Harry Wilson leaned perilously from his ladder, wishing he'd taken the time to climb down and shift the steps several inches to the left. He was holding the end of a string of Christmas lights - he thought they were wretched, unnecessary things, but the wife and kids liked having them up. He found it funny that they weren't the ones up a ladder in freezing December weather.
He was reaching for a little metal hook, one of several that he'd fitted to the house a few years ago just for these lights. Close now, very close…
"Bugger!" Harry swore, as he tried to hook the lights in place, only to miss and drop them - he watched the string plummet to the ground, two floors below. He continued to curse all the way down the ladder, estimating that at least half of the bulbs on the string must have been smashed in the fall.
He reached the bottom of the ladder and knelt to pick up the lights. The bulbs seemed intact, but there was no way of knowing without switching them on. He tried to set them down again, but something peculiar had happened - he seemed to be tangled up in them. Harry shook his arms, trying to throw the plastic cabling off, but he only succeeded in becoming even more caught up in it.
"What the hell…?" Harry tried to grab the lights again, but the cable darted out of his grasp at the last second. He could feel the plastic snaking around him, tightening and digging into his arms and chest. He tried to call out, but the lights had begun to wrap around his throat, cutting off his windpipe and strangling the sound before it could reach his mouth.
He fell backwards, struggling violently as he tried to free himself. His chest felt like it was bursting, his lungs desperately trying to draw in more air. He thrashed and kicked, but to no avail.
Slowly, Harry Wilson stopped struggling. A few moments later, he lay still, and the lights feel away from his body loosely. He was still lying there ten minutes later when Mrs. Wilson opened the front door and leaned out to ask him if he'd like a cup of tea, before screaming at the sight of her husband's lifeless body.
Lizzie Moore sighed as her sat-nav led her into yet another cul-de-sac. She looked around, vainly hoping that she might have, by some unknowable miracle, finally arrived at her desired destination. Sadly not. She admitted defeat and switched the sat-nav off before reaching for her bag and the maps she'd printed off the internet last night. The digital solution was all well and good for getting from point A to point B, but it simply couldn't cope with something fiddly like a housing estate.
Thankfully, she didn't seem to be that far away - two corners later, she finally recognised the houses on both sides of the street from Google's Street View software. According to the paper maps, there was a small car park at the bottom of this road. She headed for there, but when she arrived, she groaned. Only one space wasn't occupied by a car, and there was a bloody great police telephone box sitting in it. It looked like an antique, and Lizzie briefly wondered why anyone would leave something so old and presumably valuable out in the middle of the street, open to the elements where anything could happen to it.
She parked in front of one of the houses and switched off her car's engine, cutting Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody off mid-verse. She got out and considered scribbling a passive-aggressive note onto a scrap of paper and sticking it in one of the police box's windows. She decided it wasn't worth it, and simply locked her car and started back up the street towards the homes.
As she walked, her phone vibrated inside her pocket. She reached down and removed it, biting her lip as she saw the notification from the news app. She bit her lip as she scrolled through the article – the police had completed their forensic operation at Harry Wilson's house, and the coroner had ruled a verdict of accidental death. Lizzie sighed and unsubscribed from that story – it would be of no use to her now. Accidental death... Lizzie wanted to believe that, but she couldn't.
As she read the article, she almost didn't see the ladder in the middle of the footpath. It was resting precariously against a lamp-post, swaying a little as the man at the top moved around. Lizzie shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun and looked up at him. He was wearing a long tan-coloured coat and seemed to be using some kind of tool on the Christmas decoration attached to the lamppost, muttering to himself.
Lizzie was about to call up to the man to be more careful, when something on the decoration overloaded. The man on the ladder recoiled backwards, overbalancing as he tried to avoid the hot sparks. The ladder tilted backwards, away from the lamppost.
Lizzie grabbed the ladder without thinking, struggling to pull it back into position. The man at the top finally righted himself, and the wooden ladder came back to rest against the lamppost.
"Hey! Are you alright?" Lizzie shouted. "You should be more careful!"
"Good catch!" the man above yelled back. Lizzie continued to hold the ladder steady as he descended. As he reached the ground, she got a better look at him – he was young, and rather handsome. He wore a brown pinstriped suit underneath the enormous overcoat, and a pair of battered trainers. He smiled at her warmly, as though they were old friends. Lizzie wondered if he was perhaps slightly mad.
"Sorry about that," he said. "That was a bit clumsy, wasn't it? Should've known it'd resist being scanned... Rookie mistake."
"What on Earth are you talking about?" Lizzie asked. She looked up at the decoration at the top of the lamppost – a set of lights arranged into the shape of some holly leaves. "Why were you messing about with that thing?"
"Uh..." The stranger's hand plunged deep into the pocket of his coat and returned with a black leather wallet. He flipped it open and showed her the contents. "Council, health and safety checks, you know the sort of thing... All fine."
"It exploded," Lizzie pointed out.
"Yes, it did," said the stranger. "And I can assure you we're doing everything we can to fix that. I'm the Doctor, by the way."
"Lizzie Moore," said Lizzie. "Independent investigative journalist. "What are you doing here?"
"Tracing a signal," said the Doctor, looking back up at the Christmas decoration at the top of the lamppost. "I thought that was the source, but it seems it was just a router – like a repeater, making the signal stronger, you know? The actual source must be somewhere nearby, but I can't find it."
"Right..." Lizzie bit her lip and glanced quickly at her watch. "Listen, I haven't got time for this: I'm supposed to be meeting someone, and I'm already late. Good luck with... whatever it is you're doing."
