This was actually the first thing that came to mind for the Summer Lovin' ficathon on LJ's "ohsheknows" community. But the very wise wmr, Dark Aegis and Aibhinn pointed out that the idea didn't quite work for that particular ficathon, so I put this aside and "Slip Up" was written instead. That's also archived here.

Still, I couldn't leave the story. I love the setting. (Oh, you do know that I don't own any of this, right?)


"Martha! Are you ready yet? We're here!"

Martha walked into the console room dressed in a beach cover-up, a canvas tote bag slung over her shoulder. "Surf City, here we come! I'm still cold from that last planet."

"I will remind you that you're the one who called me, moaning that you needed a break from your studies, Miss Jones," the Doctor said in a mock-stern voice. "When you're getting a free ride, you shouldn't complain about the itinerary. Now, this should warm you up quite nicely! Malibu, California, USA, 1965." He grabbed his coat and headed toward the door.

"Doctor, we're going to the beach. Why are you bringing your coat?"

He looked down at it. "I've got things we need in there. Like...sun cream! Can't go out without that."

Martha patted her bag. "Got it."

"A beach blanket."

"Got that too."

He thought for a moment. "A beach umbrella! You don't have that in your bag!"

She stared at him disbelievingly. "And you can't have it in your coat, either!"

He grinned. "Of course I can. The pockets are bigger on the inside! Now stop nitpicking and come on! If you're lucky, we might spot Frankie and Annette playing beach blanket bingo."

"Who doing what?" she asked as she stepped outside. The Doctor rolled his eyes and went out after her.

She'd stopped short just outside the door, and he nearly ran her down. "You missed the beach," Martha said dryly. She gestured at the scene in front of them. "Those don't look like palm trees, unless they grow differently in California."

They'd materialized in the midst of what looked like a lumber yard. Piles of wood in different lengths and thicknesses were stacked up around them. They could hear the sounds of hammering and sawing in the distance.

"Well, hmmm..." He started to weave through the piles, Martha following. "I'm sure the beach isn't that far off…."

"Are you sure we're even on Earth?" she interrupted.

He shot her a wounded look, then took in a deep breath. "Hmm…Mostly nitrogen atmosphere with some oxygen, a bit of argon, carbon dioxide, helium, neon, krypton, methane, hydrogen and just…hmmm…" He cocked his head and held up a finger as he kept on cataloguing, "just a tiny bit of nitrous oxide, xenon, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, iodine, carbon monoxide…and…yes! A trace of ammonia to top it off! Yes, this is Earth." He grinned down at Martha, who just shook her head with a wry smile.

"There you go trying to be impressive again!"

"I am impressive!"

"So impressive that you failed your TARDIS driving test," she teased. "And you're a rubbish navigator."

A man's voice barked out, "Hey! You're not supposed to be here!"

They looked up to see the speaker, a man in a worker's cap, looking at them over a wood stack. As he came around the stack, they saw he was wearing carpenter's clothes and carrying a sledgehammer like a weapon.

"Sorry," said the Doctor, trying to keep things friendly. "We were just—"

"You were just trespassing!" the man interrupted. "And with her half-naked, I think I can guess what for!" he added, glancing at Martha and then looking away.

Oh, not this again. "It's not what you think," the Doctor said. "She's…she's from Fredonia."

The man interrupted again. "Don't matter what I think, or where she's from. Just matters what Miz Winchester thinks. This is her property. You have to come up to the house."

"I never argue with a man carrying a sledgehammer," the Doctor said. He motioned to Martha, and they followed the man out of the lumber yard.

The sounds of construction became much clearer as they walked. They rounded a small grove of tall pine trees, and Martha gasped. "You call that a house?"

House was putting it mildly. A huge structure loomed before them; a confused, Escherian jumble of gables, spires, turrets and towers, topped off by a tall belfry that had to be seven storeys high. The walls were paneled with sunny yellow siding and fishscale shingles, and the rooftops and gables were all crimson. As if this edifice wasn't massive enough already, a crew of workmen was busy constructing yet another gabled section.

No, house definitely wasn't the right word. A madman might call it a mansion….wait. Or a mad woman… He called out to their guide, who was obviously one of the carpenters. "Did you say Mrs. Winchester? Mrs. Sarah Winchester?"

The man looked back over his shoulder at them. "Of course. Who else is building night and day without stopping? She says the hammers can't ever go silent, no matter what happens."

A scream made them look toward the partially finished gable. Several of the carpenters were gathered in a knot on the ground. Heedless of the man with the sledgehammer, the Doctor and Martha took off for the group. As they approached it, the Doctor could see a pair of denim-clad legs lying in the dirt. "Let us through!" he shouted, trying to push his way through. "We can help!"

