Prologue – The Watch pt. I
Like a patchwork quilt, Tenzina could remember her life before in parts, all separate, and all stitched together in the wrong order.
She could remember the high school, where all the kids at Pine Hill were carted off on the daily. She remembered being relatively popular, considering where she came from; the rest of the children from the home were outcasts, and she remembered working hard for it. She could remember her fifth birthday, where the staff had baked her a cake, which hadn't been great, but she had refused to share it anyway, and had eaten it all in one afternoon and had had a marvellous time doing it. She could remember the creature – whom she now recognised as a Graske – that had stalked her on her final days of humanity, and accused her of things that she could never have imagined. She could remember her friends; loud girls with bleached hair and pink nails and a lingering smell of cigarettes, and she could remember how she hated them, but they kept her out of harm's way, so she persisted. She remembered growing up alone – surrounded by other children that came and went, but something about her meant that no one wanted her, always last considered, always first brought back. She remembered the athletics club that she attended for seven years, and the scholarship she was aiming for that all seemed so trivial now. She remembered that her name had been Charlotte – Charlie to her friends – and that everything about her had been a lie.
And, of course, she remembered the Doctor. How could she forget him?
It was late winter, a bitter February, and Charlie had just celebrated her seventeenth birthday. It had been the traditional party; a few cans of lager snagged from the local off-licence with Alexis' fake ID, downed in the park behind the bushes that reeked of weed. It had been cold, and Charlie hadn't been sure whether it had been worth it, but she had been told that it was The Thing To Do, so she had gone along with it regardless. Sometimes she found human behaviour hard to understand, despite being one herself.
The week to follow had appeared normal from a distance, but upon closer inspection the cracks began to show. On the Monday, Charlie arrived at school to discover that every single one of her teachers was ill. That fact alone wasn't that strange, after all, there could have been some sort of bug going around that one of the other student in Charlie's classes had passed onto them, what made it strange were the substitute teachers that had been brought in in their place. Not one knew a thing about the subject they had been asked to teach. On top of that, none of them seemed to care when the students misbehaved, unless it was Charlie. She realised that that sounded exactly like the type of thing a bitter teenager would say, but it was entirely true. They all had something strange about them too, and Charlie found that she could never look any of them in the eye, no matter how much she wanted to.
Now she knew that that was due to the low-level perception filter that each of them used to cover up the fact they weren't human at all, and that if she had ever managed it she would have seen that their eyes were all entirely red. If only Charlie had known that.
"Don't you think Miss Gregory is sketchy?" Alexis asked Charlie as they left their biology class the next day, clutching her binder close to her chest and drumming her brightly painted nails against the cardboard absently.
"I think they're all sketchy," Charlie said simply, "they don't make eye contact with anyone and, like, once I leave I can never remember what they looked like, y'know?" Her brow furrowed as she considered this, realising she had never thought it through entirely before. How did that work? Did the entire class just collectively forget what their teacher looked like? The world was strange, yes, but nothing like that ever happened in Leeds, it was always London. Or Cardiff.
"I never thought about it before but you're right," Alexis looked at Charlie as if she had made some sort of breakthrough, "Maybe Miss Gregory is a criminal on the run and she can't make eye contact with us because of her intense guilt."
Charlie shot Alexis a look out of the corner of her eye as they walked between the school buildings towards the PE block, "you can tell you're going to study creative writing, you have far too much imagination" she said dryly, and then sighed, "it's probably nothing, it's just giving me a headache."
"You can tell you're into sports," Alexis threw back, her voice vicious but edged with humour, "you don't like to think very hard."
"Be careful or I'll throw a shot put at your head," Charlie quipped, adjusting the strap of her backpack over her shoulder, "anyway, I have athletics until five so I'll meet you tomorrow at the usual place at quarter to eight."
Alexis nodded, waving as she broke off from Charlie and headed towards the school gates, leaving the girl to enter the changing rooms alone.
There were very few people in the athletics club, and even less sixth formers. Charlie was the only girl left in the team from the college, and there were significantly less from the lower school than there were boys. It was mainly because of this that she had been so determined to be the first student from the school to gain a scholarship for athletics. She was one of the best at her level in the UK at shot put - her trainer was starting to push her to apply for the Olympic qualifiers, but Charlie was still unsure. She thought she could use another four years of practice at least.
