That same night, Rose had what was her strangest psychic experience so far. A couple minutes after lying down in the comfortable bed which had already been set up for her, she felt a strange sensation, as if someone was giving her a very light push. This resulted in her believing that she was at the point of falling off her bed, so she gripped as tightly to the bedpost as possible, even going so far as to reach out to Little Franny (who had somehow found her way back into the bed when Rose wasn't noticing) to keep her balance. However, the pushing sensation continued, with the grip Rose felt around her back getting a lot more forceful and painful within each second.
Rose did the only thing she could think of doing at the moment. John Smith! She cried out in panic. John Smith, do you know what's happening to me? It feels as if someone's pushing me very hard! Please make it stop if you can!
In response, John Smith said to her in a calm and gentle tone, Rose, what you I think you'll be experiencing is probably going to come across as very scary, but you're going to remain safe. If you start seeing frightening images, know that nothing you see is capable of physically hurting you.
So does that mean that I'll be having visions?
Yes. I can't tell you right away if they will be scary or not, but it could still come across as a frightening experience because you'll probably start getting confused over what feels real and what doesn't. Whatever happens, keep reminding yourself that what you're seeing isn't real, and you'll be okay. Is that clear?
But John Smith, will you still be able to…
She didn't get to finish this thought, because the push reached its most forceful point yet, and the sensation of falling completely took over, making Rose feel as if she had just leaped off a cliff. However, screaming was impossible, because this same force that had pushed her now kept her from the capacity to utter even a single sound.
A couple seconds later, Rose found herself in a cold, dark room full of small desks and piles of toys scattered around. It was only upon looking at the blackboard with "Welcome! The date is 3rd of December, 1992" which was written in the pink chalk which her teacher always loved using, that she realized that she was in her classroom. This gave her a slight sense of relief because she thought she might see Miss Bryan in there, who'd once told her students in a happy manner that she loved the school so much that she even slept there. Perhaps she had a secret room hidden in the building, if not the classroom itself, where she would be found having a late night tea and watching a video tape of old Coronation Street episodes, which was something she admitted to doing during nights when she couldn't sleep.
Suddenly, as if serving as a sign, a small flicker of light was seen in the back of the room.
Rose smiled in delight and called out, "Miss Bryan! It's me, Rose Tyler. I've come to visit you for the evening!" She'd already grown so happy that John Smith's words were almost completely forgotten. After all, this was nowhere near being the scary scene which she'd been expecting before the falling sensation had begun…
And then, the flickering stopped.
"That's funny," Rose said to herself. "Maybe Miss Bryan is scared of having her students see her when she's not teaching class. Perhaps she's been in her pajamas and decided to change clothes before seeing. But if she wanted to do that, then why would she turn off the lights?" She then started walking in the direction in which she'd seen the light, wanting to find the room where her teacher was staying.
But upon reaching the light's source, she didn't find simply a door, but the old storage closet where the art supplies were stored; the exact same one as Heather Marsh had opened up on the day of her birthday only to find cobwebs and yellowing paper.
"That's funny. Why did I not think that it was coming from here all along?" she wondered. As a matter of fact, she seemed to have fully forgotten that the storage closet was even in the classroom in the first place, even though she saw it every day at school. Come to think of it, did she ever see toys littered up all over the place, as she now noticed upon taking a closer look at the room?
Rose, how can you be so stupid? She thought to herself. John Smith told you that nothing you'd see would be real, and now here you are, getting all happy because you thought you'd see your teacher in here. How would it even come close to being scary, as he said your visions would be?
And then, the lights started flickering again, going on and off several times.
"This isn't real," Rose said, just as she started feeling her heart race out of fear. "John Smith said that none of this would be real…"
"Rose!" she heard a familiar voice calling out from the storage room. "Rose, please help me! I'm trapped in this closet, and I can't get out no matter what I do!"
It was Clara Oswald, who had been staying with Dr. Sullivan and Christine at Northern Horizons and had disappeared the night after Rose had gone to see them.
"Clara, I'm going to get you out right now," Rose called out. "Just give me a second to try opening this door…"
But when she placed her hands on it, it remained firmly in place, not moving even the slightest manner.
"I can't open it!" she cried out anxiously. "How could I possibly get you out…?"
Remember Rose, none of this is real, she thought to herself. You may think Clara is right here with you, but she's just another part of this vision, just like the classroom is.
But if Clara was seeing Dr. Sullivan, it had to mean that she had some sort of special abilities. Rose had not been able to form a connection of the mind with her, but she still knew that such abilities could take on many shapes and forms.
