Chapter Five:

"The Plot, As They Say, Thickens"

For a moment that seemed to stretch out as far and wide and infinite as time itself, Sally couldn't even bear to breathe. She didn't move, and she didn't speak, and she most certainly didn't blink. She couldn't. She heard herself dimly counting off the seconds in her head - One-chimpanzee, two-chimpanzee, three-chimpanzee, four - even though the Angels were nowhere in sight. She realized distantly that this had become a rather bad habit for her, but it didn't bother her. On the contrary, it provided some small comfort. She realized she had been able to count ever higher as the days wore on.

She blinked at eight-chimpanzee, when her eyes began to water, and, as if by magic, the boy on the hill drew a great gasping breath, coming to life all at once, his eyes and features seeming to almost sparkle with the hidden electricity of human animation and color flooded his formerly pale face. At first he seemed to be able to concentrate only on his breathing, and then he looked down at himself; at the ropes around his waist, and then he turned his head from side to side to regard the ones around his wrists. Seemingly bewildered, he appeared to begin to panic. He looked up, his eyes focusing on Tim Latimer, furrowing his dark brows.

"How did I get up here?" he asked in the clipped, educated English accent she had heard inside her head. "See, now - is this some sort of a joke? I don't find it very funny, I'll have you know. Was this your doing, Latimer? The Headmaster will hear of this, I can promise you that."

Sally stared at him for a moment, then turned and looked crossly at Tim. "He is just a boy," she said, and hurried to her feet, brushing dirt and stray blades of grass from her skirt. "I told you. I knew it."

She knew that she still couldn't explain some things. She couldn't explain the voice she heard at night - the voice which sometimes sounded so much like his, but sometimes sounded like some great serpent king - but perhaps that was something else entirely. Some odd mark left on her by the time vortex; some connection from another time and place, like crossed telephone wires or interference on a walkie-talkie.

She also couldn't explain his frozen expression when she first got here. Perhaps Tim was right in some respects - perhaps this boy had been under a spell - but surely it could not have been a spell cast by the Doctor. The Doctor only doled out punishment to the great big baddies of the world, and if this boy were really the evil creature that Tim had made him out to be, then certainly he wouldn't be threatening to tattle to the Headmaster. Surely he could find grander means for revenge.

"Tim, come help me get him off this thing." She stooped to observe the ropes around his ankles, although Tim made no move to help. The ropes were knotted, but carelessly, as if the person who strung him up wasn't much concerned with keeping him steady; as if they had other ways of doing that. She thought of how frozen he had been when she took off the scarecrow mask; how perfectly still he was. But then she pushed the thought strongly away. Best not to think of it. Best…

Best not to, came Joan Redfern's voice inside her head, and her hands stilled for just a moment on the knots. Then she untied them quickly and efficiently, and stood up, putting her hands on the ropes around his waist.

"Sally," Tim interjected, climbing to a stand and taking a few steps closer. "I don't think you'd better do that…"

"Well, hello," came the voice of the boy then, just beside her ear, and when she pulled back he was looking at her. He had that smile on his face, that lopsided smirk that he had been wearing when she first took the mask off - she found it both exceedingly charming and exceedingly frightening at once. "A girl on school grounds? Now where-ever did you come from? You aren't Latimer's, I hope. That would be such a waste. Not to mention quite a shock - We all thought he fancied boys."

"And so what if he did?" Sally heard herself retort, in a free-and-easy sort of way that managed to hide how mixed-up she felt inside; terror and excitement rushing in equal measure through her veins. "That's his business, not yours."

The boy appeared momentarily taken aback, and then he smiled, his jade green eyes widening in surprise - and, just under the surface, something very much like hunger. "How… bohemian," he marveled. "Latimer, where-ever did you meet her?"

"I'm a maid," Sally answered automatically, her hands going to the knots again and working at them quickly. The ropes came free all at once and slumped to the floor like the abandoned skins of shedding snakes. "I work at the school. Your school."

"Is that right?" the boy answered, his interest piqued. "How curious. I could never bring myself to focus on my studies with the thought of someone as young and lovely as you on her hands and knees scrubbing up the place." He squinted at her, long and hard. "Are you sure you're a maid? You don't look like one. Not in the slightest."

Wild horses couldn't have dragged away the blush which formed unbidden in Sally's cheeks, despite all her intentions. "You don't look like a scarecrow," she answered back. "And yet, here you are."

"Indeed, here I am," the boy returned. "The plot, as they say, thickens." That smirk again. It was beginning to drive her mad, but the worst of it all was that she didn't exactly mind. "Tell me - what is your name, girl?"

Sally looked up at him sharply; it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that he knew her name already. Of course he knew it, he had to know it; he had whispered it to her in her mind.

But of course, there was no guarantee it had been him. Maybe she really had gone a bit batty, trapped here in the country in 1913. Maybe she had imagined the whole bloody thing. And as for what Tim had said... well, maybe Tim was just taking the piss. It wouldn't be the first time a boy thought it was funny to play tricks on her.

"Sally Sparrow," she answered dutifully. "What's yours?"

"Baines," he replied, his eyes focused very intently on hers. "Jeremy Baines."

