WHILE PAUL CLUNY JUNIOR settled into his new High Throne, constructed from the intricately carved stones in the museum and set on the alter at St Vigeans church, the Doctor and his companions knew that something had gone disastrously wrong.

One moment the Bah-Sokhar’s horse form was peaceful and awe-inspiring – the next it had shuddered and reared, growing as it reared, its hooves shining balefully, its mane writhing, its muscles taught under skin that was rippling with red light.

‘No! No!’ The Doctor tried to calm it. ‘Whoever is talking to you, there’s no need to listen any more. Please!’

But the dream collapsed around Bryony, Putta and the Doctor and they all found themselves lying back on the TARDIS floor, the cloister bell tolling faster and louder than before. The last vision they saw was of a towering stallion, all aflame, its head fluxing between that of a horse, of a stag, of a wild boar and of a human face – the face of a petulant adolescent boy.

That same face was currently troubling the remaining undisappeared guests at the Fetch Hotel. Kevin Mangold had been forced by multiple disappearances to help out with serving breakfast – and a delayed breakfast at that – because only the chef and one housemaid had bothered to turn up for work. This had been the worst thing that had happened today – until the florid purple wallpaper had begun to swell and heave and had then, one might say, budded into multiple human forms.

Although they’re not human are they, I mean they can’t be, I mean I have no idea, I mean this isn’t happening anyway because it can’t be and I’m asleep and everything is…

There were a dozen new humans in the dining room now – all of them looking a bit too newly made to be entirely convincing and all of them reproducing the same lanky, slightly spotty, round-shouldered youth in sneakers, jeans and a yellow shirt. Mangold was extremely grateful that this couldn’t really be possible, because the chap looked like exactly the sort of demanding foreign oik that he couldn’t abide. (Mangold wasn’t exactly made for the hospitality industry.)

As soon as he thought badly of them, all of the youths turned to him with identical expressions of amused contempt. They all spoke with identical, whining, adenoidal American accents. ‘I, Zandor the Magnificent, have no care of what you might think of me.’ Grammar obviously wasn’t their strong point. ‘I must feed.’

At this, the youths herded the terrified golfers and golfers’ wives into one corner of the dining room and singled out one slender, kind-faced lady. They closed in on her while her husband tried to stand in their way. But the man was cuffed to the ground by one youth. Although it was scrawny, it clearly had immense strength.

Next, as the woman tried to smile and be dignified in what was an intolerable situation, one of the youths extended his hand towards her. She took this as a good sign and reached out in her turn, holding its hand. But as soon as she touched the youth’s skin, she cried out and – quickly, quickly – it was clear that contact was emptying her, literally emptying her.

Mangold and the rest of the guests looked on and her husband yelled impotently where he was restrained, still on the floor. But nothing could stop the woman’s horrible transformation.

First her forearm emptied and flattened, as if it had been no more than a skin container for water, or air. Very soon, the whole of her right arm was shrivelled and hanging. The process was obviously hugely painful, but the woman could only stare at the ruin of herself as her body failed. More hands were reached towards her and at each point they touched, her substance was removed, leaving only her skin.

Mangold tried to think that at least the ordeal would be over quickly, but that didn’t make it any better. And it was quite plain that every human being in that room was going to face the same fate.

Once the skin was completely emptied, it fell to the floor and then vanished in a flare of reddish vapour.

The husband was now sitting up and sobbing, ‘Take me, then. Take me.’

The youths’ faces flicked their attention to him and they began to close in on him, their arms reaching out.

Mangold was not a brave man – he wasn’t anything like a brave man – but he couldn’t understand why no one in the room was moving, or shouting, or trying to stop this. When he looked at the other guests, their faces were placid, numbed. Only he and the husband seemed to be aware of what was going on, of the dreadful threat which faced them.

In fact, Mangold’s levels of self-obsession, combined with his shockingly low levels of artron energy were partly shielding him from the fairly low-level field of influence the Bah-Sokhar was deploying. It was busy feeding at a number of locations and it couldn’t be bothered targeting him more precisely because it was going to eat him eventually anyway and he was no threat. Sadly, this meant that he would be horribly upset and afraid before his brain melted, along with the rest of his interior.