AN: This storyline is set in between "Brave-ish Heart" and "Detained" (episodes 5&6) of Class.

DAY 147

The Ghost of Clara Ravenwood

Charlie Smith

Coal Hill Academy was in the grip of a horrible storm, the worst storm so far that year it had been said on the news, and highly unexplainable. It was practically tropical, and their borough of London had been experiencing a humid heatwave for the last two days because of it. But this was normal. And besides, it was tropical, the remnants of some ancient or futuristic hurricane coming through one of the many rifts. People were blaming the many problems of the Wi-Fi lately on the storm, too. It kept cutting out and breaking, and people were seeing unusual symbols when they tried to log onto the school's network. Neither of those things were their current concern, however.

"I can't believe you've forced me to drive you all the way out here in this weather – I wonder if throwing you out into a hurricane would count as me making an attempt on your life?" Miss Quill mused bitterly, walking behind Charlie and Matteusz.

"And if I died that would count as you failing to protect me," Charlie said, unimpressed. Matteusz was the one leading the way, it was Matteusz's idea that they come there in the first place to look into the alleged claims of more than a few terrified students. Death was an essential part of the curriculum at Coal Hill, and they went through grief counsellors at the same rate Hogwarts went through Defence Against the Dark Arts professors. Seeing people die was one thing, but seeing people who were supposed to be dead come back to life in front of them was something else. The main thing they were thinking was that it was a re-emergence of the Lankin, come to try and feed on them again.

"I don't understand what it is we're doing here, I see enough of this hovel during the day," Quill complained, but Matteusz walked with purpose, glancing nervously down corridors on either side of them while the rain hammered down outside. It was like the school had been enveloped by a waterfall; walking there that morning had been a complete nightmare.

"Looking for ghosts," Matteusz said.

"I told you, it could be the Lankin," Charlie reiterated to Quill.

"I don't see any slimy plant-tentacles anywhere, so I doubt it. Who is this woman?"

"She was a teacher, she died," Matteusz answered.

"Oh, boohoo. Teachers die all the time here. Mr Armitage died just the other week," Quill commented.

"Yes, but they do not come back all the time," Matteusz said, "Some of the younger ones, they are scared – shouldn't we look into this? For their sake?"

"What we should look into is expanding the school budget to afford a better counsellor."

"Be quiet, Quill. If Matteusz wants us to look for a ghost, then we'll look for a ghost," Charlie said. Matteusz smiled a little. Then Charlie had to go and add, "But, you know there's no such thing."

"No such thing? Does your Cabinet of Souls not hold ghosts?" Matteusz challenged, "There are all sorts of things in this universe to see – why not ghosts?"

"That's different, that's a Rhodian thing, but ghosts? Impossible."

There was a flash of lightning outside and an immediate roll of thunder which shook the school building to its core, and a shadow illuminated itself at the opposite end of the hallway to them. Matteusz jumped and grabbed Charlie's arm, but darkness fell within a second. There was silence for a second as the thunder echoed and died away again, replaced by the droning sound of the rainstorm.

"God, the two of you; you see one shadow and you piss yourselves," Quill said.

"You saw it as well?"

"Probably just the cleaner," she said.

"It's the middle of the night," Charlie pointed out.

"So? It's not up to me what hours Dorothea wants to make the cleaners work," she said.

"Come on," Matteusz said, pulling Charlie lightly by his hand for a second, but he ran off quite fast, leaving Quill and Charlie to follow. When Matteusz got to the other end of the hall, though, he saw nothing, no trace of the mysterious figure he had seen before. "She was here, I saw her."

"What's your fascination with this dead teacher, anyway?" Quill asked.

"I liked her, she was… a friend. When things were hard," Matteusz answered, somewhat cryptically, "Why don't we split up, cover more ground?"

"Suits me. What harm can a ghost do?" Quill shrugged, "The sooner you discover there's nothing to worry about the sooner I can go home and hate my life in peace."

"Fine, Quill's right," Charlie said, and the trio divided, each of them going a different way. Charlie took an immediate right as he wandered down the corridors, some of them covered with puddles from leaks in the roof caused by the lashing tropical storm they were in the midst of.

Charlie didn't know this teacher they were after. He had never met her. All he knew was that she was dead, and her name was on the enormous memorial wall of the deceased in the entrance of the Academy. He wondered if other schools on Earth had those cenotaph-like structures, had minutes of silence every month for those who had died in unusual, soon-forgotten circumstances. He didn't know how this one was supposed to have died, but she was hardly mentioned, whoever-she-was. There were just so many metaphorical bodies buried underneath that school now, the memory just washed over them. He always thought this ability to forget was a remarkable feat of humankind.

