THE UNQUIET DEAD PART THREE
A little while later, everyone was gathered around a table. Gwyneth had previously explained how a séance had worked when she had been to one before, and the Doctor took this on to be how this one would be, too.
"This is how Madam Mortlock summons those from the Land of Mists, down in big town." Gwyneth explained, before smiling slightly, "Come, we must all join hands." Dickens, however, had a grimace on his face.
"I can't take part in this." He shook his head, shaking his hands. The Doctor narrowed his eyes on him.
"Humbug? Come on, open mind." The Doctor was scoffed at.
"This is precisely the sort of cheap mummery I strive to unmask. Séances? Nothing but luminous tambourines and a squeeze box concealed between the knees. This girl knows nothing." The Doctor rolled his eyes at Dickens' response.
"Now, don't antagonise her." He smirked slightly, "I love a happy medium."
Jazmine scoffed, shaking her head at him, "I can not believe you just said that!" The Doctor grinned.
"Come on, we might need you." Dickens, clearly reluctantly, sat down in between Jazmine and Gwyneth. The Doctor grinned. "Good man. Now, Gwyneth, reach out." Gwyneth nodded, closing her eyes to concentrate before speaking.
"Speak to us. Are you there? Spirits, come. Speak to us that we may relieve your burden." Jazmine started as whispering entered the room, scaring her. She could quite believe that the séance had worked.
"I'm hearing things, got to be." She murmured to herself, "Finally gone mad."
"Nothing can happen." Dickens refused to believe it, shaking his head, "This is sheer folly." Jazmine, however, shook her head. She nodded towards Gwyneth.
"Doctor, Look at her!" The Doctor did.
"I see them. I feel them." Jazmine felt slightly helpless, watching the gas tendrils drifting about their heads. It seemed too... Stereotypical for a ghost story.
"What are they saying?" Jazmine asked. "What're they doing here?"
"They can't get through the rift." The Doctor spoke, before looking at the girl, "Gwyneth, it's not controlling you, you're controlling it. Now, look deep. Allow them through." A short pause, before Gwyneth shook her head.
"I can't!"
"Yes, you can!" The Doctor shouted back, "Just believe it. I have faith in you, Gwyneth. Make the link." She nodded.
"Yes." Soon, blue outlines of people appeared behind Gwyneth. They didn't seem to be able to focus, but the sight made Jazmine feel slightly sick.
"Great God! Spirits from the other side!" Sneed gasped, watching them in horror.
"The other side of the universe." The Doctor agreed. The blurred figured began to speak with two child's voices, and Gwyneth spoke with them. It seemed like she knew what they were going to say.
"Pity us. Pity the Gelth. There is so little time. Help us."
The Doctor clearly took pity, and looked at them.
"What do you want us to do?" He asked gently, but his voice held a solid authority.
"The rift. Take the girl to the rift. Make the bridge."
"What for?" The Doctor asked.
"We are so very few. The last of our kind. We face extinction."
"Why, what happened?" The Doctor clearly looked confused, but he had a look of horror plastered deep into his eyes, almost like he knew their answer before it came.
"Once we had a physical form like you, but then the war came."
"War? What war?" Dickens asked, but the Doctor looked worried of their answer.
"The Time War. The whole universe convulsed. The Time War raged. Invisible to smaller species but devastating to higher forms. Our bodies wasted away. We're trapped in this gaseous state."
"So that's why you need the corpses." The Doctor stated, he know understood.
"We want to stand tall, to feel the sunlight, to live again. We need a physical form, and your dead are abandoned. They're going to waste. Give them to us."
It seemed only Jazmine could see the faults in this, as she shook her head. It was wrong, morally, ethically wrong.
"Doctor, we can't." She told him, "We can't."
"Why not?" He turned to her, asking. A sudden fire in his eyes.
"It's not just rotten corpses they would be taking, it's some one else's body. A body someone else owned once upon a time. It's not... I mean, it's not-"
"Not decent? Not polite? It could save their lives." His eyes blazed, making her narrow her eyes onto his.
"Open the rift. Let the Gelth through. We're dying. Help us. Pity the Gelth."
With their final plea, the Gelth went back into the gas lamps that were placed in the room. Gwyneth collapsed onto the table, clearly exhausted.
"Gwyneth?" Jazmine jumped up, rushing over to the woman. "You alright? Gwyn?"
"All true." Dickens murmured, a far away look on his face.