"Clara, don't you feel as if you might be dreaming?" Rose asked, telling her the first thing that came to mind, and then sighed over once again getting carried away within this vision. What was Clara going to think (that was if she was really experiencing the same vision as Rose) upon being asked if she was dreaming? Most people would think this was a crazy question for sure, and Rose didn't want to be rejected for sounding crazy yet again, especially if it someone who was most likely similar to her.
But to her relief, Clara responded by saying, "I actually do, because the last thing I remember before appearing in this closet is lying down in my bed, and ever since I've been stuck here, it's been so hard to move around. My daddy says that this happens a lot in dreams."
"Is this the first time something like this has happened to you?" Rose asked.
"Well, I've never dreamed that I was stuck in a closet before. But I'm now starting to remember these weird dreams I've been having of meeting certain people."
"Certain people? Like who?"
"Some of them look just like me. They're always wearing some kind of weird clothes and doing something which either seems very fun or very important. I remember one of those girls trying to bake a soufflé like my mummy does and then nearly blowing up the oven, so she started running into this city which looked like the ones you see in The Jetsons, saying something about some bad guy who she was thought was trying to kill her."
"Sounds a little funny," Rose said, smiling in spite of her slight anxiety.
"I know, but it was a bit scary at the same time. And…" She hesitated for a while, and then said, "And I don't just see these girls. There's someone else that I see a lot too."
"And do you know who it is?"
"Yes, but…" She paused once again, having sounded a lot more scared now then she did before.
"Clara, please tell me! I have to know," Rose insisted.
"It's you," Clara answered, now on the verge of tears. "I've been dreaming of you for a long time, but I wasn't able to tell who you were. And it was when I met you that I started remembering all the dreams I'd been having. The woman who took me home from the hotel said that you are very important, and that you're going to save a lot of people. She also said that I would be helping you in some way. I don't know how, but I think my dreams have something to do with it."
Suddenly, the two of them heard a loud thudding sound, as if someone was trying to break into the classroom. Then, Clara started screaming, and the doors to the storage closet burst open. All the yellowed paper and art supplies fell to the ground, and upon seeing Clara, Rose noticed that she'd gotten her arms and legs tangled up in the cobwebs which surrounded nearly every corner of the closet.
"Rose, help me!" Clara yelled, waving her arms around forcefully in an attempt to break free from the cobwebs.
Rose ran up to her and held out her arms to start untangling her. But upon meeting Clara's gaze, everything started looking blurry and incoherent, and before long, she could no longer see the classroom. Instead, she was now kneeling on a blue rug in front of a bathtub, and her hands weren't holding Clara's small, frail hands, but rather the bloody wrists of a young woman, whose long brown hair completely shielded her face, but whose body was covered with deep wounds which sent trails of dark blood onto the water which filled up about half of the tub.
"It's not real," Rose said in an anxious voice. "It's just a vision. No one is really hurt here."
But why had it changed so quickly? Why was she in her empty classroom just a couple of seconds ago and now found herself in the bathroom of a woman who'd most likely been killed while taking a bath? She knew such things could happen in dreams, but was it common to experience it in visions too?
And then, the silence was broken by an uproarious laughter, and instead of seeing the lifeless brown haired woman lying in the tub, Rose was now looking at the creepy disfigured woman who had appeared to her on her birthday.
"Surprise, sweetheart!" she called out in a wild voice. "How has being six been going so far? Looks like you've been having it tough based on what I've seen so far!"
"Go away!" Rose screamed. "I'm only having a vision! You can't hurt me in any way like this."
"Oh, you poor little girl. Hasn't this invisible doctor friend of yours told you how he's such a big liar yet? I may not be able to physically hurt you, but emotionally, I can still cause a tremendous amount of fear and trauma. After, you're still very young, and all these experiences you've had are already enough to profoundly affect your well-being once you're grown up."
"How do you know that?" Rose demanded. "Maybe my powers could help me become a hero, like Batman or Wonder Woman."
The woman gave an evil chuckle. "Children and their wild imaginations. When I was a child, I thought I could be a fairy, being able to fly all over the place and granting wishes to silly girls all over the world. The way I saw it, it was so easy to get rid of evil. Just a wave a magic wand and it will all go away, or look in the direction of the stars at night and wish for all the dictators and killers to get beaten by some charming chap in a suit; that was all I believed had to happen to stop all the bad things in this world. And you want to know what happened later?"
"What?" Rose asked, her voice quivering from fear.
