I immediately realized that I was, in fact, standing in a waste ground and not a garden. "Oh, sorry," I apologized to Clara for appearing a bit too close and take a step backward. Behind her, I see the Doctor- in his twelfth regeneration this time, attempting to get inside of a much smaller Tardis.
"Charlotte's here, Doctor," Clara called to him from her spot.
The Doctor looks above the Tardis to our direction. "Oh, that's good," he stood there for a second silently before returning to get back into the Tardis.
"Let's go take a look around," I suggest to her.
She nods, "yeah."
We both walk away from where the Tardis remains parked and past the train shed. Eventually, we walk down towards an underpass. A community payback group is standing at the top of the steps in front of a wall covered with graffiti. Next to the steps, Clara crouches down by a shrine of flowers and pictures. I sit down on the bottom step and look to it from where I sat. The shrine wasn't large, just about a twelve inches long then went to the top of the wall (which wasn't at all tall).
A man in the community service group yells to one of us, "cheer up, love. Might never happen."
"Have some respect," I hear one of the others say back to him. "They're grieving."
"Oh, sorry, love. I didn't mean nothing by it," the guy says again.
We both stood up from our spots and began to walk through the underpass- which is decorated with people with their backs turned to us. The people on the walls included both men and women, one with a child. A pair of quick footsteps comes down the stairs behind us, I look to see a young dark-skinned man wearing a bright yellow vest and a baseball cap coming towards us. I rake my head for his name, Rigsy.
We pause the walk through the tunnel to see what Rigsy would say to us. "Sorry about them," he apologizes. "They're idiots."
"That's all right, don't worry," Clara responds. "I've had worse."
"I've lost some, too," Rigsy reveals, standing in front of the back of a woman wearing a yellow blazer. "My Aunt Karina. Deaf as a post. Didn't really know her that well but she's still gone. Is your one in the mural?" He strokes the back of the woman.
"Oh, no," I shook my head. "We're just visiting."
"I'm sure they'll get round to it at some point," Rigsy paused, walking away from his aunt's part of the mural and stood in front of us. "I'm not really with that lot out there. I just have to do this community service thing. I just do graffiti. Not anything, you know, murdery or..."
Clara gave him a dry laugh, "so, er, what's all this about? What's happened to all these people?" Clara walks to one side and inspects the pictures on the wall.
"You mean you don't know?" Rigsy responds quickly, shocked.
I face Rigsy, "we are going to need you to tell us what you know."
Rigsy explains, as quick as he can, that people have gone missing all over the estate, and how an unknown artist has been painting the missing's murals here. "We need to go..." is what I said to Rigsy once he finished explaining, pulling Clara along to the Tardis.
As we get closer to the Tardis, she pulls her phone from her coat pocket and dials his number. Once the call is picked up, she holds the phone out so we can both hear the Doctor as we walk. "Hey, we think we've found something," she tells him. "People are missing all over the estate."
"There could be a connection, right?" I wondered.
"Could be," he agrees.
We walk to the area where the Tardis was parked, only to see no Tardis. I snicker knowing how it will look when we see it.
"And where are you?" Clara asked into the phone.
"Exactly where I was."
"No, you're not. I'm here and I can't see," Clara and I pass a wheelbarrow, and right in front of it was a Tardis only about six inches tall. "Oh," Clara says as I started to laugh.
"Yes. Oh."
Clara laughs with me. "Oh, my God, that is so adorable. Are you in there?"
"Yes, I am." The Doctor responds, "and, no, it's not adorable. It's very, very serious."
"So is this more shrink ray stuff? Are you tiny in there?"
"No. I'm exactly the same size. It's merely the exterior dimensions that have changed." If it wasn't such a serious situation we were in, I may have taken a picture when the Doctor opens the Tardis' tiny doors. We could only see most of his face, but it was still such a site to see- causing both Clara and me to laugh a little more. She puts the phone back into her pocket.
"Stop laughing," the Doctor said. "This is serious."
"Well, we can't help it, huh?" I responded, "you and your big face."
Clara agreed, "how are you going to get out?" She questions the Doctor.
"Well, plainly I can't. Something nearby is leeching all the external dimensions."
"Aliens?" She wonders aloud.
