The clearing was devoid of life when we found it, save for the occasional whistle of a bird. It was low, sad, mournful. It was impossible to say how I knew, I simply did. The unexplainable was possible now, or at least it felt that way.
"She was standing there. The bridge was empty, just as it is now, and then she appeared. Simon was so happy, but she didn't show anything."
The man (the painfully average name of John Smith didn't fit) made his way toward the bridge slowly, crouching down to examine the decking as though it held great secrets.
"I don't think shes there right now," I said sarcastically, but he didn't reply, and I thought he was oblivious to my presence again.
"Oh she is, in some way." His reply was followed by a strange sound, a high pitched buzzing-like sound. I was vaguely reminded of the sound in the woods, following Simon's disappearance.
"Anything?"
"Oh yes," he guffawed, "plenty. A human aaaaaand...hmm. Something unrecognisable. Thats new."
He remained crouching for a few more seconds, and then straightened up again in one swift movement. "It was certainly a trace of something. Something distant, mind you but...something-"
"Not human?"
"Sorry?" he quizzed, with an innocent expression.
"You said," I replied in my distant voice, "'human...and something unrecognisable.' Does that mean, not human? Alien?"
"Afraid so," he said gently, and approached me carefully.
"Awesome. No man with the name 'John Smith' would be so flippant, either. Would he?"
He shook his head, and smiled again, unexpectedly. "You lived in London, where it all happened."
"I remember...very little...I tend to block it out. But...I remember...panic. Plastic figures, ships hovering over our street...The giant beam with shot it as it retreated."
His face was extraordinarily serious when I mentioned the last part. "Yes."
"Why did they kill them?"
My question, my tone, surprised him. "For the protection of the human race, I suppose."
I wanted to quiz more, but I could see it was still a delicate subject. We simply stood in the cold, the snow beginning to pick up speed. He turned his face to the sky, thoughtful.
"I should get home."
"Yeah," he chuckled humourlessly.
We turned to walk back in the direction from which we came, and found our way from the forest clearing.
"So...what do we do now? About this?"
He shrugged, but he was clearly raking this over. "Find some more about about them, I guess. What did she look like?"
I thought back to the terrifying woman, who still sent shivers down my spine. "White hair, White face, black clothing."
"Like the old fashioned ghost."
"A White Lady type thing, yeah, or Banshee. Both very similar."
He continuously slowing step slowed even more, and suddenly he turned and retreated. "Carry on, just checking something," he shouted behind, and I shook my head in derision and continued, just as he said. Still didn't know his name.
I was back home, not living very far from the woods, thankfully, and for the second time that hour I was removing my coat and shoes. I chose to wait in the living room, not bothering to switch the tv on. Instead, I grabbed my laptop and began researching. Anything to make the time go faster. But soon, the minute became the 10 minutes, and that became 30 minutes, and I was unsure whether to be worried. Did he say he was going to return? He knew where I was, but did he say that? Just that he was checking something. He was a very sketchy character, indeed. But I liked him for it. Was that strange? Because he was simply contagious, fascinating and contagious.
I also knew he had some involvement in the London happenings, and knew stuff was going on here despite not really knowing where he was. How he did it was a mystery.
I returned to my reading, researching banshees and what not, when I heard a noise. It took time to pin point it, but as soon as I did, I made for the door to the back garden, the fences aglow with royal blue light against the stark black night. The sound was deafening, and the light was glowing brighter, but I recognised the noise it was making. It was a similar one to the sound I heard in the forest.
As it began to retreat, I risked a glance, and my eyes fell on a tall blue box, the words 'POLICE BOX' in black lettering above the door. I approached it cautiously, grabbed one of its silver handles, and the door opened with a high creaking.
"Must get that fixed," the man's voice complained from somewhere, and appeared from behind the huge column in the middle of the much, much larger room, wires hanging loosely and metal panelling everywhere I glanced. At the base of the column, a large control panel surrounded it, much too alien and complicated.
"Wha-what...how...huh?"
"Not the usual first words," he mused in surprise, sticking out his bottom lip in disappointment. "Different though."
"But its...its..."
"Bigger on the inside," we observed in unison. In fact, he really mimed it sarcastically. I threw him a look. "Apologies if this is new to me."
"Actually you're taking it very well," he remarked, interest in his eyes and hands in his blue pinstripe jacket. He accentuated every syllable with importance. "Almost as if this isn't as new as you think."
"Living in the capital of all things E.T and directly entering a supposedly physically impossible blue box which makes no sense doesn't happen every day. What is this place?"
"Time and Relative Dimension in Space; the TARDIS. Call it my get away car," he said with pride, and glided his hand over the control board with the care of a devoted owner. "Been through some scrapes, ain't we?" he cooed. "These days she lands where she likes, that's my explanation for acting like an escaped elderly this afternoon."
His words should have made me laugh, which I did, but I barely found them funny. They rang in my head like a bell that made no sensible noise but made sense when I saw the man before me. They would have made perfect sense whether they were said now or 2 hours ago. But really, I only really had one question on my mind.
"Who and what are you, may I ask?" My voice was slightly breathless. I had only time to see his face, pushing offence and seriousness away with a caring smile. "Im the Doctor, Time Lord. No, im not from he-"
The walls raced side ways, and that was my last image. My last sensation was arms saving my back and head from crashing into the grated floor.
