The commotion was already in full swing by the time Sally got into the room. Tommy Boys had woken up and was panicking. She had returned to the lounge for such a mundane reason. She had forgotten her keys. She heard the shouting from down the hall and the sight that greeted her was enough to shock her.
Tommy was shouting about Al-Mon and the Doctor and something about the bell in the church tower. He was contorted like an old rag doll, discarded quickly and carelessly, with Doctor Sneed leaning over him with a syringe.
"What's going on?" asked Sally. She was most surprised that the softly spoken question made Sneed jump.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, as if he were talking to an errant stray dog.
"I forgot my keys", she replied.
"Then don't you think that you should simply collect them and depart, young lady?"
She hesitated. Tommy was wheezing. "Miss Taylor, help me".
Sneed turned back to Tommy, as if he no longer even acknowledged Sally's presence. Then he ruined the illusion by talking. "Our Mr Boys is very troubled. A fast acting sedative should provide a valuable first step toward solving his problem". His voice was snake-like as was his deft movement, injecting Tommy in the neck. He then dragged his victim toward the door, not seeming to worry about banging his already bruised leg onto the hard wooden table.
Tommy knew he had only seconds to act before the drug took effect. As he passed Sally, he dropped a cold metal object into her hand. He murmured so softly that it was difficult for her to distinguish it from a groan. But the words she was sure she could hear were "press the button at the end", "bell tower" and "take me there". Sneed rounded the corner with his burden, leaving Sally standing there holding an object that reminded her of an unbreakable pen that her uncle had once brought her back from Japan. Except there was no nib, just a round blue light on one end and a button at the other. Temptation got the better of her and she pressed it. Without warning the glass from the ornamental lights shattered, as did the television screen. How did Tommy get such a strange device? Well, at any rate, Sally didn't have to put up with Countdown anymore.
Tommy was in a tiny room that smelled of something that made him think of fear. The earth floor was muddy, and there were some small wooden pieces of furniture, their legs sinking into the dirt. He moved over to the table, his clogs making an all too loud squelching sound in the mud. He inspected the metal cans with the remains of cheap cups of coffee and tea clinging to them, and half imagined, half remembered how dangerous it could be to drink from them. He walked over to the small cupboard on the wall, that long lasting sickly feeling of dread slowly coming back to him. He knew that there was something terrifying lurking behind that tiny door, but he had to see it. He had to remember.
He squelched and splashed right up to it and opened it. The object behind the door was so terrifying that it made him fall to the muddy floor, soaking his shirt and shorts, and getting dirt on the inside of his clogs.
It was a small shaving mirror. The most terrifying object in the world.
And so he ran. Out of the small room through a door so small it could hardly contain even his modest frame, supported by a low wooden beam that threatened to give way any second. All that he could think was to head for the green, head for the trees, and hope no one was watching him.
Sally stood in the lounge dumbfounded. There was a thought that was trying to get out. She looked at the orange carpet, strewn with all different shapes and sizes of glass shards, with selective sparks still flickering from the television set and holding the bizarre device in her hand.
Suddenly it hit her. As crazy as it seemed, it was true. Everything that Tommy had said about the dreams, Al-Mon and the Doctor. She didn't understand it, but she decided that it was the only thing that made sense. And if this was true, Tommy may be in real danger.
She got angry at herself for wasting a whole second on this thought, and then she hastily followed Sneed and his limp burden out of the room. The corridor was antiseptic and white, dotted with notices and safety warnings.
She was conscious that she had been as quiet as possible, when Sneed interrupted the silence. "Following me, Miss Taylor?"
"Just worried about Tommy".
"I told you that he is trouble and needs sedation", said Sneed, his quiet voice not at all belying his anger. Coming to his office door, he fumbled for his keys.
"Make yourself useful, Miss Taylor", he said. "Hold the patient upright whilst I search for the correct key".
She knew that this would be her only chance. Tommy would be in real danger unless she acted now.
Looking around, her brain seemed to work faster than it ever had before. She took in all the safety warnings and notices, calculating almost incidentally that she had been put down for over 48 hours' work next week. Then she saw it, almost looking up at her. The friendly red fire extinguisher. As she took it from its holder she wondered just how horrified the people who wrote its instructions would be at the use she was about to put it to.
Sneed hit the floor with a thud. Sally hoped her instincts were right.