She changed quickly into her gym clothes, away from the rest of the girls in her usual back corner of the locker room, then stuffed her backpack and ring binder into a locker and made her way outside onto the sports field. Charlie liked to get out early to do a few laps of the track before everyone else rocked up, just as a pre-warm up warm up, and she set off at a sprint, running until she saw the rest of the kids congregate on the AstroTurf, when she slowed down to join them.
The PE teacher was, as with all of Charlie's others, absent with no explanation, and the substitute seemed not to be very athletically inclined, seeing as he was looking at the javelins with more confusion that Charlie had ever seen anyone look at anything. She was almost one hundred percent certain that she heard the man refer to a shot put as a cannon ball at one point, but Charlie assumed that he had been joking. She really hoped he was, at least. Despite this he seemed quite intent to criticise Charlie's form at every opportunity, something that she was not used to, being not only the schools but the entire county's star sportsman. She would have stared him down, but she couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye.
Two and a half hours of being needlessly criticised later, Charlie made her way out of the school gates. Despite spring being so close, the sun was setting as she made her way out through the park and down the road back to Pine Hill, her shadow stretching out in front of her, all broad shoulders and thick hair. The park was nothing spectacular; just a playing field with a painted football pitch, the bushes where Charlie and her friends went to smoke and drink, and a small play park for kids that was vandalised more often than it wasn't. Tonight, the swings had been tied together, the chains wrapped up in a bizarre knot that would probably take the council several days to unwrap. Charlie smirked, no one had done that for a while.
The wind wheezed, a cool breeze rustling the bushes next to the path, causing the knotted swings to squeak and swing. It sounded strange - like some sort of leaf blower on steroids. Maybe there was a storm coming.
Pine Hill Children's Home was only a fifteen-minute walk from Charlie's school, and it stood proudly in the centre of a street of terraces, the one detached house for several blocks. Pine Hill used to be some sort of manor house, or mansion, or something- the staff had once told Charlie it was where the factory owner's family lived, amongst the terraces of workers. The factory had long since been demolished and replaced with the old working men's club across the road, but the architecture in the area still screamed "Industrial revolution". Charlie had been in the home the longest, and therefore had ended up with the largest bedroom, on the right side of the top floor. It hadn't been repainted for ten years, since the last kid had been adopted and moved out, so it still had dark blue walls and a mural of planets and stars. Charlie wasn't mad at that, it was childish and cartoon-like, but she loved sci-fi, so she could make it work for her.
She collapsed down on her bed after making her way up the stairs to the top floor, when she had stuck her head into the kitchen to say hi to Paul, the chef, who she had a soft spot for seeing as he was the only care worker who had stuck around for the entire fourteen years she had been at Pine Hill. He had given her a warm smile, and had told her that she had half an hour until dinner was ready. She stared down at her bedside table for a while, studying the contents as if it was the first time she had seen them - a lamp, navy blue, like the walls; her alarm clock, always ten minutes early to give her a sense of urgency; her mobile phone, one of those flip up ones; and her old fob watch.
She was never sure why she kept it by her bedside - it was probably because it was the only thing that belonged to her family that she owned, but then she had no memory of them, so she wasn't entirely sure why she had kept it. There was just something about it that stopped her from throwing it out each time she got close. The watch had some form of engraving in a language that she couldn't speak, and it had been stuck ever since she had been given it by a foster worker once they decided that she was old enough. She didn't remember the last time she had tried to open it.
Charlie swung her legs forwards and back a few times over the edge of her bed, before leaning over and checking her phone for texts - she had two from Alexis and one from Kelly, both asking if she could hang out that evening. Charlie could have easily sneaked out, but she was exhausted after training, so declined, before throwing her phone back down and heading to the bathroom to take a shower.
Currently, there were only seven children at Pine Hill, including Charlie. Eva was four, just a little older than Charlie had been when she had been left on the doorstep, and Charlie suspected that Eva would be snapped up soon by a foster family. The little kids always stuck around the shortest amounts of time, apart from Charlie, of course. Ben was the next youngest, seven years old with bright red hair and an obsession with dinosaurs - he had been at the home for about a year after his parents were killed in a hit and run. Charlie still heard him crying sometimes in the middle of the night - most of the orphans had nightmares, she had noticed. Polly and James were twins, both ten years old and always fighting - their older brother, Samuel, was thirteen and had given up trying to shut them up. The other two girls, Sarah and Holly, were eleven, and were almost as close as sisters, despite being unrelated. Charlie, being seventeen, was the oldest by far, and had been given the opportunity to move out the year before, but had insisted on staying for as long as possible if only just to finish her studies before moving to university.
