Nowhere Girl

3

Mattie had insisted they bring Church along with them on their way to break the news to Mrs Ward. She knew Mrs Ward and didn't want to have to make two trips, one to announce the death of her beloved cat and another to deliver the body of said cat. She was a crabby old lady, and Mattie didn't say that lightly; she had nothing against old people, of course, not after watching her parents age so quickly compared to her and having to look after them. But their neighbour was simply not very personable, despite Matilda's best efforts and constantly returning the cat every time he ran away. It was wrapped in a towel in the boot.

She was trying not to think about her parents, though. She'd dreamt about them in her second bout of sleeping and that had been painful enough, waking up to remember that her dad's ghostly words of comfort had come from her own mind entirely. That he would never speak words of comfort to her again. Did that make her a bad person, trying not to think about them? But surely she couldn't just wallow, could she? She couldn't just… stop. Cease to function. Or was that more normal? Should she crawl into bed for weeks and stay there until one day finding the strength to get back to being herself? Announcing the death of Church wasn't going to help take her mind off her circumstances too much, though.

At least she had seized the passenger seat, with the Doctor in the back and Clara driving, after they had argued about how the Doctor wanted to drive but apparently didn't possess a driver's license. Not that Clara driving her parents' car was legal, either, since she wasn't insured for it. She would get fined quite a lot of money if they got into an accident, but then again, surely any money would come straight back to Matilda now, if everything had become hers… but the rural backroad between her house and Mrs Ward's was scarcely patrolled by traffic officers. It didn't even have any speed cameras that she had ever noticed. Suffice it to say, they didn't get arrested in the five-minute journey, Clara turning into Mrs Ward's empty driveway.

That house had always unnerved Matilda. Mrs Ward was one of those types who kept newspapers plastered all over the windows, blocking out the world and as much light as she could. She'd never been inside that house, even after offering to help out or make a cup of tea after returning Church, which she was secretly glad about. Mum and dad had never understood just how creepy the woman was. The building's drains were blocked with old leaves and there was moss and ivy crawling up the walls. One of the windows was smashed and had been for the last few years they had lived there; she'd always wondered if it didn't get unbearably cold in the winter months.

Clara parked the car, leaning forwards on the dashboard and squinting up at the eerie cottage.

"Does she definitely live here?"

"Yeah," said Matilda, "It's creepy. I don't like it. But it's always looked like this, I guess."

"Let's just get out of here as soon as possible…" Clara murmured. And then what, Mattie thought? Go back to her empty house, sit around waiting for her missing godparents to return? Plan the funeral of her actual parents? Had they even contacted an undertaker yet? Were her parents' bodies still waiting, unclaimed, in the morgue of St Mary's? But then, she wasn't supposed to be thinking about that. She was supposed to be thinking about Mrs Ward and Church.

Clara and the Doctor got out of the car, leaving Mattie to get out last and brace herself. What if Mrs Ward asked her who Clara and the Doctor were? Why was Mattie being driven around by them? Would she have to tell her, would she have to say those words out loud and in full for the first time? My parents are dead. She hated it. She hated being somebody now whose parents were dead, trapped with the knowledge that she would always be that person now. A girl with dead parents.

For the time being they left Church in the boot, though Mattie wouldn't have minded carrying him too much. Dead things had never really bothered her, she used to collect dead butterflies when she was a little younger. The specimens were up in the loft somewhere now, but she still had them. And once, a very long time ago, she'd been gifted a taxidermy alien creature by Dr Cohen. That was buried upstairs in her other possessions, too, because mum had always been so worried a visitor might notice it. Not that they ever had any visitors who weren't in their immediate social circle, but she'd never liked getting into arguments with Martha. Mainly because she always won.

Clara knocked on the door.

Nothing. No answer.

She knocked again, and still, zilch. For nearly five minutes Clara kept knocking loudly and incessantly without hearing a a stir from within.

"Normally she shouts obscenities right away, she hates people knocking on the door. There's a sign on the garden wall telling the postman to leave everything in the letterbox," Mattie explained. That was why the letterbox was overflowing with bills to the point that they were in a heap in the mud, soggy and illegible after being rained on for god knows how long. Months, probably.

"Mrs Ward?" Clara pried open the metal slit of the letterbox to shout through it, "Mrs Ward, we've got your cat." She neglected to mention that the cat was, in fact, dead. But Mrs Ward loved that cat, Mattie thought it was the only thing in the world she actually cared about; there was no way she wouldn't come to the door. Unless… "Did you say the cat looked like it hadn't eaten for a while?" Perhaps Clara could read her mind.

"Well, yeah. You don't think…?" But Clara didn't answer her, she met the eyes of her wife.

"What say you? Risk it?" Risk what?

"Hold on – you don't mean to break in?" Matilda questioned.

"How old is this Mrs Ward?"

"I don't know – old? Old as mum and dad? Thereabouts? Seventy, eighty?" Mattie had never been good at guessing ages, probably due to her own unusual condition.

