A dark, cavernous space opened around the Doctor and his companions, as they reached the top of the stairway and stepped onto the attic floor. The top of the manor house. The peak of fear. The room was vast, though not as large as the room that had taken up the first floor. The ceiling was, however, much higher, invisible because of the thick dark air that shrouded it from sight. All that could be seen of the roof were long bundles of wires trailing down into the centre of the room. The cables all connected to a large, central console that sat in the attic. It was a wide, metallic cylindrical structure, its rusting black surface covered in bright luminous blue panels. Around the room's walls were collections of control panels, display screens and wires, all adorned with flickering electric blue lights. Windows were just about visible, set high into the wall, a little underneath where the cloud of darkness that consumed the ceiling began.
The Doctor was looking around the whole room, examining the technology, taking scans with his sonic screwdriver. He obviously recognised the severity of the situation, but underneath his serious manner there was a recognisable hint of glee.
"Control deck, I'd say." he explained to Amy and Rory. "Going by these controls, I'd guess that this whole place is some form of spaceship. Except, it's not just a spaceship. It's way more than that! This is a whole facility, generating power; using power; telepathic connections; weapons more twisted than most species would dare to see in their darkest nightmares… And it's all focussing on fear. Generating it, capturing it, inducing it, spreading it… why? What's it all for? Who's benefitting from this? How are they benefitting from this?"
"Who would go to all that trouble just to scare people?" Rory questioned.
"Whoever it is, they are powerful. This place is almost, maybe even as powerful, as the TARDIS. Similar technological design in some areas as well. It's like someone's dark, nightmarish version of a TARDIS. But not capable of time travel – all that power that would be given to travelling through the time vortex in the TARDIS is being given to…" he trailed off, unable to find the right words.
"Being given to what?" Amy asked.
"Fear circuits!" the Doctor yelled, though he seemed reluctant to use that phrase. "Telepathic circuitry being used to access all areas of the mind that are related to fear and then use it in all the different ways we've seen it used! Whatever's doing this must be colossally powerful, hugely advanced, incredibly dangerous and… and… children."
The Doctor's gaze was now fixed on the far end of the large attic-like room they were in.
"Children? Doctor, what do you mean?" Rory questioned, in his confused voice.
The Doctor remained silent, simply staring, his attention captured by the room's far end. Slowly, tentatively, Rory and Amy followed his gaze, seeing what he had seen. They both froze. Shocked. Confused. Scared.
Stood at the other end of the room, their forms silhouetted by a series of blue lights, were five children. None of their features were visible, but it was obvious they were not normal children. They weren't human. Their limbs were long and wiry, their torsos slightly too small. On top of their slender shoulders and small, slim necks, were swollen heads, just noticeably larger than they should have been. None of them were completely still, but the movements they made were small and slow – their heads swayed slightly, their arms twitching, as though they were uncertain by their sides.
"Hello?" the Doctor called out cautiously. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
Silence. The strange childlike creatures seemed not even to notice the Doctor's words.
"I know you can hear me! You've been watching me the whole time, controlling this entire ship – what do you want?"
"We want to play."
The cold, echoing sing-song voice came from one of the strange children, though it was impossible to tell which. Their heads were still gently lolling from side to side, their bodies swaying slightly, like reeds caught in an invisible breeze. Another voice – or perhaps it was the same one – then rang out, a slightly more sinister edge to its tone.
"We want to play with your nightmares."
"Who are you?" the Doctor demanded. His response came in a chorus of echoing, chilling high-pitched voices.
"We are the children of the night. The monsters under your bed. The dwellers of your darkest dreams."
"That's almost poetry!" the Doctor mused. "Very… disturbing… poetry. And, I have to say, not the most helpful explanation as to who you are. So, let's try it this way. Do you know who I am?"
Their heads seemed to twitch slightly at the question. Almost as though they were gripped by fear. Or by pride. Again, they answered in chorus.
