Authors notes: Chapter updated 22/June/2020. This chapter is vastly different from the original one I wrote.

Updated 24/August/2022

Chapter 71

Athena Orphanage of Lost Children

Raven woke in her bed the next morning and there was still no sign of the Doctor. Did he never sleep? She got up, and planned what she was going to do. Firstly, she thought, she needed some food, her stomach was growling and she hadn't had anything since yesterday when Russel gave her fries.

Russel...

She forced her mind back onto more important matters.

Unfortunately, the pub downstairs wasn't open to provide food, which suited Raven just fine. She'd seen the slop that they cooked. It was hardly edible. The bartender wasn't any help either. He wouldn't even sell her a packet of peanuts or even bags of those potato chip things the Doctor had called 'crisps'.

With nothing to eat or drink Raven went to the only place where she knew she could get some needed sustenance. The local coffee shop.

After ordering a cup of tea and a small cake, and subsequently devouring the cake, Raven sat and peered at her tea cup as she planned her next move to investigate the creature. Her mind was blank. The Doctor was the one always dreaming up the plans, Raven just tagged along against her better judgement. What would the Doctor do?

Irritate her.

Well, her blank brain was already doing that. What next?

Go back to the forest to investigate. But she had no tools, no Sonic Screwdriver or anything like that. There were the gadgets from the Doctors case, but she hadn't a hope in hell in understanding how any of those things worked.

What did Raven have? Her powers. But they were out. What else could she do?

I can sense things. Raven thought. I can meditate in the forest and reach out and look for something. Yes, that sounded like a good plan, to start with, at least.

"Good morning, Raven." She was snapped out of her thought process by… Russel? Oh god, he comes in here every morning and she'd forgotten. Despite her displeasure at the appearance of the thing causing her hormones to fly out of control she found herself saying.

"Good morning, Russel." But she tried to make it sound disinterested.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Russel asked, sitting opposite her. She didn't answer, she was staring at her tea cup. She glanced up into his big, brown eyes briefly before returning her gaze to her cup. "I've been thinking about that thing we found in the forest." He said, "Does your Dad know anything about it?"

"I…" Raven began, "I think he's investigating it. He does things like that. Investigate the strange and unusual."

"On his own?"

"No, he usually drags me along." Raven now voiced something that had been playing on her mind. "He didn't show up back at the room last night." She had to admit, she was a little worried about him. The Doctor could look after himself, he'd been around for over nine-hundred years after all. But still...

"Do you want to call the police?" Russel asked.

"Oh yeah, and tell them what?" Raven asked, "That there is an invisible monster in the forest?"

"You can at least tell them he's missing. You don't have to wait twenty four hours, that's just stuff from the movies." Raven considered. But no, the police would only get themselves hurt if they found the monster.

"The police will only complicate stuff." She said.

"Complicate?"

"Yes." Raven said, finishing her tea, "I'm going back to the forest to find the creature." She rose from the table.

"Are you nuts?" Russel said rising to meet her. "What can you do against it?"

"I'll be fine." Raven dismissed with her voice still a cool, low rasp.

"I'm coming with you."

"That won't be necessary." Raven tried to dismiss him.

"Try and stop me." He argued back. God, he was so stubborn!

"I could." Raven said in a low, threatening voice. It would be so easy. Pass Russel into another dimension, freeze him, put him under a spell, make him fall asleep, forget everything. But again, it all came down to her powers. Without them, she couldn't make him do anything.

"Do it then." He challenged. He was serious about coming with her.

Your own little companion.

Shut up! At least I am not so stubborn.

"Fine." Raven said giving up. "But listen to me." She said standing barely a few inches apart, staring up at him with a challenging look. "I am in charge. Got it?"

"I'm too terrified to challenge you." He said with a grin.

Raven shut her eyes and groaned.

BOYS!

The two teens walked for hours in the overcast weather, back towards the Devils Hump, and the forest. Raven had a determined look to her face, mostly because of the awkwardness of the situation, because they weren't talking. Why wouldn't Russel say something?

STOP THINKING ABOUT BOYS FOR TWO MINUTES, GOD! She screamed into her mind. She could understand now why romance novels sounded so gushy and mushy. This 'love', this 'infatuation', this 'infection' changed the way your brain thought, and she didn't like it. If it wasn't for the fact she was certain Russel was as magical as a beached trout she'd suspect he'd cast some sort of spell on her.