"Now, listen, Matilda," Clara began as the Doctor took out her screwdriver, "You should absolutely never, ever break into somebody's house without their permission. Okay?" It was at that point that they broke into somebody's house without their permission, the Doctor unlocking the door with the device and letting it swing open.

A musty stench hit them like a wall. It was unbearably dark inside and stagnant, filth lining all the surfaces. But this wasn't really out of the ordinary for what Matilda had experienced of Mrs Ward.

"Maybe you should stay in the car, Matts," Clara said.

"No. What if something happens out here? I won't be able to text you," Matilda said, which was true, because her phone was not working, either. She didn't even want to go snooping around Mrs Ward's house.

"Just… don't leave my sight, okay?" Mattie nodded. Already, Clara seemed to love bossing her around, which she wasn't too keen on. For the time being, however – given their unpleasant surroundings – she decided to just grin and bear it. She didn't really object too much to staying by Clara in the creepy house, anyway.

"Oh my god…" the Doctor breathed when they entered the front room. It was full to the brim with junk. "She's, like, one of those hoarders."

"So're you," Clara told her.

"Shut up. This. Is. Gross." Matilda had to agree. It was stacked high with rubbish and it reeked, no light getting in through the newspapers, closed curtains, and mountains of unnecessary possessions. There were all sorts of strange things in there; Mattie saw at least two bicycles in the old living room and a pile of tyres, among a hefty collection of radios and televisions, most of which appeared to be broken. Even more old newspapers, old books, quite a lot of dead plants and a floor covered in a thick coating of cat hair and faeces; Mattie began to think maybe they shouldn't have kept returning Church to that squalor. If only her mother wasn't allergic.

Dust from the room stuck to the lenses of her glasses. Staying behind Clara, who had taken out her phone to switch on the torch and get a closer look at what was in there, she took them off and tried to clean them on the lining of her jacket. This rendered her unable to see, and she tripped over an old floor lamp lying across the right of way and bumped into a cardboard box sitting on a chair. It fell to the floor with a thud and a collection of old, mouldy photo albums spilled out.

"You okay?" Clara whispered.

"Just… tripped…" she mumbled, sliding her glasses back on. While the Doctor wandered off into the kitchen, Clara crouched down carefully to get a look at the albums. Mattie stayed with Clara, as instructed, and strained her ears to pick up on any noise at all that would betray Mrs Ward's presence. There was always the possibility she had gone into town for something, walked, maybe, and would be back any minute. Back to shout them out of her house and blame her for the death of her neglected cat, probably. The Doctor elsewhere, Mattie peered over Clara's shoulder as she flipped through the pages. "Why do you use telekinesis? Why not touch it?"

"Because it's totally grim in here," Clara said.

"Are you a germaphobe?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Does she have any family, do you know?"

"No idea. I've never even been inside the house. Why does she keep her photos in an album and not, like, on a computer? Isn't she your age, probably?"

"Yes, I'm an elderly, 1980's child," Clara sighed, as though she couldn't believe that somebody born in the 1980s could be considered elderly. Especially not when eternal youth was on her side. "It's just nice sometimes. We've got photo albums and pictures in frames, the Doctor and I. Wedding photos, mainly. And – see – looks like Mrs Ward and I have something else in common." She showed Mattie a photo which was very clearly taken at a wedding, many years ago. "2011, it's dated."

"So like, the olden days. Even before I was born."

"Enough of the olden days. 2011 is not… urgh. Kids today. When were you born, again?"

"August 5th. 2014. I'm fifty next month."

"So you're an ancient relic, too."

"Barely. Why do you care about the photos?"

"It's just nice to learn about people. There's baby photos in here, too. There's so many photos of you from when you were a baby."

"There's photos of me from throughout my whole life."

"I like babies, though. Less keen on teenagers."

"Thanks."

"She had a lot… I wonder where they all are now…" Clara skimmed through the remaining reams of photos of Mrs Ward's family, as she, at first a youth, grew older and much more recognisable to Matilda. Strange how none of the anguish and bitterness that had characterised their interactions didn't seem present in these photographs. But nor were any of the relatives, and there were a good few decades missing from where the photographs ended up until the present day. At least three, she suspected. A lot could happen in thirty years. In fact, a lot could happen in thirty minutes. In the middle of the night, there had been a thirty-minute interlude between her parents both being alive and her parents both being dead.

"What's that one?" Matilda pointed over Clara's shoulder. It looked like a family Christmas, all the inhabitants of the previous images gathered around a table with Mrs Ward smiling and midway through carving a turkey. It was faded and creased, as was the plastic covering of the album, nearly falling away. It had been looked at many times. Clara slid it out and turned it over, where it was covered in names and dates. She sighed.

"They're dead. Her family. Her husband's name was Nicholas, he died six years ago. In fact, most of them…" Mattie had spotted it too: the death dates were the same for nearly all of them.

"They all died at once?"

"I guess," Clara said, "Probably an accident. March 16th, 2058."

"That's awful…"

"Yeah… yeah, it is…" She slid it back into place in the album.