Now he was running through the fields. The pleasantness of the trees and flowers all around him contrasted the constant feeling that he was breaking the rules. The rules you could die for breaking. Most of the mud on his clogs had been wiped off by running through the grass. For just an instant he thought he might get away.
But then it happened. The grey steely sky turned blood red, and a faint booming started.
He felt his adrenaline kick in as he ran faster. And he couldn't stop thinking about the shaving mirror. His heart threatened to break out of his chest as he ran.
Just a mirror.
Perfect for a quick shave.
That's all Frederick wanted.
But the sun.
The bright, bright sun.
It reflected off the mirror.
And the gunman saw it .
A sharp crack, and Frederick's blood was everywhere.
It had been the instant Tommy realised death was real.
He was heavier than Sally had thought. Asleep he was a dead weight. She dragged him out of the front door. She had been sorely tempted to hit Sneed with the fire extinguisher again, but had managed to resist the temptation. But somehow she knew that it would only be a matter of time before he was after her. Thankfully Morton was only a tiny village, and no two buildings were very far apart. She dragged Tommy's sleeping body over the cobbled street, in the general direction of the church where he had been at Archie's funeral just days before.
He was running like he had never run before. The booming was growing ever louder. In a moment of forgivable stupidity, he half-glanced backward, remembering what had happened to Lot's wife. Grey mud was bubbling up out of the ground behind him, choking the grass and flowers. It was flowing far faster than he could move and he knew that soon he would start to sink in it.
Faster and faster he ran.
Sally had never known the church was so far away. She finally managed to drag Tommy into the graveyard and towards the doorway. In her haste, she was only slightly relieved to find the door unlocked. As she pulled Tommy through it she looked upward. There at the gate of the churchyard, some twenty metres behind her was what looked like a zombie from a 1920's silent movie. Sneed had recovered inhumanly quickly.
Tommy had to rest. He was wheezing now, feeling that the breath in his body was being replaced by a burning gas. Again remembering Lot's wife, he decided not to look back. Not even his curiosity was that great anymore. It was then that he saw it; a small, peaceful looking tree in the middle of all the tumult. He made for the tree, not knowing any better.
Old churches didn't have lifts or escalators. At the moment Sally wished they did, as she pulled Tommy's limp form up the old spiral staircases. Sneed would catch up to her any second. She was confident that on any other day, she could outrun the old man. But on any other day, she wouldn't be lugging Tommy around. With a split-second's relief, she pushed open the wooden door at the top of the stairs and walked through. She was in the bell chamber. Now what?
Whilst the rest of his world was the stuff of nightmares, the lone tree reminded him of the truly peaceful dreams when he was younger, before his innocence was lost. It looked relaxed as it stood there.
As he approached it he felt that he could finally stop running. That he was actually allowed to relax. He was now standing about a two feet from it, when he saw something on it, perched between two of its branches at his head height. At first he thought it was a piece of broken glass, but then he realised what it was. A shaving mirror. Tommy froze as he saw the sun glint off it and heard a cold and oily sound behind him. He was going to die and he knew it. As he fell to the ground he heard the shot.
He was suddenly aware that he was lying in the mud and that there was a man on top of him. He then realised that he had fallen to the ground just before he heard the shot. He looked up at the man who had just saved his life.
"Hello, Tommy", said the Doctor.
The bell tower was old, dark and quiet. It smelled of a fusion of old wood and stone. As Tommy lay there on the floor, Sally thought that even sleeping, he looked troubled. And then the footsteps started. Regular in rhythm, getting ever louder, up the spiral staircase. Sally grabbed the small metal device from her pocket. She had absolutely no idea what it was, but hoped that it would work against Sneed. Her thoughts raced, and she knew that she couldn't even come close to giving a rational explanation for what she had done that day.
Louder now, and ever closer. Sneed's steps were like the second hand of a clock ticking away the final few seconds of a condemned person's life.
And then finallly he came to view in the dark doorway,l his head cocked to one side, jarred by the fire extinguisher Sally had used. No man moves like this, she thought, pointing the metal object at his as if it were a gun.
As the Doctor helped him to his feet, Tommy knew that one way or another it had to end today. "Are you okay, Tommy?" asked the Doctor, his face creased by lines of genuine concern for the person he had just saved.
"I'm alive", replied Tommy, almost surprised. He somehow knew that, a mere reality away, his heart had just skipped a beat. He looked around. All the green was gone. The grass had been engulfed by mud. There were no leaves on the trees, and even some of the trees themselves had been blasted into splintered stumps. Then he noticed the booming and the bits of chipped wood flying through the burnt air and wondered how long it had been going on and why he hadn't noticed before.