Tim listened carefully to the exchange between the two. He didn't like that they were talking - it didn't feel safe to him - but he couldn't think of any reason to stop them from doing it. He had been focusing purely on Baines, looking for any sign that things were not right. He was studying him not only with his eyes and his ears, but with his mind as well. Scanning his brain, trying to pick up anything at all that seemed out of place. But it was as if he had come up against a brick wall. A huge barricade blocking him out.

"I wouldn't let him free if I were you," he said warily, his eyes never leaving Baines' face. "There's no telling what he'll do."

"Oh come now, Latimer, you're being ridiculous," Baines replied, then appealed to Sally. "He's a petulant little shit, that one. You'd be wise to steer clear. He's always telling tales out of school, talking about how he can read minds. But really he's just a pathological liar." He regarded her for a moment, that smirk returning to his lips. "Will you untie the rest of me, Sally Sparrow? I have been here all night, after all. I don't even remember how it is I came to be bound here like this. I suspect Latimer must have put something in my water glass last night that it knocked me flat."

"And then I dragged you out here by myself?" Tim challenged the older boy. "I never would have been able to, and you know it." Something else that Baines had said had nagged at him, as well. He had said that Tim told him he could read minds. But Tim had never said that, not once - not in those words. He had simply said that sometimes he said things that turned out to be correct. He had actually gone to great lengths to hide his odd ability from the other boys. He didn't want them to know that he knew some of their deepest, darkest secrets and desires. They would only beat him harder if they knew.

"You had help, then," Baines shot back. "Hutchison thought it would be a good show to get revenge on me for not bringing back any beer last night. That was last night, wasn't it?" He furrowed his brows. "My head is all... fuzzy."

"That was six weeks ago." Tim said it evenly, managing to keep all anger and suspicion from his voice. "Six weeks at least."

"Six weeks…?" Baines went inside his head somewhat; appeared to do some quick mental calculation. When his eyes returned to Latimer, it was only for a brief moment, but Tim easily caught the distress present in his eyes. He couldn't say exactly why, but he was certain it had little to do with not being able to remember the six weeks that had passed, and that it had more to do with the fact that six weeks had passed at all.

"That's a great bloody long time, Latimer," he said, appearing completely unnerved now. "A great bloody long time indeed."

"Do you not remember any of it at all?" Sally asked, drawing her hands up to his left wrist and untying the knot there. He drew his hand in toward his chest when the rope fell, flexing his fingers and staring at it as though it were a thing he never saw before - or thought he might never see again. It wasn't lost on Sally that Jeremy Baines was a very strange person, but she didn't think he was what Tim had said he was, either. The Family of Blood, he had said. She shivered. No… he was far too human to be anything like that.

"Bits and pieces, I suppose," Baines replied, reaching over with his free hand to undo the tie around his opposite wrist himself. "I suppose it will all come back to me. I must have fallen and taken a sound knock to the head. They say a man can lose the memory of his entire life if he is struck in just the right place, you know." With both hands freed, he took one step forward and immediately staggered, nearly falling, his atrophied leg muscles protesting at his sudden weight. Sally caught him in her arms, and at kissing distance she was able to see the fright in his eyes.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Quite," Baines replied, that smirk lighting one side of his mouth again. "And I thank you most kindly for freeing me, Sally Sparrow. I only hope that one day you may allow me to return the favor."

Something about the way he said it made her mind go to the journal; to the nights she had spent scouring each and every word, looking for the magic key held within which might send her home. The Doctor had written her messages on the walls and had left them in hidden menu options on DVDs in Larry's rental shop; surely leaving her a secret code in an old journal of his would have been child's play for him. Surely there must be something in there which would set her free from what bound her to 1913.

Why she was thinking of this now she had no idea. It wasn't as if Jeremy Baines could know she was from the future and she was looking for a way to get back to it. He had only said what he said to be polite.

"We'll see," she enigmatically replied, her hands still holding him at the waist. "For now though, I think we'd better get you to the nurse. Have her examine that bump on your head."

Tim Latimer would have bet his very last farthing that there was no bump on Baines' head at all, but he said nothing. After all, telling Nurse Redfern that the scarecrow had been let loose from the hill would be the best for all involved. Nurse Redfern would know exactly what to do. She had been the Doctor's friend, after all - or, perhaps, even more than that - and so she would know. She must know. Tim was sure of it.

"I think that's an excellent idea, Sally," Tim replied, folding his arms over his chest indignantly. "We'll go and tell Nurse Redfern, and she'll sort all of this out."

There was a momentary flash of panic in Baines' eyes, but it was gone in an instant. "Fine," he agreed. "The nurse it is. Though I may need to lean on you," he warned Sally with a smile. "I'm not entirely certain my legs can be trusted at the moment."

Tim wasn't entirely certain any part of him could be trusted, but he sidled up on the other side of Baines and allowed the older boy to sling one arm over his narrow shoulders anyway, and with a little effort they helped him down the hill.

They left behind only the wooden post the scarecrow had once been strapped to, and the burlap mask laying forgotten in the grass. It smiled its sinister grin at the rapidly lightening sky, its pitch black eyes glaring out at the universe in the waking dawn.

The sight of it frightened even the last of the night stars out of existence.

…To Be Continued…