Clara left the photos and proceeded into the kitchen, Mattie on her heels, to see what the Doctor was up to. She was examining the contents of the rusty kitchen sink with one hand covering her mouth and nose, peering at it from as far a distance as possible. The smell of the house got even worse as they entered.

"I think the cat's been peeing in the sink," she whispered. Clara almost retched.

"That's disgusting."

"This right here is a severe depression. Gal's got issues."

"When did you last see her, Mattie?" Clara asked.

"Not for months. Church hasn't been around and it's not like I visit. She's very hostile." There were even more radios throughout the kitchen, however. It was as though she literally collected radios, but when Matilda looked at them a bit closer – though she didn't quite dare to pick one up – she saw they were all set to the same band. "Hey," she said, interrupting Clara and the Doctor freaking out about the maggoty contents of a very old cat food dish near the back door. Clara was glad for any excuse to get away from that mess.

"What?"

"The radios are all set to the same frequency – do you think that's weird?" Clara frowned, then went back into the living room to check the devices in there, too. They weren't even all battery powered; the wall sockets were overloaded with adapters and plugs for them all, and the TVs.

"I wouldn't advise turning them on," the Doctor said from the kitchen doorway.

"Why not?" Mattie asked.

"I'm just sceptical of what, exactly, they're tuned into. Satellites are a lot more complex than radios…" Thirteen looked off into the middle-distance. Mattie leant down and peered closely at the dusty radios again; they didn't look like they'd been adjusted in a long time, all the dials set permanently to the one frequency.

"Who even uses analogue radios anymore? Are these not satellite radios?" she asked. She realised her glasses had gathered even more dust since they'd entered Mrs Ward's house and took them off to wipe them clean on her clothes for the second time.

"These things? They're ancient, older than Clara," said the Doctor.

"Sounds like your VCR player," Clara quipped.

"Hey! I like videos. I like having to rewind them," she argued. "You'd sure have to go to some trouble to get radios like this, though. And to have so many, not broken?"

"You're just going to make them dirtier," Clara said. It took Mattie a second to realise she was talking to her about her glasses.

"No, it's fine," she said, even though it wasn't and she was making them worse. The dust was irritating her nose, and she was snotty enough already since she had to keep sniffing back tears. "What do you mean about what the radios are tuned into?"

"It's complicated," said the Doctor, "I was once in 1953, with Rose, and there was an alien entity called the Wire living in the television sets and sucking off people's faces through the screens."

"Is that what's happening now?"

"No, I doubt it…" she said, then she turned and wandered back into the kitchen again. Clara watched her go, then rolled her eyes.

"Just leave her," Clara said, catching Mattie's eye after she had slid her glasses back on, bringing the world into focus again, "She gets lost her in her own mind sometimes."

"What does she mean, though? Things can travel through TVs? Through radios?" Mattie whispered.

"Maybe."

"But what kind of things?" And Clara didn't answer her. Did Clara just not know, or was she trying to protect her?

"I'm gonna look upstairs."

"What?" Mattie hissed, "Don't do that! She might be up there, like, sleeping, or something."

"You can stay with the Doctor, or go back out to the car. Nobody's going to make you stay here if you don't want," said Clara, being much too accommodating for her grief. In that moment, and though her exact mood seemed to change between minutes, she didn't want anybody to be accommodating for her. She wanted to go up those stairs, because it would prove… she didn't rightly know what it would prove, but she suddenly decided that she was absolutely going to do it. So she followed Clara. "Look… I won't stop you, but be careful. Stay right behind me. Alright?"

"Alright," Mattie agreed. Clara didn't look convinced by her state of mind. She wasn't too convinced of her own state of mind.

The stairs were narrow and nearly black at the top, Clara turning her torch on them. Covered in hair from top to bottom, the foul smell of the house just got more potent the further they inched upwards. It was a very bad smell, but not the smell of cat poo. Much, much worse.

"Sweetheart…" Clara began, holding the back of her hand underneath her nose, "I'm not sure Mrs Ward is sleeping if she is up here."

"You don't have to sugar-coat it," Mattie lied. She very much did like Clara sugar-coating it. Silence in the dusty house and a beloved cat that hadn't been fed for days, or even weeks? It was what they had all been thinking. And still, despite pondering the thought ever since they'd pulled into the drive, nothing prepared Matilda for what they found in Mrs Ward's spare room.

Clara nudged the slightly-open door with her foot, and it creaked unbearably as it opened. The room was full of televisions and radios, like downstairs, only these ones weren't stacked aimlessly. They were in neat stacks, TVs on top of TVs, the bulky tube kinds and a very vintage set she suspected must be at least a century old. The paper-thin glass screens people used today were right on top with radios piled up similarly. They were all arranged around the walls, in a semi-circle, facing Mrs Ward. she sat, utterly motionless, in an old wooden chair right in the centre, back to the doorway.

"Stay there," Clara ordered Mattie, stepping tentatively into the room. As predicted, Mrs Ward didn't move. That was when Mattie spotted the blood on her head and neck, dry, crusty, and coming from her ears. Clara pressed her hand right over her mouth after shining the torch on Mrs Ward's face and shook her head.