"Raven's scar forest." Russel suddenly said.

"Huh?"

"Raven's scar forest." He repeated, "That's what the forest is called." Raven stopped and stared at him as if his words were intruding on her mind. He shrugged, "Just thought you'd be interested."

"Well, I'm not!" She insisted flatly.

"Worried about your dad?" Russel asked when Raven moved off again.

"Yeah, sure, something like that." Raven couldn't stand this fight she was having with her mind. She should tell Russel to go away, she could be horrid to him, nasty, insulting. But her brain refused to engage her mouth to say it. "I'll beat this demon." Raven said to herself, "I will control this demon."

"Did you say something?" he asked her.

"Nothing."

Upon entering the forest both Raven and Russel followed a dirt path, but did so slowly, and warily, listening out for any creature.

It would help if the forest was silent, but the place was filled with the gentle rustle of trees, the chirping of irritating birds and the scurrying of small animals.

How long had they been walking for, practically holding their breath, Raven could not say. But Raven couldn't sense any creature within this forest, at least, nothing beyond the common critters that would usually crawl around a forest. Perhaps the creature couldn't be sensed, that was possible, if it never made a disturbance in the ether then Raven would never be able to sense it. Or maybe the creature could change size or something and was so small that it could blend in with the psychic image of other critters.

But there was something, something she wasn't able to put her finger on. There was a subtle power here.

Strange, she felt a similar power from the Devils Hump and the old Church. Perhaps it was to do with this Azal demon Russel had told her about. When a powerful psychic force was killed it can leave a scar. A kind of psychic wound in the ether. The church was understandable, that was apparently where Azal was killed. But the Devils Hump and Ravens scar forest? Who or what was killed there?

There was also no sign, nor hair of the Doctor.

Russel nudged Raven and broke her train of thought. She turned to stare daggers at him, then at the thing in his hand he was holding out to her, almost invading her personal space. A bottle of water, there was another bottle half poking out of his hoodie pocket. She was feeling a little thirsty, so she gently took the bottle, unscrewed the cap and drank some of it down. She wasn't worried that it might contained something, if it did then Raven would make Russel pay, here and now, without a second thought. She replaced the cap and slipped the bottle into her hoodie pocket.

After a little more manual searching, finally, Raven decided to attack this more from the spiritual angle. She found a patch of dry ground and sat down and adopted the lotus meditation position.

"What are you doing?" Russel asked.

"I'm going to search the ether." Maybe if she was within the ether she'd spot it better.

Russel laughed, "You really believe in this stuff, don't you." He stated mockingly as he adopted the same lotus position as she did, just opposite her. Raven wasn't insulted, it was understandable, he was a sceptic. Anyway, she had the power to prove it whenever she pleased.

"Yes, I do." She said at last as she raised her arms and looped her thumb and fore fingers. With her eyes closed she sensed Russel's confusion, he tilted his head to one side before raising his own arms to mirror hers. After a few seconds his arms began to tire and sag and he dropped them.

Silently, Raven chuckled, there was something adorable about his attempts to mirror her. Instead he sat with his hands on his knees and his breathing became calm and shallow.

Raven found her centre and began to mutter her chimes.

"Azarath, Metrion, Zynthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zynthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zynthos."

"OOHHHMmm…" Russel went in a mock tone, like a Tibetan monk, "Oooohhhmmm…"

"Don't do that." Raven said in a calm, relaxed voice. Russel chuckled, straightened his back and, to Ravens amazement, he'd found his centre too.

As a picture was painted in Ravens mind she could see Russel's spiritual form appear in the ether with her. This was kind of bizarre, Russel had no powers, at all, he was totally normal, as far as she could tell. His presence, that of a shimmering, white outline of his true form in the lotus position reflected how little power came from him. Compared to Ravens psychic presence it was tiny, and unlike Raven, Russel's avatar's eyes remained closed, and it was rooted to where he was, while Raven could move around within the ether.

Curious of the boy, Raven decided to inspect him closely. Again, no hints of any power. He looked ordinary, but again she could sense something about his brain, his mind, it wasn't quite wired up the way it should be, perhaps this is why he had a presence in the ether. Perhaps the wiring of his brain meant his mind chakra, at least, was active. That would make sense.

