(Disclaimer: Spirit-slash-ghost-slash-zombie-things...or whatever.)
Episode 3:2- The Unquiet Dead
Gwyneth went slightly pale. "How did you know?" she whispered quietly. Calvin shrugged.
"A mixture of things," he said. "The way you actually aren't freaked out that much by Hobbes, and Rose's clothes... the fact that you seem to know quite a bit about our little zombie problem... the whole bit where you're accepting our 21st century slang..."
"Waitwaitwait," Rose protested, holding up her hands. "What in the name of Starclan are you talking about? Is she from the future or something?"
"Warriors!" Calvin exclaimed. "Excellent series; we must have a fangirl attack later over how awesome Erin Hunter is... but no. Nothing so dramatic."
"I have the Sight," the younger girl admitted quietly.
"She can see the future," Hobbes chimed in. "Annnddd... can apparently communicate with our spirit-slash-ghost-slash-zombie-things."
Rose blinked. "And this helps us... how?"
Calvin jumped up, starting to pace the room. Charles and Sneed were staring at the oddity of their unusual conversation. They probably had no idea whatsoever what Calvin was talking about.
"Well, if our slimy girl friend here... what's your name?"
"Gwyneth."
"Gwyneth, right. Thanks. Article (1): If our slimy girl friend, Gwyneth, knows what our spirit-slash-zombies-slash-ghost-things are, and can communicate with them, it stands to reason that she can put us into contact with them, and we can find out what they want. Article (2): They obviously want something, because otherwise they wouldn't be coming to life and strangling people, and generally causing chaos. Article (3): They're zombie-slash-spirit-slash-ghost-things, but we really need to come up with a better name for them. Anyone?"
He paused for a moment.
"Right, no one has any ideas. We can sort that out later. Article (4): We need to hold the séance soon, otherwise the...the...spirit-slash-zombie-slash-ghost-things will continue causing mayhem (we really need a better name for them) and although I fully endorse mayhem, killing people is kind of stepping over the line. Article (5). You're all staring at me."
Everyone was indeed staring at him. Hobbes raised a hand timidly. Calvin nodded and pointed at him.
"You're scaring me," he stated. "I have never known you to be so... so... logical."
Rose nodded in agreement, and Gwyneth made a hasty noise of agreement. Calvin rolled his eyes.
"Maybe I'm just growing up?" he offered.
Rose and Hobbes shook their heads.
"Taking charge?"
They shook their heads again.
"This is a rare flash of inspiration for me?"
"Maybe," Hobbes conceded. "Right. Séance?"
"Yes. Downstairs."
Everyone groaned as one.
"The zombie room?" Rose complained.
"Of course! Where else would we summon zombies but the zombie room! Come along, Tyler!"
And he dashed off downstairs. Everyone glanced at each other. Hobbes shrugged and followed. Rose copied Hobbes, dragging Gwyneth by the arm. Dickens and Sneed had a silent, furious conversation involving lots of head shaking and mouthing, but they seemed to come to some sort of conclusion, and they headed downstairs with the rest of the group.
They were seated cross-legged on the floor- two girls, a tiger, and a spiky haired boy. Anyone watching might have thought that they were playing a children's game, not summoning zombie-slash-ghost-slash-spirit-things via a girl who could see the future. Read that again, and think of it out of context. Imagine how confused a new watcher of this show would be if they jumped in right here. Now stop thinking about things like that and get back to reading. Thank you.
"So," Hobbes ventured. "How do we go about summoning spirit-slash-ghost-slash-zombie-things?"
"They are called the Gelth," Gwyneth whispered. Calvin started, and glared pointedly at her.
"Why didn't you tell us that before?" he demanded not-so-quietly. "We didn't need to go through the whole process of calling them zombie-slash-gh-"
He was cut off abruptly by the swirls of glowing blue vapour that began to swirl about the room. Gwyneth stood and held her arms out horizontally, and spun around. "They are coming," she hummed. Calvin clapped his hands together in pure delight. "Actual ghosts!" he cried. "Oh my Starclan, I am SO happy! Never in my travels have I seen ghosts! I sound stupid!"
"They are called the Gelth," Gwyneth repeated, and the vapours increased. "Oh!" she gasped.
Whispering surrounded them. Dickens glanced around, looking spooked.
"What are they saying?" Rose wondered. Hobbes cocked his head to one side, and his ears pricked up.
"They're saying they can't get through. Gwyneth! They aren't controlling you, you're controlling them! Open the rift!"
She hummed in agreement, and raised her hands. The blue vapour around them started to group together and solidify into distinct shapes.