"What?" asked Mattie, stepping closer.

"Matts – no – don't-" Clara held up a hand as if to stop her with her kinesis, but if that was her initial plan she did not follow through. Mattie nearly fell over into the wall of televisions when she saw what Clara had seen: the grotesquely terrified face of the ancient Mrs Ward, her eye sockets completely empty and black with old blood. But there were no eyes, dead or otherwise, to stare back. "Go back over there," Clara ordered her sharply, and she actually listened without resentment this time, wishing she had done so before. "Doctor!?" she shouted, "You'd better come up here!" There was a noise downstairs like Thirteen had knocked something over, then obedient footsteps. Clara stooped down to look at Mrs Ward very closely, shining the torch right in the gruesome eye sockets.

Thirteen nearly walked into Matilda as she came into the room.

"What is… whoa…" the Doctor looked at the TVs, then went to Clara's side and also took in the characteristics of Mrs Ward's corpse. It stank in there. She took out the sonic screwdriver and examined Mrs Ward with it. "Her brain is basically, uh… mush. Severe haemorrhaging is what killed her and made her bleed like this. I guess it's true what they say about TV rotting your mind."

"And made Church bleed like that," Mattie pointed out.

"And me," said Clara, "From the phone interference… hold on…"

"What?" Thirteen asked. Clara appeared to be thinking very quickly though, realising something the Doctor must have missed.

"In 1897, a meteor crashed in Hollowmire and all the people there started to suffer the symptoms of an unusual plague," Clara began, "Brain blisters and severe haemorrhaging. And all those people were isolated in a sanatorium in the middle of a lake."

"Wait… but that's-"

"That's when Oc'thubha came to Earth," Clara said, "In said meteor."

"What's that?" Mattie interrupted.

"Oc'thubha is a sort of… extra-dimensional god," Clara explained, "Who came here from another universe after being banished by all the other gods in his pantheon, or whatever."

"Banished why…?"

"For being a totally chill dude, that's why," said the Doctor, "I love that guy. We hang out on myspace."

"Myspace?" Mattie asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, anyway," Clara resumed, "My point is that Oc'thubha made the people sick by mistake while trying to communicate telepathically with them through the telegram and phone lines. And later through TVs, radios and satellites. Sally's told me tons about this over the years, when she compiles her records. Rose can't affect Oc'thubha or see anything to do with him, or any of the other monsters from his dimension. She only has sovereignty over our universe."

"Mrs Ward must have been communicating with another of them," Thirteen explained, "So now the question isn't 'what', but 'why'?" Clara said nothing more, instead went past Mattie to head into the next room: the bedroom. Matilda, not wanting to stay around the eerie corpse for longer than necessary – despite her reputation for morbidity – followed suit.

The bedroom was a lot less spooky than the rest of the house, though. Still covered in the same fine coating of cat hair, it very much looked like the sort of room an elderly lady would keep; the bed was even made. Clara made straight for the writing desk in the corner, covered in papers, pilfering it for everything it was worth. Matilda's attention, however, was piqued by the pictures on the walls. More family photos of Mrs Ward's relatives, her children who never seemed to visit and a husband who couldn't be alive any longer; but the most interesting by far were a set of photos arranged in a strange collage, portraying an old building. She lifted the frame off the wall, recognising much of the area.

Mostly because one of the buildings depicted was her own home.

"H-hey," she said shakily, "Clara…" Clara looked up.

"What's wrong?" Matilda didn't answer. "Mattie?" Clara came over and looked at the pictures as well, the Doctor still in the room with the body, "Wait, this is impossible." Mattie frowned.

"Impossible? It's creepy, but it's not-"

"No, this house was demolished over two-hundred-and-fifty years ago, in 1820."

"No, that's my house."

She realised they were looking at different photographs in the collection. Clara was drawn to the picture of a large, stately home, while Mattie was encapsulated by the picture of the renovated cottage her parents had bought around four years ago.

"Wait… no, but – your house? Is that cottage? Shit! How did I… oh my god."

"What?"

"I've been there so many times since you moved, but I never… okay. This building," she pointed out the mansion, "Is Knighton Gorges Manor, right?"

"Yeah, centuries ago. We just live in what used to be the groundskeeper's cottage, or something like that."

"Matilda, Knighton Gorges Manor and the ground it used to stand on is one of the most haunted places in the country. And some might say the entire world. Certainly on the Isle of Wight which – quite frankly – is full of ghosts. But this photograph – it's taken with a modern camera. There are no photos of the mansion, just drawings, but you can recognise it by these weird gateposts, which-"

"Are still there, I know, I've seen them in the woods," Matilda said, "They're overgrown by the trees now, though, like most of the land."

"Matts, she took a photo of a house that doesn't exist. And now she's been killed trying to communicate with creatures from another dimension."

"I get that, I just – I don't know what you want me to say!" she protested.

"…Nothing, I'm just…" The Doctor heard their voices get louder and joined them in the bedroom now.

"What was that about a house that doesn't exist?"