"Gwyn? Wake up, are you alright?" Jazmine kept trying, while Dickens carried on with his murmuring.
"It's all true."
With a little help from the Doctor, Jazmine had Gwyneth moved from laying across the table and onto a chaise longue. She kneeled down besides the woman, smiling lightly at her.
"Everything's okay, Gwyn. You just rest, you deserve it." She told her, but earned a shake of the head in return.
"But my angels, miss. They came, didn't they? They need me?" The Doctor nodded.
"They do need you, Gwyneth. You're they're only chance of survival." Jazmine glared at him.
"Leave the poor girl alone. She's exhausted and she's not fighting your battles. It's not what she's meant to do." She handed the girl a glass. "Drink this." The Doctor glared at his companion, but didn't comment.
"Well, what did you say, Doctor? Explain it again. What are they?" The Doctor sighed, rubbing his forehead.
"Aliens." Sneed's face screwed up in thought.
"Like foreigners, you mean?" The Doctor sighed.
"Pretty foreign, yeah. From up there." He pointed towards the ceiling, where the sky would be, but Mr Sneed didn't take it that way.
"Brecon?" He asked. The Doctor winced.
"Close. And they've been trying to get through from Brecon to Cardiff but the road's blocked. Only a few can get through and even then they're weak. They can only test drive the bodies for so long, then they have to revert to gas and hide in the pipes." Jazmine rolled her eyes at him, but didn't comment.
"Which is why they need the girl." Jazmine shook her head at this.
"They can need what they want, I won't let them have her." Jazmine refused.
"But she can help. Living on the rift, she's become part of it. She can open it up, make a bridge and let them through." Dickens grinned slightly.
"Incredible. Ghosts that are not ghosts but beings from another world, who can only exist in our world by inhabiting cadavers." The Doctor nodded.
"Good system. It might work." Jazmine frowned, shaking her head.
"You can't let them run around inside of dead people, people who's bodies aren't something you can just pawn of to the next alien race who need them. They belong to somebody-"
"Who's dead and has no need of the body!" The Doctor agreed. "Why can't we? It's like recycling."
"Seriously, you can't." She refused, earning a scoff from the Doctor.
"Seriously though, I can." Jazmine narrowed her eyes.
"It's not just wrong. Those bodies were living people. We should show them some respect, even if they're dead." The Doctor glared at her again.
"Do you carry a donor card?" Jazmine scoffed.
"That's different. That's-" She groaned in frustration as she was cut off.
"It is different, yeah. It's a different morality. Get used to it or go home. You heard what they said, time's short. I can't worry about a few corpses when the last of the Gelth could be dying." Jazmine narrowed her eyes on his.
"Your taking the word of an alien race, an alien race wanting to use a human girl for a purpose that is more than just morally wrong. You can't do this. You can't let them use her for their own good!" The Doctor rolled his eyes.
"I'm taking their word, yeah, I am. You got a problem with that?" Jazmine opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off.
"Don't I get a say, miss?" Gwyneth asked, though her voice was slightly timid. Jazmine groaned.
"You don't understand, Gwyneth. It's more than just helping a race-"
"Yes, miss, I understand. You don't want me to get hurt, I know. But, miss, it's for the greater good." Jazmine shook her head.
"You can't possibly know that." She argued. Gwyneth nodded.
"I can't, but it's a risk I must take. Things might be done very differently where you're from, but here and now, I know my own mind, and the angels need me." She grasped Jazmine's hand, "Just like your angels need you." This confused Jazmine enough to shut her up. Gwyneth turned to the Doctor, "Doctor, what do I have to do?" He nodded at her.
"You don't have to do anything." He told her, glancing at Jazmine.
"They've been singing to me since I was a child, sent by my mam on a holy mission. So tell me." The Doctor sighed, but understood. It was her decision, one she had made.
"We need to find the rift. This house is on a weak spot, so there must be a spot that's weaker than any other. Mister Sneed, what's the weakest part of this house? The place where most of the ghosts have been seen?" Sneed thought, before sighing.
"That would be the morgue."
With that, the group made their way down to the morgue. Jazmine was less than happy with the choice, but decided to shut up and stay to the back. She wasn't going to interfere any more, not if it was Gwyneth's choice to help.
The morgue really was rather melancholy. It was a cold basement, where the recently dead layed under blank white sheets. It screamed depressing, and it didn't help that the place was freezing.
"Urgh. Talk about Bleak House." Jazmine rolled her eyes at him.
