Screams in general are unexpected, but this scream that echoed through the TARDIS startled even the Doctor. He kicked up his legs and sent the book crashing to the floor. He tore his spectacles off his face and jumped to his feet. His hearts pounded and his mind raced, but he still nearly instantly deduced the scream came from the direction of Rose's room.
The Doctor ran at full speed down the hall and skidded to a halt in front of Rose's door. He almost barged in, but he held himself back to pounding on the door instead. "Rose?" He shouted with panic in his voice. When there was no answer, he stood back in the hall and shouted her name again. No answer.
Alright, the Doctor decided. He pushed a button on the wall and the door obediently slid open. He stood in the doorway and looked into a dark room. "Rose?" he asked. He reached around and tapped a pad on the wall, the lights came on. He looked over the room and noted that it was same messy as the last time he'd seen it, which was once shortly after she moved in. He gasped. There on the floor next to the bed, was a puddle of blood.
In a flash, the Doctor was on his knees next to the blood. He put his glasses on and leaned over the blood for a much closer look and smell. Next, he dabbed the tip of a finger in the blood and raised it to his lips. He was nervous over what he was about to taste, but he licked his finger anyway. As he feared, the blood tasted like human female A positive roughly 20 years old. He closed his eyes and fought the emotions that welled up inside him. Being emotional was not going to help him find Rose.
Investigation mode, he told himself, stick to investigation mode. He dug out the sonic and waved its blue light over the blood. When that yielded no new information, he waved the sonic around the room and paused when the sonic picked up on something underneath the bed. He shuffled on his knees closer to the bed and lowered his head to the floor.
His eyebrows crunched together when he saw the golden box. "What have we here?" The Doctor said aloud and didn't contain his curiosity as he picked up the box. He sat up and turned the box over in his hand. He'd never seen anything like it and was completely perplexed. The little box was certainly a new addition to the room, and it was a strange addition indeed. The markings its sides were as close to Gallifreyan as the Doctor had ever seen, close, but not quite. Because of the similarities, he thought he could discern the word 'dimension', but he had to admit, it was only a guess.
He scanned the box with the sonic and learned that it contained some sort of energy, but the sonic couldn't pinpoint it. The Doctor wore his deep thought expression and let his eyes wander over the room. That was when he saw the parchment rolled up on top of the bed. As quick as a snake strike, the Doctor snatched up the paper, failing to notice the old sonic underneath it. He unrolled the paper and studied the black inked diagrams intently. "Lament Configuration," he whispered with fascination.
This was something new and it peeked his curiosity no doubt about it, but Rose is in trouble, so he hunkered down and committed the diagram to memory. According to the diagram, the box contained energy, but what kind it didn't say. The diagram wasn't really helpful in determining what the box was for, only that there were different configurations the box could have that served different purposes, and those purposes weren't spelled out clearly either. Instead, the Doctor made educated guesses on each of the configurations.
"Rose. What happened?" The Doctor sighed and glanced over at the blood. She must have been trying to solve the puzzle, he reasoned, and maybe this really does open a door to another dimension. But why the blood? Only one way to find out. With the Gallifreyan word for dimension dancing around in the back of his mind, he tucked the sonic in his jacket and pressed his fingers into the side of the puzzle box to make the first move.
.
.
"Such sweet innocence," said the man, if that's what he is, standing in front of her. Through tear-filled eyes, Rose stared him in terror and mentally tried to comprehend the reason behind the deep cuts in a grid pattern and the nails imbedded at each cut cross point on the man's otherwise bald head. She dared lower her eyes to his leather clad chest that split down the middle revealing skin flayed apart held open with metal rings embedded in the flesh. Rose felt her stomach churn at the sight of the exposed muscle and oozing crimson blood, but there was nothing left to expel.
The horrible man, Pinhead, reached out his hand and gently caressed her cheek. Rose decided to call him Pinhead since he never offered her his name other than that of his species, Cenobite.
Rose shrank back and struggled against the chains wrapped snugly around her chest and neck. Her arms, also wrapped in chains, were suspended out on either side of her. She was slightly suspended off the smooth floor of the dark room so when she kicked her legs, her toes barely brushed the surface. There was no escape. She had no choice but to cringe under Pinhead's touch.
"W-why did you bring m-me here?" Rose asked and wished she didn't sound as scared as she was. The clanking of the chains that suspended her echoed like eerie chimes.
"You opened the Lament Configuration," he answered casually. "You summoned us."
"But I didn't know what it was!" She exclaimed desperately.
"You solved the puzzle with the desire for the greatest pleasure in your heart," he said with a dark smile and cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. "And we don't like to disappoint."
Tears streamed down Rose's cheeks as she whimpered and hoped beyond hope the Doctor would come to her rescue. She whipped her head around toward a rustling sound beside her and looked into the dark eyes of a pale faced woman. The woman had the look that she might have been beautiful once, but countless tiny scars pocked her skin. She too was clad of black leather that fit tight over her voluptuous frame and creaked with her movements. The woman's feature that disturbed Rose most of all was her throat. It was flayed wide open exposing muscle and blood, the skin pinned back with rusted metal rings pierced through the neck.
