Of Angry Stone

Chapter 1
The Visitor in The Night

The children of Acrethorn Orphanage were thinking. Linda had sent for a doctor so it must be bad. Is he mad? They asked themselves, but again and again, they couldn't find an answer. He certainly had never seemed, well, normal. However, they had never seen a mad person, so how could they tell. They weren't allowed into his room, door was always locked. But then, there was more than locked door in this place.

Suddenly, they heard a whoosh-whoosh! whoosh-whoosh! noise like a wheezing elephant. They ran to the window, and there, on the unswept leaf-clogged drive, was a box. A blue box.

'Linda,' shouted someone, 'its one of those old police box things!'

It looked very impressive on the drive, but its glory was shattered when there was a loud bang from inside, and black smoke emitted from behind the door.

'Doctor, are you sure you fixed it?' coughed Amy, throwing open the TARDIS doors to let some fresh air in.

The Doctor's hand appeared over the top of the console.

'I'm alright!' he said and heaved himself up. The Doctor started wiping the soot of his face. 'Err, well, that was certainly something new! I've never seen it do that before!' He gasped, and then all further words were lost in a fathomless fit of coughing.

'Rory!' called Amy into the murky atmosphere of the control room.

Rory appeared from an adjoining corridor. 'I've got the bolt!', He said holding it up in the gloom. Then, he saw the mess. 'WHAT ON EARTH DID YOU DO! Doctor, have you been reheating that pizza?'

'No, no! I just made a minor mis-' cough! 'calculation with the-' cough! 'Portal Manipulators!', The Doctor went to the opened doors and leaned out. 'Phew! Well, at least we're here now!'.

A woman came out the door and bustled hurriedly towards them. 'Who are you? and what are you doing at Acrethorn Orphanage!'.

'You need a Doctor, don't you?'

'No? Well, yes, but-'.

'So you do then?'

'Yes, but you're-'

'-Not the sort of person you were expecting', finished The Doctor, 'So', he turned around on the stairs, 'why do you need one?'.

'Well, since you're here, there's a boy in our care, could you please examine him? He-' She stopped, and closing the door on the curious faces in the living room, she continued. 'He's delirious, Doctor, keeps locking himself in his room and shouting. He only comes out at night, the kids hear him pacing the corridors. He's up on the left side of the landing,'

'Any idea what he was shouting about?'

'No, sorry, the door's bolted on the inside'.

The Doctor strode through the door and up the stairs. The landing was long and narrow It was a dark hallway, possibly because the only window was being blocked by a thin, bony figure who was peering out.

'You parked that right in the middle of a puddle, you know. And your Portal Manipulators are all wrong', he sighed, 'Hi, I'm the mad one. And you must be another doctor sent to examine me', he raised his eyebrows sarcastically when he said that word. It was then that Amy saw his eyes. They were full of blue and green and red and gold. Like the man in the supermarket, she thought.

'Mind you, you don't look like the others. I'm Silas by the way, who are you?' He proceeded back into his room, and the door was open. The others followed him, into a room, small and shabby with dark, cracked and peeling paint. All the available flat surfaces were covered with stacks of papers, clay in plastic bags or small crude clay sculptures of what looked like monsters. It certainly looked like a mad boy's room.

'This is Pond,' said The Doctor, 'and this is Rory, and I'm The Doctor'.

'Really? I thought he was', said the boy glancing at the doorway, but before The Doctor ask him who 'he' was, Rory interrupted him.

'What are these drawings of,' he asked, picking up one of the papers. It looked like a dragon crossed with a lion.

'Its the creature up on the hill,' he said, 'there's a.. a stone statue up there. It looks like that. Well, sometimes. It comes to me in the night, Doctor, to my window, it peers in. Its different everytime.' The boy's eyes filled with fear.

'I knew I had to record it somehow, to prove to everyone it was real. I tried drawing it but it wasn't enough.' He got up of the bed and paced whatever little floorspace was left.

'Then, I discovered the media of clay,' he gestured to the vast lumps of it on the tabletop. 'It was difficult at first, the texture was different to how I guessed it would be.' Then he stopped. ' Its like in La Gargouille. I can show you, but you'll have to sit here and wait.'

'When does he usually arrive?'

'Around two-ish. I'm not mad, Doctor.'

'No,' said The Doctor, 'No, I don't believe you are.'

As they were heading back to the TARDIS for bedding, Amy said, 'Doctor? How did they know your number? And did you see his eyes?'

The Doctor muttered, 'Yes, I think this is the younger version of our friend from the supermarket. I don't think they in the house. I think Silas knew. Or at least The TARDIS did. There's something special about Silas. '