"The thing is, Doctor, the Gelth don't succeed, do they?" She questioned. "Because, I know they don't. I know for a fact there weren't corpses walking around in 1869. I took History GCSE and for A level. Dropped out, but that's no the point." The Doctor rolled his eyes at her rambling.
"Time's in flux, changing every second. Your cozy little world can be rewritten like that. Nothing is safe. Remember that. Nothing." Jazmine rolled her eyes. Him and his rules of time...
"Doctor, I think the room is getting colder." Dickens pointed out, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Jazmine gulped.
"Here they come." She nodded as the blue gas came out of a gasp lamp by the door, and the Gelth formed to stand under a stone archway.
"You've come to help. Praise the Doctor. Praise him."
"I know I have nothing to do with this, but promise me one thing. Please. Promise you won't hurt her." The Gelth seemed to nod, but otherwise ignored the request.
"Hurry! Please, so little time. Pity the Gelth."
"I'll take you somewhere else after the transfer. Somewhere you can build proper bodies. This isn't a permanent solution, all right?" The Doctor told them, before turning to glance at Jazmine with a 'You happy?' glance.
"My angels. I can help them live." Gwyneth murmured, closing her eyes.
"Okay, where's the weak point?" The Doctor questioned.
"Here, beneath the arch." And not a second later, Gwyneth repeated.
"Beneath the arch." She moved, standing under the arch while inside the Gelth. Jazmine started to worry.
"Remember, you don't have to do this. We could figure something else out." But she was ignored.
"My angels." Gwyneth spoke.
"Establish the bridge. Reach out to the void. Let us through!"
"Yes, I can see you. I can see you. Come!" She spoke louder.
"Bridgehead establishing."
"Come to me. Come to this world, poor lost souls!" She was now shouting.
"It is begun. The bridge is made."
Gwyneth then opened her mouth, and a fountain of blue gas came out of it. The Gelth them spoke again.
"She has given herself to the Gelth. The bridge is open. We descend."
The before sweet blue apparition turns to a blood red colour with sharp teeth. It's voice also changes, becoming deeper and harder.
"The Gelth will come through in force."
"You said that you were few in number." Dickens pointed out, a look of fear on his face.
"A few billion. And all of us in need of corpses."
At this, the dead in the room began to rise.
"Gwyneth, stop this. Listen to your master. This has gone far enough. Stop dabbling, child, and leave these things alone, I beg of you!" Jazmine gasped, reaching out to Mr Sneed.
"Mister Sneed, watch out!" Just then, a corpse grabbed Sneed around the neck, snapping it. The red gas zoomed into his mouth. The Doctor felt regret settle into his stomach. He knew, somehow, he should have listened to Jazmine. He just didn't want to.
"I think it's gone a little bit wrong." Jazmine scoffed, but didn't comment.
"I have joined the legions of the Gelth. Come, march with us." Mr Sneed's voice had changed to the deep, hard voice of the Gelth.
"No." Dickens refused, trying to appear brave.
"We need bodies. All of you. Dead. The human race. Dead."
The Doctor, appalled, turned to Gwyneth.
"Gwyneth, stop them! Send them back now!" Gwyneth, however, appeared unable to hear him. The Gelth carried on.
"Three more bodies. Convert them. Make them vessels for the Gelth."
The now deceased Sneed backed the Doctor and Jazmine up against a metal gate. Dickens, however, wasn't. He shook his head, looking sickened by the sight infront of him.
"Doctor, I can't. I'm sorry. This new world of yours is too much for me. I'm so-"
The Doctor and Jazmine, however, were too busy trying to save themselves. They had now hidden behind the metal gate, where they hoped the corpses couldn't reach them.
"Give yourself to glory. Sacrifice your lives for the Gelth."
"I trusted you. I pitied you!" He shouted at them, pain clear in his eyes.
"We don't want your pity. We want this world and all it's flesh."
The Doctor's eyes hardened at that. He'd be the cause if this world died, and he refused to be the cause of another genocide. "Not while I'm alive."
"Then live no more."
Dickens, noting the Doctor and his beautiful companion were busy, instead booked it out of the house. But, the gas had seeped out around the door. He rushed down the street, being chased by the Gelth.
"But I can't die. Tell me I can't. I don't have any memories, I need to find them. I don't even know my own birthday. Tell me that makes it impossible for me to die. Please." Jazmine pleaded, tears in her eyes. She knew she couldn't die here. She just couldn't. The Doctor, however, just gazed at her sadly.