He froze, thoughts interrupted completely, when he thought he saw twitching, dark movement at the end of the corridor. At night, all these halls were identical, and they were all plenty creepy without the added worry of some phantom prowling up and down them.

"Is somebody there?" he called, wondering if it was Quill playing a cruel joke. But while she was cruel, he wasn't sure Quill knew what a joke was, or that she could be bothered doing something so petty. He walked slowly, cautiously, wondering if perhaps Matteusz's superstitions held some sort of logic in them, at least; if, maybe, there was the ghost of a long-lost teacher stalking the halls, haunting the place.

He jumped when he heard, from above, banging, scraping sounds, like there was something in the ceiling. He looked up to follow the sounds with his eyes, and then heard a particularly loud thud and stumbled.

"Come out now and stop playing around," he said, trying to conjure some sort of authority in his voice, but just hearing himself tremble. Another lightning bolt outside terrified Charlie out of his wits, and he was nearly ashamed of the way he was acting. He staggered away from the source of the noises above, towards the earlier disturbance he had seen in the shadows. Dimly, he could have sworn he saw something scurry away out of the corner of his eye as he backed away sightlessly and rounded the corner.

But when he did, what he saw nestled there in a store cupboard was far more mysterious and shocking than any noise or twitch he had quite possibly imagined in his own fear, fear begun probably by them splitting up. Whose idiotic suggestion had it been to split up? Oh, right, he remembered. His boyfriend's. What could Matteusz or Quill do to help now, though? There he was, in that corridor, looking at the ghostly image of that blue box that had rescued both he and Quill from being murdered by the Shadow Kin back on Rhodia.

And there it was again, this mirage, and Charlie could hardly believe that the TARDIS standing before him, softly humming with its ambient sounds, wasn't merely a projected phantasm of his own desperate imagination. He approached the TARDIS carefully; it had been months since they had seen the Doctor, since he had come and ridded them of the Shadow Kin temporarily, had given Ram his new leg, had put Quill and the group of them in charge of defending Coal Hill. He stepped towards it, holding up a hand, making to check that it was real, that maybe the Doctor had come to put an actual stop to the strange happenings at Coal Hill.

Charlie jumped again when the door was rammed open from the inside by a young man, tripping and stumbling over, his tweed blazer only half on, hanging off one arm, a banana held in his mouth, some sort of device in his free hand. He was halfway out of the TARDIS, this stranger, when he met Charlie's eyes and frowned at him. He pulled on the other sleeve off his jacket and then bit into the banana, right into the middle of it, with its skin still on.

"Eurgh!" he exclaimed. The odd device he was holding was on a leather strap around his neck, so with one hand he took the banana, and with the other he just spat what he had already bitten off into his palm and stared at it, "Why does this banana taste so disgusting? What's wrong with it?"

"You bit into it with the skin on," Charlie pointed out to the stranger.

"What? Oh, I suppose I did. Sorry. I'm distracted," he reached over and wiped his hand on the wall, and then dropped the partially-eaten banana into his pocket. Then he went back to studying Charlie, stepping all the way out of the TARDIS and shutting the door. He had unusual hair, this man, and didn't appear to have any eyebrows. Charlie could have sworn he still heard rattling from above, unnerving him. "Anyway, pleased to meet you, is this your school? Do you have the deed?" he held out his hand, the mushy one, for Charlie to shake.

"Uh…" he faltered, not knowing whether to touch him or not. The man removed his hand.

"Yes, good instincts, stranger-danger and all that. Don't talk to funny men who live in phone boxes," he said in an oddly approving way, then beckoned Charlie closer, "Listen, I don't know who you are, but I need a favour. I'm looking for a girl; blonde, about so high," he put a hand in the air about a foot below his own head, "Cute but with memorable eyes and a wonky thumb." His own eyes bored into Charlie's as he asked that, speaking very seriously. Then the noises from above reached a crescendo and, right in between Charlie and the stranger, a humanoid form came crashing out of the ceiling. The man didn't take his eyes from Charlie's once as this happened, and then said in the same serious tone of voice, "Never mind. I found her."

"I'm confused…"

"When are people not confused? Wouldn't it be a boring life if we all went around being not-confused all the time? We'd never ask any questions, or solve mysteries. That's what you teenagers do, isn't it? Solve mysteries? Drive around in a van? Do you have a dog?" he asked as he crouched down to help the girl on the floor to her feet.

