"Sorry, did you say blonde girl wearing a red coat?" Clara casually asked. Spencer nodded. "Like her?" Clara pointed, as a girl, the ends of her blond hair poking out from her raised hood, ducked through the exit of the tent, and back into the graveyard. Without a word, the four girls ran dashed after her, Clara and the Doctor close on their heels.
"Ali? Ali!" Emily yelled as the figure disappeared around a corner. There was a hint of desperation in her voice. Clara wondered just how long they'd been chasing their once believed to be dead friend, just how much finding Ali meant to each of them. And why did Ali, if it was Ali, keep finding them, just to keep running? Was she trying to lead them somewhere? Clara didn't understand why the girl didn't just meet her friends in secret, tell them she was alive and enlighten the stressed group of girls. Perhaps Ali wasn't the friend they assumed she was. Immediately, guilt swamped Clara. There must be some good reason. She had no right to judge what she didn't know.
They skid to a stop, seconds after the girl in the red coat turned the corner. Eyes squinting into the area she went, there was no sign of her. She'd melted into nothing. The six of them inched forward.
"Ali?" Emily called again. Silence answered. It was a mausoleum of some sort, a great marble structure, statues with blank unblinking eyes lining the walls. Clara checked behind several of them, just in case.
"Girls don't just disappear into thin air," the Doctor muttered, just as Spencer exclaimed "Look!"
She pointed at a patch on the ground. "No leaves," she said, "which means this moves."
"I knew that," the Doctor remarked, "or, I could have known that. Would have, if I looked." He reached into the inside pocket of his great coat, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. He pointed it at the door, scanning it.
"What is that?" Aria stared, as the sound echoed across the mausoleum.
"Sonic screwdriver. Now, no one get in the way. That statue's heavy, but I'm trying to move it," grunted the Doctor.
"Sonic wouldn't work on stone," Spencer dismissed, just as the statue began to grind against the ground. The four girls gaped. Clara suppressed a smile.
"You'd be surprised at what a sonic screwdriver can do," she murmured into the ear of an astonished Spencer. She looked into the place revealed by the door; a set of stairs lead down into the dark. The Doctor adjusted his top hat and took the first steps. Halfway down, the door slid shut.
"Hey!" Emily bolted back up, "open up! Who's there?" She banged against the stone, but it remained resolute.
"Why does this always happen?" Aria groaned. The Doctor soniced the steps.
"Trigger mechanism on that step," he pointed, "releases the door and closes it when someone steps on it. No way to open it from this side."
"Onwards and downwards then," Clara pushed past the Doctor, setting foot inside what seemed to be a tunnel.
"There'll be another way out. Tunnels; no one ever builds them to lead nowhere. Besides, there's a breeze. Feel it?" the Doctor noted, squinting against the wind. The lights mounted on the walls hummed, flickered.
"Ali!" Emily called into the space. The sound echoed back to her. The Doctor used his sonic screwdriver again, the green light eerie in the dark. A rat darted past their feet and Hanna screamed. Clara's heart slammed in her chest. She wondered that it hadn't broken out of her ribcage yet.
The Doctor started left. The wind picked up and they had to lift their arms to shield their eyes from dust and dirt and shards of debris as it pelted them. They pushed on, feet shuffling against the floor, bodies leaning into the wind. Clara felt Spencer in front of her, Emily behind.
Another gust and the lights went out. A power shortage was exactly what they needed in that moment. They still pushed onwards. Clara hoped that the Doctor was right, that this was the way they were supposed to be headed. Who was she to doubt? He wasn't often wrong.
They stopped when another gust almost blew them off their feet. Hats went flying into the dark. The Doctor cursed when his top hat when flying past Clara's head. Then, just as quickly as it had started, the wind died, the leaves swirling into a pile at their feet. Clara let out a sigh of relief, just like the girls on either side of her.
"Hanna? Oh my god. Hanna!" Aria yelled and Clara's heart leapt into her throat.
"Where did she go?" Emily panicked, eyes frantically darting around.
"I thought she was right behind you, Aria," Spencer accused.
"She was!"
"Oh no. Oh no no no," the Doctor groaned from behind them all. He stared at the statue that they'd passed in the dark. One of its hands was outstretched, inches from Aria's shoulder. "Get away from that statue, Aria, now!"
They scrambled away from it.
Clara touched the Doctor's shoulder. "What is it?" she whispered.
"Nobody blink. Keep staring at that statue, and don't look away. Don't even blink. Long as you can. Whatever you do, don't blink!"