1928

A candle lit to life. Then another. Then another. Three candles lit the room just enough to read the book on the alter. A hand slid across the cover, before opening it. A great tome with innumerous pages, its words were written in a darkened red. The man touching the cover considered the words. His face obscured by his hood, only the nod of his head could be seen by his allies in the room. One by one they nodded before their leader began.

Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Dagun wgah'nagl wgn'ha'la

Ia! Ia! Dagun wgn'ha'la

Dagun wgn'ha'la

As he spoke, he raised his hands higher and higher in the air. He spoke with a rising strength in his voice until he was shouting the words all together. As he finished, he looked at his compatriots, two of whom nodded and left the room. The man began reading the words again, in the same ascending voice. This time, the others joined in. Their dark ritual, continuing, their voices began to be drowned out by screaming in the room behind them. The shadows of a flailing body flickered and danced against the vague candlelight. Then the woman, arms and legs bound in chains, was brought into the room.

"Please!" She screamed. "Let me go! I didn't do anything! I was just lost! I was just lost... I promise, let me go and I won't tell anyone... please..."

Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Dagun wgah'nagl wgn'ha'la

Ia! Ia! Dagun wgn'ha'la

Dagun wgn'ha'la

No one in the room seemed to hear her, their monotonous and grim chorus speaking to a higher purpose than her humanity. She fell and landed on the wooden flooring, the guards lifting her up again. They carried her past the chanters, past the book, and past the candles, and into where the light did not touch. She looked around her.

"What are you doing? Why are doing it! Where am I? I can't see anything... I smell the water... the ocean..."

They continued chanting. Their voices were now louder than her shouting. It reverberated through the air and throughout the village around them.

"You're going to drown me, aren't you? I'm going to drown... I didn't do anything, I was just lost! Please! Please have mercy!"

The chanting was all she could hear now. She could smell the sea, feel the dock below her, and hear the chanting. It dominated her thoughts. Those strange words, those unknowable words. She was filled with terror as she was carried farther and farther along the path.

"Please," she sobbed. "Please just tell me if you're going to drown me..."

Without ceasing his chanting, the leader shook his head so slightly that none of the other worshipers saw. Her face broke into a smile.

"Oh, thank you. Bless you. Thank you. I'm so sorry. I promise I won't tell anyone ev-"

Her body splashed into the water, quickly sinking below. As she sank below, she felt the confusion of the meaningless betrayal. Why did he tell her she wasn't going to drown? Why lie in her final moments? She didn't understand any of it, but as her lungs filled with water, it was all she could consider. And then she understood.

Up above, the air from her screams bubbled to the surface, followed quickly by the reddening of the seawater.

Ia! Ia! Dagun wgn'ha'la

Doctor Who

The Nevertime Chronicles

Chapter 1: The Dreaming Dead

2012

In a quiet park, where the birds sang and the cool breeze rustled the leaves, a young woman sat in the grass underneath the shade of a tree. She sat, legs crossed, reading a large textbook spread over her lap. She took a bite out of a green apple as she pored over the pages. She looked around herself to the empty swings and vacant benches. This was her favorite time of day. The schools were still in session, the people were still at work. It was a time when she was the only person in the world, without sound or distraction.

She flipped back a page on her textbook. Myocardial infarction. The chapter on them was huge. Worse, it made no sense to her. She sighed as she considered another barely passing grade. When she was a child, everything was simple. They were heart attacks. People had them. You called the ambulance. Now, they were myocardial infarctions and she may well become the ambulance. She pinched the bridge of her nose as she shook her head. This had to make sense. It made sense to everyone else. It was going to make sense to her. She was going to understand. She was going to learn it. She was going to sit int his park until she understood. Then and there, she made the choice to not leave until she understood the chapter. It was a good decision, but not nearly as important as her next one. In the next moment, she decided to look up.

It was a mundane confusion at first. In the middle of. If she had understood her book's lesson, she may have been too enthralled to think about it, but when the chapter was this confusing, a shadow was immediately the most captivating thing in her life. Setting aside her book, she stood to look at the growing darkness. Growing more and more. Eventually, she looked above herself and saw the very sky blotted out. Where once there was light was a large rock… or a ship… or a satellite? She couldn't be sure. A knot of fear grew in her stomach. She couldn't be sure what she was seeing, but it was larger than most anything she had seen, and it was falling towards her. She looked around herself to see if there was anyone to help her understand, when she saw yet another new thing.