"How was athletics?" Paul asked as Charlie sat down at the dining table, wearing oversized pyjamas, her dark hair still wet. She nodded to him as she reached into the centre of the table, spooning chili onto her plate before reaching for the rice,
"It was good, yeah, though the coach was ill so we were stuck with a substitute." She pulled a face to illustrate her disapproval, and Paul returned it,
"Did they not let you know why they weren't there?"
Charlie shook her head, pouring herself a glass of water from a jug and taking a sip, "no, none of my teachers have."
Paul shot her a look, swallowing the mouthful of chili he had been chewing before prompting her to continue, "what do you mean, 'none of them'?"
Charlie realised then that she hadn't mentioned that all her teachers had been absent since the beginning of the week, and so recounted this, though she decided to leave out the parts about the weird substitutes. She wasn't sure what part of her was telling her the staff shouldn't know about them, but she trusted whatever part of her it was, and so stayed quiet.
"Must be a bug going 'round," Paul shrugged, "Polly caught something last week and had to have a few days off, didn't you, Pol?" He looked down the table towards the little girl, who nodded enthusiastically, her cheeks bulging with food. Clearly she wasn't feeling ill anymore. Charlie hmmed in response, acknowledging Paul's explanation but still not quite believing him.
She was only half way through her dinner when the doorbell rang.
"Charlie, could you watch them while I go see to that?" Paul asked, indicating to the younger kids. Charlie nodded, she had accepted her role as a substitute care worker a few months ago, when she realised that she was now often left to babysit when the adults needed to have meetings or pop to the corner shop. Paul gave her a thumbs up, before disappearing out of the room. A year or so ago, chaos would have ensued immediately, but now the children just continued with their dinner, knowing Charlie would yell at them if they stepped a toe out of line. She could be quite scary when she wanted to be. Maybe she could make a good teacher if the Olympics dream never happened.
Paul returned just over a minute later, with a rather odd looking man in tow. The visitor was skinny, looked to be in his late twenties, and was dressed like an idiot. He was wearing a bow tie. In 2009. Charlie found herself staring at him in awe. He looked completely barmy, as he stood there and grinned back down at the children. No, not at all of them… just at her.
"Hello," the man addressed the room, clasping his hands in front of his body and beaming, his voice warm and friendly, "I'm the Doctor." He glanced at Charlie as he finished his sentence, as if he expected her to react, but she only frowned. What kind of person just called himself 'the Doctor'?
Paul indicated to the man with a wave of his hand, "The Doctor is here to run an inspection for the council, nothing to worry about," He said, before sitting back down at the head of the table.
"Yes," the Doctor said, as if he had completely forgotten why he was there in the first place and Paul had just jogged his memory, "I'm here to make sure this children's home is adequately…. child friendly," He frowned slightly, before pointing down the table to Polly, "tell me, is this one," He moved his hand so he was pointing at Charlie, but still addressed the ten-year-old, "a friendly child?"
Polly blinked at him, but found herself nodding, seemingly too shocked to agree verbally. The Doctor frowned again,
"Maybe she gave me the wrong coordinates." He chuckled to himself, talking under his breath, glancing at Charlie as if she was supposed to find this funny too. She didn't. The Doctor clapped his hands together, "Anyway! Inspecting, yes, well," he looked around the dining room quickly, not moving from his spot, "well, this certainly looks good - are the chairs comfy?" He asked Ben, who nodded, chili smeared all around his mouth, "good," the Doctor gave him a thumbs up, "Can't go approving homes that have chairs that make your bottom numb now, can I?"
He looked around the room expectantly, as if this was some sort of serious question as opposed to just a stupid joke. Then again, Charlie didn't know, maybe the council did have laws about the comfiness of chairs in children's homes. If they did they really ought to get rid of the one in the living room with the dog cushions.
"Anyway," The Doctor continued, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet, "I could do with a tour of this place." He addressed Paul, "Don't worry I won't tear you away from your duties," The Doctor looked back to Charlie, who quirked an eyebrow at him, "You seem like you've been here the longest."