"I'm sorry."
"But it's 1869. How can I die now? I don't even know my birth date!" The Doctor sighed, rubbing his face.
"Time isn't a straight line. It can twist into any shape. You can be born in the twentieth century and die in the nineteenth and it's all my fault. I brought you here." Jazmine sighed, shaking her head.
"It's not your fault. I wanted to come. I chose to, you don't have the blame." He sighed.
"What about me? I saw the fall of Troy, World War Five. I pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party. Now I'm going to die in a dungeon in Cardiff." Jazmine sighed.
"I suppose we won't just die, we'll become a host body for one of... Them." She grimaced slightly at the thought, before looking at the man besides her. He was brave, never once so far had he not been. "We'll go down fighting, yeah?" The Doctor grinned.
"Yeah." Jazmine gulped, before reaching her hand out towards him.
"Together?" The Doctor, once again, grinned.
"Together." He grasped his hand in his, letting his grin grow slightly wider. "I'm so glad I met you." Jazmine smiled back.
"Me too. You've shown me that, even though I can't remember most things about my life, I can still live it." He grinned back, just as Dickens ran in.
"Doctor! Doctor! Turn off the flame, turn up the gas! Now, fill the room, all of it, now!" The Doctor looked at him.
"What're you doing?" Dickens motioned to the lamp.
"Turn it all on. Flood the place!" The Doctor grinned.
"Brilliant. Gas." Dickens grinned back.
"Am I correct, Doctor? These creatures are gaseous!" The Doctor nodded, grinning widely.
"Fill the room with gas, it'll draw them out of the host. Suck them into the air like poison from a wound!" The corpses leave the Doctor and Jazmine, instead starting to stumble towards Dickens.
"I hope, oh Lord, I hope that this theory will be validated soon, if not immediately." The Doctor nodded.
"Plenty more!" He grasped a gas pipe from the wall, before ripping it off. The gas suddenly left the corpses, the corpses falling to the floor limply.
"It's working!" Dickens exclaimed happily. The Doctor rushed out of the alcove, helping Jazmine over the bodies
"Gwyneth, send them back. They lied. They're not angels." Gwyneth frowned at this.
"Liars?" The Doctor nodded.
"Look at me. If your mother and father could look down and see this, they'd tell you the same. They'd give you the strength. Now send them back!" Jazmine tried to breathe, but the gas was making it extremely hard to.
"Doctor I can't- It's hard to breathe." The Doctor looked at her, before nodding to Dickens.
"Charles, get her out." Jazmine, though coughing, shook her head.
"I'm not leaving her. They might not give her back, I need to be here." Gwyneth began to struggle.
"They're too strong." The Doctor refused to loose her.
" Remember that world you saw? Jazmine's world? All those people. None of it will exist unless you send them back through the rift." Gwyneth shook her head.
"I can't send them back. But I can hold them. Hold them in this place, hold them here. Get out." At this, she took out a box of matches from her apron pocket. Jazmine gasped (from either shock of the gas, she didn't know) and shook her head.
"Gwyneth, you can't!"
"Leave this place!" Gwyneth ignored her, pulling a match out.
"Jazmine, get out. Go now. I won't leave her while she's still in danger. Now go!" Dickens went to pull Jazmine out, but she grasped onto the Doctor's arm.
"Promise me, promise you won't leave her." He gulped, but nodded.
"I promise." She searched his eyes before nodding, letting Dickens pull her out of the basement. Once in the hallway, Jazmine let Dickens lead the way.
"This way!" He pulled her the way out onto the street. They stood a bit away, watching and waiting anxiously for the Doctor and Gwyneth to return. Jazmine saw the Doctor, but no Gwyneth, and instantly knew she hadn't made it.
"She didn't make it, did she? They took her." She stated as the Doctor walked towards them. The Doctor nodded sadly.
"I'm sorry. She closed the rift." Jazmine looked at the smouldering house sadly. Dickens sighed.
"At such a cost. The poor child."
"I did try, Jaz, but Gwyneth was already dead. She had been for at least five minutes."
"What?" Jazmine asked. "How?"
"I think she was dead from the minute she stood in that arch." Jazmine shook her head.
"But she can't have been. She spoke to us. She helped us. She saved us. How could she have done that if dead? If under the influence of the Gelth?" Dickens took it upon himself to try and make sense of it.
"There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Even for you, Doctor." Jazmine smiled sadly.