This girl was odd, too; there she was, little more than five feet tall, a lopsided woollen scarf loosely around her neck, wearing a long and very fitted coat and carrying on her back what looked like a frankly enormous firearm of some description. A heap of junk, Charlie thought, but he didn't doubt the danger of it. Matteusz always hated guns, and Quill couldn't use them.

"What's this?" she asked when she had stood back up, looking at a mark on the side of her otherwise-unblemished black coat.

"He spat banana into his hand," Charlie said. No explanation came as to why she had been crawling through the vents in the first place.

"I did not!"

"You did what!?" the blonde girl hit the strange man in his arm.

"Ow! That's child abuse!"

"Child abuse!? How is it child abuse? I'm the child!"

"Yes, the child is the one who's abusing me."

"CHARLIE!" Yelling interrupted whatever this was. It was Matteusz; Charlie would know his voice anywhere. He didn't care about whoever these two weirdos were anymore, hardly had time to think about it, he just dropped everything and made a break for it, the two of them following right behind, with the weird device and the massive gun.

He saw another twitch in the shadows, a scurry of movement, but he ignored it completely, he was so focused on running back to Matteusz. Charlie nearly collided with Quill, also following Matteusz's shout.

"Who are these two?" Quill asked.

"Uh – the Doctor? I think?" Charlie said. But they found Matteusz again a second later, standing, horrified, in the doorway of a classroom. "Are you okay? Why did you shout?" Charlie went to check if he was alright.

"I saw it, I saw her," he answered, Charlie touching his face, "The ghost of Miss Oswald." Thunder clap outside. "Down there, I swear it."

"I believe you."

"You saw it?" the stranger, the Doctor (maybe?) asked.

"Who are you?" Matteusz asked.

"Look! Jenny!" the stranger pointed something out to the blonde girl. And there it was, the thing they had been hunting, the figure of a woman. Charlie vaguely recognised her from old photos hanging around in the school, but that distant apparition was definitely real. "It's right there – get it!"

"No! What if she needs help?" Matteusz asked, "Put that gun down!"

"It's fine," the girl, Jenny, said, raising the gun, then she added to the stranger, "You know this is the first time I've fired this thing since I had my cast taken off my thumb?"

"I'm sure you won't miss, just hurry up, it's coming this way!" And it was, she was, Matteusz protested.

"If it's a ghost, what's shooting it going to do?" Quill asked. But that question was shortly answered when this Jenny pulled the trigger on her huge gun and a six-inch, slightly-crooked, rusty spike shot out of the end of it, steam melting out of its metal seams, and the spike tore through the face of the ghost. That was when Charlie saw it wasn't a ghost, it wasn't even a person; its head shattered apart into electronics and wires, and it fell to its knees, and then to the floor. Charlie was stunned. Quill sighed.

"That wasn't another one of their robots, was it?"

"Depends on what you mean by 'they'," the stranger said, tapping the side of his nose.

"Look at that!" Jenny complained, "I just shot my girlfriend in the face! My girlfriend! I literally love her more than anyone in the universe and now I shot her in the face, broke it to pieces."

"Your stepmother, too. You know, Sigmund Freud would have a field day if I ever met him. Again. But I'd rather not, the last time I saw him he kept asking me questions about my father's penis," the stranger said.

"Sorry – did you say he's the Doctor?" Quill asked Charlie, who just shrugged.

"Hmm? Oh, yes, right, that's me, the Doctor," he said, beginning to walk off towards the dead woman on the floor. Matteusz was horrified and holding Charlie's hand tightly. "Wait – how is it you know me?"

"You shot her," Matteusz accused.

"You think I would shoot my own wife?" the Doctor asked.

"No, you'd get your daughter to do it for you," Jenny muttered. They all steadily approached the body, and the Doctor went right up and just kicked it. It didn't work. "Does that count as domestic violence?"

"I hope not. At least it's dead, blasted thing – must have got lost. You've got a very odd school here, haven't you? What's the matter with this storm? I've been detecting a lot of stuff with my thing here," he showed his device, which had a lot of flashing lights and spinning dishes, "My timey-wimey detector."

"Good god, he's an idiot," Quill said.

"Oi! I don't even know who any of you are! How do you know me?"

"You rescued us, Doctor, from Rhodia," Charlie said.

"Rhodia? I've never been to Rhodia. It's on my bucket list, though – I hear it's very beautiful. Not as beautiful as Gallifrey, of course-"

"Messaline is quite nice now it's been terra-formed," Jenny interrupted.

"But still."

"If that is not a ghost, or a person, then what is it?" Matteusz asked.

