Doctor Who and all related characters are property of the BBC, Selphie Tilmitt is property of Square-Enix and is used without permission. This story is a non-profit fan work and should not be sold under any circumstances .Nor should it be re-upload onto another website without my expressed permission. Any other characters are the properity of myself and I must be consulted before they are used by someone else.
The Doctor ran frantically around the TARDIS, pushing buttons, turn dials and pulling levers. He looked at his companions, Martha Jones and newcomer Selphie Tilmitt.
"Vacation? What do you mean 'vacation'?" The converse wearing alien asked in bewilderment, "Vacation from what?"
"Monsters?" Martha suggested
"Mayhem!" Added Selphie
"Running?" Martha asked her new cohort, who nodded in agreement.
"Things that go squwzrtl!" Selphie continued
The Doctor sighed and shook his head, "You take them to one sentient mountain and they never let you hear the end of it...fair enough. So vacation it is. Week in the Bahamas?"
The TARDIS came to full stop as the Doctor replotted the time and location and sent it hurtling off into the time vortex, while the two girls went and got changed into some more summery clothes with the Earthling Martha trying to explain the Bahamas to the Gaian Selphie. The Time Lord removed his brown over coat and threw it over one of the coral like supports, loosing the tie of his blue pinstripe suit.
The sentient time ship came to a stop with a thung! A sound somewhat of a cross between a thud and a dong and the girls each came back in swimsuits. Selphie's bikini was an overly bright yellow, and Martha was wearing red with black straps.
"How come you have so many women's clothes in the TARDIS wardrobe, Doctor?" The medical student asked
"Right then, shall we go?" Was the Doctor's only answer, overly cheerful though it may be, "Prepare yourself for sun, sea, sand and..."
The Doctor rubbed his hands together, then opened the TARDIS door revealing heavy rain, dark skies and what was most definitely not the Bahamas.
"Brighton..." The Doctor said awkwardly, "Well, it's nearly the Bahamas."
The Selphie Chronicles: Episode 1
Spectral Waves
The rain did nothing to dampen the spirits of the sunny girl that used magic and earned her living as military for hire, granted she'd changed out of the bikini and into something warmer, a blue hoodie (with the hood up of course), a pair of jeans and her favourite pair of boots. Martha had changed back into her red jacket, which was zipped up the collar and her jeans, keeping herself dry by way of umbrella.
"Rain, Rain, Rain!" Sang Selphie merrily, "Wash away my fears!"
"So, why aren't we going to the Bahamas again?" Martha asked, "Especially for Selphie's first visit to Earth?"
"She seems to be enjoying herself." The Doctor replied absently, roughling his hair in the rain. "Besides, the Bahamas don't do fish and chips like Brighton does them! Although... it does seem a little too quiet."
"Well, it is raining."
"Since when has that stopped the British?"
"Fair point."
The group continued along the waterfront towards Brighton Pier, Selphie seemed to make it her mission to jump in as many big puddles as she could. Martha liked the girl for sure, but she seemed to act so childish at times. Still her cheerful nature was infectious and when the girl grinned at her, she grinned back.
"Hey, hey lookit that!" Selphie called up, leaning against the railings and pointing out to sea.
Way off in the distance was an old fashioned galleon, The Doctor glanced around, the roads seemed to be late twentieth/early twenty-first century earth, but the ship... The Time Lord reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses, walking towards the railing and peering out to sea, his squinted in focus, jaw hanging open slightly.
Off in the distance, the sailing ship emitted a faint light then vanished.
"What was that?" Asked Martha looking at The Doctor expectantly, he didn't reply.
"It was the Ghost Ship." A fourth, unfamiliar voice answered, it belonged to a man in his mid thirties, his black hair was already greying at the sides and his brown eyes had the look of someone who hadn't slept in a month.
"Ghost ship, hm?" The Doctor asked, "How come that hasn't brought a crowd of tourists, even in weather like this?"
"Where have you been? People are staying away because the ghost ship brings bad luck and that's if you're lucky."
"That seems something of an oxymoron to me," The Doctor replied sceptically, "And if you're unlucky?"
"If you're unlucky, you join it's crew."
The group plus their new acquaintance ended up in a small fish and chip shop just off the waterfront on a street called Ship St(1), the group of four were sat by the window, Selphie watching the rain while Martha helped bring over their order. The Doctor noticed a calendar on the wall was set for August 1993, and turned his attention back to the man they'd met outside. He seemed slightly more at ease inside and out of the rain, but his eyes rarely left the restless waves.
