wound themselves around his feet. He kicked out but found the weed had got quite a grip.
    'Not good,' he murmured. 'Not good at all.'
    He shone the torchlight down and, to his mounting consternation, saw that the milky tendrils were actually moving, feeling their way over his ankles and up his shins. They crept under his trousers and over the material, increasing their grip.
    Hurriedly he pulled out the walkie-talkie and pressed the transmit button. 'Hello? Martha? Can you hear me?'
    There was nothing, not even static now. He shook the radio and tried again. 'Martha? Angela? Anyone?' With a hiss of annoyance he stowed the walkie-talkie again, but in doing so lost his grip on the torch and the lanyard slipped free of his belt. The beam of light whirled briefly as the torch fell and disappeared into the web below. For a moment the light shone directly upwards, illuminating the Doctor as he hung in the air like a puppet on a string. The weed had crawled up over his knees now, and was beginning to exert pressure – pulling him down.
    And then the light faded. The Doctor couldn't tell if the torch had died or if it had fallen deeper into the morass below until the light was completely lost – but either way, it hardly mattered. Because suddenly the Doctor was plunged into complete and utter darkness. He couldn't see a thing.
    And the weed was still pulling him down.
    'It's working!' announced Angela suddenly as the winch rattled into life. 'It must have got caught on something again.'
    Martha peered down the well, but she couldn't see anything. The walkie-talkie was useless. She tried calling down, but her voice just seemed to fall away into nothingness inside the shaft.
    The winch was winding the rope back onto the drum at a good rate. Any minute now...' said Sadie, and they all looked down the well, waiting for the first sign of the Doctor. The rope grew thicker on the drum as it slowly revolved and the blue line that dangled down into the shaft began to snake back and forth.
    'I don't like the look of this,' said Angela after a moment.
    Then they saw the end of the rope as it ascended the shaft, and