But then Raven sensed something else about the boy. Something she didn't sense before. She could detect the recently ripped and repaired tissue from yesterday, the ones she'd healed. But she could sense more damage. Old wounds and scarred tissue, they weren't recent, they felt quite old and they were on his back, where she'd last seen that red mark yesterday while he'd been unconscious. Russels back was alight with old wounds. Raven wanted to probe further, but couldn't see under his avatars clothes.

Gently, she placed her hand on his shoulders and sent soothing energy into them. Russel's body relaxed further and his outline became a few hues brighter.

With that sorted Raven spiritually left Russel and went looking for anything unusual.

There were swirling colours of purple and red all around her, like a slowly shifting, faded nebula. Evidence of a psychic scar. Whatever had died here it didn't die in a pleasant way, Raven could sense that at least. Upon looking further Raven found something interesting.

It was a shape, a building, a rather large building that was vastly overgrown with plants and not very far away. Buildings and objects can appear in the ether too, if they were the centre of some psychic disturbance. The TARDIS would also have a strong presence, it created disturbances all the time when it materialised. That building she was looking at was the next place to investigate.

Instantly Raven let her consciousness drift back into her head. Her eyes snapped open, determined.

Russel was so relaxed, she almost didn't want to wake him. He wasn't asleep, he was just deep in meditation, and he was surprisingly good at it. You didn't need to be psychic to feel the benefits of meditation. It could help organise and focus the mind, and it had positive mental health benefits. Or so the Doctor claimed.

"Come on." Raven said without thinking, Damn, I could've gotten rid of him by walking away, stupid. She cringed at her own stupidity.

"Found something?" Russel asked with the smirk of the sceptic.

Yeah, my foot will find your frickin' face if you don't wipe that smirk off of it! Raven thought. "Yes." she said simply instead.

As they followed the path and direction Raven suggested they came to a large, old wrought iron gate. A moss covered brick wall stretched out at either side of the gate. An old, filthy sign declared it to be the Athena Orphanage of Lost Children.

"I know someone who came from here." Russel said. Raven suspected he meant Antonia. "Place shut down years ago."

"Why." Raven asked.

"Donno, I was a little kid, so about six odd years ago." Russel said.

Raven held the gates pad lock in her hand. She could break it easily, but refrained from doing it.

"You don't want to go in there, do you?" Russel asked, looking a little unsure.

"Yes." Raven answered matter-of-factly as she looked around. There was nothing on the wall to stop someone climbing over. She leapt up at the wall and tried to get a purchase, but gravity pulled her back down. God she was bad at this.

She nearly flinched as Russel ran at the wall, leapt up, his momentum carried him far enough up for him to grab the top and haul himself onto the wall. He sat on it, with his legs either side of the wall like he was riding a horse.

He then reached down for her to take his hand. Which she did, and he hauled her up onto the wall where she jumped down into the thick weeds, with Russel following.

There it was, the old building. The grounds had overgrown with weeds, a children's swing set and slide was left unattended and slowly rusting. The building itself looked as dilapidated as Raven had imagined. There were thin metal bars going up across the lower floor windows, though they looked more like fancy decorations than anything practical, but it did give the place the air of being more a prison. Windows were smashed in, and nature was slowly reclaiming this site of human activity.

The abandoned building looked utterly creepy, in a beautiful kind of way. Raven loved it.

The two teens approached the door moving through the thick weeds. Raven gently took the door-knob and tried to turn it, but it wouldn't budge. She then nearly jumped out of her skin, and she swiped at Russel's hand as he'd just pressed the doorbell, and it still worked.

God, boys can be so stupid!

After a few minutes of silence where no one came to the door Raven went over to the windows and looked around to find any entrance they could climb through.

The sound of a door opening caught her attention and she spun back to the main door to see Russel pushing it open.

"How did you do that?" Raven asked, amazement, but also accusation in her voice.

"You were turning the door knob the wrong way." Russel explained with a shrug as he walked in.

Raven followed, feeling a little foolish. She was certain she'd turned the knob the correct way. Taking the doorknob she tried to twist it clockwise, it wouldn't budge, then anti-clockwise. It turned and the latch in the door retracted. She had, indeed, been turning it the wrong way.