"I'm The Doctor, this is Martha Jones and Selphie Tilmitt." The Doctor introduce, pointing out each in turn.
"Ricky Sharp, (2)" The Man replied,
"Funny, you don't look like Sean Bean." The Doctor stated
"Come again?"
"Never mind." The Time Lord said, somewhat disappointed before remembering his dates, "You'll see next year. So tell me when this 'ghost ship' arrived."
"About six or seven weeks back, that old sailing ship started appearing once a day, every day." Rick explained, warming his hands on a mug of tea, "At first everything was great, tourism was up, the BBC, ITV all the new programs thought it was some kind of publicity stun..."
"Imagine that," The Time Lord interjected with dry sarcasm,
"But no one stepped forward to claim responsibility," Rick continued, "Then a little girl named Debbie drowned, it was huge. She'd apparently gone out in the middle of the night, swimming alone and got swept out in a strong current. Her body washed up on shore a few days later."
"That's awful..." Martha whispered sadly, the normally spunky Selphie nodded her agreement.
"It gets worse." Rick continued, "That same night her father heard sobbing, from out in the hallway, at first he'd believed it to be his wife, until he realised she was lying in bed next to him. So he went to the hotel room door and saw... her. He saw Debbie. The poor chap said she was dripping wet from head to toe, water spewing from her mouth whenever she tried to speak. He opened the door and she ran away from him, down the hall, leaving wet footprints. Then she just vanished. Everyone thought he was mad. They began accusing him of killing Debbie, making it look like an accident. Then it happened again, a man named Thomas West disappeared from his home. His keys had apparently been left at home, the door still locked and his wife didn't remember him getting up during the night. Two days later he turned up dead on the shore too, drowned. Four more people in a month after that."
"But what does that have to do with the ship?" The Doctor asked, Rick looked at him in bewilderment. Then reached over to the table next to theirs grabbing the newspaper, he began leafing through it.
"There should be a picture in here somewhere..." He said wearily, in frustration, he threw the paper on the table. "It's not in there, but someone once took a close shot of the galleon. Each time a person died, they appear on the ship in the photograph.
"It could be Photoshop'd," Martha pointed out,
"photowhat?" Rick asked,
"Right, sorry I forgot. Faked. Like those girls with the fairies.(3)"
"No, I mean they literally appear on the photograph, if you looked at a photo of the ship before someone died they wouldn't be there, look at it while they're dying and they..."
He paused for breath, trying not to choke on the words even as he said them. "They fade into the photo. I've seen it happen, others have too. That's why everyone's leaving. They won't come back until that damned ship has gone."
"Why haven't you left?" Martha asked, "If it's so unsafe, surely you'd have gone too?"
"Brighton's my home, like a lot of people, I've got nowhere else to go. Everyone else just avoids the waterfront."
"Not you, though?" The Doctor asked, the suspicion creeping into his voice,
"I come by to see if the ship has appeared," Rick replied wearily, "I also check on those damn fools who insist on chasing ghosts... even when it gets them killed."
The group turned to look out of the window, staring out through the rain, to the horizon where the ship lay in wait. The Doctor turned back to his companions and grinned.
"Well gang, looks like we've got a mystery on our hands!" He beamed
"Oh, god!" Martha groaned, "Next you'll be telling us to split up and look for clues!"
"We'll wait until tomorrow, hopefully the weather will have cleared up." The Doctor explained, "We'll see what we can find out about the ship and it's 'victims'" The Doctor stood.
"How come we're waiting?" Selphie asked, "Why don't we just go after the ghost ship now and clobber whoever's behind it?"
"I can't land the TARDIS on a ship that can phase out of this plane of reality when it's not in this reality, and the weather's too choppy for me to be able to take a boat out and get some decent reading on it's appearing point, I'll have to wait for the weather to calm down." The Doctor stated, "I don't like sitting around waiting, but if I can rig up the TARDIS' sensors to scan for dimensional breaches, we'll be able to know when it arrives."
"Dimensional breaches?" Asked Rick, "What's a Tardis? What are you talking about?"
"Hmm? Oh, it's hard to explain, easier to show you." The Doctor said, "The TARDIS, isn't too far from here and it's probably the safest place right now. Come on."
*** Later That Night ***
Andrew Porter had maybe had a little too much to drink, the thought would have crossed his mind, but he was too busy concentrating on walking home, he didn't remember the road to the pub being so damned uneven and he was sure he'd walked this way on the way there. Tripping over a loose paving stone, Andrew fell to the floor, the change he'd been planning to spend at the local takeaway spilling all over the pavement.