"Just like you, I started sensing some evil presence in the place where my sister's boyfriend worked. I told him and my sister all about my fears on several occasions, and what do they do? Just laugh in my face and tell me that I'm too old to believe in such superstitious nonsense and that perhaps I should stop watching so many scary movies, even though I rarely ever watched them."
"So you're saying that you had ESP?" Rose demanded to know.
"No, silly! I was just an ordinary woman who happened to find some demonic girl in a hotel room, going on about how all was safe as long as I always found my way back into that awful place. And that screaming; that terrible screaming which always occurred close to nighttime. I couldn't stand any of it, but my sister's boyfriend was so attached to that bloody place, always going on about how all his hard work over the years had saved it from obscurity."
"And where was…?"
"So, what do you think happened later on?" the woman demanded in a forceful, frightening voice.
"Did someone in that place hurt you?" Rose asked, the fear in her voice coming across more clearly than it did before.
"No; much worse than that. I drove off with my husband one night, hoping for the chance to escape from all the haunting incidents I'd been going through lately. And then, riding around not that far from us, was none other than your bloody mother and her closest friend!"
"You mean Hannah?" Rose said. It had been so long since her mummy had heard anything from Hannah, since whenever she tried calling her to get some idea of how she was, the calls always went unanswered. This bothered Jackie a little, but because she was so busy preparing for the temporary move to Northern Horizons, she put her worries about her friend aside for moment, thinking that she was finding some way to adjust on her own and didn't need Jackie's help after all they'd gone through together.
"Of course; who else do you believe it could have been, you stupid girl?" the woman answered in a disgusted tone. "Because she was such a good friend, she agreed to drive your drunken wretch of a mother home for the evening, and because of their thoughtlessness, their car ran right into ours, and this collision ended up killing both my husband and me."
For a moment, Rose was silent. Was that what she'd been seeing in the dream she'd had when her mother arrived home late on the first day of school? Why had neither John Smith nor her mother told her the full story of what had happened? Did they worry about scaring her with the information that her mother had nearly been killed, or did they fear what her reaction would upon hearing that her mother was partially responsible for the death of a young couple?
"But of course, your beloved Doctor John Smith couldn't bear having someone so close to you being killed, so he send a telepathic message to one of his closest allies to help save them, and save them she did. It was one of those dreadful Time Ladies, who could walk across the most blazing infernos and step away fully unharmed, or in the worst case scenario, can simply regenerate. Good way to cheat death, don't you think so, sweetheart?"
"Why do you say that? Did you really wish my mummy would…?" And before she could finish, Rose felt herself being pushed once again, only this time, it was the woman's light yet strong arms that had taken a hold of her, and she landed on the slippery floor with a loud thud.
"Your mother and her friend were supposed to have died right alongside me, Rose Tyler! You can't mess with what fate has in store for you and expect to walk away unharmed! It's for that reason why I can't rest in peace, and why half of the universe hates those wretched Time Lords who manipulate the rules of time for their own conveniences. But I'm not going to let more time pass by without doing something to set things right once and for all. I managed to kill Hannah Lewis tonight, and before you know it, my dear little Rose, you'll be left an orphan, without anyone to protect you. And I'll be sure to make sure that old Doctor and all your wonderful new friends pay their dues as well. Your little friend Christine and her own Doctor Sullivan have started getting their fair share of my revenge already, as did Clara before John Smith's ally helped her get away from it. And you, as the daughter of one of the women who killed me and what some in other planets call a soul girl, will experience the worse of my wrath and pay the full price for it by having your life spared, forcing you to live through all the haunting experiences which will come about for the rest of your life!"
And then, before Rose could speak up, she once again pushed her down, letting off an evil laugh as Rose tumbled down into the middle of nowhere, now screaming as hard as she could.
The next thing Rose knew, she was back in bed, feeling horribly hot and jittery for what appeared to be no reason. Thinking back, she couldn't recall what had made her so frightened. All she could remember was feeling a small push, seeing Clara talking about how she'd managed to safely get away from Northern Horizons, and finding some woman in a bathroom with a laugh coming straight out of a bad scary movie. Just as John Smith had told her before the vision had begun, no one managed to hurt her, so why was she still so scared?
Not once did it occur to Rose, as she managed to drift off into a long and deep sleep after pushing aside her disturbing thoughts on what it was which she couldn't remember from her visions, that perhaps John Smith was just as capable of lying as any human could.
Next, will the memories from that vision remain forgotten by Rose, or will something occur which will trigger them back at some point? And the news of Hannah's death will be revealed to Jackie soon, and will bring about some new alliances from a couple people we've already met, as well as further reveal the dark sides of characters whom Jackie and Rose already little trust in.