Stupid door. She silently insulted it.

Slowly, she followed Russel into the darkness and the door closed on them both.

Raven didn't know what to expect as the two teens entered the orphanage. The place was abandoned, but it wasn't entirely gutted. The one thing she could describe it as was dusty and cobwebbed. The floor was tiled and the dust was so thick they left feet prints as they walked. There was a carpeted staircase to one side and there was a clear smell of musty mould as it ate its way through some fabric somewhere.

Raven tried a nearby light switch, but no lights came on. But the door bell had worked? Perhaps a circuit had blown and the door bell was just on a different circuit.

Russel went up to the stair banister and blew on it. A mistake, as the dust became a cloud that enveloped him sending him into a coughing fit. Then began a sneezing fit as he tried to control his nose.

There was only one source of light, a window on the second story which bounced back and down the staircase. As her eyes adjusted to the light only now could she see damp wallpaper, which might explain the smell.

"To think, about ten years ago this place would've been bustling with kids." Russel said once his sneezing stopped, but now he was contending with a stuffy nose.

"I'm trying not to." Raven still hated kids.

"Why did you drag us to this place?" Russel sounded a little warily through his stuffy nose.

"Why, scared?" Raven mocked coldly.

"It reminds me of the mansion from the Resident Evil one remake." He'd said.

"The what?"

"It's a video game." Russel explained, "survival horror, you'd like it."

"I'm sure I would." Raven said, disinterested.

"I hope we don't bump into any zombies. They always freak me out." Russel said, resting his hand on a door knob near the stairs.

"Hardly likely." Raven said, hoping this wasn't one of those one in a million times the impossible became truth.

"It's got to be one of my worst nightmares." Russel said, "Being stuck in a creepy place with a load of zombies. I hate zombies, they're like unstoppable corpses who mindlessly wander around looking for people to bite and infect so they become like them."

Raven was too busy trying to sense everything in this house, but Russel's comment did catch her attention.

"Zombies aren't real." Raven said, "The only zombies are those who play video games." Russel laughed.

"Ouch!" He said in mock hurt. "What freaks you out, then?"

Cybermen! Raven was going to say, Unstoppable Cyborg creatures, who mindlessly wander the galaxy looking for people to turn into beings like them. Soulless, and dead. But settled on, "Space Zombies."

"Space zombies?" Russel laughed again thinking it was a joke.

"Space zombies." Raven confirmed. Russel smiled before turning the knob of the door he'd been standing next to.

"I tell a lie, this might be my nightmare." Russel said ominously. Raven came towards him and looked into the room. It was full of cardboard boxes stacked high to the rafters with papers. "If this was mountains and mountains of maths homework." Russel completed.

Raven looked at him and shook her head.

"You never said why you wanted to come here." Russel asked. He stopped, he suddenly looked like a wary animal smelling something.

"What's wrong?" Raven asked, did he find something?

"Nothing" Russel said, but began moving like he was expecting some kind of trap, or something. He looked at her in a way Raven didn't understand as he walked past her.

Raven took a moment to just drink in the room. It was old, it was gothic, but it had an unnerving beauty behind it. Rather like looking at a rusting wreckage of a train. It was difficult to put it into words.

"I expect you must like it here, then." Russel suddenly said.

"Yeah," Raven said, "what of it?"

"Nothing. Just wondered what you see in it." Russel asked.

"I see..." Raven nearly said 'beauty', but she didn't want to use such a mushy word. "I see... sadness. I see a mood. This place makes me feel something."

"Uneasiness, in my case." Russel said. "They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You see beauty where others see none. That's one of the things I admire about the goth culture. You look at the creepy and macabre and rather than feel revulsion, you feel a kinship with it. You feel you don't belong, and you feel neither do you."

Raven looked at him and wondered if he was reading her thoughts. "Yes." She said a little suspiciously.

"I'm expecting Cousin It, or Lurch to come out to greet us." Russel said.

"Who?"

"Lurch r Cousin It. Have you ever seen the Adams Family?" He asked.

"The what?"

"The Adams Family. You know." He began to sing.

"They're creepy and they're kookie,

"Mysterious and spooky,

"They're all together ookiy.

"The Adam's family."