"A dreadful thing, really, called a spoonhead," the Doctor explained, "It's a discreet, mobile server. They wander around and suck out peoples'… souls, in a way, and upload them into a computer to help feed the Great Intelligence. I stopped them a while back, but this one must have gotten lost, strayed into one of your rifts. Understandable it decided to wear Clara's face, it could be the one who downloaded her, for all we know." That explained the recent issues with the school Wi-Fi, Charlie mused.

"You know Miss Oswald?" Matteusz asked. The Doctor and Jenny exchanged a look with one another.

"Miss Oswald?" Jenny questioned, like she was figuring something out, "…What school is this?"

"Coal Hill Academy – how do you not know that? You're the one who dumped us here. Though it was a different you, I suppose you've regenerated," Quill remarked coldly

"Regenerated?" the Doctor asked, "Who did you meet? What did he look like?"

"Much older. Wiry. Scottish."

"Ah," said the Doctor.

"Oh," said Jenny.

"That explains it," they said together.

"Explains what? I am confused," Matteusz said, Charlie holding his arm.

"Betaverse, I suppose… we're from a parallel universe," the Doctor answered, "Well, they're not completely parallel, they more sort of… zig-zag. A lot of overlap. We get the wires crossed constantly. We were only chasing the spoonhead. This is Jenny, my daughter. Very proud of her and her keen aim, though I hate guns."

"Let it go, I don't shoot to kill. Not at anything that's actually alive," she said, "You know that."

"But you know Miss Oswald?" Matteusz continued, "Who is dead? Did she not have a stroke?"

"A stroke? I'm sure she's had plenty of strokes, usually from weirdos, when she's drunk," the Doctor said, looking at Jenny like she should find that funny.

"Drunk weirdos? Are you talking about yourself, dad?" she asked. His smile faded. Jenny sighed. "Look, it's complicated, Clara – your Clara – she used to travel with the Doctor." None of them had known that. Had any of their circle even known that? One of the esteemed Doctor's companions, teaching at Coal Hill? "She died in a… you know, it's a very odd way, and I found an ex-girlfriend-eighteen-year-old-Viking to ask her about it just recently, and it still didn't make much sense. Something to do with a raven? And a chrono lock? I don't know. She's not even dead."

"She's definitely dead," the Doctor said, "Your one is."

"She's a vampire."

"That counts as being dead. But – wait – you said Rhodia?"

"Quill and I," Charlie explained.

"Quill? Quill!? You're a quill and you're calling yourself Quill? That would be like me coming to a school and calling myself 'Mr Time Lord,'" he scoffed.

"Wouldn't surprise me, you seem a bit slow," she said.

"Why are you not living on Rhodia? Why are you here?"

"The same reason you're not living on Gallifrey," Quill said, "Rhodia is gone. All the Quill, and all the Rhodians, wiped out by the Shadow Kin. But you already mostly dealt with that. The other one."

"We call him 'Old Twelvey,'" Jenny said.

"My condolences for what happened to Rhodia," said the Doctor seriously.

"You saved us, just us. I'm the prince of the Rhodia," Charlie said.

"Prince, really? Monarchies are a flawed system of government with only the interests of the upper-classes at heart," Jenny said, and the Doctor gave her a confused look, and she added quietly, "…Mum says…" He rolled his eyes.

"You mean Miss Oswald?" Matteusz asked.

"No! My real mum, the Doctor. A different one. It's weird," she said.

"Can't stand that woman."

"You'll turn into her one day," Jenny quipped.

"Are we all caught up with the explanations now? Because I had a very fun evening planned of trying to pretend the sounds of Charlie and his boyfriend coming from upstairs don't exist," Quill said. Matteusz shifted guiltily, but Charlie gave Quill a dark look.

"Aren't the Rhodians and the Quill at war?" the Doctor asked.

"They were. Andra'ath was their most celebrated terrorist-"

"Freedom fighter," Quill interrupted, "He stuck an Arn in my head."

"An Arn? That's archaic, taking away somebody's free will," the Doctor said.

"What's an Arn?" Jenny asked.

"A tiny creature that sits on my brain and kills me if I don't protect the prince here," Quill said resentfully, "But I can't use any guns or weapons to defend him, or it also kills me. It's a wonderful life of slavery."

"It's not slavery, it's-"

"Shh," Jenny cut them off, "I heard something." They all silenced. She raised her huge gun again.

"I thought the Doctor hates guns?" Quill asked.

"Yes, well… there's some arguments I'll never win with her."

"Don't be mean to Emmett," Jenny whispered. They all followed her gaze to the opposite end of the hall, the rain still pummelling the roof above, still dropping down through the cracks and making puddles in front of the lockers.