Two of the men moved aside to make way. "Too late," one of them said. The fallen workman had landed in a twisted heap, a look of pained fear in his staring eyes.

The Doctor felt for a pulse but wasn't surprised when he didn't find one. He let his hand drop. "I'm sorry," he said to the dead man, and stood up again next to Martha, who'd cocked her head, listening.

"Do you hear that?" she asked.

One hammer was still pounding. They looked up to see one carpenter still nailing shingles to the wall. "A man just died here!" Martha exclaimed. "You can't just keep going like nothing happened!"

"The hammers can never go silent," said the man with the sledgehammer. "Miz Winchester's orders."

"Never mind that this whole place is cursed," grumbled another carpenter.

"Cursed?" asked the Doctor with interest. He knew the story of Sarah Winchester's bizarre home, but hadn't heard of a curse. Particularly not a fatal one.

"Gotta be a curse," said the grumbler. "How else do you explain the accidents?"

Sledgehammer barked out, "Accidents happen on construction sites! That don't mean there's a curse!"

Another man piped up, "What about the voices on the sixth floor?"

"There ain't no voices on the sixth floor," Sledgehammer said derisively. "And there ain't no curse, except the one you bring on yourselves by shirking! Simmons, Thomas, you two take poor old Bartholomew over to the foreman's house. Lay him out and call the undertaker. The rest of you, get back to work!" He turned back to the Doctor. "And don't you two think you're getting out of anything because of this."

"Oh, we wouldn't dream of trying to get out of anything," the Doctor answered cheerily. "Not when there's a curse to investigate. Right, Martha?"

"How could we possibly walk away from a curse and mysterious voices?" Martha replied with a smile.

The Doctor beamed. "There now, you see? Lead on, MacDuff!"

Sledgehammer looked at him oddly. "The name's McSweeney," he growled before starting back the way they'd run. He led them up to a doorway and rang the bell. The door was opened by a woman in a maid's dress. "I found these two in the lumber yard," McSweeney said, jerking a thumb toward Martha and the Doctor. "Since she's half naked, they were up to something indecent, I reckon."

"That's a misunderstanding!" the Doctor corrected. He gave the maid a bright smile. "Things aren't always what they seem. I'm the Doctor, this is Martha. We'd like to see Mrs. Winchester about a curse."

The maid didn't seem at all surprised, but from what he knew about Sarah Winchester, strange visitors were probably the norm for this house.

"Mr. McSweeney, I'll see to them. This way, Doctor." The maid led them inside, down a mahogany-paneled hallway to a lavish parlor. "Please wait here, sir. Mrs. Winchester will be right with you."

"Give me your coat, Doctor," Martha said, holding her hand out as the maid left.

He looked at her curiously. "My coat? Whatever for?"

She glared at him. "We're obviously much too early for Surf City, and I don't like people saying I'm walking around naked. So hand it over!"

He shrugged off the coat, murmuring, "He only said half-naked. Be careful with it."

"I'll try not to fall into the pockets," Martha deadpanned, taking the coat and putting it on. Now covered, she perched on a loveseat covered in golden brocade while the Doctor walked over to a curio cabinet and inspected it. "So, where and when are we? It sounds like you know this place."

The Doctor was studying the glass panel inserts on the curio. "Thirteen," he murmured. He looked over at Martha, who was watching him patiently. "Hm? Oh, sorry. Yes. Well, we're on Earth, just as I said, and we are in California. We're just a little farther north than I anticipated. San José rather than Malibu. And you're right. We're a bit early for Surf City." He moved over to the fireplace and took out his glasses, bending slightly to peer closely at the objects on the mantle. "Well, more than a bit. About five or six decades too early, although I'm not sure of the exact date. Martha, you're about to meet one of the most eccentric women who ever lived."

"The mysterious Mrs. Winchester?"

"Sarah Lockwood Winchester," the Doctor said, removing his glasses and turning toward her. "Half owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms company, heiress to a fortune and one of the wealthiest women in America during her time. She was a New Haven socialite until she lost her daughter to a childhood illness. That nearly drove her mad. Then she lost her husband to tuberculosis, and that did send her over the edge. She started consulting spiritualists. One of them supposedly got her in touch with her dead husband, and he supposedly told her she was being haunted by the spirits of everyone ever killed by a Winchester rifle. Since it was the gun that won the West, that was a lot of people."

Martha looked shocked. "There really were shootouts just like in the cowboy movies?"