Almost immediately behind her, and standing with an unearned comfort of belonging in the park, was a large blue phone booth. At least, it looked like a phone booth. At the top and above the windows were the words "Police Box". The young lady considered the words before. She had heard of Police Boxes being used in Britain, but she had never seen one in person. She considered this oddity quietly, before gasping at the rumbling overhead. Looking up, the looming object was much closer, and it appeared to be some sort of ship. A crashing ship.

Increasingly frantic, she turned to look at the empty park once more. There was no one. The shadow of the ship was farther than she could run. Her heart began to beat fast. Then faster. Then faster...

The police box opened. Out of it leaned what appeared to be a young man with short brown hair and a look of frantic fear.

"Hello, ehm, hi. I'm the Doctor. Nice to meet you. Now please do me a favor and come into this police and onward to anywhere else."

His eyes scanned the park before he added, "Now."

The young lady stopped raised an eyebrow at him before she looked again at her backpack on the other side of the park. With a ship crashing down, an impossible blue box, and a man claiming to be a doctor that can take her anywhere, she found herself with a rising appreciation of myocardial infarctions. In that moment, all she wanted was to run. Sensing her hesitation, the man in the blue box spoke.

"Look, I don't have time to explain and, so let me just tell you two points. Point one: You can trust me, I swear. And B: You need to step into this police box now or you'll spend the last..." He pulled back his sleeve to check his wrist watch. "... thirty-two seconds of your life thinking 'Who was that funny little man with the blue box and the fabulous bow tiw who was right about everythi' followed by a really big boom. Now please, come inside. There's plenty of space."

As he leaned out of the police box looking at her, she could see his desperate sincerity. As absurd as whatever she was witnessing was, he seemed to believe every word of it. She looked into the sky and saw the bottom of the ship, moving slowly downward. The whatever it was was covering the entire sky. She looked at the strange man with the bow tie. Then to the metal machine lowering through the clouds. Without turning, she asked,"Won't they destroy the box, too?"

His face betrayed his impatience. "Well, sort of. Maybe. We'll find out. Just get in!"

Leaving the open park aside, she ran into the police box. Its door closed, leaving the park as quiet as it had been just five minutes ago. The birds chirped and the water trickled from the fountain, oblivious to the shadows overhead. Just as quickly, the police box door opened again. The young woman ran back out onto the pavement. The man poked his head out and shouted at her.

"Earth! Doom! Big boomie explosion things. Is this machine not translating boom; is the onomatopoeia broken!" he shouted, knocking the door of the box.

"Just… Just!" she called back. Fifteen feet from the box, she grabbed her book back, shoving the spilled medical textbooks into it. Flinging it around her shoulder, she ran back to the box and jumped back in. This time, the door slammed behind them and locked.

As she jumped through the box, her eyes were fixed on her books, making she had collected them all.

"Three and four? Did I bring five? No, four. Okay, good." Nodding in satisfaction, she looked around to realize she was in something considerably not phone booth.

She was inside a large, domed building, building, copper and shiny. Staircases ran from where was standing to circular metal platform in the middle of the room. In the middle of that platform was a giant device, cantankerous and seemingly coherent. Levers and knobs, tubes and typewriters, and even a rotary phone were affixed to it with what appeared to be no symmetry or meaning. The room contained far more, but what fascinated her greater was that this was only the first room. Another staircase lead off into another direction she had yet to see.

Confused and scared, she murmured. "Where… where am I?"

The man looked at her with a broad grin, overflowing with excessive pride with even having been asked.

"It's the Tardis. A Tardis, I should say. Maybe the…" his smile flickered briefly as he looked around the room. "Anyway! I told you there was space didn't I? Now come on, come in!" He started to bound up the stairs before spinning around on his heel to look at her.

"Wait, very irrelevant question but I'll wonder if I don't ask, what's your name?"

She continued to look around the room, taking in the size and chaos of it. Absently, she answered.

"Mars."

He stopped and looked at her, worry written across his face.

"Mars… You're not a planet, are you?"

She was jolted out of her fascination when he said this. "What? No! I'm a person."

Relief washed over him.

"Oh, that's good to hear. I had to promise I wouldn't take any more planets aboard after last time."

He stood upright and jutted his hand out, offering a shake.

"Nice to meet you, Mars. I'm the Doctor."

To be continued...