"I'll try not to take that as an insult," She muttered, before rolling her eyes and sighing, "Fine, I'll show you around." She pushed her chair back and stood, picking up her empty plate and glass before heading towards the kitchen, indicating with a head movement for the Doctor to follow her.
"So this is the kitchen… obviously," She said with little enthusiasm, not turning to face him as she spoke, more concerned with putting her dishes in the dishwasher so as not to get yelled at later, "You can check it out for mould or bugs or whatever it is you guys are looking for."
The inspector didn't seem to be doing much inspecting, he simply glanced at the countertops a few times, before continuing to grin at Charlie, which was more than a little unsettling. She gave him a small false smile back in the hopes to get him to stop, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.
"Yes, this all seems to be in order," The Doctor nodded, prodding one of the magnets on the fridge with a finger curiously. The postcard it had been holding up fell on the ground, but the man seemed unconcerned, "So, how long have you been here?" He asked, leaning a hip against the kitchen island and folding his arms, looking at Charlie curiously as she scraped the food scraps off her plate into the bin.
"Fourteen years, give or take," She said, glad to have some form of conversation – she did always like to talk about herself, "I've been in and out a few times, not in the last few years though. No one wants a teenager, not when there are cute kids like Eva and Ben around." She shrugged, slotting the plate into the rack in the dishwasher, "I'm not too bothered though, I like it here."
The Doctor tilted his head slightly, regarding Charlie with a strange manner, "Why did they always bring you back?"
At any other time, Charlie might have considered this to be an offensive question, but something about the inspector's tone told her that he might know more than he let on, and she finally let herself meet his eyes as she shut the dishwasher and turned to lean against it, crossing her arms and mirroring his stance. He looked familiar, now she saw him properly, though she couldn't imagine where she had ever seen anyone who looked like that before.
"I have no idea," She shrugged her shoulders, "they just did. They all said something about me seemed off, and they felt like I was better off here," She stood up straight, dropping her arms back down to her sides and setting off out of the room again, "I try not to get too upset about it – should we go to the living room next?"
"You're the boss," The Doctor clicked his fingers and pointed to her with both hands as she passed him on her way out. He did honest-to-god finger guns. Charlie rolled her eyes. As they walked down the hall, the inspector carried on with their kitchen conversation, his voice slightly softer than before,
"I'm sorry," He said, and Charlie shot him a look,
"I'm honestly not bothered," She shook her head as she opened the door to the living room, stepping to the side to allow him to enter first, "so yeah, this is the living room. Please make them get rid of the god-awful dog chair, that deserves to fail any inspection."
The Doctor nodded knowingly, and glanced around the room, "Yep, this place looks good – check, big tick for the living room."
"You're literally… stood in the doorway."
"I work for Leeds City Council; did you expect me to be thorough?" The Doctor asked, pushing past Charlie to leave the room, heading towards the staircase at the end of the hall. Charlie realised she couldn't argue with that point, and trailed after him as he conducted similar 'inspections' of the kids' bedrooms, glancing through the doorframes and nodding. Sometimes he didn't even bother opening the doors. After a few minutes, they had reached the last room – top floor, on the right.
"This one's mine," Charlie said, twisting the handle and pushing the door open, making her way inside and standing a few paces away from the doorframe, so that the Doctor would have adequate space to complete his non-inspection to the usual standard. He poked his head around, and seemed to spot something, because he grinned and stepped inside, linking his hands behind his back and squinting at the wall,
"A mural!" He exclaimed, shooting a smile back at Charlie before going back to inspecting the paintwork. Charlie shrugged and took a step towards him, swinging her arms by her sides, feeling slightly embarrassed,
"Yeah, that was the kid who had this room before me – I never got around to painting over it."
"And why would you want to?" The Doctor asked, a note of glee in his voice as he turned back to Charlie, "Murals are cool, especially space ones."
Charlie frowned, "Yeah, I guess. So, uh, is everything satisfactory? You've seen the whole house now."
The Doctor frowned, then turned quickly towards the corner of the room where Charlie's bed was, and pointed overdramatically at the table, "What's that?" He demanded. Charlie followed his gaze,
"It's a pocket watch, why?"
"It's suspicious. I need to… Inspect it." He moved over to the table and picked it up, turning it over several times and proceeding to shake it violently by his ear. Charlie watched him, completely puzzled by this display, just wanting him to finish his inspection and leave,
"What are you doing?" She asked, moving closer to the man and snatching the watch from his grasp, gripping it tightly in her fist. It always felt weird when other people touched it, "I thought you were just here to inspect the building, why are you looking at my stuff?"