"Photograph of Knighton Gorges," Clara explained, showing her the collection, "Which is famous in ghost stories for the fact that people claim to have seen apparitions of the entire building. Which-"

"Would happen if it existed in a liminal space," said Thirteen.

"Liminal?" Mattie asked.

"A place of transition," Clara said, "It comes from the Latin, 'limin', which means 'threshold.' If it exists on a liminal plane between dimensions, then-"

"Then this whole area could be used to transport things between two separate universes, with the old mansion right at the centre," the Doctor finished her sentence, "Things like Jack and Rose. Or worse… what else do you remember Sally telling you about Oc'thubha?" Clara opened her mouth to talk, but then the Doctor continued speaking, "You know what – hold it. Tell us in the car. We'd better go."

"Go? Go where?" Mattie asked.

"To see the ghost house," Thirteen said as she turned on her heel to leave.

"What? And just leave Mrs Ward here?"

"What do you propose we do? Call the authorities, her family, next of kin? The phones aren't working."

"And her family are dead," Clara reminded Matilda. She supposed they must be right, but she didn't like it. She felt like they had to tell somebody; someone ought to know. Surely there was someone who cared about what had happened to Mrs Ward? Not all of her acquaintances could be dead? But Matilda didn't even know her first name. How would any of them begin to make arrangements for a funeral? At least her parents had left instructions… not instructions that she was too privy to, that was Jack's job, and…

Now she was thinking about that again, and how much they needed Jack. Just like Rose, he'd always been there, trusted with everything…

"Do you maybe want to leave the cat here?" Clara asked her before they got back into her parents' car. She had her hand on the door and didn't know what to say.

"You mean just dump him?"

"No, not…"

"He should at least be buried," she said. Clara exchanged a look with the Doctor, a very fleeting one Mattie couldn't decipher.

"Of course," said Clara, "We'll do it later. Once we get Jack and Rose."

"Do you really think we will?"

"Absolutely," said the Doctor as they all got into the car, "When you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."

"Even saving them from evil gods from another dimension?"

"You can't give up, Matts," Clara told her, starting the car, "Can't lose hope. Do you think Jack and Rose would lose hope if it was you who'd been taken?" Mattie leant back in the passenger seat, the Doctor behind her. No, they wouldn't lose hope. They wouldn't ever give up trying to get her back. Clara passed her phone to the Doctor in the back. "Try and call Donna, see if you get through."

"Why Donna?" Matilda asked.

"Donna can make portals between dimensions at will," Clara explained.

"She can!?"

"Yeah."

"I thought she could just shout really loud."

"She can. And she can make portals. Including portals into the world of these god things… basically, a very long time ago before you were born, there was an incident in Hollowmire, right? Where another of these gods, called Ic'tharru, tried to destroy the Earth as revenge for Oc'thubha getting so friendly with humans. They had to go into the dark universe and destroy this power source that was keeping it connected to Earth."

"Destroy it how?"

"Esther did it."

"Can't get Donna," said the Doctor, "Same thing."

"Well – Esther, try her. She can travel through phone lines," Clara said, clearly stabbing in the dark. If they needed Esther's help and they couldn't get a hold of her… "If we could just get internet connection for half a second we could tweet her." Or tweet the Lightning Girl, as she was known to the rest of the world for the last decade. The closest thing to an actual superhero the planet actually had – well, aside from the Doctor, perhaps. But the Doctor couldn't shoot electricity out of her hands. Neither could Clara. It wouldn't bode well for them if they had to destroy another extra-dimensional power source, seeing as none of them were living lightning rods.

"Listen, Mattie, the important thing to remember is Newton's third law, okay?" said Thirteen, leaning over the back of the seat, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

"Meaning what?"

"If you can open a door, you can also close the door."

"Nice," Clara muttered, "Very deep. Very good understanding of the basic principles of doors."

"What goes around comes around."

"She means we can stop them coming through," Clara 'translated' to Mattie, the Doctor putting the phone to her ear again, "Sparky's probably busy, anyway. Rescuing children from a burning orphanage, talking someone off a ledge or getting a cat out of a tree."

"What do you mean, 'them'?"

"There's this poem," Clara said, "By Lovecraft-"

"Clara's specialty," the Doctor interrupted for a moment.

"Yes, thanks. A poem. Called 'Night-Gaunts.' About creatures he used to have nightmares about. I'm not so great at remembering poems when I'm driving, but it goes something like, 'Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell, / But every night I see the rubbery things, / Black, horned, and slender, with membranous wings, / They come in legions on the north wind's swell / With obscene clutch that titillates and stings, / Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings / To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare's well.' It's one of his better poems. They're predominantly quite shit."

"So what's your point?"

"Okay, there's another story about Knighton Gorges and about the old gateposts where people sometimes claim to see large, black gargoyles appear on them. And they did all get attacked by one back when the portal opened in Hollowmire."

"How did they stop it?"

"Shot it, I think. So, you see, they're not invincible."

"But we don't have any guns. And Jack did have a gun. And Rose can crush cars with her bare hands."