He clicked his fingers twice. Raven looked at him like he was insane. "They're a family of gothic like people who live in a spooky mansion. Despite being creepy and spooky, they are the nicest people you'd ever meet. Just don't have their cooking. It'd probably eat you alive." He laughed. "You'd actually fit right in with them." He said without malice with a playful smirk.

Raven looked at him and shook her head. He had either tried to insult her, -which she didn't think,- or perhaps charm her. She was determined he would get neither rise out of her, though there was something enduring about him that stopped her breaking his knee-caps.

There was nothing in the opposite room, except for some empty, glass cabinets. On the walls were old, children's crayon drawings, all crude, all showing childish things like sunshine, rainbows, bunnies, Santa Claus. There was one that caught Ravens eye. It was signed as 'Antonia Lethwidge' and Raven wondered if it was her Antonia from the village. It showed a crudely drawn girl, probably Antonia herself, along with a larger woman and man, the man had glasses with the words Mum and Dad scrawled underneath. There was also a larger boy, not an adult, but not a child, labelled as 'brother' and another girl, labelled as 'sister.' Behind this happy family there was a tree, and despite the low light Raven could see something drawn as if to hang from the tree. It was labelled as a pinata. But if Raven didn't know better, she'd swear it looked like a fifth person dangling from the tree by his neck, another young boy.

Raven turned and saw Russel staring at her with a wary look she didn't really like. Like he thought she was a danger to him. Or maybe he was looking at the board with all the pictures and something put him on edge.

Russel opened another door, it was pitch dark and he disappeared inside. There was a crash as something fell over. Raven quickly dashed to the door, flung it open and entered, from what scraps of light she could see from the open door, a kitchen area.

"Russel?" Raven called, and she reached out with her mind. There was a pile of broken plates on the floor. Russel was crouching down behind a counter, what was he doing?

An echoing, croaking noise came from his mouth, but it echoed around the kitchen like it was coming from everywhere. The croaking sounded creepy and ghostly. He was trying to scare her.

"Oh no, I'm so scared without someone to protect me." Raven shook her head as she approached Russel's hiding place. When she got near enough he did what she was expecting. He jumped up at her and shouted 'boo!' Raven didn't react, she looked bored.

"Is this the part where I'm supposed to feel terror?" She asked.

"You could look a little surprised." Russel said, cocking his head to one side. His mouth straightened, clearly surprised by Ravens apparent nerves of steel.

She gave him a half-hearted "Argh!"

"Now you're just patronising me." Russel said back to her. She was going to ask if he was hurt since those pots crashed on top of him, but he acted okay. Since Russel wanted to play games Raven was tempted to cast an illusion to scare him. She made a mental note to get back at him.

Their eyes began to adjust. "You look kind of pretty in the dark." He'd said.

Raven felt flattered by that, but considering they could barely see, Raven began to wonder if it was a joke of some sort, at her expense. Her mind couldn't think of a witty response so just settled for rolling her eyes.

It took them a while to find the door and leave the kitchen. From there the only other place to go was up the stairs. They creaked underfoot as they climbed them one at a time, but also made a dull thudding as their feet impacted the dusty carpet.

They found a long corridor with rooms branching off either side. The rooms had all been gutted, though some things had been left behind, like beds, some pencils, old toys and drawings. A little along the corridor, Russel ducked into one room and Raven entered the opposite. "What am I looking for?" He called out to her.

"Anything unusual." Raven said to him.

"Very specific." Ravens frown straightened a little, just a little.

In the room Raven was in everything was decorated with pink. It was clearly a little girls bedroom. Old dolls were left disorganised all over the place, some blocks and other toys were broken and discarded. There were drawings on the wall, held in by pins. All by 'Antonia', ages 8 to 12 were scrawled on each one. All showed a perfect, family scene. A mother, a father, a girl and a teenage boy and girl with a lot of spots. There were more drawings underneath them. Pushing the top ones up revealed even more. But this time there was a sixth person in the pictures. A boy. Why was he absent from all the others? The next few hidden under the wall of drawings were a little disturbing. It looked like someone climbing out of another's head, crawling out of their ear. Another showed the fifth member of the family hanging from a tree with a rope around the neck, or with a million daggers stabbed into the back. That drawing also had multiple stab marks as Antonia had stabbed the paper with her pencil.