"Damn it..." He slurred as he reached for coins slowly, only managing to grab one at a time, returning each to his pocket in turn. Using a nearby garden wall for balance, Andrew cautiously regained his footing. With a deep determined breath that became a weary sigh he marched on as the mild august air became a bitter icy chill.
Andrew felt a trickle of water down the back of his neck and raised his hand to wipe it off, only to find his neck dry. Shrugging it off the man continued walking until he could safely stumble through his front gate, he tripped over his own feet and slammed into the front door, shushing at it. People were being too noisy, the door was trying to sleep.
His brow furrowed at the sentence he'd just thought, it sounded wrong somehow but he couldn't figure out why, maybe in the morning, after his hangover the world would make more sense. Yeah, a good night's sleep was exactly what he needed.
Suddenly he felt water on his wrist, grasping at it like a cold, wet hand. He looked to his right and saw a person dripping from head to toe, pale flesh. Messed hair and dead eyes. But it was different then that, it wasn't that they were just wet... it was like they were made of water. He could see through them. They were but they weren't.
Suddenly Andrew Porter's mind was very, very clear. He knew exactly where he was and exactly what the person was who stood next to him. He'd never believed the stories about the ghost ship or it's crew of the damned. When the rest of Britain had run for cover, he'd laughed it off with Jack, Aaron and Spizz down at The Four Sails(4), but here right now next to him, in a ruined and tattered suit was a man who was clearly dead and had come from The Ship. Which meant...
"No, no no no!" He cried, "Please, NO! NOT ME!"
Which meant he'd been chosen to join their crew.
Reaching his hand away from the aquatic spirit, Andrew charged out of the garden, half running, half staggering down the street.
"Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god!" The drunk gasped, "Never drink again as long as I live...!"
Turning a corner he stopped and gasped, leaning on the side of a house as he clutched his chest gasping for breath.
All of Andrew felt something grabbing his wrists, it felt like Death's hands had taken ahold of him. Trying to pull away, he screamed and struggled against the wall, being dragged backwards against the brick and through the cement. The wall had become fluid as the drowned man pulled him in, as he felt himself being dragged away from the land of the leaving, Andrew heard a watery voice speak.
"Ahoy, poor soul who feels my hand,
this surely means that you are damned.
Our captain does have need of you,
his crew is cursed now you are too.
And if his ship indeed can mend,
it means that you must meet your end."
It would be the last thing Andrew heard.
The Doctor had gone through the usual shock and awe, the "bigger on the inside" and the calming of the newcomer, explained who they were, and Rick was just beginning to calm down.
"It's a lot to take in," Martha said, leaning against one of the 'coral supports' "Isn't it?"
"No kidding, this makes even less sense then that ghost ship out there." Rick replied, to which the Doctor scoffed. "What did I say?"
"This is simply a transcendentally dimensional time ship. It's science, albeit from your point of view very futuristic-y science. Just like that 'ghost ship' of yours. It's technological not supernatural." The Time Lord explained, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world as he rewired bits of the TARDIS.
Selphie grinned,
"Well however it works I think she's the coolest thing in the world... any world!" She beamed, "And so pretty too!"
"There!" Exclaimed The Doctor suddenly, "I've rigged up the TARDIS to scan specifically for temporal rifts and dimensional portals in the immediate area. It'll bring up the exact location of any entry into this universe here," The Doctor tapped a monitor displaying a detailed map of Brighton, "If any of the 'ghosts' show up, we'll know about it and no one else dies."
To be continued.
Author's Notes:
(1): Ship Street is a real place in Brighton. To help inspire me to write this story, I looked up images on google maps, and thought it was a nice looking Chip Shop for the gang to go to. Was that particular shop there in 1993? I don't know.
(2): Rick is short of Richard, Richard Sharpe is the name of Sean Bean's character in Sharpe which first aired in 1994, hence the Doctor's comment. It's not important, I just thought it was funny.
(3): Yes, the photo I'm referring too is the same one used in that episode of Torchwood, however as far as Martha knowns it was fake and that those vicious little gits aren't real.
(4): The Four Sails, however is to my knowledge not a real Pub, I just thought it sounded like a good name.
Thank you all for reading, and I look forward to bringing you the next chapter as soon as I can. Feedback, both positive and negative is much appreciated, so long as the negative is in the form of constructive criticism, I hope you've enjoyed the chapter. See you next time,
Coops.