"This is so cool!" cheered Calvin. Rose wasn't so sure. Two shapes spiralled through the air and settled themselves behind Gwyneth. They started to speak with innocent cute little girl voices. That should have been a clue from the start. Anything that sounds like a little kid is automatically creepy. Ever heard of the movie Child's Play? Well, neither have I.
Back to the story.
"Pity the Gelth," said the Gelth. "Pity the Gelth."
"Okay, we pity you," asserted Hobbes. "What do ya want?"
"The rift. Take the girl to the rift. Time is running out so quickly. Pity the Gelth."
Rose crossed her arms. "Well, why should we? Pity you, I mean. And what do you want with Gwyneth?"
"Once, like you, we had a physical form. And then...the War came."
"What war?" Calvin asked curiously.
"The War of Wars. You, Time Lord, should know that above all others."
Calvin strode across the room to a solid war and promptly began banging his head against it.
"I," he yelled between boinks. "am," BOINK. "not," BOINK "a," BOINK "freaking," BOINK "Time," BOINK "Lord!" He stopped slamming his head against the wall. "Why does everyone think that? It was a stupid joke between Hobbes and me!"
He turned to the Gelth and crossed his arms tightly across his chest. "I am extremely tempted to just not let you through the rift, out of spite."
"Our bodies wasted away. We're trapped in this gaseous state," the gaseous beings continued, unfazed.
"And that's why you want the bodies," completed Hobbes, nodding. "You want to see the sunlight again."
"Yes. Pity the Gelth. Your dead bodies are going to waste. Lend them to us. Pity the Gelth."
"Shut up," Calvin snapped.
"It's not right," agreed Rose. "Shouldn't we just let the dead stay…well, dead?"
"They just want to see the light again," disagreed Hobbes.
"Pity the Gelth."
"You're not helping."
The Gelth swirled about the room, and fed themselves back into the gas lamps. Gwyneth collapsed onto the floor.
"It's all true," muttered Dickens.
Later, Gwyneth was laid out on the couch in the living room. Rose carried a glass of water over to her. Calvin and Hobbes were in deep discussion in the corner, while Charles seemed to be in slight shock. Gwyneth's eyelids fluttered. "Miss?"
"Shush," Rose said. "Drink this." She held the glass of water to the younger girl's lips, and she drank greedily.
"My angels," she said weakly. "Did you see them? They came for me."
"Quiet!" Rose hissed. "You really shouldn't be caught up in this type of thing."
"Yes, she should," Hobbes insisted from across the room.
"No, she shouldn't," insisted Calvin. And they were back to arguing again. Gwyneth eyed them curiously.
"Does this always happen with them?" she wondered. Rose nodded.
"From what I can tell, yes."
"Hm."
There was silence, broken by the soft arguing in the corner, occasionally punctuated by an exclamation or yell.
"You can see the future?" Rose ventured.
"Yes, miss. I've always had the Sight. Ever since I was a child."
"Can you see my future, then?" she whispered, throwing furtive glances towards the two arguing time travellers in the corner.
"...potatoes!" yelled Calvin. Rose, personally had no idea what he was talking about and had no wish to actually know in the first place.
"I could," she admitted. "If you'd like, Miss."
"I would." Rose felt extremely guilty for some reason, as if it was something she really shouldn't do, but was going to do anyway for the thrill of rebellion.
The younger girl closed her eyes, and began humming a strange tune that sounded sort of like a hymn, but a bit more ethereal.
"I see..." she hummed. "You're from London. I've seen London in drawings, but never like that. All those people rushing about half naked, for shame. And the noise, and the metal boxes racing past, and the birds in the sky, no, they're metal as well. Metal birds with people in them. People are flying. And you, you've flown so far. Further than anyone. The things you've seen. The darkness, the big bad wolf!" She gasped, and sat upright. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, miss. So sorry."
"It's...all right," muttered Rose, not quite sure what she was apologising for.
"Ugh!" yelled Calvin from the corner. "Fine, have it your way, you big furry fleaball! But I reserve the right to say I told you so!"
"Fine!" Hobbes yelled right back.
"Fine!"
"AAAUGH!" he screamed, and stormed over to Rose and Gwyneth in frustration. "We're doing it," he growled, and jerked his hand over his shoulder to where Hobbes was standing, paws crossed over his shoulders. "I know, I know," he said, cutting off Rose, who was about to speak. "I don't like it any more than you do. But we are outvoted. Hobbes, Gwyneth, and the Gelth are all in favor, and only us are against them."
"Zombies count in votes, now, do they?" she questioned, raising an eyebrow. Calvin chuckled dryly, and called Mr Sneed over.