"You are the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds. You are the goblin, and the trickster, and the warrior. You are the last of the Time Lords and today you shall fall."
"Yeah, yeah, heard it all before. Who are you?"
For the first time since they had been noticed, the children froze. Their twitching and swaying just stopped. They stood bolt upright, their invisible gaze resting on the Doctor and his companions. And then they stepped forwards. For the first time, light fell onto them and their features could be seen. Rory clasped his hand over his mouth. Amy opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came – just an empty, deathly silence. The Doctor simply stared, a previously unseen fear etched onto his features.
Pitch black rags hung from the slender, alien forms they had been observing. Only the heads and the hands were visible. The children's flesh was a mottled grey, uneven and coated in half frozen moisture. It was wrapped around their imperfect skeletons in a thousand clotted twists and lumps, looking as though it should have been suffocating their delicate forms. Their swollen, misshapen heads were bald with thin, lipless mouths that twisted all the way up their cheeks in a distorted, crack-like shape. Their noses were small, pointed twists in their flesh. But most striking of all their deformed features, were their eyes. Each child had a single, large bulbous pitch black eye. Soft, wet flesh gripped at the edges of the eyeball, sprawling across its rim like an army of minute claws and talons.
"We are the children of fear. And fear shall become our child." said the creature at the front, in that odd unearthly voice. As it spoke, its mouth movements seemed almost incomplete, as though the words shouldn't have been fully formed.
"You can't be…" the Doctor whispered, genuine fear in his voice. "That's impossible."
"Doctor… what are they?" Amy asked quietly. But the twisted children all slowly turned their heads, the creaking of their malformed bones almost audible, like the screech of a harsh night's wind. Their sinister, almost melodic chorus voice answered the question.
"We are the Nightmare Children."
The Doctor was observing in fearful awe, uncertain of what to do. Not knowing how to act. Not knowing how to survive.
"The Nightmare Children… one of the deadliest and most feared species to have lived throughout all creation. The Time Lords even named the Time War's greatest weapon after you."
"We are far more powerful than anything of Gallifrey's design."
"And you're impossible." the Doctor breathed, his voice still trapped in a hushed tone. "You've existed since intelligent life first emerged in the universe, tearing your way through the Dark Times, skipping between reality and nightmares, running through the void. Feasting off the universe's greatest fears. You exist simply because the universe feels fear."
"How's that possible?" Rory asked in a shaking voice.
"The realms of the universe were once so much smaller." answered one of the children. "When life was first forming, all life was still connected through the very fabric of reality. As life first started to rise into darkness and terror, we were born out of the fears of the universe."
"What does that mean?" Rory demanded.
"When the universe was first forming, it went into what the Time Lords named the Dark Times." the Doctor explained. "All of creation was controlled by terror; life forms were forming in new, impossible ways, the laws of time and space still settling, still undecided. Basic psychic waves ran through the entire universe, connecting every life form they came into contact with, and connecting with each other. Vast networks, connecting every single life form in the universe! But they were more powerful than most people realise. Psychic energy can't really form unless there's something living to create it. In this case, the psychic waves were alive themselves. A life force, draining on all the thoughts of all the universe and all of those thoughts were spawning from terror. Eventually, it was enough to create new life out of the psychic energy, simply by twisting all of the fear together. And it formed the Nightmare Children…"
"We were born of the darkness, and fear, and horror that fell across the skies of all reality." the horrific creatures insisted in their eerie unison.
"But you were destroyed." the Doctor said flatly. "The Time Lords scattered you into atoms!"
"We returned to our original form, merely released from these bodies." explained one of the children, their heads now gently swaying once again.
"You became psychic waves. Living as entities, connecting the minds of living beings… how did you become all sort of solid, and… creepy, again?" the Doctor asked, his tone attempting to hide his fear.
"We ran to the Earth, carried in our last vessel, and spread through the dreams of the world."
The Doctor paused, pondering the thought.