The woman smiled warmly, but it belied the wicked malice that glimmered in her eyes as she gently caressed a large fish hook down the exposed skin on Rose's arm. Rose flinched under the feel of the cold metal and watched with terror stricken eyes. "Doesn't that feel wonderful?" The woman cooed in a raspy voice. Rose wondered how she was able to talk at all.
"No! No, it doesn't!" Rose squealed. "Please don't hurt me anymore."
"Pain is the greatest pleasure of them all." The woman's voice rasped and she stopped the hook at Rose's elbow, gently pressing the point into the skin, but not drawing blood…yet.
Pinhead stepped back with a wicked laugh as Rose struggled helplessly in the chains making them rattle like music in his ears. When the hook slid into Rose's flesh and her blood began to flow, he let her screams wash over him, the climax of a twisted symphony.
.
.
The Doctor sat cross legged on the floor at the foot of Rose's bed inadvertently facing the puddle of blood. The parchment with the diagram draped across his lap and he held the puzzle box in one hand as he traced the over a paragraph on the parchment with a finger of the other hand.
His spectacles threatened to slide down his nose again as he read the words, so he pushed them back up into place. The parchment was practically useless in the actual solving of the puzzle, and he finally decided to toss it aside and focus solely on the box.
The Time Lord pulled on the piece that he discovered was a moving part and slide the piece up, gave it a twist and pushed it back down. The result was quite in interesting geometric shape that he couldn't help but admire.
He was curious how the box was producing that odd music that signaled to him he was getting somewhere. He manipulated another part of the box and the music grew louder. Another move and he was surprised by what at first he thought was the Cloister Bell, but this bell gonged out a solemn, ominous song.
Suddenly, the Doctor became aware of a portal on the bedroom wall. It was a tiny swirling mass of darkness at first, but it steadily grew larger until it was large enough to walk through. The other side was nothing but darkness. The Doctor jumped to his feet with the sonic in one hand and the puzzle box in the other. He waved the sonic at the portal and the fact that it was indeed a door to another dimension astounded him.
He took a step closer and peered into the darkness, when a pale face, decorated with nails imbedded in flesh, materialized in the blackness. The Doctor took a reflexive step back. "Hello." He regarded the being with cautious curiosity. "I'm the Doctor."
The face smirked as he stepped out of the portal. To the Doctor, it seemed like the floating head suddenly attached itself to the blackness and made a solid body out of it. The leather coat, wrapped snug around the creature's torso and flowed out from the waist like a membrane, creaked as the creature moved a couple of steps out of the portal. Much to the Doctor's dismay in himself at meeting a new being, the nail-headed creature utterly repulsed him.
"The Doctor," the man said calmly. "She screams your name."
Anger and shock hit the Doctor at the same time. "What did you say?" he asked in a dangerous tone.
The nail-headed man smiled wickedly, took a step to the side and made a sweeping motion with his arm toward the portal. Rose appeared in the darkness. Her arms were suspended now by metal hooks piercing through the flesh at the wrists and elbows. Two larger hooks protruded through her blue t-shirt at the shoulder and the dark patches around the hooks made it clear they went right through her. All the hooks were attached to chains that suspended her in the air. Her head was held up by hooks in her cheeks and chains that ran toward her back. Her eyes were closed and her body hung limp.
The Doctor couldn't think of anything he'd encountered that matched the level of atrocity he saw before him. And it was Rose. His Rose, sweet and wonderful. She, of all people, did not deserve this, and now she looked like she was dead. "Rose!" He cried and his vision turned red in rage. He flew forward fully intending on beating this creature to a bloody pulp with his bare hands.
A chain shot out of the portal and punched the Doctor in the right shoulder with such a force; it lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the wall behind. He yelled in surprise and pain at the sudden, unexpected attack and struggled to get free. But his feet weren't even touching the floor and the spike at the end of the stiffened chain had him impaled nicely.
The nail-headed man laughed a laugh the Doctor instantly hated, it was cruel and victorious. The creature slowly stepped over to the Time Lord and looked him over with dark eyes as if he was selecting a side of meat.
"Let Rose go!" the Doctor spat in fury. After he slipped the sonic and puzzle box back into a pocket, he wrapped his hands around the stiffened chain to hold himself up and ease the pain, but his fingers slipped on his own blood.
The wicked man nodded once in agreement of a sinister internal decision. "You are more deserving of our attention than sweet, little Rose." He stared straight into the Doctor's eyes with his own black gaze and grinned when he saw that look of understanding. "Come with us and she can go free." The words had to be said for the deal to be made.
The Doctor didn't take any time thinking about a decision, he made it before it was even spoken. He nodded his head desperately. "Yes, yes, take me," he said. "You can have me. Let Rose go now!"
"No, Doctor!" Rose yelled and jerked in the chains, but instantly cringed and yelped in pain of the hooks embedded in her flesh.
"Of course, Doctor," the evil creature said with a menacing smile. Materializing out of the darkness came two other creatures even more hideous then the nail headed one, a pale woman and a humanoid thing with a mouth for a face. The pair strode out of the portal up to the Doctor and grabbed his arms as he fell when the chain holding him retracted back whence it came.
The creatures dragged the Doctor into the portal and all the while, he kept his eyes on Rose. Tears streamed down his cheeks at the sight of her covered in her own blood, at the pain she endured, and the love in her eyes as she looked back at him. Whatever these creatures were, he made a promise that he never thought he would make, he promised to kill them.
.
.
To be continued.