Chapter 6
Laila skidded to a stop in front of her door. Heavens, Mama was going to kill her. She tucked a curl behind her ear and licked her lips. How on earth was she going to explain what happened? I decided to walk down Falling Star Lane because apparently I'm horribly stupid and reckless and something happened and I passed out and then when I woke up I met a strange man who had probably escaped from some sort of madhouse and then—argh. She couldn't even explain it to herself. She might as well say she'd been kidnapped or something.
She raised her hand and knocked, balancing from one foot to another as she waited for a response. She heard a footstep on the sidewalk behind her. She started and whirled to see the Doctor sauntering down the sidewalk.
She fixed him with the best glare she could manage. "Alright, Mama's going to kill me enough for being gone all night," she said. "And she'll kill me even more if I bring some random stranger home!"
He shrugged. "Alright. I'll just—"
"No, you will not wait here!" she snapped. "You will go away and find someone else to pester!"
"Pester?" He raised an eyebrow. "Now that's not a word I've had pointed in my direction very often." He shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Alright then, I'll just go—pester someone else then." He turned, took a few steps, then turned back. "Oh—if you happen to see a blue police box lying around, please do tell me!"
"And how am I supposed to—" But he was gone, turning the corner and disappearing out of earshot. She huffed and knocked again.
No answer.
She stepped to the window and cupped her hands around her face, peering inside. The shades were closed—of course. So Mama was out, then. Alright—she'd let herself in. She stepped back to the door and lifted the mat.
The key wasn't there.
She let out a little frustrated exclamation. Today was not working. At all. Maybe this was why people didn't dare approach Falling Star Lane.
Well—she might as well try the door. It was silly—Mama never left the door unlocked. But it wasn't as if she was going to break a window or something, and she was certainly not going to stand here on the street like an idiot waiting for her mother to return and let her in. So she grabbed the doorknob, and turned.
It opened.
She blinked. Okay then. That was—odd. But lucky. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
Empty houses had a certain feel about them. And Laila knew the minute she stepped inside that no one was here. The silence was heavy and filled with the kind of half-light that could only be created by closed shades in the afternoon.
She sighed.
Well—now she'd have time to cook up some kind of explanation, at least. She reached for the light switch—and froze.
It was different. Strange looking, somehow. She couldn't quite identify it, but—well, she got the same odd, unsettled and off feeling when looking at it that she had when looking at the car that had passed earlier. As if she were walking through a dream where everything was slightly wrong.
She forced herself to take a breath, and flipped the switch. She turned to the living room—and she had to steady herself a bit on the entryway wall, suddenly feeling almost dizzy.
Mama was not one to suddenly decide to redecorate. And even if she had had that sudden and uncharacteristic urge, she couldn't have done it so thoroughly overnight. The couch was new. She didn't recognize a single chair. The carpet was a darker brown. The walls were off-white instead of tan. And a strange-looking device sat against the far wall, some sort of screen or something. She didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to try to figure it out. She just wanted—
She just wanted things to be normal again. She wanted to come home to a scolding from Mama and maybe a letter from Rob. She wanted—
And then she was running, down the hallway and away from the strange dreamlike living room. Towards the only place she could find solace, the only place she could sit down and think. Towards her little room in the rafters. Her little attic room, where she went to be alone and to dream.
She hurried up the ladder and shoved the door open, bursting into the loft. And she let out a little shriek and nearly fell over backwards at the sight.
The Doctor sauntered through the town, taking in every detail. Laila had said it was 1943, but he was fairly certain she had been wrong. Oh, he was no stranger to anachronisms. But this was just not right. Now, he just had to figure out why she had thought she was in 1943—
The sound of running feet brought his head around and he turned to see Laila flying towards him, her curls disheveled and her eyes round with fear. She skidded to a stop just before smacking into him, her breath coming in short gasps.
"Everything's wrong." It almost sounded like a sob. "My house isn't my house and everything's different and it has strange things in it and the attic is full of bodies!"
His eyebrows shot up. "The attic is—what?"
"The attic is full of bodies!" And then she was leaning against him, sobbing into his suit coat. "And I don't know whether they're alive or not."