"Oh, yes. There's a reason they called it the Wild West, you know. I saw the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The movies weren't nearly as violent as the reality." A Tiffany lamp in the corner caught his eye. Like the paper on the walls, it was patterned with blue daisies. Thirteen of them on the lamp, he noted. "So….Sarah Winchester thought she was being pursued by angry spirits. A medium told her she needed to build a house for herself and all the spirits. Sarah went West, bought a house and spent her fortune adding to it. She calls the place Llanada Villa. Believe it or not, that's Spanish for plain house."

Martha snorted. "She'd probably call Buckingham Palace a shack! She could house an army of spirits in here. Why's she still building?"

"The medium told her if she stopped, she'd die. So the building went on and on and on, day and night, starting in 1884."

A gravelly female voice said, "The hammers haven't stopped for twenty-one years, but now the spirits are more troublesome than ever." Sarah Winchester stood in the doorway, a short, slightly stout woman whose white hair contrasted sharply with the black crepe she wore. "I'm told you want to see me about a curse, Doctor….?"

"Yes, I do," the Doctor said, ignoring the unspoken request for a name and pulling out his wallet. "Curses and spirits are our speciality, you might say. We're with the Society of Psychical Research." He showed her the psychic paper, knowing that she was seeing a letter of introduction from the Director of the Society. Surreptitiously, he motioned to Martha to get up. "Martha, may I present Mrs. Sarah Winchester? Mrs. Winchester, this is Miss Martha Jones."

"Ma'am." Martha nodded to her.

Sarah looked her up and down and sniffed disdainfully before turning back to the Doctor. "I know my workmen have been whispering…"

"They're not just whispering anymore," Martha interrupted, her voice sharp in reaction to being dismissed. "A man just fell off your roof and died, and they're talking about other accidents and a curse and strange voices on the sixth floor."

Sarah had paled at the mention of the dead man. "Another spirit to appease," she murmured. After a moment, she composed herself. "Obviously we need to double our efforts here. Construction has been slowing down, and the spirits are angry."

The Doctor leaned forward. "Why the slowdown?"

"Because of the voices on the sixth floor," Sarah answered.

Martha interjected, "Mr. McSweeney says there are no voices."

Sarah sniffed again. "I told Mr. McSweeney to tell his crew that. I cannot have them walking off the job. The hammers cannot stop. My life depends upon it." She paused for a moment. "There are voices. I heard one myself, two nights ago."

"Did it say anything?" he asked.

Sarah shrugged. "Nothing that made any sense."

The Doctor stood. "Can you take us there?"

Sarah led them down another richly decorated hallway. The Doctor noted that she moved very slowly, stiffly, as if she was in great pain. Arthritis, he thought.

They eventually reached a lift, a manservant standing ready outside it. "This will take us to the fourth floor," Sarah said as the servant opened the gate for them. "We'll need to take stairs the rest of the way."

"We can see ourselves up," the Doctor began, but Sarah cut him off.

"I am not completely crippled yet, Doctor. I can still move from place to place in my own home." She swept into the lift. He glanced at Martha and gave a small shrug before they followed her in.

The servant closed the gate and pushed a button. They felt a small jolt as the car began to move. Martha cocked her head, listening. "Is that water?"

"Hydraulic fluid!" the Doctor said. "Hydraulics were an alternative to electric lifts. If this goes four floors up, then the cylinder shaft must go…five floors down."

Sarah nodded. "Yes. It goes below the house. I plan to have electric elevators installed, but it takes time to get materials delivered here in the West."

"But what you have done so far is astounding," the Doctor said. The lift was moving upwards slowly. "Mrs. Winchester, tell me, how long have you been hearing these voices?"

Sarah thought for a moment. "One of my maids first heard something there four nights ago. She came downstairs screaming, and hasn't set foot there since."

"One of the workers mentioned accidents," Martha said. "Did anyone hear voices before the accidents?"

"Accidents happen on construction sites," Sarah replied, addressing the Doctor rather than Martha. "They happened before the voices started, and they'll happen in the future. Only the ignorant and superstitious believe there is a connection."

"Talk about the pot calling the kettle black," Martha murmured under her breath.

The Doctor shot her a quelling look as the lift arrived on the fourth floor. Another servant was waiting to open the gate. "Thank you, Smithson," Sarah said as she walked out. "Please call the kitchen staff and tell them to set another place for dinner."

"Two places," the Doctor corrected. When Sarah looked at him with a raised eyebrow, he said, "I should have told you that Miss Jones is soon to be Doctor Jones, and is my very trusted assistant. I don't make a move in an investigation without her."

Sarah gave him a curt nod of acquiescence, and turned to Martha. "My apologies, Miss Jones. I should know by now that appearances can deceive."