"You existed in the dreams of the human race? How long have you been here?"
"A great many years. Since humanity first learnt to crawl, we have been watching from within."
"And all that time you've been reforming yourselves… how?"
"We entered their dreams, and brought the darkness of time with us. We flooded their minds with fear, which would grow and flourish and flower, granting us our bodies once more."
"You gave all of humanity nightmares, you created nightmares on Earth, that created fear within the humans and that was enough for you to rebuild your bodies."
"Correct."
"Then what are you still doing here? This ship's in perfect working order, you can fly away, you have your bodies back – what's keeping you on Earth? You've been here thousands of years, at least, when you could be off exploring the stars!"
The Nightmare Children's heads all twitched, their flesh writhing as they regarded the Time Lord.
"The nightmares we infested within humanity shall flourish and consume the Earth."
"Meaning?"
"You will see."
The children all craned their thin necks upwards, staring up into the darkness that clouded the top of the room. The Doctor, Amy and Rory all turned their attention the same way, observing in silence as controls within the room began to hum violently.
Gradually, the darkness faded, revealing that which it had been hiding. The top of the room was a dome-like shape, though the top stretched far out of sight. Lining the walls were innumerable grey, glass pods. Within each of these, there rested a human being. There was a variety of ages amongst them, though most seemed to be children. All frozen, their eyes closed tightly, an expression of anguish worn on their faces.
"You've been luring people to this house for a long time…" the Doctor realised. "And you're keeping them in suspended animation – just dreaming! Trapped in their nightmares. Or, rather, your nightmares."
"The wave that connected us to the rest of the universe has been passed through them. They are connected by the consciousness of the Nightmare Children." another child explained.
"Trapped in their nightmares and you're using all that psychic energy to make their nightmares real. Just like you did for us, with the Daleks and the crack."
"Correct." the Nightmare Children chorused.
"Then why haven't you done it? Why has the Earth not been submerged in nightmares-made-reality?"
"We are not as powerful as we once were."
"Thousands of years of nightmares… and you still haven't regained all your power. Because you can't." the Doctor was slowly piecing all the facts together now, making sense of it all. "When you last had all that power, like I said, the laws of time and space were still forming – now you're in a universe where they're fully formed. You're getting desperate, even draining life from the grass just to keep yourselves going! You can create a few, small, weakened copies of fears but you can't create a fully-fledged army of nightmares! You would need to break down the boundaries of reality to do that!"
"And that is what we shall do."
"Oh really? And how do you plan to do that, then?"
The sapphire light from the illuminated panels on the room's central column intensified, accompanied by an electronic screeching. The large illuminated panels slid up along the console, which extended right up to the invisible roof. As rolling waves of smoke billowed out from within and subsided, a familiar sight was revealed. Sat there, wires trailing from its surface was the bright blue shape of the TARDIS.
"No!" the Doctor yelled out, as soon as his ship became visible. "No, you can't use the TARDIS! It's too powerful for this! You can't!"
Four of the children were already attending to control banks at the edges of the room, operating the controls the TARDIS was now wired into. One child remained standing by the blue box, its single shining black eye watching the Doctor intently.
"Doctor, what do they want to use the TARDIS for?" Amy asked.
"They need to break through the walls of time and space, break down the laws of reality and restore the twisted sciences of the Dark Times – the very first days of the universe. The TARDIS is the perfect engine for them!"
"And now Doctor, you will begin the eternal era of darkness." the child ordered, in its sweet yet sinister tone.
"Me? What do you expect me to do?"
"You are required to access and operate the TARDIS."
"What?" the Doctor was almost smiling now, his tone a little incredulous. "You can't operate it?"
"In order for our ship to gain access to the time vortex, the TARDIS must become linked to the vortex." the child explained, apparently not the slightest bit bothered by their dependence on the Doctor. "Our forms are still vulnerable to the slightest exposure to time energy or travel through the vortex. A Time Lord is required."