"Possibly," he was quick to change his answer, "oh, who am I kidding? Probably. Sensors are down and I can't risk taking off with it in this state. Charlotte, I need you to pick up the Tardis. Carefully," I grabbed the Tardis from the ground and stood up at the same time as Clara. I held it out an arm's length with both hands. The Doctor continues to talk from the inside, "it should be possible. I've adjusted the relative gravity."
"You mean you've made it lighter," Clara guessed by how I could hold it (which was quite odd with how much bigger it is on the inside).
"Clara, it's always lighter," he walks over to the console. "If the Tardis was to land with its true weight, it would fracture the surface of the Earth."
"Be a way to go," I muttered. No one heard me, which I write off as a good thing.
"Yeah, maybe a story for another time," Clara replied. "What now?"
"I've managed to get a rough fix on the source of the dimensional leeching," the Doctor returns to the small doorway. "It's roughly northwest. That way," his hand went outside, and he moves it northwest like a fish.
"Please don't do that again," I tell him as he runs back to the console.
He runs back to the doorway. "Now, listen! You're going to need these," the Doctor passes the psychic paper to me. I carefully hold on to the Tardis with one hand as I put the paper into the pocket of my jacket.
"Oh, what an honor," I joked. "This makes me you now?" I remember hearing Clara saying something like that in the show, and seeing as I had the paper, I copied her line.
"No, it does not, so don't get any ideas," he passes the sonic screwdriver as well.
I carefully hand Clara the Tardis to set inside of her massive purse. She sets it in with the doors facing up. The Doctor's hand stems out from the Tardis and holds an ear pod, remembering the previous adventure, I tell Clara she can take them. "And listen, stick this in your ear," he instructs.
He said something into the ear pod, to which Clara responds with "yes." Quickly after she flinches, "ow! What just happened?" She pauses while he responds, "what does that mean?" She asks the Doctor.
I focus on trying to remember what happens in the episode, "he can see what you see, right?"
"Yep."
Clara spins around the shopping precinct, with the sonic- it was only obvious to give it to her, as she was the Doctor's eyes at the moment. She spins past the mural of foot and handprints with tire marks. I held my tongue.
"Anything?" I ask her and the Doctor.
After he answers the question, Clara responds to me. "Nothing useful."
I groaned. Yes, there is!
Rigsy walks up to where the brunette and I stood in the grass. I look behind him to see the rest of the community service group on a meal break- sitting at a table in the shade. "You never did tell me your names," he comments.
"Charlotte Bolton," I introduced myself.
"I'm er," Clara started. "I'm the Doctor," I snicker as she swishes the sonic around, "Doctor Oswald. But you can call me Clara."
"I'm Rigsy," he responded. "So er, what are you a doctor of?"
A part of me wants to use the Doctor's line, 'of lies.' I didn't, though.
"Well, I'm usually quite vague about that," I bit my tongue as my smile grew. "I think I just picked the title because it makes me sound important."
"What are you exactly?" Rigsy questions her, "you don't smell like police but that's some pretty cool gear you got there. You like a spy or something?"
I held back an eye roll at the question. "Very bright," I mumbled.
Clara hums. Most time you can tell whether someone is humming a 'yes' or 'no', but I wasn't particularly sure when she hums as an answer to Rigsy.
The three (four?) of us crowd in front of the front door of a flat. Across the entrance, the Police crossed it off with tape. "He was the last one to go missing," Rigsy explains as he tears the police tape from the door- which I felt guilty for, but recall we'll have a quick getaway later if need be. Then I remember that 'quick getaway' is resting in Clara's purse. Goodness gracious, we need to fix this quick.
Rigsy walks into the flat first, then Clara and I go after him. "And when he disappeared all the doors and windows were locked from the inside," he unveils as we walk out of the small area separating the doorway from the living room.
I turn to the left to see a mural placed on the wall behind a bookcase of CDs. The mural is different than the other ones I saw today, instead of being footprints or the backs of the victims, it looks as if it were a cracked sandy surface. It was harder to point out what it was supposed to be.
"Yeah, doesn't everyone?" Clara interrupts. For a single second, I look to her strangely then remember how she was talking to the Doctor.
Rigsy, who standing a few feet behind me, turns when he hears her. "What?"
"Huh?" Clara's eyebrows scrunched up, then unknit when she realized why he was confused. "Oh, sorry. I'm talking to somebody else. He's listening in. Doctor, Rigsy, Rigsy, the Doctor."