The Doctor looked at Charlie for a second, "Uhh," He glanced around the room awkwardly, wringing his hands, "That's a good point. Don't you think it's suspicious, though?"
Charlie frowned at the inspector for a few moments, before dropping her gaze to the watch in her fist. She had been gripping it so tightly her knuckles had gone white. She was getting a headache.
"No," She lied, snapping, "Are you done now? I have homework."
The Doctor blinked at her, and muttered something to himself under his breath that sounded to Charlie a lot like "This is going to be harder than I thought." She narrowed her eyes at him, and he seemed to get the message, "Right, yes," He said brightly, "All done – tick, tick, tick. I'll see what I can do about the dog chair."
The Doctor slapped her on the arm, smiling, "It was good to meet you, Charlie," He said brightly. Charlie frowned; she didn't remember ever telling him her name.
"Likewise," She lied, "See you around."
He nodded to her, and waved as he walked out of the room, leaving her stood alone in the centre, clutching the watch in her fist just as tightly as she had been when he had been there. She glanced down at it again. Her headache was getting stronger.
She threw the watch back down on her bedside table and sat down on her mattress, trying to process what on earth had just happened. The council really must have been facing budget cuts if those are the types of people they were hiring. Charlie shook her head, glancing down at the glowing red numbers of her alarm clock. She ought to get her homework done – who knew when her real teachers would be back to collect it?
Charlie was awoken at five thirty by the angry screeching of her alarm clock, which she glared at,
"Shut up," she muttered to the device, as she reached over to shut off the beeping, hoping, as she did every morning, that it hadn't woken anyone else in the building up. She rubbed her bleary eyes and sat up, still holding the duvet around her body for warmth, and frowned. She had been having the most bizarre dream – something about intergalactic wars and her troops all dying. She often had dreams where she was the general of an army of troops, but this one had been darker. More vivid. And it had ended with her running away.
That didn't usually happen.
She shook her head and threw the duvet from herself, standing and hunting around on the floor for her gym clothes, which she had dumped unceremoniously in the corner of the room the night before. She changed quickly, before heading out of her room and down the stairs, stopping before she left the home to fill up a water bottle, and out into the street. She stretched her legs a few times before heading off on a jog – every morning she did a full circuit to school and back, before showering, getting dressed and returning to school a few hours later. Part of her wished that there were more places to go in the tiny suburb she was trapped in, she felt far too enclosed.
She reached the park and slowed down slightly, taking this leg at a more leisurely pace. She passed the kids' play park, where the swings were still knotted, and the line of bushes, which seemed to be housing far more empty WKD bottles than it had been doing the night before. She didn't take a second glance at them – she didn't take a second glance at anything – until she saw something new.
It was entirely possible the blue phone box had always been in the park and Charlie just hadn't noticed it, but something about it felt wrong. Just looking at it made her nauseous, as if it didn't belong in this universe – almost as if she wasn't allowed to look at it. She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at it, completely mesmerised for seemingly no reason at all. No, this had never been here before – definitely not.
Something inside of her told her that she shouldn't stare; it told her that if she did not want to face any consequences she was to carry on with her day, and never think about it again. She decided that now was, as usual, the time to listen to that little anonymous part of her consciousness, so she screwed her eyes shut and shook her head, before carrying on at a jog once more.
It took a few moments of jogging for Charlie to realise why the box had made her stop and stare – she had recognised it. Not just as a nineteen sixties police telephone box, but as something else. She had seen it somewhere before – though she couldn't picture where – and she knew that it was dangerous.
There was rusting in the line of bushes that she ran alongside, pretty unusual for this time on a morning, and she glanced down as she ran. She saw a streak of orange amongst the dark green. Probably just a fox, she thought, carrying on up the path to the school, before turning right to make her way out of the park. She only looked back at the police box twice on her way out.
She arrived back at Pine Hill twenty minutes after she had left, and was, as usual, still the only one awake, besides the staff. Chris was the night support worker, and had been for the past 2 years. He greeted Charlie as she crossed him on the stairs,
"Good run?" He asked, smiling much too brightly for someone who had been at work since 10pm. Charlie nodded to him, not wanting to let on that it was actually pretty weird, considering, and returned the smile – it was far too early to engage in conversation.