And then Charlie saw what he'd been seeing all evening, the same tiny, scurrying shadow; it whooshed past far ahead, small and fast and making odd noises. Jenny lowered her gun, leaving it hanging off her back by its strap, and then reached into a bag she had across her shoulder. She reached very deeply into this bag, in fact, all the way down to her shoulder, and then pulled out a huge walking stick.

"What's that?" Quill asked.

"It's my vampire-bashing cane," she said, then to the Doctor, "Killed your wife once."

"Everything's killed my wife once." She brandished it in her hands, the bat-shaped headstock making a very painful looking bludgeoning instrument. All five of them crept down the halls towards whatever it had been, though Charlie assumed it wasn't much of anything. Not compared to what they usually found in Coal Hill.

And then something flew at them – or, jumped at them – something furry – or, possibly feathery? Charlie couldn't see, but it came right for Jenny, who was at the front of the group. And then, in an instant, it was dead. She swung that cane at it and smacked it down to the floor, and the dark mass splatted, then the Doctor pulled a large torch out of his pocket. When he switched it on, what he illuminated was wholly horrifying.

"What is that?" Jenny asked. He reached down to touch it.

"Oh, don't do that, you'll catch something," Quill remarked, but he ignored her, he picked it up by its wing. Because it had wings. Even though the rest of it looked like a rat. It had the body of a rat, the tail of a rat, and then wings like a pigeon, and even more shockingly its mouth morphed into a beak halfway down its face. The Doctor dropped it. "Nothing that unusual."

"Really?"

"We had a dragon last month."

"A dragon!? Blimey. What I wouldn't have given to have seen a dragon. I slew a dragon once. You know St George? That's me. Kidnapped Rose a long time ago because it thought her hair was gold," he rolled his eyes and wiped his hand on his trousers. Then spotted something else on the wall. "What's that?" He walked over and squinted at it.

"Just a missing poster," Matteusz said.

"Just a missing poster?" the Doctor frowned, taking it down from the wall where it had been blue-tacked. "For someone from your school? You don't sound very bothered about that. Don't any of you know this… Josh Hart?" he read the name from the poster.

"Lots of people go missing at Coal Hill, it's hardly news. Listen, Doctor, I don't mean to sound rude – or maybe I do, I can't say I care – but isn't it about time you left now? You've killed your spork-face-"

"Spoonhead," he corrected. Quill looked sick to death of him.

"Whatever it is. It's dead now. So isn't this your cue to clear off?" she crossed her arms.

"If you want me to. I suppose so," he glanced between their faces for a moment.

"I still have some questions about-" Matteusz began.

"No, no. The Quill is right. I suppose if this is New Rhodia, or something, I'm not one to argue. The pair of you have fun finding your feet again. Come along, Jenny, we're leaving," he declared, "Probably somewhere more exciting to go, anyway, rather than this poxy school." And so the Doctor swept away, with Jenny at his heels, though she seemed perplexed.

"But, but Doctor – you never said – she's a vampire?" Matteusz continued to ask questions about Clara Oswald.

"Sorry," Jenny mouthed at him as she left, shrugging. And then the two of them disappeared around the corner, and out of their lives.

"I don't get it," she asked as Eleven held the door back onto the TARDIS open for her, which still sat in its lonely store cupboard, her ducking under his arm, "Why did we just leave? That thing was half-rat half-pigeon. Didn't you see it?" He didn't answer, went towards the computer on the console. "Dad?"

"We're not leaving, not for long," he said, "There's something funny about that place." Jenny shut the door behind them. The console room was empty for now, thankfully.

"I think I have to ring Ravenwood and say sorry for shooting her in the face…"

"Oh, feel free. But I have an idea. All we need is some jumpsuits and your spaceship."

"I'm not wearing a jumpsuit. I have a look I'm going for," she said, "It's a kind of a combination of Lara Croft and the main one from Underworld."

"Underworld? You've been watching films now?"

"It's about vampires and Clara fancies the girl in it," Jenny said.

"Name one girl Clara doesn't fancy," he muttered, and Jenny paused, and thought about this, and realised she could not name one girl Clara didn't fancy. So she changed the subject.

"Anyway, I've got my coat. This coat can't be compromised, alright? I went through a lot of trouble to get it."

"You're as bad as your ex-husband. Speaking of which, where is Jack?"

"I don't know, haven't seen him since he went swanning off after hearing Oswin say something about Kent the other night. I was distracted," Jenny shrugged.

"Fine, no jumpsuits. But your spaceship isn't a debate."

"You can have the spaceship, but where are you going to park it?"

"Oh, I have a very good idea about that, Jenny, don't you worry…"