"Oh, I see! Well, sorry fellers, but the answer's no. Not going to happen. Not today, not ever. Now, let your prisoners go, and leave before I pull your ship apart, piece by piece."
"The Doctor will comply." the Nightmare Child insisted.
"No, I won't." the Doctor repeated. "Nice thought, but not happening. Now, goodbye!"
The child simply allowed its head to flop to one side and reached out a thin, bony arm, wrapped in deformed flesh. A low hissing noise crept out from its elongated, lipless mouth and thick black rings of smoke formed around its outstretched hand.
Suddenly, the same smoke was wrapping itself around the Doctor's body, forcing him to the floor, letting out a scream of agony.
"Doctor!" Amy screamed, running towards him.
"Stay!" the child ordered, its voice sharper than before. Amy involuntarily froze, feeling herself being held back. She looked around. Nothing was restricting her, but she had been stopped from moving. The child was doing something, using its powers to constrain her.
The Doctor lay on the floor, thick clouds of smoke now starting to form around him, curling up into strange, distorted shapes. It was surrounding him, but enclosing him as well, washing against his body. Amy saw one tower of smoke momentarily form the shape of a Dalek, before dispersing itself into atoms. Then a blurred Cyberman was visible, and a Weeping Angel, before also vanishing into darkness. The children were using the Doctor's fears.
"Your deepest and darkest fear, Doctor, shall rise against you." the child taunted, its high voice echoing endlessly through the rooms high walls.
The Doctor propped himself up on his arms, forcing his head up so that he could see the smoke swirling into new forms in front of him. Amy and Rory watched as through the smoke, there stepped a figure. A man, his face, his clothes instantly betraying his identity. The Doctor. A copy of him, standing over the real Time Lord, glaring down at him with contempt. The copy's clothes were differing shades of grey and black, and his eyes held an obvious red luminosity.
"The Doctor." the darkly clad copy said slowly, its voice the same as the Doctor's but with a haunting echoing quality to it. "The last of the Time Lords. The Oncoming Storm. The Saviour of the Earth. And humanity's greatest threat."
"No…" the real Doctor whispered, though his words were ignored by his double.
"Look at you. Look at what the mighty and noble Time Lords have been reduced to. An imbecile, who sees fit to call himself a hero, when he endangers so many lives. Desperately trying to fit in with the snivelling apes he so adores. You even try to dress like a member of their filthy species and you fall even at that task. You cannot think like them, you can't see the universe with the same beauty that they see and ultimately, deep down, Doctor, you refuse to lower yourself to their level!"
"They are so much more than you! So much more than the Time Lords!" the Doctor insisted through strained breaths, his eyes now tightly shut.
"How the mighty have fallen!" the copy continued, "The Time Lords were once able to look down on all creation, allowing time and tide to pass, but you couldn't resist getting involved. And as a result, how many have died?"
"Stop it. Please, stop it!" the Doctor insisted, the black smoke sweeping through him, exaggerating every ounce of fear he was feeling.
"You claim to be a saviour, Doctor, but I know the truth of you. All those humans you vow to save and leave to die. Those friends of yours that lose their lives in your name. They have died alone and afraid, because of you, Doctor. You are a bringer of death, and doom and destruction."
As the copy spoke, the Doctor opened his eyes to see copied figures of Amy and Rory appear either side of his own duplicate. The smoke wrapped itself around them, engulfing their forms, draining the life from their flesh, their eyes becoming hollow.
"I'll do it!" the Doctor screamed, his voice agonised and unlike his own. "I'll help you!"
In a slow, sweeping movement, the smoke that had surrounded him disbanded itself, leaving the Time Lord cold and alone on the room's dusty floor, his breath beating heavily against his ears. He gradually got to his feet and began to walk towards his TARDIS.
"Doctor, no! You can't help them!" Rory called out in desperation.