She showered and changed into her clothes for sixth form – they were meant to wear business dress, so Charlie was obliged to wear a suit every day, not that that was necessarily a bad thing; blazers suited her. The other kids had started to get up and fight over who got to use the bathroom first by the time that Charlie made her way down for breakfast. In all her years of living in the children's home, she had learnt that the earlier you woke up, the better.
Charlie met Alexis at the park entrance an hour later, and the two of them made their way up to the school, Alexis recounting the messy events of the night before to Charlie, who couldn't have been less interested if she tried. She had only been half listening, until they turned a corner and Alexis stopped hallway through her sentence, pausing for a second before asking,
"Where did that come from?"
Charlie looked up and followed Alexis' gaze until her eyes settled on the police box once again. She shuddered. Just looking at it felt wrong.
"I don't know, but I don't like it." She said shortly, "Come on, we're gonna be late."
"We've got plenty of time!" Alexis said brightly, "Why don't you like it? It's cool – kind of vintage. Do you reckon it works?" She set off at a jog towards the box and Charlie sighed before following behind at a much slower pace. Alexis threw Charlie a grin before opening the hatch in the door and picking up the phone that was attached inside and holding it up to her ear.
"No dial tone," She frowned, "Must just be an art piece or something,"
Charlie felt uneasy, "Come on, Lex, I really don't think you should touch that thing." She glanced back up the path towards the school, just to check that no one was looking at them. The feeling of nausea was back.
"So you have no problem breaking the law on a regular basis, but touching a big wooden box is too scary for you?" Alexis laughed, putting the phone back and closing the hatch, "Fine, I'll leave it."
"Okay cool, let's go." Charlie sighed in relief, feeling some of the unexplainable tension that had built up in her chest dissipate.
"I didn't finish!" Alexis said, laughing, "I'll leave it, if you knock on the door." Her eyes glinted wickedly. Charlie cursed herself for having such terrible taste in friends.
"No."
"Then I will." Alexis turned back towards the box, her bleached blonde hair swishing over her shoulder, and extended an arm up to knock against the wood.
Knock, knock, knock.
Charlie's heart was pumping so fast it was almost as if she'd been doing laps of the playing field again. The next few seconds were terrifying. She knew that, logically, no one could really be inside the box – it was far too small for anyone to just hang out in, but something – that tiny anonymous bit of her brain that always had the good ideas – was screaming at her to run away.
"See? No answer," Alexis said, pulling a face at Charlie and shaking her head, "You're being so weird this morning," She added. Charlie shrugged,
"Come on, we need to go to biology."
After the police box incident, the rest of the day, thankfully, continued as normally as possible. All of Charlie's teachers were still absent, and the substitutes were as shady as ever, but nothing new and unnecessarily weird happened until later in the day, during Charlie and Kelly's free period after PE theory.
The two girls were sat in the cafeteria, Kelly downing a coffee and scrolling down Twitter on her laptop, and Charlie finishing last minute sociology notes before their lesson at the end of the day. They were the only students that weren't in the library which meant that, ironically, the cafeteria was far more quiet, which was how Charlie liked it.
"Ah, Charlotte!"
Ms Walters, the head of the sixth form college, approached the two girls at the table, her kind, dark eyes trained on Charlie. She appeared to have someone trailing behind her, though the woman was far too tall for Charlie to be able to make out who it was.
"Yes, miss?" Charlie asked, looking up from her notes, noticing Kelly switch tabs on her internet browser to a sociology paper out of the corner of her eye. The teacher didn't seem to be paying Kelly any attention, and instead was addressing Charlie, as if the other girl wasn't even there.
"You're on free period until half past one?" She asked. Charlie nodded, and the teacher continued, "We have an inspector here from the council, could you give him a tour for me?"
Charlie frowned. An inspection at Pine Hill and now an inspection at school within the same twenty-four hours? It wasn't completely unheard of, but she was suspicious all the same. And why was it always her who had to show the inspectors around? Didn't the adults realise she had exams to study for?
"Yeah, sure," She said reluctantly, not wanting to get on the head teacher's bad side – she was the one who was in control of her scholarship currently, after all. Ms Walters smiled at her,
"Excellent – Doctor Smith?" She turned around to face the man who was behind her; the tall, skinny man in a tweed jacket and a bow tie; and addressed him, "Charlotte here will show you around the sixth form buildings, I trust you'll find it up to standard."