"Where's the largest concentration of ghosts?" he asked him. "I mean, where have they been seen the most."
"That... would be the morgue," the undertaker told him.
"Seriously?" Rose yelled, throwing her hands up in the air. "Couldn't it be in the, I don't know, gazebo or something?"
"That would ruin the dramatic tension of the episode," Calvin informed her.
"Wait, whaddya mean, episode?"
"Nevermind."
The morgue was, well, morgue-like. Very gloomy, a lot like the cellar. A Gelth emerged from a gas pipe, and swirled its way to stand underneath an arch.
"Pity the Gelth," it said. Calvin slammed a fist into the wall.
"I AM SO SICK OF THEM SAYING THAT!" he yelled.
"There is so little time."
Rose raised a hand. "Uh, Calvin? Can I just point out that I know for a fact the Gelth don't succeed. Otherwise, there'd be corpses walking around in my time. And there weren't."
"Time can be rewritten," Hobbes informed her. "It's always moving; changing."
"Stand beneath the arch," the things-previously-known-as-zombie-things instructed. Gwyneth obeyed.
"This is a bad idea," Rose warned.
"Of course it isn't," Hobbes shot back.
"Of course it is," Calvin agreed with Rose.
"Establish the Bridge," the Gelth hummed. "Reach through the Void. Let us through."
"They're coming," sighed Gwyneth. "They're coming."
"It is begun. The Bridge is made."
And that was when everything began to go pear-shaped.
Gwyneth opened her mouth, and blue gas came out of it. The Gelth hovering behind her faded from blue into an angry flame red and grew large teeth. It no longer looked so sweet or innocent.
"We are coming. The Gelth will come through in force."
"I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN, YOU STUPID FLEABAG!" Calvin screamed. "Sure, they claim they only need a few bodies, but when they actually come out, they need-"
"A few billion."
The dead bodies around them rose to their feet, and began to move towards them. Rose, Calvin, Hobbes, and Sneed backed up against the wall.
Charles Dickens took the opportunity to dash out of the room.
"Get back here, girl!" Sneed demanded. "Stop dabbling in witchcraft!" He attempted to move closer to Gwyneth, but a Gelph (I do believe that is the singular term) moved forwards and snapped his neck with the movements of an entity that had done it many times before. Sneed's dead body glowed red and sat up.
"I have joined the legions of the Gelth," he hissed. "There are three more bodies for us to take. Take them. Take them."
"I take the opportunity to tell you, 'I told you so'," Calvin growled, hustling Rose and Hobbes towards the door, which was conveniently locked. He pulled out the Transmogrifier Gun, and aimed it. It crackled, but nothing happened. "They deadlocked it!"
"Give yourselves to glory. Sacrifice yourselves for the Gelth."
Hobbes growled, the primal noise rumbling deep in his throat. "I trusted you. And you..."
"You'll never take this world while we're alive," Calvin seethed.
"Then live no more."
"Seriously?" Rose wondered. "Isn't that, like, more than slightly cliched?" The Gelth drew closer, and she gulped. "I'm not alive yet, so it isn't it impossible for me to die?"
Calvin said nothing, and Hobbes reviewed her with sad eyes.
"Tell me it's impossible for me to die. Please."
"I'm sorry," Hobbes said.
Outside, Dickens was being chased by a glowing red Gelph down the street. Suddenly, without warning, it began to choke. As much as a gaseously-based creature can choke, that is.
"Atmosphere not sufficient," it gasped, and dived into the nearest street lamp. Dickens's eyes widened.
"The gas!"
"But it's the 1800s. How can I die now?" Rose asked.
"Is this really the time for this discussion? We're about to be murdered by red zombies," Calvin yelled. "And I think I have more of a right to be annoyed than you do. I've seen so much more than you have. I made the Tower of Pisa lean, I accidently married Vlad the Impaler, and here I am. About to die in a dungeon."
He paused, and then added, somewhat sourly.
"...in Cardiff."
Rose took a breath. "Let's go down fighting, then." She felt for Calvin's small hand, and Hobbes's furry paw, and squeezed them. "Together."
"Together," they echoed, and closed their eyes, waiting for their inevitable demise.
As it turned out, their demise wasn't that inevitable after all, because, at that moment, a certain famous author came running in.
"Turn up the GAS!" he yelled. "Turn off the flame, turn up the gas!"
He turned to the gas controls, and began flicking all the switches up to high. Calvin's eyes widened.
"Brilliant! Gas!"
"Oh, so we're going to choke to death instead. Wonderful," Hobbes put in sarcastically.