"She saved the world. A servant girl. And no one will ever know. No one will ever mourn her or thank her."
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
Once outside the TARDIS, the Doctor was trying to politely imply that they had to leave to Dickens.
"Right then, Charlie boy, I've just got to go into my, er, shed. Won't be long." Jazmine turned to the author, giving him a polite smile.
"So, Charles, what are you going to do now? Any special Christmas plans?" She asked.
"I shall take the mail coach back to London, quite literally post-haste. This is no time for me to be on my own. I shall spend Christmas with my family and make amends to them. After all I've learned tonight, there can be nothing more vital." Jazmine smiled at his change of heart.
"You've cheered up." The Doctor commented, earning a slap over the arm from Jazmine.
"Exceedingly! This morning, I thought I knew everything in the world. Now I know I've just started. All these huge and wonderful notions, Doctor. I'm inspired. I must write about them." Jazmine frowned slightly.
"Do you think that's wise? Don't you think that might... Scare people more than inform them?" She asked.
"I shall be subtle at first. The Mystery of Edwin Drood still lacks an ending. Perhaps the killer was not the boy's uncle. Perhaps he was not of this Earth. The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the Blue Elementals. I can spread the word, tell the truth." The Doctor chuckled lightly.
"Good luck with it. Nice to meet you. Fantastic." The Doctor told him, grinning.
"Goodbye, Charles. And, thank you for helping us." Jazmine shook his hand, before leaning forward and kissing his cheek gently.
"Oh, my dear. How modern." His cheeks were now tinted red, "Thank you, but, I don't understand. In what way is this goodbye? Where are you going?"
"You'll see. In the shed." Jazmine grinned, but walked inside. She didn't impose on the Doctor's conversation, instead looking around the control room. She had never felt so happy to see a room, yet she felt somewhat out of place. Like, possibly, she shouldn't be there.
The Doctor wandered back in, watching her for a while before wandering back up the stairs. Jazmine spun to look at him.
"I'm pretty sure Charles Dickens didn't write about blue ghosts. Won't that change history if he does?" She asked the Doctor, who shrugged in response.
"In a week's time it's 1870, and that's the year he dies. Sorry. He'll never get to tell his story." Jazmine frowned at this revelation.
"Oh, no. He was so nice. A gentleman." The Doctor nodded, but looked at her lightly.
"But in your time, he was already dead. We've brought him back to life, and he's more alive now than he's ever been, old Charlie boy. Let's give him one last surprise." The pair watched on the scanner as his eyes widened as the TARDIS de-materialised.
"Right, so, where next?" The Doctor looked up at her.
"What's bothering you?" She paused, looking up at him before sighing. She fell into the jump seat, fiddling with her fingers.
"Have you ever felt like... You're taking someone else's place in something? Like, maybe you are meant to be there, but not the way you are?" The Doctor looked at her weirdly. "I feel like... I'm taking Rose's place. Like, maybe, I'm not supposed to be here. Watching Gwyneth like that... I dunno. I think maybe Rose would have handled that better."
"Jaz," She froze as he called her that for the second time, "She chose to leave, not you, nor me. She wanted to-"
"Maybe because I was here," She spun to look at him, "Don't you get it? What if I had left? Maybe everything would have went better!" The Doctor sighed.
"Don't blame her death on yourself. You can't, it wasn't your fault. If you do that for everyone, it'll weigh you down. Trust me, I know." She looked into his eyes before sighing.
"Maybe your right," she murmured, but wasn't so sure, "Maybe I'm just home sick."
"Well then, let's take you home." She gave him a weak grin, but wasn't feeling it.
Maybe it was meant to be Rose as his companion.
~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~
I wish to point something out, that I have a plan for Jazmine as an OC, but it has to be this slow start. I want her to realise she's not meant to be his companion, by herself or otherwise, then I will start on the main story line. I just sort of need to her question her place in the TARDIS and the Doctor's life. Does that make sense? From now on, I can promise (hand on heart) she won't be taking Rose's place. She will be with Rose, but Rose will be there too. The only time she will probably take Rose's action, is in The Parting of Ways because, this is a romance story (eventually) and I don't want the Doc kissing Rose when that's not the point of the story, understand? Tanks!
Anyways, I promise there is a point to all this! And, sorry it's late! I had to do my Spanish oral, which I mucked up on, but it's alright, It'll be fine! I also had an English controlled assessment which is, as always, a pain in my back side. Thanks though guys, it means a lot.
Thank you guys!
- Seren12