"Yes, excellent, I'm sure I will." The Doctor was beaming again, but Charlie was not.
This was weird. The same inspector for both buildings, always requesting her to tour him around. She frowned at him. Maybe he was connected to the teachers going missing. Charlie didn't want to say anything, not in front of the head anyway, so she stacked all of her work up and slid it back into her backpack, then stood and slung the bag over her shoulder.
"Okay, cool," She watched the Doctor carefully out of the corner of her eye, but all he was doing was wringing his hands in front of him, still beaming at Charlie, "If you wanna follow me I'll show you the business classrooms out the back."
The Doctor obliged, trailing after Charlie as she made her way through the rows of cafeteria tables towards the back door of the building, where there was a short path between the main building and the business block. As soon as the door was closed, and the two of them were out of sight of any windows, Charlie turned swiftly, grabbing the man by the lapels of his tweed blazer and slamming him into the wall,
"Who are you?" She demanded, meeting him eye to eye, "And where are my teachers?"
The Doctor chuckled, but held up his hands in defence as he did so, as if this was familiar to him, but he was still unsure as to whether Charlie would actually hurt him. His laughter only succeeded in making Charlie more angry,
"If this is some sort of weird… plot to –"
"To do what?" The Doctor interrupted, quirking an eyebrow.
Charlie faltered for a moment, her grip on the Doctor's jacket loosening a little, before she reapplied the force, pushing him back against the wall harder this time, so he made a little 'oof' noise.
"I don't know! Why would I know? It's your plot!"
The Doctor was still grinning, it was infuriating, "I can assure you, I'm not plotting anything," He chuckled again, "I'm just an inspector."
Charlie narrowed her eyes, "of schools and children's homes?"
The Doctor shrugged, "Child services."
Charlie dropped him instantly. She was being stupid. Of course the same department would inspect both the schools and the children's homes – it shouldn't even have been weird that it was the same guy. She shook her head and stepped away from the Doctor, apologising,
"Shit, I'm sorry, this has just been a really weird day, though that isn't an excuse to physically assault you, I guess." Charlie screwed her eyes shut, "Please don't tell me you're going to put this on the report,"
The Doctor laughed again, though this time it came as more of a relief to Charlie than an annoyance, "Nah, don't worry about that." He brushed down his lapels and straightened his bow tie, "So, to the tour?"
Charlie eyed him suspiciously, "You're surprisingly okay with the fact that I just attacked you."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows, "I'm used to it."
Charlie frowned – what kind of schools was he inspecting if he was used to the kids assaulting him? She shook her head again, attempting to clear it of the fuzziness that had been settled down upon it all day, before heading off again towards the business building.
The Doctor's inspection of the college was very much like the inspection of the home the night before. He barely looked in any of the classrooms, maybe poking his head around the doorframe if he felt like it, but otherwise deciding based on the door whether the room was a pass or not. He didn't even seem to be writing anything down. Charlie didn't want to ask; she was still too embarrassed by her overreaction in the alleyway.
"So, what's happened with your teachers?" The Doctor asked as they made their way through the shelves of the library, "You asked me where your teachers were."
Charlie inwardly cringed at the fat the Doctor had brought up her outburst, but the tiny part of her brain was speaking up again, and it seemed to think that if she should tell any adult about all these strange goings on, this was the one to tell. She didn't look him in the eye as she recounted the facts, but instead trailed her eyes along the spines of the books, feeling decidedly uncomfortable,
"All of my teachers have been missing since Monday," She said, "No one's told us where they've gone. It's just the ones who teach me – my friends in other classes still say theirs are there. But they've given us really weird substitutes."
"Weird how?" The Doctor sounded far more interested in this conversation than he had in any they had been having about the school, but Charlie chose to ignore that – something told her that he could help.
"Well, that's the thing," She said, pausing for a moment to let another student pass the two of them, "No one can remember. As soon as you leave the classroom you can't remember anything about them – nothing except that they never look you in the eye." She stopped, reaching the end of the bookshelf, and turned to face the Doctor, who was regarding her oddly.