"No!" Calvin disagreed. "The Gelth are gaseous creatures. If they're sucked into the gas, and we light it with fire..."
"Boom!" realised Rose.
They all set to work, ripping gas pipes off the walls and filling the room with gas. Rose coughed, and realised that it was getting hard to breathe.
"Calvin..." she choked. He noticed, and motioned to Charles.
"Get her out," he ordered. "Now."
"No!" she protested. "I'm not leaving Gwyneth."
"You have to. You're choking to death," Hobbes informed her.
"No...!"
She sank to the floor, coughing heavily. Charles grabbed her by the upper arms, and dragged her out. Hobbes turned to Calvin. "What now?"
By way of response, he Transmogrified two gas masks for them. Hobbes accepted his.
"Now," he said, voice muffled by the mask. "Now, we get the other slimy girl out of here."
They moved towards Gwyneth, who was still standing in the middle of the arch.
"They aren't angels," Hobbes yelled to her. "You need to get out of here."
She gave them a sad smile. "I can't."
Calvin felt for a pulse, and suddenly realised. "You're dead. You were dead the moment you stood in the arch."
"Yes. I cannot help you anymore, except for one last thing." Gwyneth removed a box of matches from her apron pocket, and held them up.
"I'm sorry," Hobbes said. "Thank you."
The two of them, the boy and the tiger, dashed out of the room together, just as Gwyneth removed a match from her pocket and lit it.
The room went up in a massive ball of fire.
They made it outside just as the shop exploded. Calvin and Hobbes went flying across the street, and Calvin collided directly with Rose. She caught him around the waist, and noticed.
"She's not with you."
"She's dead," he said, removing the mask. "I'm sorry. She was from the moment she stood in the arch."
"She saved the world," Rose realised. "A servant girl. And no one will ever know."
Half an hour later, the four of them, a girl, a boy, a man, and a tiger, they were all standing in front of the Time Machine.
"Well, goodbye, Charlie Boy," Hobbes grinned, waving. "It was lovely to meet you, but we must be going. Things to see, you know."
"Yes, me too," he agreed, nodding. "I am taking a coach back to London, and then I may finish off the Mystery of Edwin Drood. It lacks a proper ending, you know."
"Hm," Calvin had a pensive look on his face. "You could put something about glowing blue spirits in it, you know."
"Yes!" the writer exclaimed. "I can retitle it 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the Glowing Blue Apparitions!'"
"Catchy title," Rose remarked, covering up a smirk.
"Yes, I think so too," he agreed.
"Bye, then." Calvin waved, and entered the box, his spiky hair disappearing from view.
"Bye," Hobbes said as well, and shook Charles's hand vigorously. He entered the box as well. Rose turned to him, grinning.
"I guess this is goodbye," she said, and kissed his cheek before shaking his hand. He shook his head in slight disbelief.
"What odd customs you have."
Rose laughed, and turned to go, but was stopped by his voice again.
"One last thing, Miss Rose. You have such knowledge of future times, so please tell me this. My books. Do they last?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Oh, they do last. They last forever."
And she entered the box too.
Rose dismounted the trampoline and joined Calvin and Hobbes by the console. "He was so nice," she said.
"Yeah, I guess so," agreed Calvin. "But don't you think it may change the timeline if he writes about blue ghosts?"
Hobbes gave him a sad look. "Charles Dickens dies next year. He won't have a chance to publish 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood'."
Rose covered her mouth. "Oh no. That's horrible. He was so nice."
Calvin shrugged. "It's just life. Or death, I guess. And do you really want to try to change it, after what we've just seen?"
"I guess not," Rose admitted reluctantly. "But can't we give him one last surprise?"
"What did you have in mind?"
Rose told him. He grinned.
Outside, Charles Dickens waited for the two children and the tiger to come out from their odd cardboard box, and go home. After five minutes, he became slightly concerned. What exactly were they doing in there?
Just as he moved to look, the box rose up into the air, and began to hover. It swooped around his head a couple of times, and spiralled up into the air, before disappearing into a rip in the air. He laughed in amazement and delight, and began to walk away.
Somewhere, a choir was singing 'Hark, the Angels Sing'. It was Christmas Eve, and the snow was just beginning to fall.
"Merry Christmas, sir!" called a boy who was selling newspapers on the side of the road.
"Merry Christmas to you too!" he called back. "God bless us, everyone!"
(A/N: I decided the remove the interlude, after much deliberation. Might post them somewhere else...anyway. Aliens of London will be up next week, and it'll be very different. I hope. See you then.
REVIEWS ARE LOVE. SHARE THE LOVE.
~Kitty)