"The element of surprise was on their side," said the Doctor, "Jack wasn't there when they went after Ic'tharru, neither was Rose. Clara only knows so much about it because she's got a vested interest in anything spooky."

"Mm, well, it comes in very useful being married to you," Clara said quietly, turning off the road and back into the drive leading to Mattie's house.

She had lived in that building for four years without ever feeling too much unease, inside or out, but now it filled her with an unbridled sense of dread. Not just because of the familial emptiness it symbolised for her now, but because of the horrors surrounding it. Horned, winged monsters kidnapping her godparents and throwing cat corpses at the windows, and the dead body of a lonely old woman with her brains turned to pulp – it was overwhelming. Even the trees looked frightening to her now.

Clara stopped the car. Cold wind bit her face once she got out to follow them both; the Doctor had not managed to get through to Esther.

"You should get a signal for her. A lightning signal," she suggested.

"I wish," said the Doctor, "Tagging her on social media is much more effective. If you can connect to social media, that is. It's like in Kick-Ass."

"Which way are the gateposts?" Clara asked Matilda.

"Sort of, that way," she pointed towards the back of the house, "Where you said the cat came from…" Where Jack and Rose went, and where they disappeared from. "Maybe they found the house?"

"Maybe," said Clara, "Can you see the land? From the upstairs windows?"

"Yeah, but I've never seen that building."

"I suppose not… come on. Stay close. I'm doing a forcefield thing. Kinetically. So don't worry."

"The Phantom is almost as good as the Lightning Girl," said the Doctor. Mattie heeded Clara's words and stayed right by her side, looking around every few seconds to check she didn't see any devilish monsters crawling out of the shadows.

"So, the story here," Clara began, keeping them occupied as they trekked. It wasn't a far walk, though. "Is that allegedly, a few hundred years ago, the house was owned by Hugh de Morville."

"The Lord of Westmorland," the Doctor added, "One of the knights responsible for assassinating Thomas Becket in 1170, the Archbishop of Canterbury, after a bit of an extreme misunderstanding. Because the king – Henry II – didn't actually want them to kill Becket, it was just like, an offhand comment, so then these assassins were excommunicated and fled."

"De Morville believed it was cursed," Clara returned to the folklore, "Lots of the owners of the house have had run-ins with bad luck. Most famously Sir Tristram Dillington, whose children all died of smallpox and then he killed himself in 1718. And then, in 1821, another owner demolished the house out of spite just because he didn't want his daughter marrying this clergyman. Or so the stories go. They say the house reappears often on New Year's Eve, and that sometimes the gargoyles rematerialise. The weird part is that nobody even knows if those gargoyles ever actually existed in the first place."

"And you just know this? You just memorise ghost stories?"

"It's useful," Clara reiterated, "Especially in our line of work."

"Teaching?"

"Just general adventuring," the Doctor said, "She's got a master's degree in occult studies." Mattie had never been told that, she just thought Clara Oswald read a lot of books. She didn't know she was some sort of folklore aficionado, that was more the idea she associated with the Gutkeleds. Not that she was ever allowed to see either of them, her parents had always absolutely refused to invite them in – especially Sally Sparrow, even if Esther and Jenny did both put in good words for them.

The stone gateposts loomed through the unnatural flog curdling around the tree trunks and their legs, like wading through a ghostly swamp. She'd seen them before a few times, though she couldn't say she wandered into the woods particularly often, but had never felt so ill at ease. Seven-foot-tall, imposing stone columns, a rotten wooden gate between them. And behind it the large, overgrown field where the manor had once stood. It certainly wasn't there now, though. Neither were these gargoyles. The gate was rusted shut, so Clara boosted her over it first while the Doctor scaled it awkwardly on her own. Clara merely phased through, which amazed Matilda, who had so rarely seen Clara turn intangible; she'd only really heard about it from anecdotes her parents tried to keep from her so she didn't get enamoured with the lifestyle of an intergalactic time-traveller. This brief exploit had done more than enough to dissuade her from that life so far, however, much more than her parents actively keeping her away from it. She didn't want any of what had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and only grew more and more frightened with every passing minute.

"Huh," said Clara, crossing her arms, "I wonder what we do now…"

"There has to be something here," said Matilda.

"Don't worry," Thirteen announced, taking out her screwdriver, "I know just what to do."

She did not, in fact, know just what to do. Her idea of knowing 'just what to do' entailed walking around using the tiny sonic device like a makeshift metal detector, dragging it up and down the length of the field and the wet grass while Clara and Matilda observed, thoroughly unconvinced.

"We could try shouting?" Clara suggested.

"Won't that draw these things out?"

"I don't really know… hey, while we're stumped, are you okay? Probably a really stupid question, I know, but… well, I can't just not check on you."

"I don't know," she answered honestly. Clara watched her carefully.

"Yeah. My mum died when I was sixteen." Matilda hadn't known that. "And my dad when I was fifty-three, back at the tail-end of 2042. He had cancer. Mum was… sudden… I know what it's like, is my point. Like, really, I do, it's the hardest thing in the world. That's why I started smoking."

"You think I should start smoking?"