"Thanks..." The Doctor wasn't paying attention. He'd pulled a little rod out of his pocket, made of porcelain and metal with a blue light on top, and was listening intently to the noise it made. Lizzie decided that he was quite insane, and turned away quickly, walking away at a brisk pace. It wasn't far to her contact's house, but she couldn't help but look over her shoulder. The Doctor's ladder was still resting against the lamppost, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Her contact's name was Andrew Thatcher, and he had contacted Lizzie two days ago claiming to have important information relating to the death of Harry Wilson, saying that they'd worked together. Lizzie's investigation had been faltering, so she'd eagerly accepted his invitation. But something was unnerving her as she stepped up onto the front doorstep and rang the doorbell. The house appeared perfectly normal, but it all seemed too... still.
This unsettling feeling only increased when the door didn't open. She rang the doorbell again, and again, but there was no answer. Lizzie looked at her watch – she was on time, just about – before crouching down and opening the letterbox.
"Hello? Mr Thatcher? It's me, Lizzie Moore, we were going to have a chat about Harry Wilson?"
There was still no response. Lizzie straightened up and sighed. As she did so, the door to the house next door opened and an elderly lady appeared on the step.
"Are you alright love? You're looking for Andrew, is it?" she called.
"Yes, that's right," Lizzie replied.
"Oh, I haven't seen him since yesterday afternoon," said the neighbour. "He called around to pick up a parcel the postman left with me. He usually goes out for a run in the mornings, but I don't think he went for one today. Maybe he's gone away for a few days."
"Oh." Lizzie frowned. "Well, I'm definitely meant to be meeting him today."
"He could be in his back garden," the neighbour suggested.
"I'll go and check – thanks!" Lizzie called back. She followed a path around the side of the house and found the back garden was fenced off from the driveway. The gate was locked on the other side, but the fence was just low enough for her to see over. Lizzie craned her neck to see the whole garden, but it was empty – no sign of Andrew at all.
However, Lizzie could see the kitchen window – it was hanging slightly ajar. She thought for a few moments – this was the only lead she had. If she left now, she might never hear from Andrew Thatcher again, and her investigation would flounder.
She checked around quickly, hoping that no one was watching. The neighbour next door had seemed the nosy type, but there was no sign of her now. Lizzie decided to take the plunge and braced her boots against Andrew Thatcher's fence.
She crossed the garden quickly and pulled the kitchen window open. After checking that the kitchen was clear, Lizzie pulled herself onto the ledge and crept through the window. She quietly stepped down onto the floor and looked around. The kitchen was well kept, everything clean and in its place.
Then she realised that wasn't strictly true. A mug was sitting on the counter, and a bottle of milk was sitting alongside it. Peering into the mug, Lizzie noticed that there was a teabag already waiting inside. She pressed her hand against the milk bottle for a few seconds – it wasn't cold but had instead warmed up to room temperature. How long had it been out of the fridge?
Lizzie opened the kitchen door and went out into the hallway. It was narrow, with two doors on the left and a staircase on the right. She opened the first door – beyond this was a dining room, everything neatly tidied away. There was no sign of Andrew, so she closed the door and moved onto the next one.
When she saw Andrew, she had to stifle a scream.
He was lying in the middle of his living room floor, entirely still. Lizzie crouched beside him, dropping her laptop case and shaking his shoulder.
"Andrew? Mr Thatcher?" She said. His body felt cold. Lizzie reached down and pressed her finger against his neck – no pulse.
"Shit," Lizzie muttered, sitting back and reaching for her mobile phone. She swore again when she saw the no-signal icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen. Pocketing the phone again, she looked around for a landline phone, but she couldn't see one.
"Alright, alright, calm down," Lizzie told herself, sitting herself down on the sofa. She considered running next door and getting Thatcher's elderly neighbour, but then she realised that she'd have to explain how she got into the house, and that wasn't a conversation she wanted to have with the woman.
She looked around the room, trying to piece together what had killed Andrew. There were no visible marks on his body, but it looked like he'd struggled before he died. A lamp was lying on the floor, apparently knocked off a small table beside the sofa, and the cushions on the sofa were in disarray.
Then Lizzie noticed the packaging beside the hearth, a torn open box filled with bubble wrap and padding paper. She found this peculiar, since the rest of the house had been kept so neatly – she didn't believe Andrew Thatcher would have let this lie here, so he must have opened the parcel just before he died.
She picked it up, and examined the contents but aside from the protection, there was no sign of what had been inside. Lizzie realised that whatever had been inside must be close by, so she searched around for it quickly.
She found it on the other side of the room from where Andrew's body lay. Apparently, he'd thrown it away during his struggle against whatever killed him. It was an old-fashioned telephone with a rotary dial, made from a horridly tacky red plastic. Lizzie picked it up – why had Andrew thrown this away from him in his dying moments?
She set it on the coffee table in the middle of the room and crouched down beside it. There was no cord, no plug to power it – it had to be battery operated. Lizzie lifted the receiver – strangely enough, there was a dial tone.
Lizzie reached up to the rotary dial, preparing to dial the emergency services. She pulled the dial around to the number nine, before releasing it. The wheel spun slowly, ticking slowly back into position.
As soon as the dial stopped, something happened very suddenly – the screw in the middle of the dial seemed to open, and the telephone sprayed something cold and wet on Lizzie's face. It covered the entire bottom of her face, and to her horror, she felt the liquid begin to harden and tighten on her skin. She tried to wipe it away but whatever the substance was, it was quick-setting, totally covering her mouth and nostrils. Lizzie clawed at the hardening material but to no avail – she took one last, gasping breath, cut short as the covering finally solidified and cut off her air supply.
A/N: I'm back! The hiatus is over! And I've got a new name - TARDISBlueBox is no longer, Ziggy STARDIS is the future! I've enjoyed writing this one - first time with the Tenth Doctor, whom I dearly love. There'll be a new chapter every two days, four chapters in all :D
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