"Tommy, come on!" said the Doctor, now in a panic, snapping Tommy firmly out of his melancholy.
"What's happening?!" cried Tommy, now in a total state of confusion.
"It's your nightmare", barked the Doctor, "I have no idea. Come on, we need to get away!" He grabbed Tommy's sleeve and pulled him away with a sharp tug, past the deceptive tree, now itself a withered, blackened stump.
The mud was growing ever deeper, ever thicker. Tommy felt his clogs sinking into it and knew that he was going to lose them. They were going noticeably slower now. He turned to see the Doctor's back, his long-coated saviour no longer moving. His heart pounding, he turned the Doctor around. His face had changed. Mud now seeped out of his eyes and mouth and his white shoes were no longer visible as he sank into the mud. And his throat was rumbling.
Even he can't beat Al-Mon, thought Tommy, as the pounding grew and now even parts of the red sky started to explode.
The rumble in the Doctor's throat grew louder as Tommy turned back to him. A vomit of mud cascaded from his mouth, clearing his throat. The rumble had been a muffled scream all along.
"Tommy!" screeched the Doctor, perplexed, "Now! You have to defeat Al-Mon now!"
"But how?! It's been chasing me for years, how can I stop it now?!"
"Find out where it came from".
Tommy put his hand to his chin. Think? At a time like this? The Doctor had overestimated him.
"And what's that booming?" added the Timelord, "It's driving me mad".
The booming. Always the first sign that Al-Mon was coming, getting louder ever louder. Followed by the sinking mud and the burning sky.
"Wait a minute", the Doctor said to himself, his throat now clear, wiping the tears of mud from his eyes. "The booming, the mud, the explosions". Tommy could almost see the cogs turning in his companion's mind. He then looked up at Tommy like he was about to shout "Eureka!". He had a youthful enthusiasm in his eyes that Tommy seldom saw anymore. And when he again spoke he asked the strangest question:
"Tommy, how old are you?"
"Fifteen", he blurted out automatically.
"Think!" shouted the Doctor. "You think of yourself as fifteen, but how old are you really?"
Pushing back the boundary of reality, Tommy concentrated. Memories of the real world flowed into his mind, momentarily choking back the dream. He remembered Spring when he was young, the sweet shops, the factories and playing cricket until dark. He remembered working in the cobblers, making shoes, day in day out, with its monotonous smell of leather. He recalled seeing a group of children playing and the painful realisation that he was no longer as young as he once was. And he remembered the home. The old people's home he had lived in for the last twenty years.
"No", he struggled, "I'm not fifteen".
He looked up to the Doctor and faced him head on. "I'm a hundred and twelve".
Before the Timelord's eyes, Tommy started to age. He grew taller, thinner and his hair began to grey. His clothes changed as well, from a brown sweater and shorts and clogs to thin white pyjamas and a black dressing gown, clinging to the form of an old man. The process wasn't horrific, as the Doctor may have thought. In fact, he saw a certain natural rhythm and beauty to it that he would never have imagined.
"The War", said the Doctor. "You fought in the First World War, in the trenches. The booming, the mud, the explosions, it all fits. And you've been dreaming about it ever since".
Tears stung Tommy's wrinkled face. "And", he started but couldn't finish. Catching his breath, he tried again. "And I was just a boy. I lied about my age. I was only fifteen when I enlisted. I saw people die, get shot, drown in the mud. I was only a child!" he screamed as an old man would.
The Doctor regarded him, as if trying to look into his soul. Although he didn't speak, Tommy knew to translate his expression as "please continue".
"And one day we", another gulp for air, "we had to charge, go over the top. And I got lost. I hurt my eyes and tried to get back to my company. It must have taken me days. I was wandering through no man's land, blind, it's a wonder I didn't die. And then a French company found me. They looked after me, but", his face shifted to a mask of horror, "they were attacked. The Germans were charging".
The Doctor guessed the rest, seemingly picking up Tommy's own narrative. "And they were afraid. They were shouting, crying in fear. 'Germans! The Germans are coming. Attention, attention, ils viennent, les allemands, les allemands!'"
At the mention of the word, Tommy stood bolt upright. "Allemands", he said, "the French word for 'Germans'. 'Al-Mon'".
