Chapter five! This one is a bit longer than the rest, hopefully worth the wait...
Never had The Doctor's hand lost circulation so quickly. Of course, his hand lost circulation quite a bit, especially if he was reading or lying down with his hand at some weird angle, but nothing had happened as quickly as this.
In the few seconds it took both Clara and The Doctor's brains to recognize the familiar sound of footsteps, a big chill to go down both their backs and for them to both latch onto the closest thing that their hands could finds. Which was, in short, each other.
To be more specific, each other's hands. They grabbed for each other, quickly looking like they had never been apart in all of their lives. Locking like magnets. Very frightened magnets, but magnets all the same. Which would have been romantic, however it did seem like a Elf on the Shelf doll was going to come out and devour both the Time Lord and his Impossible Girl alike.
Clara was squeezing The Doctor's hand so tightly it felt like it was going to burst. But he couldn't speak. He wouldn't dare alert the creature to their presence more than they already had. Which was quite a lot.
The footsteps grew closer, and closer and time seemed to slow as the grabbed tightly to each other, waiting for the creature to appear. The footsteps stopped and then the creature appeared.
It was a cat.
A rather small cat. A kitten. With bright green eyes and grey fur. It licked its paw and stared up at them, completely still. And then it darted away, back into the shadows of the hallway.
The Doctor jumped to his feet, pulling Clara, whose hand was still leached to his own, behind him. He chased the cat down the corridor, dodging pieces of furniture and books stacked on the floor. (He jumped over an entire chair, forcing Clara to do the same.) Within seconds, they arrived at the room at the end of the hallway. Just the same as Clara's apartment, the bedroom was rather wide with a large window at one side. The cat was nowhere to be seen.
They stepped into the room, which was surprisingly cold. Like the window was open, but it wasn't. There was dust covering nearly everything. Something had happened there. Something very very important. But no one had come to investigate. Neither wanted to make a sound, scared that they might wake something. Or someone, for that matter.
Clara pointed to the bed, where there was a rather human-sized lump in the Christmassy fabric, and the duo tiptoed towards it. There was a moment of complete silence as they both grabbed a bit of the fabric and yanked it down suddenly.
It took Clara all her might to not scream at the top of her lungs.
Before them laid an older woman. And if it was just an older woman, it would have been perfectly fine however, that was not the case. First off, she was not breathing, her chest was still like the rest of her apartment. The skin on her neck was alright except there was a slit in her throat the length of The Doctor's index finger. But there was no blood. No, there must have been blood but whoever did this (or even whatever creature did this) cleaned their mess up.
However, that was not what made The Doctor's breath catch in his throat.
It was the woman's face.
Her face had been horribly deformed. But not by some toxic chemical or freak accident. By hand. With some sort of knife and some needles and thread. Her face had been cut and sewn back together lazily, but neatly. The woman's cheeks were sewn so the skin bunched at the cheekbone area making them look puffer. Her mouth was stitched into a smile so wide that her lips was ripping slightly. But the most frightening thing about her whole face were her eyes.
Her eyes were stitched open, wider than they were supposed to go, the red of the insides were clearly visible. In fact, if the eyes had been stretched even just a little bit further, the skin would have ripped. The woman's eyes were dry from lack in blinking, and some of the dust that covered the rest of the room had fallen into them. It was clear to both The Doctor and his impossible companion that whoever had stitched this poor old woman's face had used a particular doll as reference.
To be specific: an Elf on the Shelf doll.
The kitten rubbed against Clara's legs, and she couldn't help but jump. This poor woman had had her face turned into one of a doll, and a rather childish one at that. She let the pressure that she had made The Doctor's hand endure go, leaving it at a comfortable squeeze. Which would have been nice if there hadn't been a dead body lying on the bed in front of them with a face stitched to look like an Elf on the Shelf doll.
The Doctor broke the heavy silence. "Well... That was pretty intense."
"You think?"
He laughed breathily, looking around the room. He took in everything, like a detective taking in a murder scene. And then he jumped, over the bed and sniffed at certain objects in the bedroom. Finding what seemed to be fairly interesting things, he continued jumping over tables and ducking under curtains until he came to what seemed to be the most important object in the whole room. The woman's glasses. He picked them up, and carefully licked the lenses. (Which was pretty gross, in Clara's opinion, who knows where those glasses had been?)
"Find anything interesting?" She asked, glad to be looking away from the woman.
"I suppose so, though it may not mean anything. So don't get your hopes up, Clara Oswald." He winked at his tiny companion.
"Spill." She hoped, in the back of her mind, that the woman wouldn't sit up and grab her.
"Well, first off, there is dust. But not a faint layer, this dust is here on thickly. Which does not make sense because our lovely lady friend seems to be well preserved. And the dust is on thickly, meaning that she has been here for awhile but she has not started to decay very noticeably."
"So, that means that she hasn't been here for long?"
"Yes, and whoever caused her to be in the situation that she is in now, did a terrible job of putting fake dust everywhere."
"It's fake dust?"
"Yes, it is unevenly sprinkled around this room. There more on the floor than on higher up places in this room." He nodded to her, turning his back to her.
"So the killer must be quite short... Right?"
But The Doctor did not respond, he was too busy staring at the elephant in the room that hadn't been there only a couple seconds before. A red suited Elf on the Shelf was staring down at him from its perch on the shelf. It was smiling a sort of smile that was more sinister than cheerful. Warily, The Doctor reached one hand up and grabbed the smiling toy as gently as possible.
It did nothing.
Both Clara and The Doctor let out the breath that they had not been aware that they were holding. The Doctor turned and smiled at his companion.
"See?" He told her. "Nothing to worry about." She raised an eyebrow, unsure.
"Aren't you going to do any tests or," she waved her arms about, "thingies with your sonic screwdriver? You usually do thingies with your sonic screwdriver."
"Are we calling them thingies now?" He looked a bit shocked.
"Do you have a scientific name for them, Time Lord?"
"No."
"We're calling them thingies then." The little brunette looked happy with her win.
The time traveler grumbles and turned on his heel, exiting the dead woman's bedroom and heading for the apartment's front door. He opened it with ease causing Clara, who had been looking at the old woman's decorations, to run into the stringy man.
"Clara. I need you to figure out where we are. We could be anywhere from England all the way to Galifrey. Check, won't you?" He took her head in his hands and kissed her forehead, making her blush slightly. "Once you've got it, let me know."
He turned again, and started heading back to the TARDIS.
"Will do." She saluted him.
He turned back to her, waving his hands about. "Don't do that."
"Alright, alright! Sorry." She turned and stepped out into the hallway.
"Shout if you need anything!" He called, disappearing into the gloom that was the dead woman's apartment.
"I will, I will…" She mumbled, looking at her surroundings. The hallway looked fairly normal, but it took her exactly one second to realize where she was. In fact, she was surprised that she hadn't realized it earlier. She was in her own apartment building.
Right in front of her own apartment.
That's all for now. The next chapter will be up as soon as I can get it up. Ahha. Hhh... Sorry for the long wait. But, please don't refrain from favouriting, following and reviewing this story!
~Matteo :33
