by Cavan Scott
The Shining Man didn’t say anything, but he did turn, the light from his torches dazzling her. Sammy threw up a hand. ‘Hey. Cut it out. Turn those things off.’
The figure tilted its strangely elongated head, and Sammy’s words died in her throat. The light wasn’t streaming from torches, but from wide blazing eyes. The thing in front of her had no nose, no ears, no features at all. That had to be a mask. Yes, that’s what it was, just better than the cheap Halloween tat they sold at Betterworths.
All the same, Sammy took a step back as a slit appeared across the void of a face. The slit opened to become a gaping mouth that shined bright in the darkness.
Sammy stumbled, and then screamed as the light washed over her, blotting out everything else, burning her skin.
And then the Shining Man closed its eyes and ragged mouth, and the face was smooth once again.
The figure disappeared, flickering out of view.
Curtains twitched in number fifteen, one of Sammy’s neighbours looking out.
They’d heard something. Had it been a scream? No. The street was empty. It must have been a cat.
Back in her house, Sammy’s mobile rang where she had left it on the bookcase. Noah ran down the stairs and picked it up. It was Polly, his Mum’s friend.
‘No, she’s not here,’ he told the woman. ‘She said she had to pop out.’
He opened the door and looked outside, but there was no sign of his mum.
Sammy Holland had disappeared.
Chapter 2
Stormy Weather
Bill’s life was mad. One hundred per cent, no messing about, certifiably mad.
It hadn’t always been like this. Not until she got a job at the university. Serving chips in the canteen. Sounded simple enough.
Then she started sneaking into the lecture halls, listening to what the professors had to say. One soon became her favourite, but he wasn’t a professor. He was a doctor. The Doctor.
No one knew what subject he was supposed to be teaching. Some said it was physics. Others claimed it was history. But Bill didn’t care. Each lecture was different, covering everything under the sun. The Doctor taught art, and literature, and action figures, and music. He talked about comics, and philosophy, and computing, and architecture, and knitting, and engineering, and … stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. But he never made any of it seem trivial. Sitting in his lecture hall, listening to him speak, you couldn’t help but be swept along by his words, by his enthusiasm. To the Doctor, a bag of jelly babies was just as fascinating as quantum mechanics. Everything was connected. Everything was important.
Then he had made her an offer. Sitting behind his desk in his office.
Actually, it was more of an ultimatum.
‘If you ever get less than a First, it’s over …’
She hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, but he continued anyway.
‘A First. Every time. Or I stop immediately.’
‘Stop what?’ she’d asked, and then he’d said it. Four magic words.
‘Being your personal tutor.’
It was still hard to believe. Bill Potts, server of chips, had her own personal tutor, someone who believed in her enough to share the secrets of the universe.
Literally.
Because her personal tutor turned out to be an alien with a time machine in his study. A time machine that looked like a police box on the outside and was bigger on the inside. A time machine that could go anywhere in history, if it wanted to. Bill had been to the future. She’d been to the past. She’d run from killer robots and eaten alien fish. But none of that was the mad bit.
The mad bit was how natural it all felt. How right.
Even standing here, in an impossible time machine owned by a 2,000-year-old nutter, Bill felt like she belonged. Like she was safe.
That was, of course, until the TARDIS was hit by a storm. Not outside. Oh no. That would be too normal for the Doctor. Too boring. No, this storm hit inside.
It came without warning. The Doctor was working at the console as usual. He was tall and thin, with a shock of grey hair and eyebrows that could stop a supernova in its tracks. His wardrobe ranged from ageing punk rocker to sharp-suited mod, but today veered towards the latter: a crisp white shirt buttoned to the neck beneath a velvet Crombie jacket.
His fingers were dancing over the controls of his ship, the console beeping and chiming in time with whatever buttons he pressed in a sequence that was anyone’s guess. There was nothing particularly odd in this, except for perhaps the potted plant he had balanced beside the central column. That was new. Perhaps he wanted to pretty the place up a bit, although the blue and yellow blooms would be less precarious on one of the many reading tables dotted around the upper gantry.
Bill was considering all this when the wind started to pick up. It was barely noticeable at first, like a breeze from an open door. Then it grew. The Doctor didn’t even seem to notice, until it began whistling around the upper level, the walls of the TARDIS creaking as if at sea.
He glanced up as papers swirled from above, carried by a gust of wind that rushed down the stairs. The deck shuddered beneath Bill’s feet, before bucking like a fairground ride, throwing her against the console. Opposite her, the Doctor made a grab for the plant.
She barely heard the pot smash on the floor above the roar of the gale.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me?’ the Doctor shouted from where he was hanging from a particularly flimsy-looking lever.
‘Ask you what?’ she yelled back.
‘People usually ask me what’s happening when the TARDIS is attacked.’
‘We’re being attacked?’
‘You noticed!’ the Doctor said, as a large leather-bound book flew from one of the shelves on the upper walkway to almost take off his head. ‘I knew you would.’
The heavy-looking volume bounced once on the floor before being snatched back up into the whirlwind.
‘It’s kind of hard to miss!’ Bill said as something slapped against her cheek. She cried out before realising it was just a dog-eared children’s book.
‘Hey, that’s a first edition,’ the Doctor complained as she chucked it onto the floor. ‘Little Miss Sunshine versus the Sulky Skarasen. I helped with the pictures.’
‘Doctor!’
‘What?’
‘The attack?’
‘Oh yes, that.’ he said, turning his attention back to the controls. ‘Nothing to worry about. Everything’s completely under control.’