…
The girl was light in his hands, but he struggled to lift the limp body from the floor. Instead, he slid his other hand beneath her head, and reached the other out as far as he could for the coat folded over the rail by the door. "Frail humans," he remarked in a whisper, weary that she would start up again and slap him. So sensitive.
Once he'd folded it neatly beneath her head, he returned to the controls and waited. He waited for a good few minutes, raking over the information he'd so far gathered from the energy he'd detected at the bridge. That was the thing with almost pure-energy life forms; they could be messy. Helpful to him, but messy. He checked on the unconscious woman again with a glance, which introduced a new train of thought for him.
No, I cant.
He shook his head against the idea, resolving it would only end the way it usually did. They always called it 'him leaving them'. In reality they had lives to lead, before the stars and planets and exotic life forms seduced their interests. They would leave him in the end. Its not long before all that becomes as mundane as their days on earth, especially for him. He envied the humans; they were limited in time. Once they did something once, they never knew for sure whether they would do it again. They would die with fulfilled pasts, to their own limitations. For him, he was destined to remain unfulfilled, to continue.
He glanced at the girl again, her pale face, beautiful, and childlike when her eyes weren't open. They held a lot of oldness and wisdom for a woman her age. But he couldn't put her in danger, so carelessly like with the others.
A groan interrupted his miserable thoughts, and the mop of red hair shifted on the floor.
"Wow. Never fainted before," she groaned, and struggled against her heavy body to sit and lean uncomfortably on the rail. She took one weary look at her surroundings to check, and the Doctor turned his eyes away with a smile on his lips in response to the look in her large hazel ones.
"You weren't out for long."
"Hmm? Oh, good."
He turned to look at her again, and she was examining him with keen eyes. "If you were from here I'd say you had bipolar."
The statement caught him off guard; did he really look as miserable as he felt a few seconds ago? The surprise forced a laugh from him, perhaps supporting her hypothesis. When he finished, he returned her look with the care of a real doctor.
"Yes, I'm fine now."
As she stood, he reached into his jacket pocket and slide on his glasses, and gave her a side ways glance when he felt her eyes on the new additions.
"Now," he began, and she predicted a babbling rant, "The residual energy I found is from a life form completely composed of energy, so strong that they can solidify,you might call them poltergeists. BUT, theyre not dead, so that analogy isn't well fitting, SOOO, you're theory of the Banshee may be more appropriate..."
From then he began a very confusing rant about energy properties, which trailed on to something else or other I couldn't follow because he was talking way to fast, and I had to wonder why the hell he wore the glasses. Of course he couldn't see my confusion, he was lost wondering in his own little world of erratic genius.
"...wow...ok...slow down...just...say what applied to the...life form...in question."
He looked shocked and frozen mid speech and I almost apologised for my rude interruption. "Oh, sorry, was I doing it?"
"If 'doing it' is babbling about jibberjabber without taking a breath, yes," I said, but I found him too adorable when confused. I'd be confused if I had all that flying around my head.
He paced around further, and suddenly his head popped up. "Banshees, what do you know?"
"Erm, form of faeries, ghost like, death fortellers," I rushed, as though we were playing a game of 20 questions.
"Anything else? Anything, any other folklore associated with children, anything."
"Why does that matter?"
"If something with shape shifting capabilities visits a planet it may become the closest thing to itself out of laziness, now think think think!"
"Erm ok...there is something that mourns the loss of its own child, a woman who died in childbirth? That might be it, but I can't remember the name. There is one that mourns the death of other children or her own that died in other circumstances...-wait that might be the same one. I dont know, faerie folklore tells of faeries that clean, its so random."
"Ok so we have something. That energy I found contained emotional properties that I can read."
"How?"
After a pause, perhaps to judge whether I'd learned too much new stuff in one day, he began to reach into his pocket again, and pulled out a long, pen shaped thing.
"Its a piece of metal."
"Oi!" he exclaimed with offence. "Its a very helpful piece of me- uh...equipment...Thank you very much!"
I pushed back a smile and tried to examine it with more composure. "So, what does the mighty magic pen do?"
"This device can help me get a reading on the energy. And it's sensitive! Sonic screwdriver to you!"
"Ok OK! So, I would ask how but I dont want to know, honest!" He closed his lips back together before I let him start. "What is the reading?"
"Well," he began, and pulled the object closer to adjust it and stare keenly at the blue light atop it, "its negative; the creature was displaying negative emotions." His voice became dark and wondering.
"Those could be anything, from anger to sadness to mourning to irritation to-"
"I didn't say it would be very specific," he said, still staring at the device. I waited for him to remember my presence again.
Suddenly he snapped off his glasses and put both objects in his inside pocket. "Come on!"
He rushed past me and grabbed my hand, and again we were running out of the back garden, round the side of the house, and down the street. I found his energy remarkable, like an unpredictable puppy. "Did you find anything in that thing?" I called.
"I dont know!" he called back, and I held back a slightly impatient giggle. "Is all of your work guess work?"
He slowed down a bit, and stopped for a moment, his hand still tight around mine. He sniffed in thought, and seemed to be raking something over again. "Yeah, pretty much. But its saved a few worlds." He grinned confidently and arrogantly, flashing his teeth and winking. Usually I would have rolled my eyes and called him a name; I simply knew, however, that his confidence was not really misplaced.
Then we were running again.