"Another Doctor?"
"Uh-huh," responds I. "He goes by the Doctor, though."
Clara began scanning around one side of the flat's living area. From another person's flat, I can hear people speaking loudly- almost yelling over their television. As Clara continues using the sonic screwdriver to scan the room Rigsy talks. "I think this is great that people are finally looking into this," he tells us. "The police weren't doing anything. They never do on this estate. People were thinking that no one was listening. That no one care. So, yeah, I think it's great what you're doing."
"Police in my town didn't care much, either," I tell him, cringing on my memories with the many run-ins with Sheriff Glenn. "Became cops all for show, really. Some friends and I used- never mind, you don't want to hear me rattle on." I turn to Clara, "anything?"
"Nope," she paused, listening to the Doctor. "Yeah, well, I think he could still be useful," she listens to what he says again. "Okay, fine. And all those other missing people, I suppose you know where they lived."
"He could still be in the room."
I turn to Rigsy, my mouth wide open and my eyes growing by ten-times. "Pardon?" I squeak out. Well, I forgot that line.
"Sorry, nothing. I was just thinking out loud," he explains. "It's like one of those locked room things you get in books," in front of a mirror resting above a mantelpiece on the right side of the room, Clara looks to herself, "It's always something weird, like, he's still in the room or something. Do you want to go and check out another flat?"
Clara is still looking at the mirror, "oh, really?" She listens to the Doctor, probably, "how would I scare him off?" She turns the sonic on as she has it pointed to the mirror. She continues scanning.
Rigsy comes towards me and looks to the mural. "Maybe he's lost in the desert or something."
"Okay, right," Clara quits scanning the mantelpiece below the mirror and stands with the two of us in front of the mural. She begins asking the Doctor questions, and I draw lines across the cracks in the mural- trying to recall how this adventure ends.
"Shrink ray?" She asks him, "could it be a shrink ray, Charlotte?"
"Oh, uh-"
Rigsy looks at her skeptically, "sorry, did you just say shrink ray?"
Clara looks to Rigsy seriously. "What if he is still in this room like you said, only tiny?" Between them, she spaces her thumb and pointer finger out to make a point. "You know, like underneath the sofa or something." She leaves the bookcase of CDs and bends down to the height of the coffee table, looking under it for a shrunk guy.
I don't blame the boy for looking at Clara oddly. "Okay. So er, my lunch break's nearly up. This this has been er, interesting," Rigsy heads to the door.
When Clara gets up, I stand in front of her and look at her directly in her brown eyes. "Doctor, open the Tardis doors," I say to her- him, hoping he'll be looking at the monitor as I do so.
"Look, you want him to stay or not?" Clara fires back to the Doctor. I stand beside her as she grabs the small blue police box (that I only just realized resembled the one Amy famously made in her childhood) and sets it on top of the mantle carefully. "Rigsy," she calls to him. "Come here. Meet the Doctor."
The Doctor, instead of standing right next to the doors like last time, is standing by the console when the doors open.
"So, what do you think?" Clara asks the Doctor. "Tiny man idea."
"Yes, it's a lovely thought. Which is why I set the sonic to scan for that as soon as we entered. Pleased to meet you," he waves to Rigsy, who is bending down to look into the little blue box on the other side of Clara.
"And you didn't tell us?" I raise my eyebrows to him.
"Well," he starts, "he might have been squashed under a policeman's shoe by now."
"Unbelievable."
"For all we know, he could've."
Rigsy still looks in the box oddly. "It's bigger. On the inside."
Clara leaves the group and inspects the wall with the mural. "Do you know, I don't think that statement's ever been truer." The Doctor added, looking around the Tardis as he talks.
"What are you? Like, aliens, or something?"
I shook my head. "No. He is," I sloppily point a finger to the Doctor. "Clara and I are human," I assure him. There was a quick sizzle, then the Tardis alarms sounded, causing red lights to blink in the console room. I stand beside Clara as she looks around the flat.
"Doctor? Doctor, did you hear that?" Clara asks him as she directs the sonic towards the sitting area- aware of something being there.
"Yes. Whatever it was, it just drained a massive amount of energy from inside the Tardis.
In this frantic state of mind, I was too quick to ask instead of figuring out myself. "Could you find out what it is?"