"And what do you reckon is going on?" He asked, tilting his head to the side. Charlie was slightly taken aback by the question, but found herself answering almost immediately, the words tumbling out of her mouth without her even knowing what they meant,
"Clearly it's some sort of low-level perception filter – probably masking the fact that they're not native to Earth," Charlie stopped herself with a hand over her mouth, and stood there, in silence, staring at the Doctor for a moment, before dropping her hand, "Sorry, I don't know what I just said, ignore that, I – sorry."
She turned away, because the Doctor's staring was freaking her out. What she had just said was freaking her out. Those hadn't been her words. Her headache was back.
"Charlie," The Doctor said tentatively. She shook her head,
"Can we just," She held up a hand, pausing, shaking her head again, "Get back to the tour. Please." She said firmly, her head burning. She didn't want to look at the Doctor, he was starting to make her headache worse. This last day had been weird – ever since he had turned up. She was still suspicious. She was sure he didn't work for the council.
"The tour, yes, of course." The Doctor said, his voice soft. Charlie didn't look at him. The sooner this tour was over, the better.
Paul wasn't in when Charlie got back from the gym after college, even though he was always in for dinner on a Wednesday evening. She tried not to think too much about it as she showered and pulled on her pyjamas, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, wiping away the condensation with a hand. She looked just the same as usual, but something about her appearance seemed weird to her. Had her face always looked like that? All dark hair and thick eyebrows and a nose that was almost hooked in its shape?
She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, screwing them shut and groaning. What was wrong with her?
She heard whoever had replaced Paul for the day call up to the kids for dinner, and sighed, gathering up her towels and gym clothes and taking them back to her room, dumping them in her laundry basket before making her way down to the dining room. The younger kids were already complaining, and it didn't take Charlie long to realise why.
The replacement chef couldn't cook. At all. The pasta sauce they had made was awful, and made Charlie gag. She had grinned and bared it, knowing better after fourteen years than complaining when the staff made you something you didn't like. It was only after she went back up to her room to finish her biology homework that she realised she couldn't remember a thing about what the new chef looked like. Just like the substitute teachers.
Something was going on here, and Charlie could swear that Doctor knew something about it.
He had appeared the night before, and had turned up twice in the past twenty-four hours, both times asking for her specifically. The weird replacements seemed to be following her – taking positions that would get whoever they were closer and closer to her. Paul was possibly the closest thing she had to family. That meant that whatever was going to happen would be happening soon.
But what did they want from her?
The Doctor knows, she thought, though she wasn't sure why. The tiny part of her mind that was always right was telling her to find him, though she wasn't sure how. He had only appeared in the last day… just like the police box.
Realisation dawned upon Charlie, and she jumped up out of her desk chair and dashed to the wardrobe, pulling on whatever clothes she found first, then grabbed her phone and stuffed it in the pocket of her jeans. She slipped on her trainers and grabbed her coat from the back of the door, and made her way over to the window. This wasn't the first time she had sneaked out – there was a tree outside of her room that was the perfect height and strength to carry her.
She tried not to think too much about how much of a cliché it was as she pulled open the window, feeling the cold February breeze catch on her arms. Charlie threw her coat out of the window and hopped up on the windowsill, praying that she wouldn't topple over and fall three floors to the ground below, but somehow, some sort of instinct took over and she found herself leaping into the tree without an issue, taking a hold of the branches and climbing down effortlessly. She wasn't sure when or where she had learnt to climb trees, but she was certainly grateful for the skill.
She scooped up her coat and pulled it on, before hurrying away from the building and into the street, hugging her arms around her middle as she walked just fast enough to not look suspicious, the wind freezing as it blew through her still-wet hair. She reached the park entrance a few minutes later, following the same route she took several times a day, everything slightly more sinister in the darkness of the evening. She stopped dead in front of the gates, looking up at the iron lettering blankly, as if she had only just realised where she was.
What was she doing? Looking for a school inspector in a police phone box in a park? What on earth had she been thinking?
Her head was pounding, and she shook it vigorously, trying to think straight, but she couldn't. Her mind was swimming – this was all so overwhelming, and it was all because of him. Who was he, and why did he seem so familiar?
It hurt to think about it. Charlie closed her eyes and frowned, knowing now that the only logical thing to do would be to turn around and go home – so then why was she still telling herself to keep going?
She ignored the voice in her head for once, turning on the spot and heading back to Pine Hill, not bothering to sneak back in the way she had gone out, walking in through the front door as if everyone knew that she had been out. Paul's replacement said nothing, just watched her as she walked past him towards the stairs, never making eye contact.