"You could hear the terror in your saviours' voices, so your mind created a nightmare out of what those voices were saying", concluded the Doctor.
All of a sudden, there was an explosion behind Tommy, knocking him and the Doctor to the mud ridden ground. A huge figure erupted from the ground. Its legs looked human, wearing black boots and grey military trousers. But the top half of its body looked like it had been carved from iron. Its arms were raised above its head, as if cheering on the acts of carnage it had caused.
After more than half a century of being chased, Tommy finally addressed the creature directly. "Al-Mon".
"You have to defeat it", came the Doctor's voice from behind him.
"I can't", cried Tommy. "It's stronger than me".
"That's your choice", countered the Doctor. Then, his voice softening, he continued. "Tommy, the War is over".
And then it stopped. The booming and the explosions. The sky turned from grey red to blue, and the mud sank back into the floor, to be replaced by grass and flowers. Like a planet breaking from its orbit, Tommy forced himself upwards. He walked over to Al-Mon, who now looked very out of place in the peaceful landscape. He leaned over and tapped the creature. There was a blinding flash, and it simply vanished. Tommy thought it somehow wrong that something that had plagued him for such a long time should be extinguished so quickly. He turned around to the Doctor who now had the expression of a proud parent on his face. "Thank-you", he whispered.
Standing in the gloomy bell tower doorway, the zombie that had once been Doctor Sneed addressed Sally in an even creepier voice. "Why, Miss Taylor, why?" It was something between a hiss and a whisper. "You should have just let him die". His voice faded out as he walked toward her.
She couldn't believe what had happened in the last few hours, but there she was facing off against a zombie in the bell tower. And she did the only thing she could think to do. She pointed the blue light end of the metal device at Sneed and pressed the button once more. A faint sound emerged that reminded her of her grandfather's kettle boiling. Then louder, and louder still, reverberating off the bell and creating a deafening wall of sound. Sally thought her eardrums were going to rupture, and as for Sneed. . .
A mixture of lightening and fire engulfed his body. He shot up into the air backwards, as if he had just received the ultimate electric shock. Banging into the far wall, he fell down to the floor and remained motionless.
After a moment's shock, Sally remembered Tommy. She ran over to his sleeping body, his snow white hair looking like a soft feather pillow. Checking his heart and breathing, she was puzzled. He actually seemed to be sleeping soundly now. She ran her finger through his hair, as if she was stroking a sleeping cat.
"He's a hero, you know", said a voice behind her.
Whirling around, Sally expected to see the Zombie Sneed towering about her. But something was different this time. This voice had been friendly. When she was facing the other direction, she saw a man whose footsteps she hadn't heard. He was wearing a brown pinstriped suit, with a light blue shirt and a red tie, along with a pair of red and white trainers. He wore a long beige coat which ran almost the full length of his body. He was extremely thin, and had a cheeky, angular face and brown hair. "I've fought all sorts of things in my time", he continued, "but I've never beaten one just by tapping it. Particularly one that's caused me as much trouble as Al-Mon has caused him".
There was only one explanation. "You're the Doctor!" exclaimed Sally.
"Yeah, that's me. And I believe you have something that belongs to me".
"Oh", she said as she realised what he meant. She handed the metal device over to him. "This", he went on as if trying it to selll it back to her, "is a sonic screwdriver. Oh, and thank-you. If it hadn't been for you, I'd have never gotten back".
Suddenly she remembered Sneed. She looked over to him, and the Doctor followed her gaze. "Oh, he's an Oneiric Wraith", he said, taking a sharp breath in through his nose.
"What will you do with him?" she asked.
"Well, you know that asteroid belt between the seventh and eighth planets orbiting Proxima Centuri?"
"Can't say that I do".
He smiled. "I think I'll leave him there". He turned and walked over to his opponent's unconscious body.
"I'll never see you again, will I?" she asked, now raising her voice a little.
The Doctor slowly turned around and shook his head. For a moment he looked like he was going to step toward her, but then stopped himself.
"Take care of him", he said, pointing towards Tommy.
"Always", she replied.
And then the Doctor turned, took the body of the Oneiric Wraith and carried it out of the small wooden doorway, and was gone, leaving Sally and Tommy all alone.
They didn't hear from the Doctor again. Sometimes they would wonder just who he was an where he came from. Tommy thought that he had once known, but the details were slowly leaving his mind like the memory of a half-forgotten nightmare. He was an old man now. But from that night on, he always slept soundly.