Doctor Illuminatus by Martin Booth Page A

data — the aircraft had just altered course at a radio beacon over Tours — and went to the window to draw the curtains. The rain was beating against the glass, carried on a stiff wind.
    As he pulled one curtain across to meet the other, the glint of a pinprick of greenish light caught Tim’s eye. At first, he thought it was the power diode on his computer reflected in the window, but it was not. It was outside.
    Opening the window against the torrential rain and wind, he saw it again. It seemed to be winking, like the eye of a predator caught in the beam of a headlight. And it was coming from the direction of the copse on the knoll.
    “Pip!” Tim hissed, drumming his fingers lightly on her bedroom door. “Pip!”
    “What?” came the drowsy reply.
    He opened the door and asked, “Pip! Are you awake?”
    “No, I’m fast asleep,” Pip retorted, sitting up and reaching for her bedside light.
    “Leave it off,” Tim said quietly, closing the door behind him. “Come and look at this.”
    He went to her window and pulled aside a curtain. Pip stood beside him, rubbing her eyes.
    “What?”
    “Over there, in the trees by the river.”
    She peered into the darkness. The green light flashed off and on.
    Immediately, she was wide awake. “What is it?” “Like I know?” said Tim. “I only just saw it.” He let the curtain fall and switched on the bedside light. “We’ve got to tell Sebastian.”
    “Yes,” Pip agreed, then she paused. “How? We’ve never contacted him. He’s always got in touch with us.”
    “Knock on the paneling,” Tim suggested, and he knelt by his sister’s bed, tapping very gently on the wood. He hoped it might echo, that somehow the tunnel was there after all, not just the lath-and-plaster wall. His knock, however, was not met with any resonance. He tried again. In vain.
    “Maybe we could go out to the coach house,” Pip suggested, regretting it the moment the words were out of her mouth. The last thing she wanted to do was leave the security of the house.
    “No point,” said Tim, without admitting how he knew. “If he isn’t here, he isn’t going to be there. Maybe,” he added, “the light’s his.”
    They heard a soft footstep outside Pip’s door. A cat’s paw would not have made such a faint sound. A floor-board creaked.
    “Tim ... ,” Pip whispered. She reached for Tim’s hand and gripped it so tightly his fingers hurt.
    There was another step. Someone was making their way along the corridor on tiptoe. Or something.
    “What do we do?” Pip mumbled, her mouth going dry.
    Tim shrugged and looked around the room. Against the wall was Pip’s tennis racket. He removed his hand from hers and, picking it up, positioned himself beside the door. It was not, he admitted to himself, much of a weapon. His bat would have been more effective but that was in the wardrobe in his room.
    The steps halted outside the door. There was a snuffling sound, as if a dog were running its nose along the bottom of the door. A scratching at the door was followed by the handle beginning to turn. Pip hid behind her bed. She wanted to scream but, instead, pressed her hands over her ears as if not hearing what was outside would somehow cause it not to exist.
    Raising the racket over his head, Tim held his breath. The door opened. Four fingers covered in fur, like those of a bizarre ape, the nails small, the skin wrinkled and black with the ends blunt and grimy, appeared round the edge. Tim wondered if he should smash the racket down now or wait a moment until he saw the creature’s head.
    “Pip,” came a barely audible but gruff voice. “Tim.” As he looked, Tim saw the fingers beginning to lose their hair, the black skin turning ashen.
    “Pip, Tim. Are you there?” The voice was marginally less gruff. “It is I.”
    Tim lowered the racket. Sebastian entered the room. His hands, and everything else about him, were quite normal.
    “Your hands . . . .” Tim began, then he realized.