Okay, a little too much for Raven's liking. This might not be the same 'Antonia' she knew. There could be more than one at an orphanage. Antonia wasn't an uncommon name, right?

As Raven moved a box she nearly jumped as a very fast something moved a few inches, then stopped, and waited. It was a spider. Big and with long legs, a classical house spider. As carefully as she could Raven reached out and picked up the poor thing. It was probably scared of her. It remained calm as she stood with it in her hands.

"I haven't found anything." Russel said coming into the room. He froze when he saw the spider on her hands. She looked down at it then up at Russel.

"What?" She asked.

"I… I don't do well with spiders." Russel revealed.

"Really?" A cruel smirk playing across her lips. "It won't hurt you." Raven held the spider out to him.

"Raven don't." Russel said sternly, or tried to, a smile was cracking at the edges of his mouth while his eyes remained wide with terror.

"It's more scared of you." And she began to bring the spider too him. Russel backed away as Raven advanced. Its eight hairy legs spread as if to jump at him.

"No, I mean it, I mean it." Russel retreated back into the corridor and further along it. "No, no, Raven stop."

"Look at it, you little baby." Raven smirked evilly as she chased and teased him. "It's only a spider."

The pair froze when they heard creaking coming from the floorboards below. Before anything else could be said the floor gave way beneath Russel and the darkness swallowed him whole. Raven discarded the spider and ran for the hole that disappeared into nothing but darkness. Russel screamed, he was in utter terror.

Without hesitation Raven jumped down after him. He'd crashed through two floors and ended up in a basement. A pile of papers broken Raven's fall and kicked up more dust. As she got up Raven saw Russel on his back covered in dust and cobwebs, and she could tell he was uninjured. But his face was a mask of utter horror because he'd fallen into a large web, perhaps it was a nest, and spiders were now crawling all over him. Some were of a pretty impressive size, but as much as Raven was amazed, Russel was utterly terrified. She wanted to take immense pleasure from this, but Russel had gone so pale with terror that she couldn't find any heart to enjoy it.

"They won't hurt you." Raven said, reaching out to grab his arm. "Close your eyes and I'll pull you out."

"I can't," Russel said, his muscles had locked up.

"Shut your eyes, and let me guide you." He did so, and Raven began pushing and shoeing the spiders away with her hands. One tried to crawl across Russel's face. But she plucked it from him and tossed it aside. "Come on." Raven said and she gently persuaded Russel to sit up, his eyes still shut, and she guided him out of the nest. He slipped, and she caught him as he regained his footing, he was trembling, he was terrified.

"Thank you." He said, as colour began to come back to his face.

"Don't mention it." Raven thought it was rather pathetic to be scared of spiders, but something about this gave comfort to Ravens mind. Something about Russels aura had been off from the start. It suggested he wasn't real. But his fear shattered that image of 'perfection' Raven had of him, it seemed to make him more human in her eyes. It was also kind of strangely adorable how this grown boy could be so scared of something so small and harmless.

Only now did Raven take in where they were. Another room stacked to the rafters with cardboard boxes full of papers. Thank goodness it was, or else Russel might have seriously hurt himself, maybe even died. But he didn't, he's safe. Raven made Russel sit down on a box to regain his composure.

But it was Raven's turn to freeze in fear. She felt something. Something had manifested not too far away. It was just outside, and it was coming slowly up the road. It passed through the gate, Raven heard a distant clang on the edge of her hearing as whatever it was rammed its way through the gate as if walking through cobwebs. It was coming up the steps to the main entrance.

"What's wrong?" Russel asked, since he'd noticed her grey skin starting to turn shades paler. She shushed him as she heard the main door open, and something large and heavy footed stepped inside, the door closing after it. Its heavy foot falls echoing around in the darkness.

Whatever it was, it was now in here.

With them.

To Be Continued...

Authors notes: The story is now going in a completely new direction from the old version. Things are going to change and the arc is now going to end differently from how it did originally, so please bare with me on this as I slowly updated and expand the arc. This chapter was updated on 22/June/2020. If the next chapter doesn't start with an authors note suggesting it hasn't been updated since 22/June/2020, then please bare with me while I continue to update the story.

Updated 24/August/2022: Added the part where Raven describes why she's a goth.