Chapter Two:

"I Swear I Will Believe"

Joan Redfern was a mild-mannered, well-put together woman. She was not a pretty woman, but she was perhaps a handsome woman, if such a thing exists. Her features were light and fair but somehow severe, all the same. And she didn't smile. Not even with her eyes. In fact, her eyes were the saddest eyes that Sally had ever seen. Their sadness went down deep, so deep it seemed bottomless, and yet, there was also a sense of peace there. A serenity that comes with knowing your life may never be filled with light again.

She sat behind a desk, her hands clasped in her lap, as she studied Sally with those sad and peaceful blue eyes.

"Tell me," she began, "How you came to be standing in the middle of the shooting range at target practice when no one saw you approach?"

"Miss Redfern-"

"Matron Redfern, if you please," Joan interrupted quite mildly, giving one quick bow of her head. "Besides the fact that it is my title, I must also confess I am far past being referred to as a Miss, in any case. I was married once, though that was a very long time ago." She thought that perhaps, if she were being very honest with herself, she had really been married twice - once in this life, and once in a life that never existed; a life where her second husband had been a man named John Smith; a man who was not a man at all but only pretended so very convincingly for all too short a time.

"All right then," Sally replied, returning the matron's serene tone of voice. "Matron Redfern. I know it sounds odd, but it's as I told Professor Hayes when I came to - Even if I could find the words to tell you how it happened, you wouldn't believe me."

Just the ghost of a smile which looked just as deeply sad as her eyes did touched one side of Joan's mouth, and then it was gone. "I believe a great many things these days," she wistfully replied, and for a moment her eyes went somewhere very far away. "A great many things which I never could have imagined I would believe. Not even in my wildest dreams."

Her eyes returned to Sally's, and they were sharper, somehow.

"Tell me where you came from, Sally Sparrow," Joan Redfern implored her. "Tell me and I swear I will believe."

Sally stared across the desk at Joan Redfern for what felt like a very long time. She stared at her unblinkingly, though she knew she could have blinked if she so wished. There was no sense of danger coming from this woman, and yet Sally thought she could feel some other brand of tension baking off of her; filling the space between them across the desk in shimmery waves like car exhaust on a hot summer's day. It was anticipation, Sally thought; and perhaps a kind of desperate longing. A hunger for something which Sally hoped - but very much doubted - that she could provide. It was this unspoken need which made her answer truthfully, though she knew the risk was great that she would be locked away in a London sanitarium before the day was out. It's funny; she had always wondered what Bedlam looked like while it was still active. Now, it seemed, she might get her chance to find out. Firsthand.

Finally, she spoke.

"I came from London," she said. "But not your London. Not here. Not now. A different London, far away. I was... I was in a house. This old abandoned house called the Drumlins. It hadn't been lived in since..." She thought about it, and, for a moment, smiled. "Well, since now, I guess." The thought mystified her; that the Drumlins would still be there on that same dead-end street, filled with rich people having parties; standing around drinking highballs and every now and then stopping to dance the waltz. Perhaps going outside for a cigarette on the terrace to admire the beautiful stone statues along the way...

She shivered.

"This house," she continued. "Had statues. Old statues; incredibly old. Statues of angels. Angels crying into their hands. Except... they weren't statues, not really." Her eyes met Joan's across the desk. "When you turned your back... they moved."

Joan was instantly reminded of the scarecrows. The scarecrows that weren't scarecrows; the scarecrows that moved. She looked away; swallowed involuntarily. Thought again of John.

"I believe you," she said, her voice so low it was barely more than a whisper. She put a hand to her throat as if she could massage away the sudden lump which had formed there. "Please... go on."

"When they touched you," Sally continued. "When they got you. They transported you. Through time and space. They dumped you off wherever they saw fit. They did it to my friend Kathy. And they did it to Billy. And now... now they've done it to me."

Through time and space, Joan thought, and the journal came to her mind, then. The journal of impossible dreams. The journal with the ink drawings of the woman with the long hair, and the little tin dog, and the magic box. The magic box which she herself had seen, that big blue box that took him wherever he wanted to go. Anywhere in time and space.

After seeing these things, it was not so difficult to believe that stone angels had transported Sally Sparrow here. After meeting the Doctor, it was not so difficult to believe that at all.

"Sally," she began. "How many years into the future have you traveled from?"

This question was easy for Sally. She had done her calculating on the shooting range. It had not taken more than a second or two.

"Ninety-six," Sally solemnly replied. "Ninety-six years, Matron Redfern."

"Ninety-six..." Joan echoed, losing her voice at the end of it. She felt as though the world had tilted ever so slightly to one side underneath her chair. She took a moment to catch her breath. "My word," she said. "That's nearly an entire century. You poor girl. You're so very far from home."

Sally exhaled the breath she hadn't even realized she was holding in her lungs, a whoosh of pure relief spilling past her lips. "You do believe me," she exclaimed. "I don't know why, but you really do, don't you?"

"I do," Joan replied, and in her voice was a note of unmistakable regret. She wished she didn't believe this girl. She wished she still lived in a world where she would find the things that Sally Sparrow had told her to be completely mad; the fanciful lies of a bored teenage girl. But she simply didn't live in that world. Not anymore. Not since John Smith went away.

She stood from her desk. "And if you care to hear an impossible story told by an aging widow, then I would be quite happy to explain why." She walked around the desk and headed to the door, then stood to one side, holding it open.

"But first," she said. "I think perhaps there's something I ought to show you."

...To Be Continued...