"Absolutely not, not in a million years. It's an appalling habit. I've never managed to kick it."

"…Why doesn't Other You smoke? I mean, I've never seen her smoke."

"I think it's because the tobacco craving dulls in comparison to the human blood craving. Look, I'm not going to say that if you ever want to talk to someone you can talk to me – even though obviously you can, if you do – but if you ever just want somebody around, who does understand, then I'm good for that. So's the Doctor, though she'll talk your ear off if you give her half a chance," she smiled fondly when she said that, glancing at the Doctor patrolling up and down the field with her screwdriver, "I know we're not your godparents and we haven't been here for you as much as Jack and Rose, but we do care. We'll do our best." Matilda believed her. There was something sincere about Clara, something trustworthy; a warmth.

"Thanks. I wouldn't know what to say even if I did want to talk."

"I don't think anybody ever really knows what to say in situations like this," Clara told her, "Hard enough even understanding what you're feeling, let alone trying to put that into words and confide in somebody else."

"Hey!" the Doctor shouted from the dead-centre of the field, right where the house had been stood in the old picture, "Get over here! There's something underground, I'm pretty sure."

"Probably just a rabbit warren or a badger den," Clara said quietly enough that only Matilda heard, following her wife's directions. Matilda followed, too, as the Doctor scanned the mud in a circle around her feet.

"There's stuff down here," Thirteen said.

"Stuff?"

"Yeah. Stuff. Hinky stuff. Weird energy. I think it's hollow."

"If it's hollow…" Clara began, thinking. "You two should stand back." Matilda didn't know why they should stand back, but going by how quickly the Doctor vacated the area and moved a few metres away from the spot, she was easily convinced that she should do the same thing. As soon as she was at a safe distance, Clara held out both of her hands towards the ground and it exploded.

'Exploded' wasn't necessarily the best description, it was more like a hole had been punched in the ground from above by an incredibly large hand, causing bits of grass and mud to go flying in all directions. A gaping hole was left between them, as though she had just dug a well through willpower alone, and Clara stepped forwards to look inside. The Doctor also tentatively craned her neck to try and see without approaching.

"Anything, Coo?"

"Oh, yeah. There's something. It's too dark to see much." It didn't seem like Clara thought it risky at all to simply jump into the wound she'd created, disappearing into the ground without a care in the world. Matilda stared at the Doctor in shock, and Thirteen began to step closer. "No monsters!" Clara shouted up, her voice echoing, "No godparents, either. If you both follow, I'll cushion the landing."

"You go first," the Doctor said to Matilda, "Don't want you left up here on your own."

"I don't really… uh…" She was caught between a rock and a hard place. Stay in the field with the ghost mansion all on her own, or follow her new guardians into the very creepy underground cave. Fearing loneliness above all else, she chose the latter option, and like Clara descended into the underneath.

The cave had crumbling, grey stone walls and stank of wet mud, dirt, and something strange she hadn't a hope of identifying. It was also full of objects: test tubes, flasks, books, an odd slab in the middle which looked like a cross between an altar and a gurney with unusual shapes carved into its surface. The floor also was covered in the small bones and bodies of various woodland creatures, everything from mice to a skull she thought belonged to a fox. Mildew-covered papers were stacked on every surface as well as jars containing coloured liquids and specimens. The dark mouth of a tunnel formed at one side.

"I suppose that's the normal entrance," Clara said, looking at the passage, "Must come out in the woods somewhere. We've taken the express route." The Doctor finally jumped down behind Matilda, crunching the fox skull underfoot by mistake.

"Eurgh!" she exclaimed, "These are my nice shoes!"

"You say that about all your shoes," Clara said.

"That's because all my shoes are nice. Gross…"

"Where are we…?" Matilda asked, crossing her arms tightly around herself and avoiding touching anything.

"My best guess? A laboratory," said the Doctor after only a moment of taking in their surroundings. "Definitely has that kind of vibe."

"Conducting what kind of experiments?"

"Spooky ones," said Clara, "Opening portals into other dimensions."

"But surely you can't just do that," said Matilda as the Doctor went to rifle through the mouldy papers on the table in front of her, "Wouldn't you need some really powerful technology to travel to a different dimension?"

"Depends," said Thirteen, "There's certain areas where it's easier than others. Sometimes you can just walk from one universe to another. And going between universes is generally safer than travelling between two points in the same one. You'd be lucky to survive going through a rift in time-space over here, and you need a very strong ship to withstand a wormhole."

"I told you," Clara continued, "It's liminal. A place of transience between one realm and another. Like when Alice goes down the rabbit hole and gets to Wonderland, or when Bottom gets lost in the forest and meets Titania. Alice thinks it was a dream, Bottom thinks it was a dream. The entities that come from where Oc'thubha comes from-"

"Acnictexr," interrupted Thirteen. Clara paused and looked at her, but the Doctor was reading aloud from a piece of paper she'd found.

"Sorry?"

"That's where they're from, the city, it says here in these notes, Acnictexr."