"Don't you know?" Clara asks me as soon as I finish my question.
I look back to her, "I don't know what they're called! That's the least of our problems, now. We need to leave." On cue, the Doctor slams the Tardis doors shut. As quick as possible, Clara sets the blue box back into her purse.
Rigsy was stuck to the ground next to the hall leading to the door. "Okay. Go. Rigsy, this is where we run. Stick with us," Clara tells him. Quick as we can, Clara and I leave the flat. Luckily, Rigsy follows behind us.
After learning of more names of the people who've disappeared, we decided to take another trip to where one of them lived. Starting with John Heath. "MI5?" The policewoman questions as she looks down to the psychic paper I handed to her.
"Yes, miss. You see this is a peculiar case, don't you think?" For some odd reason, there was a silent unanimous decision for me to do all the talking.
She nods, "well, you've come to the right place, ma'am. First reported disappearance, a Mister Heath. It's not on the estate, but it's exactly the same MO as the rest." She hands back the psychic paper.
"Really, now?"
"My shrink ray theory?" Clara whispers so the policewoman can't hear. "I thought you were already scanning for that."
"It's like they vanished," she tells me.
I keep the conversation flowing, "maybe they did. Maybe they just disappeared. What is your name, Miss?"
"Raina Amelia Forrest, ma'am."
Clara continues to whisper to the Doctor, "Doctor? What are you doing?" She pauses as I get into a very off-topic conversation with Raina on our favorite colors (hers is orange). "What do you mean, they're in the-" she pulls a lump hammer from her bag.
"My thoughts on magenta? Ma'am, these are hardly appropriate questions for the issue at hand. We haven't done as much as we could, we have no suspects, and the top brass hopes if they ignore this it'll all just fade away." Raina says all of this so fast, we both almost don't realize Clara with the lump hammer is standing next to her.
"Apparently they're in the walls."
Rigsy was the first to slam the hammer into the wall, once he slams the hammer into the plasterwork he hands it over to Clara. Raina's phone rings, "PC Forrest. Yes, sir. MI5, sir." She leaves the room to continue the conversation in another part of the home.
"So, you and that bloke in a box," starts Rigsy. "You all do this sort of stuff a lot?"
"Oh, well, he's usually out of the box. But, yep." Clara hands me the hammer.
"So how'd you get this gig? You study science, or aliens, or something?"
I laughed along with Clara, "Nah. I worked in a shopping mall in Kansas, before this. English major."
I hit the hammer against the wall as Clara talks. "No. Well, it's kind of a more of a right place, right time or wrong place, wrong time depending on how he's behaving."
I smile at that joke as I hit the hammer against the wall.
"Ma'am, there's something in here, I think," PC Forrest calls from the room she went to for the phone. Just as I hit the wall once again, we hear a scream of terror from where she was. I drop the hammer and lead the Clara and Rigsy to the room. The three of us got there just after she disappears. All left was the torch laying on the ground.
"PC Forrest? Hello? Hello?" We hear no response from Clara's calls.
There is a mural on the wall to the right of the door of red symmetrical lines making what looks to be the nervous system. My nose wrinkles, disgusting.
"Doctor, she's gone," Clara picks up the dropped torch, I take it from her and set it inside the inside pocket of my jacket. She faces away from the mural, then turns back to it- her eyes narrowing.
C' mon, c' mon.
"Her nervous system," she says.
I nod, "yep."
"What? Why?" Clara wonders.
The door to the room closes with a sizzle, Rigsy points out that the handle that was there only moments ago was flattened to look like a circle of paint where the handle was.
"Doctor," Clara said urgently. "The handle, they've flattened the handle."
The sofa with the cushions set on it has the thing go over it too, causing it to lose their third dimension similar to the doorknob. "What happens if they touch us?" Rigsy asks, only for a chair to flatten in the room's corner.
"Let's not find out," I suggest, going over to a hanging chair. Rigsy sits inside of it as Clara and I hang onto the chain keeping it hung to the ceiling.
"They can't jump, can they?"
"No!"
Clara's phone rings as we try to swing out of the room, using one hand to hold the sonic, the other to hold onto the chain and presses the mobile phone against her ear. "Hey, you," she says into the phone. "Just a little Sorry, Danny. I think lunch is er, a bust," the Thing is causing the carpet to wobble as it slithers closer to the swing.