"I don't have a choice." the Doctor responded quietly. "There's no way to stop them. If I don't help the Nightmare Children, I can't save any of them." He gestured upwards, to the imprisoned, sleeping humans.
"If you help the Nightmare Children, they're only going to suffer!" Amy pleaded.
The Doctor was silent, before he placed the key in the TARDIS lock.
"Sorry, Pond."
He stepped inside the familiar old time machine, walking up the small staircase to the console. After hitting a series of keys on the typewriter, the Doctor looked up at the monitor. It was displaying readouts from the Nightmare Children's machinery. The Doctor glanced over the readings, a new concern gripping his expression.
"Hold on…" he said, "these readings are saying you're not just using the TARDIS to help you turn nightmares into reality, you're using the TARDIS to connect to the nightmares of all of time and space through your psychic network. You're not just using the nightmares of your captives, they're only providing a template. You're going to fill the entire universe with the nightmares of every living thing! Why?"
"The nightmares are our realm. So now, we shall turn all reality into our realm." the children explained in their menacing chorus.
"But why are you doing it? Every nightmare that's ever existed being turned into reality… why?"
"Because it is fun." one child said simply. "We are forever children and we run and play and laugh and dance through the fear of others. Nightmares exist within the universe because of us and now we shall make our designs reality."
"Nightmares exist because of them… Doctor, what do they mean?" Rory asked.
"The psychic waves that created the Nightmare Children still exist. That psychic energy and the Nightmare Children are connected – technically they're one and the same thing. They embedded the energy across all of time. Every nightmare anyone has ever had, comes from them." the Doctor explained, his tone horrified, as though the realisation had only just sunk in.
"And now they want to use the TARDIS to make those nightmares real?" Amy continued.
"Yes. Their perfect realm, made real."
"But, why take prisoners? What do they need them for?"
"We require a template." answered one of the children. The Doctor continued its explanation from inside the TARDIS.
"The machine needs to come into direct contact with people who are having nightmares, so they use the captives. Then the TARDIS boosts their power by an infinite amount and spreads it across the history and future of the entire universe, making every nightmare that ever has existed, or ever will exist, a reality!"
"Now, the Doctor will start the TARDIs engines." a Nightmare Child said in a tone that could almost have been polite.
"No I won't." the Doctor answered. "It's too much. Too dangerous. I can't do it."
"Then perhaps we can invite your friends to meet their deepest fears." the child-like creatures chorused.
"No!" the Doctor retorted quickly. "I'll do it. I'll help you."
"Doctor, you can't!" Amy screamed.
"Amy… trust me." the Doctor said slowly, before busying himself at the TARDIS controls.
He was moving around the console slower than usual, flicking switches, throwing levers, pressing buttons. As he busied himself at the controls, he gave the Nightmare children a commentary of what he was doing.
"Okay, forming a vortex link to the Dark Times… setting up an inverted helix loop… initiating time wave and running it through a binary triple enfolded psychic link…"
He threw a few final switches and then positioned himself at the Wibbly Lever, as he had once called it. He stood still, staring through the doors at the now gathered Nightmare Children.
"Are you ready?" he asked bitterly.
"Begin the reign of nightmares." the children's gathered voices ordered.
"On your own head be it." the Doctor whispered, before placing his hand on the lever. He took a deep breath, Amy and Rory watching in fear. All three prepared themselves, the Nightmare Children watching with a twisted, darkened glee. The Doctor pulled the lever.
In an instant, bright white lightning was forming over the equipment in the room, light replacing the darkness, an impossible wind scattering dust from the floor. The blinding light was issuing out from the pods overhead, their occupants now waking. Smiling.
The Doctor was stood cool, calm and relaxed in the TARDIS doorway, in the middle of the chaotic scene, watching the furious Nightmare Children as they fought against fearsome sharp torrents and explosions of light, to check their displays and readouts.
"What have you done?" they shouted, over the crackling of energy and gusts of wind.