"What were you saying about them? The entities?" Matilda pressed Clara when she lost her train of thought, watching the Doctor rifle through the paraphernalia for more information.

"Oh. They can communicate through dreams."

"'Communicate' is a generous word…" Thirteen muttered.

"Alright, they can make people have visions. Nightmares. It happened to Donna."

"You said H.P. Lovecraft had nightmares about those gargoyle-things…" Mattie remembered.

"Yeah. He did."

"As did Mrs Ward," said the Doctor, "She says, 'six years ago I started having the dreams.' Visions of the city. Black sun, black sky, gothic buildings, grey ground, innumerable horrors… 'but over time I began to understand,' she goes, 'I began to realise that they were the true creators of mankind, the true guardians, and that mankind has gone astray. I have been chosen, with no more attachments, to enable their return to a world no longer deserving of human habitation. Life will be reborn anew and I will be among those to see it.' She writes a lot of stuff like that. Most of these were written in the last few months, though, I'd say. Based on the state of the paper."

"Six years ago?" Clara implored.

"Yeah."

"Six?"

"Yeah, six. Why?"

"That's when the accident happened and her family died," said Clara, "And she said she has 'no more attachments'?"

"What's your theory?"

"The house here was supposed to be cursed, people died tragically, Dillington committed suicide… maybe it – or these things – need that. Maybe they're drawn here now, today, because of the fresh grief." Because my parents have died, Mattie thought but did not say. "Wouldn't someone be more susceptible to their influence after a tragedy? This land has been collecting sorrow for years, it's full of it."

"So Mrs Ward is, like, their agent, then?" Matilda interrupted them brainstorming with each other. She didn't want them to forget she was there, or something.

"Exactly," said Clara, "They're using her and her grief-"

"-to create a real, permanent gateway between the worlds. It's like capillaries, you know?" the Doctor said to her, "Semi-permeable. Some things – like these night-gaunts or Donna Noble – can get through. But the big boys, like Ic'tharru and your friendly, neighbourhood Time Lord, can't. Not without using a serious amount of energy to make an actual portal manifest – you'll notice the distinct absence of a portal."

"Maybe it's an invisible portal?" Mattie suggested.

"No, trust me, if there was a portal open to another dimension we'd definitely see it. I mean, you know the beginning of Hellboy?"

"No."

"Well, it's just like that. Only I'm Rasputin. I mean, obviously I'm not Rasputin, he was a nasty piece of work, but in Hellboy I'm playing the role of Rasputin. And you two are like the Nazis helping him. But in a good way."

"Do you ever think you ought to stop talking?" Clara said to her.

"Yeah, but my mouth just runs away with itself… anyway," she went back to her notes, "We've established the portal isn't open yet. So now the question is how do we open it?"

"How do we what!?" Mattie exclaimed.

"Open the portal."

"Why!?"

"Why did the chicken cross the road?" the Doctor countered.

"What!?"

"To get to the other side," Clara told her, "To rescue Jack and Rose."

"Normally I'd be one-hundred-percent against opening a portal to a dimension full of monsters that want to destroy our entire universe," the Doctor went on, "But in this case, I really don't think they should be getting their spooky hands on the Bad Wolf and the Man Who Can't Die. Just thinking about what could happen is giving me majorly bad juju."

"Is that how juju works?" Clara asked, perusing more paper.

"What are you, the juju police? Anyway – come on."

"Come on?" Clara repeated, confused.

"You're the occultist," Thirteen reminded her, "Why don't you use your back catalogue of Lovecraftiana and tell us how to cross dimensions?"

"I'm not a magician," Clara snapped, shaking her head, "I don't know, it probably wants something ridiculous, like a blood sacrifice. 'Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches' mummy, maw and gulf –'"

The Doctor interjected to continue, "Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron-"

That was when something dropped down onto Mattie's shoulder. Whatever it was it terrified her and made her jump backwards, her initial assumption being that it was a spider. It was, she realised when she knocked it to the floor, just a clump of grass and dirt. However, the problems really arose when she tripped over her own feet, fell into the wall, and knocked into something.

"Are you okay?" Clara asked immediately, worrying.

"I'm fine," Matilda said, "I'm just… whoa…" She had pushed something, which now looked like a button, into the wall. Shrouded by dirt and impossible to see otherwise, but parts of the surrounding earth were now vibrating, moving, changing, forming mysterious shapes all embedded into the ground. The movement spread the length of the whole lair, Mattie carefully returning to Clara's side. The cave itself was spinning around them.

"Uh-oh," said the Doctor.

"What?" Clara asked urgently, "What is it?"

"Kinetic generator… We should get as close as possible, think like – vortex manipulator teleportation close, c'mon," she dashed around the table and grabbed both their arms.

"Kinetic generator powering what?"

"The portal."

"You said they might not have been able to make a portal or whatever 'big boy' is out there would have come through by now!" Clara argued.

"Well maybe there's something else going on, because seriously, you've really gotta brace yourselves for what's gonna feel like someone's just sucked all the air out of your lungs with a pair of bellows. Just get ready."

"For what!?"

"Something wicked this way comes!"