Chapter 3

The Doctor was slightly stumped. He'd had to resort to asking round the place. Down the slums, he had supposed, they'd know a bit about the deaths.

So that's where he had headed, down the back streets.

It wasn't particularly information about the shadow creatures he needed, but of how to get rid of them. He didn't know, really, why he was asking humans. But did the victims of the killings have anything in common? Time to find out…

"Hello," The Doctor said to the scruffy-looking coal worker who had approached him, "What do you want?"

"Help us, good Sir," The man said, "The shadows are coming…"

The Doctor was quiet before he broke his own silence with,

"Why don't you help me, eh?"

One sign of madness, they say, is hearing voices.

After almost 6 hours of staying in the same position and not seeing anything, the only sounds being screams of pain and sadness, Clara wasn't sure whether she was hearing voices or not.

She found she had been locked up quite a lot during her time with The Doctor. She didn't like it. But would she leave him? Nah.

She doubted she would ever have a choice, though, if her Doctor didn't come for her.

"Are these voices in my head," Clara said to herself, "Or are they actually here?"

She couldn't quite reach the blindfold with her bound wrists.

"Hello?" She called out.

No reply.

"Oh well, never mind…" The voices, she guessed, were imaginary.

Another sign of madness, she knew, was talking to yourself…

"Nothing really seems to link them all," The Doctor mused out loud, "They just seem so random."

"What do the creatures need them for, anyway?" The man asked. His name was Jon, The Doctor found out, and he had lost his family to the monsters.

"How should I know?" The Doctor retorted. He didn't want to think

about it, that's what it was. He didn't want to imagine what his friend was going through.

There didn't need to be a link, though. All that mattered was stopping the shadows.

At that moment, a shadow flashed past them for an instant.

The Doctor set after it without delay, sonic screwdriver in hand.

Jon wasn't following; the coward, so The Doctor was alone in his pursuit of the creature.

'What could destroy a shadow?' he thought to himself as he wandered the streets.

He stopped in his tracks, suddenly, and turned around.

What was he doing? That's what he thought. Following the thing wasn't going to do anything. What he had to do was head back down to the passages and the rooms and investigate… and get his companion back. His companion, who was currently trying to distinguish different people by their screams. It was the only form of entertainment that she had down there, however vulgar it might have been.

Though, she was quite enjoying it.

"Goodness…" she thought suddenly, her face falling, "What's happening to me?"

She was right, it wasn't like her to enjoy the screams of innocent people, but this time, even though she knew she shouldn't, just having a sound to keep her awake (and therefore keeping her from dying) was a pleasant experience to her. She suspected, and she was right about it, that she was slowly going insane. She didn't know how long it had been, but it felt like days. Talking to herself seemed a good idea, so she set about finding something good to talk about.

Talking to herself was stupid, she decided, she'd talk to The Doctor instead. Even if he wasn't actually there, she could pretend he was… easily.

"So," She started, "What took you so long?"

Making his way quietly down the hole, The Doctor assessed his options.

One: he could find Clara first.

Two: he could get the Paternoster gang's help.

Or three: he could do this himself.

He felt the best option was number three. He didn't want to risk Clara getting hurt, and she was probably already searching around, anyway, being Clara. He didn't need to worry about her, he thought.

It was getting dark up on the streets anyway, and he could always see down here by the light of his sonic screwdriver.

So he turned around, headed down a passage and set to see what he could find…

By the light of the sonic, he could see rows and rows of… cages. It was like a prison, he thought. Boring.

He strolled casually past a line of them and gazed into a couple. Inside he saw humans chained up to the wall, wheels round their necks and blindfolds over their eyes.

Ok, this was worse than he thought.

The people were all Victorian, of course, some coming from posh houses and some just from the slums, the creatures weren't being choosy.

"Come over here!" One man shouted, angrily, "I'll rip your head off!"

The Doctor stayed away from him.

Another called out as he passed their cell,

"No! Stay! Don't go!"

'Poor guy…' The Doctor thought. He was about to scan the lock and let the poor man out, but just then, a shadow crept round the corner and he had to hide. He ducked behind a pile of wheels and closed his eyes.

He shouldn't have closed them, though, as if he'd had them open, he would have seen two people with pitch black eyes, slightly fuzzy round the edges, leading a short, brown-haired girl by the arms. The Doctor would have recognised this girl as his close companion. Or he might have, she looked a slight bit different:

Her hair was a mess, she had a long piece of fabric wrapped around her mouth and another round her eyes. She was wheezing slightly with the weight of the wheel.

She couldn't speak or see, so she didn't even try to fight as the two supposed 'people' led her away…

She was right: there was a torture room down the hall.

They had walked her there and taken off her blindfold so she could see exactly what she would be faced with.

Light streamed into her eyes and she blinked a few times before taking in a sharp breath that almost made her cough.

The sight that met her was not a pleasant one at all. So much so that I don't want to go into details, and neither did she. Straight in front of her, waiting, was a chair: lined with nails.

Her heart raced and she tried with all her might to release herself from the grip of the creatures. They weren't human, she had decided, something seemed wrong about them. But they didn't let her get away, either, as they gripped one side of the wheel each. Clara stopped moving.

If she fidgeted, the spokes would… actually, she didn't want to think about it anymore. At least a chair of nails wouldn't kill her straight away, if she could help it. But she still didn't want to take the weight off her feet; that was obvious. But the creatures tried to make her.

She wouldn't give in. She might have been small, but she could stand up for herself.

Eventually, the creatures stopped pushing and one released his grip from the wheel, walking to stand in front of her.

Then something queer began to happen, a black mist started to envelop the creature and then a familiar looking shadow being started to seep through his eye sockets and mouth and start to crawl through the air towards The Doctor's shocked and disgusted companion.