"Oh, did I forget to confine the psychic link to your pre-determined psycho-kinetic wavelength?" the Doctor asked casually. "Sorry, I'm always doing that!"
He flashed a broad grin at the infuriated alien children, Amy and Rory sharing the expression.
"Sorry, what have you done?" Rory asked him, confused.
"I extended their range a bit. They feed off fear and nightmares, but the universe has so much more than that. I'm feeding their machine the hopes, dreams and wishes of all reality! Every thought, every desire, every pain, every longing, every treasured memory, every love, every friendship of every species, all racing through their circuits and through their bodies!" the Doctor explained triumphantly.
"You will die for this, Doctor!" the children screamed, their flesh now curdling and writhing over their scrawny forms, as they struggled against the bright light and harsh breezes that were soaring through the room. Thick, pulsating purple veins were starting to spread across their bulbous black eyes and their twisting mouths hung open in elongated cries of pain.
"Somehow, I'm not convinced!" the Doctor commented, still smiling at the Nightmare Children's downfall.
With a severe gust of wind, emphasised by a surge in the bright white light that was now pouring through the once darkened house, the skeletal forms of the Nightmare Children disintegrated, every molecule of their bodies scattering outwards to be lost in the eruption of light and movement. As the last of their forms disappeared, Amy and Rory turned to the Doctor, their faces slightly concerned. The Nightmare Children were gone, but the crackling white energy and small whirlwinds within the Manor were still present.
"Doctor – what's going to happen to the house now?" Amy asked.
"Well, like I said, it's not a house, it's a spaceship. And it absorbed all the energy the Nightmare Children did and, like them, it's not designed to take all the positive energy, so I would say it's going to explode!" he finished with another of his manic grins, which suddenly fell as his own words dawned upon him. "Oh dear."
Amy and Rory quickly ran across the room, cutting through the dust that had been swept up into a thin fog in the air. Shielding their eyes, they ran through the wooden blue doors and into the TARDIS.
"Come on, then. Let's go!" Amy said hurriedly.
"It's not that simple." the Doctor explained, rubbing his eyes. "All the people that the Nightmare Children took prisoner are still trapped. We can't just leave them!"
"Isn't the TARDIS, connected to the machine that's connected to all of them?" Rory prompted, at which the Doctor's face seemed to light up.
"Oh, of course! Rory, you're brilliant! I can set up an externalised dematerialisation inclusion field, by inverting the TARDIS's internalised vortex shielding…"
"English, please, Doctor!" said Amy.
"I can do this!" the Doctor replied simply, before turning a dial on the console and then throwing the main lever. The familiar wheezing of the TARDIS sounded out and the trio watched as the ship began to dematerialise. Leaving them behind.
Rory and Amy were too shocked to say anything, until the TARDIS was gone and they found themselves still stood in the house. The bright burning of light was still surrounding them, becoming more intense, strong whips of wind tearing through the attic control room.
"Doctor, what have you done?" Amy snapped.
"Oh, don't worry." the Doctor retorted, as though she was overreacting. "Look up!"
Amy and Rory both turned their gaze upwards. Every one of the dark glass containment pods was empty. The human prisoners that had rested within them were gone.
"They dematerialised with the TARDIS. Should be safe now."
"But what about us?" Rory shouted at the Doctor.
"Stop worrying! This ship is shutting down, all we have to do is run to the bottom floor and leave through the front door!"
"You said this ship was going to explode! And there are four floors, one of which is a maze!" Rory insisted.
"Yeah," the Doctor agreed, grinning gleefully, "squeaky bum time!"
"Doctor… what do the numbers on this screen mean? It's saying two thirty and it's going down…" Amy questioned, fearing the answer.
"Countdown! Minutes and seconds until boom!" the Doctor responded, still insanely jolly. "Super squeaky bum time! Now, you two, let's do what us time travellers have always done best."
"What?" Rory asked flatly.
"Run!"
