The only was I can in any way justify this is that it's practice for me writing other things. I cannot confirm or deny that it's an excuse for Oz whumping/obsessive geekiness. I'm sorry RTD and Joss. So, so, sorry.
Don't own anything. No, not little old me.
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The stricken van had been forcing its way up through the overgrown track for twenty minutes now. Sputtering, exhaling obscene amounts of thick black exhaust into the dimming twilight of the wood, it progressed in stops and starts, with the occasional flourish of a sharp swerve as it tried to offload its unwanted, roof-bound passenger. The passenger himself (or herself, or, for that matter, itself), had no intention of leaving. Three limbs, which shone dirty grey in the approaching moon, clung resolutely to the roof-rack, whilst one with open palm and relentless violence slammed repeatedly down on the roof.
On reflection, Oz thought to himself, There are better ways to see The Netherlands.
With a rumble, he cleared the end of the track. Though still surrounded by trees, there was flat clear road ahead, falling off into darkness, and the van was filled with the steady hum of tyres on level tarmac. The metallic slams resonating from his roof had stopped, though the van hung low to the ground, still carrying that extra weight. Oz drew a little more speed out of his reluctant vehicle.
Where are you-?
The unasked question was answered with a grasping hand smashing through his windscreen, followed readily by a reaching arm. They found his t-shirt and pulled, tugged, clung. Oz grappled for a sharpened wooden stick in his glove compartment. He hadn’t noticed the beginnings of a new sound from somewhere further ahead on the road, a gentle whumph-whumph like the breathing of an iron giant. What he did notice was the clattering sound of wood dropping to the floor of the car and the unusual sound of himself cursing. Putting both hands on the wheel he braked suddenly, nearly breaking rib-bones against the pull of the seatbelt. The hold on his chest gone, his passenger now hung to the window frame of his car with bloodied arms, and was trying his level best to clamber into the cab.
Oz revved up the van again, on the periphery of his senses aware of a sudden breeze in the still summer air and a whumph-whumph, something at once both advanced and archaic, which he assumed was a new form of protest from his now-exhausted van. The van itself jerked off with its more familiar grumbling sounds, and rapidly picked up speed along the straight roadway. It was working. The arms slipped back to hands, gradually losing their grip.
Whumph-whumph
He imagined there was something in the road ahead, something opaque and then invisible. He put his foot down on the pedal. The van picked up speed. There were just bloodied fingers holding onto the window frame now.
Whumph-whumph
He could smell something. Something in the midst of the richness of the air and the metal of the van and the blood at the window and his own very great fear. Something which was only remarkable, something which was only striking, because he had never smelt anything like it before. Something which in his now-jumbled, helter-skelter thoughts, came under the heading of Otherness.
The hands slipped free of the window. Oz checked his rear-view mirror, and was relieved to find a rapidly-dimishing form of someone slumped on the tarmac of the road, stirring gently.
And that was when he saw it.
Moving between opaque and otherness, invisibility and memory. Even in the evening tint of the wood its solemn blue was striking. Now a solid block of blue on the roadway, just a few feet away. A solid, solid, block of blue which he was about to hit.
And hit it he did.
He thought of parents he barely knew and loves he had lost. Of red hair and Tibet. Of the things at the back of his mind, the taste of blood, rich and thick. Then just words: Willow and killer. They screamed together as he scrunched his eyes shut.
Whumph-
There was nothing. No crash. Just the nauseating feeling as his insides unknotted themselves, the pricking of yellowy light on his eyes. The van was moving still, speeding past a blur of grubby gold. For no other reason than force of habit, he eased his foot off the accelerator. The grubby gold blur slowed and cleared into a grubby gold corridor, the walls embossed with great (and grubby) gold spheres, and doorways into more of the same. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. The road, the track, the passenger: all gone, nothing but this strange newness all around him.
He flitted his eyes back to the window. Someone stepped out, a man at the top of the corridor, lean and dark and growing bigger by the second. Oz hit the breaks and didn’t, couldn’t, didn’t shut his eyes this time, hit this man or not. The van juddered to a halt and sent his head forward. Then there was only the relieved sigh of the engine. No horrific bump over his windscreen, no shattering of bones.
Then man had quite obstinately not moved, and was now just a few feet from the front of the van. He was either achingly hip or an out-of-work geography teacher, a slender form clad in a vintage brown suit with blue pinstripes. Young and handsome with a fluffy mop of brown hair, he almost didn’t belong. What held him there, part of the bizarre scenery was his face. All at one it was boyish and irrational, old and wise. Moving, thinking, understanding, yet very, very, still, as if fleeting seconds were just that, small components of a greater plan.
Oz opened the door and tentatively stepped out of the cab onto a metallic grid of a floor.
The man said nothing, but moved, impassively strolling in converse trainers – an out-of-work geography teacher on vacation – into the room behind him. Taking one last glance back at his van, Oz followed him. What met him was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. It was a broad and high roughly circular room of the same dirty gold colour of the corridor, with a central column of wires and glass from which there emanated a turquoise light. Around this was set a control panel composed of fixtures and fittings from what looked to be various centuries. There were the scent of things attached to the otherness – of things which worked with steam, and grease, and oil, and electricity, things designed to tick over and be operated. Above him, rafters which looked as if they were encased in a fine layer of brown coral loomed down from the centre of the ceiling, tracking eventually down to the floor.
Oz took a good few of the man’s fleeting seconds to reflect upon the absurdity of the situation.
“Huh,” he murmured.
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