The fireplace next to the mantelpiece wobble by the Thing crawling over it. "Look! Look! They're climbing the walls." They were, in fact, climbing the walls.
"Oh, shit."
"Er, that's just a guy and his cousin on community support and I'm helping find their auntie," she lies into the phone. She swings the chair to the bay window straight ahead of her, and behind me. The Thing starts crawling across the ceiling. "Er, yeah, there was a thing, er a thing," I take the sonic from her and turn a little to face the window. "No, no, no, I'm fine!"
A loud crash is audible after I sonic the chain, causing it, the hanging chair and us to go smashing through the bay window. The glass shatters over the grass. We all scream as we fall into Mr. Heath's front garden, ruining the petunias he planted. A car alarm sounds elsewhere.
We all had some trouble getting out of the circular chair, but we were all safe in the glass-covered garden. "Danny?" She calls into the phone, "oh not much, just some nonsense," she lies again. "Tell you later. Love you!"
We walk along the subway, mostly silent as Clara has another conversation with the Doctor. "Sorry, what? What was that?" She said to him. "Yeah? Well, thought it was pretty weak myself."
I look to her worried. He must've found about Clara lying to both him and Danny, now.
She continues talking, "well, he is." After walking a few feet, she sighs. "Doctor." We walk a little more, "Well, there you go."
We walk some more along the subway normally. Clara stops putting a hand to the ear-piece, "ah. Doctor, you're breaking up a bit," she pauses. "No, really, you are. I can't hear you." I grab the sonic screwdriver from my pocket and hand it over to her, instead of taking the screwdriver she pulls the earpiece from her ear and hands it to me. I grab it and only successfully sonic it after a few tries, I follow a ranting Clara to the spot we were previously- in front of the tunnel with the people's back 'painted' on the walls.
I see Rigsy in the community service group inside the tunnel, trying to stop them from painting over the 'murals.' I position the earpiece so the Doctor can see the walls.
"Does it even still count as lying if you're doing for someone's own good?" Clara wonders aloud next to me as I continue using the sonic on the ear-piece, her still oblivious to the pictures on the wall. "Well, like, technically their own good."
"It's a memorial!" Rigsy says back to the leader of the group. He grabs the paintbrush from one of the men about to paint over a person and throws it elsewhere. "What are you doing?" He says to them as I concentrate on the ear-piece.
I look down to Clara's purse and see the Doctor's hand nudge her elbow, "the mural. Clara, it's the mural!" He points to the tunnel. "Over there, look, the mural! We've found the missing people, they're in the walls!" I put my hand in front of her, holding the fixed ear-piece. She takes it and puts it back in her ear.
"What do I do?" She asks him. She turns to me after he answers, "we act normal and get everyone out. You still have the psychic paper?" I nod, and then we walk to the group. "They're very realistic. Who painted them?"
"I don't know," Rigsy answers. "A local artist. Probably a grieving relative."
Clara looks to him. "Did you ever meet them? Or did they just appear after people disappeared?" Rigsy's eyes widened, realizing what the murals are.
"And who are you when you're at home, love?"
I turn to the old man as my eyes narrow; I whip out the psychic paper- even though it wouldn't work on him and hold it out to him. "We are health and safety. This subway is not safe. Everyone has to evacuate now." I say it louder, trying to get people's attention.
He takes the paper from my hand and looks at it before handing it back to me. "This is blank. Try again, sweetheart." Defeated, I placed the paper back in my pocket.
"What?" Clara blurted out, shocked he got passed the paper.
"Stan," the old man orders one of the men. "Do your job."
Said Stan's paintbrush only touches the wall when he is sucked in with a cry behind us. I turn to where he stood, only to see his back painted on the wall. "Stan!" Rigsy shouts. The pictures turn to face us, but they just look as if they were strokes of living paint. Chills run up my spine as I hear a hiss come from the Things.
"What is this? What are they?" One of them freaks out.
Clara tries to calm the crowd down, "forget Stan. Your friend's gone," we all seem to group up at the exit of the subway. "We need to move. Now." We move quickly in the opposite direction of them, just as they slide off the walls and move across the tarmac in pursuit of our group.
Oh my Lord, this chapter took forever to finish. Please review if you have the time.
Next chapter: Flatline pt. 2