"My mum always says not to judge books by their covers," Martha answered with a slight smile. She glanced over at Smithson, who had walked over to a phone mounted on the wall. "You don't have electricity but you have a telephone?"

"That is a call box. I have them throughout the house to contact my staff whenever I need them. This way." Sarah led them down another hallway that was not quite as posh as the previous ones. No fancy wallpaper or expensive woodwork here yet. They reached a curious staircase made of small, low steps, with upside-down stairposts.

"Did the builders make a mistake here?" Martha asked as they began to climb. "These stairs are strange. They're so short."

"But perfect for a woman who has trouble walking," the Doctor observed, watching Sarah carefully mount each step.

She nodded. "I told you I can still move from place to place, Doctor. And if I do have trouble, I can use the call boxes to summon one of my staff."

Martha glanced at her curiously. "How do they know where you're calling from?"

"Each box is numbered, and the number of the sending box appears on the receiving box when I make a call."

"Sort of the way a telephone number appears on the screen of your mobile when you take a call," the Doctor told Martha.

Sarah stopped and looked at him strangely. "Mobile…that was one of the things that the strange voice said. Something about interference with their mobile, as if it was a thing. I don't understand. Mobile is a verb, even for the British. There's no such thing as 'a mobile,' Doctor."

The Doctor furrowed his brow. "Not here and now, no. Now I'm really curious about these voices. Come on, let's go."

They resumed their climb, up and up. Since each step was so short, this staircase took more flights than usual to go up. "Do you know what the voices are?" Martha asked.

"I have a theory," he told her. "There are all sorts of ways for different realities to collide with each other. I just need to figure out how it's happening so we can close it up, and then no more strange voices."

Sarah shook her head. "Doctor, your words are as strange as the ones used by the voice. Are you saying you can exorcise whatever it is from this floor?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Wellll…I wouldn't use the word 'exorcise.' But I think I can solve your puzzle, yes."

They climbed the last flight of steps. "This is the floor," Sarah said, breathing a little heavily from the exertion. She made her way to a blue velvet divan placed against the wall a few feet away, and sank into it with a sigh.

Martha went to her, any remaining pique over the old woman's attitude now gone, replaced by compassion and professional concern. "Are you all right?"

Sarah waved her hand a little, shaking her head. "I just need a moment's rest."

Martha caught he hand and felt for her pulse. "More than a moment. Your pulse is racing."

The Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver from his coat pocket. "While you recover, I'm going to investigate. Where have the voices been heard?"

"Down the hall, and around that corner," Sarah answered, motioning with her free hand in that direction. "The hallway doubles back. I was trying to confuse the spirits with the design. No matter. The maid heard something when she went to change the linens in the first bedroom around the corner. And I was in the room at the end of that hallway when I heard the voice."

He flicked a switch and the screwdriver started whirring. He looked over at his companion. "Martha?"

She had released Sarah's wrist, but still looked concerned. "Go ahead, Doctor. I want to be sure she's all right. I'll catch up."

The Doctor nodded and started down the hallway, holding the screwdriver before him. Everything looks normal here. Well, as normal as this place could ever be. Nothing but the usual background radiation of the Earth.

He reached the first door and went into the bedroom. The linens were still scattered on the floor; the maid apparently never finished making the bed. He scanned the room. Now this is interesting. Traces of artron energy? How would that get here?

The traces seemed to be strongest at the closet door. He walked over to open it—

And found that the door was a dead end, opening to a wall. One of Sarah's architectural mistakes, and it's fairly crackling with artron residue. He reached out to touch the wall, half expecting his hand to pass through it, but the wood paneling remained solid. All right, let's see what's in the other room.

He could hear the hammers outside as he walked into the other bedroom. He looked out the window and could see McSweeney directing his carpenters below. His gaze traveled upwards, towards the many rooftops, all for one house. A Tiffany window glinted in the sunlight. A weather vane caught his eye as it turned with the wind.

The view was bewildering. Shaking his head, the Doctor turned back to the room and began scanning. The residue is stronger here. Perhaps because it was only two nights ago? The energy dissipates over time? But why is it here at all?

"Doctor!"

Martha's shout sent him running back down the hallway and around the corner. Sarah was still sitting on the divan. She pointed to a doorway. "There, Doctor. She heard something and went to investigate."

He barreled through the door and skidded to a stop next to Martha, staring with her at the ornate mirror on the wall. It was sparkling with visible energy that arced and swirled from the mirror's carved wooden frame to the floor and ceiling. But what transfixed him was the image within the mirror.

"Rose?"