‘I’d hate to see it when it’s not. Ow!’
‘Now what?’ he asked, his jacket billowing out behind him.
‘Something hit me.’ Bill rubbed her hand, yelping as she was struck again, this time behind her ear.
‘What kind of something?’
‘Something hard.’
A tiny ball of ice bounced off the console in front of her.
‘Is that … is that hail?’ she asked, making the mistake of looking up as the deluge began in earnest. Hailstones the size of marbles hammered down, clattering on the deck and stinging her skin like a thousand tiny pinpricks.
‘This is not supposed to happen,’ the Doctor announced as the console began to spark and fizz beneath the meteorological assault.
‘No kidding!’
There was a crash from below, a clatter that could have only been the Doctor’s precious guitar toppling from its stand. He shot a mournful look down the stairs before redoubling his efforts with the controls.
‘Have you got an umbrella?’ he asked, wiping icy water from his eyes as he worked.
‘Of course I haven’t!’
‘Then bring one next time. Useful things, brollies. Always used to carry one, back when I was Scottish the first time around.’
‘You’re babbling,’ she told him, her fingers now numb with the cold. ‘You always babble when you’re scared.’
‘I’m never scared!’ he snapped, throwing a lever without warning. The room lurched, and Bill fell away, not because
she let go of the console or even slipped. Instead, she was grabbed and pulled from her feet.
Grabbed by a hand that wasn’t there.
A hand with claws.
She skidded across the room, smacking her head on the TARDIS doors … and the storm stopped.
It was that quick. One minute the wind was raging, books were flying and the hail was falling, and then next … everything was as it should be – other than the Doctor fussing over her.
‘Bill? Bill, can you hear me?’
‘Y-yeah. Of course I can.’
He looked at her with concern written all over his craggy features. ‘How many heads am I holding up?’
‘Don’t you mean fingers?’
He stood, offering her his hand. ‘You’ve never met my godmother.’
She stood, gazing at the carnage all around the control room. ‘What happened to the wind and stuff?’
‘Oh, that,’ the Doctor said, waving away the question as he returned to the console. ‘I turned it off.’
‘You turned off a storm …’
‘It wasn’t actually a storm,’ he told her, picking up books to stack them in almost neat piles on the stairs. ‘Not really.’
‘Felt like one to me,’ she replied, lending a hand. It was odd. Books, maps, papers and a document claiming to be the last will and testament of Lord Lucan were strewn across the floor, but none of them were wet. She’d at least expected the deck to be dusted by a thin layer of hailstones, but they were gone. There weren’t even any puddles.
‘It was certainly unexpected,’ the Doctor agreed, as he climbed up to the upper gantry to return his blackboard to its easel from where it had fallen. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
The Doctor avoided her gaze as he skipped back down to the console.
‘It was your fault?’
‘Not exactly,’ he said, putting the console between them, just in case. ‘Well, maybe a little. I was running some tests.’
She circled the control panels to face him. ‘What kind of tests?’
‘The telepathic circuits,’ the Doctor said, glancing towards a row of slimy rubberised ridges on a nearby panel.
‘The TARDIS is telepathic?’
‘Everything’s a little telepathic. Except squirrels. No one knows why. Especially the squirrels.’
‘So what were you testing?’
The Doctor glanced at the shattered remains of his pot plant. Bill’s mouth dropped open. ‘You were testing a flower?’
‘Not just any flower,’ the Doctor told her, scooping up the plant and looking for somewhere to deposit it. ‘A primrose. Incredible plants, primroses. By the late fifty-fourth century, they evolve into a race of brilliant philosophers and orators. Minds the like of which the galaxy has never seen.’ He slapped the pile of earth, petals and bent stems unceremoniously into Bill’s hands. ‘Here, hold on to this.’
Soil slipped between her fingers.
The Doctor returned to the console. ‘I was trying to detect that guy’s thoughts. His name’s Nigel, by the way.’
Bill gaped at the battered flower. ‘The primrose is called Nigel …’
‘Or Martin,’ the Doctor said, checking the scanner screen. ‘Or maybe George. Anyway, whatever his name, it turns out he doesn’t have many thoughts that don’t involve Grimsby Town Football Club.’
She raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Now you’re just taking the mickey.’
The Doctor nodded furiously. ‘I know! Did you see their last match? Who in their right mind plays 3-5-2 against Barnet?’
‘Doctor!’
He waved her towards the piles of books on the stairs. ‘Just pop him over there.’
Bill almost apologised to the flower as she did what she was told. ‘So, these tests …’
‘Proved slightly trickier than I expected. I was forced to drop the TARDIS’s psionic defence grid …’
‘Opening us to attack.’
The Doctor gave her an appreciative grin. ‘You’re catching on.’
He pulled the display around to show her, as if she had a hope in hell of understanding the swirling circles that danced across the screen.
‘Nope, sorry,’ she admitted. ‘Still need the Idiot’s Guide. Where did the attack come from?’
He raised a long finger. ‘Hold that thought.’
‘Why? Where are you going?’ she asked as he disappeared down to the lower level.
‘Just a minute!’
‘But, you don’t understand,’ she said, brushing soil from her palms as she walked to the top of the stairs. ‘It wasn’t just the storm. Something grabbed me.’
‘Grabbed you?’ he repeated, running back up to her, his black and white electric guitar in hand.
‘Like a claw. It dragged me across the floor.’
‘Interesting,’ he said, giving the guitar’s paintwork a cursory inspection before handing the instrument over to Bill. ‘Look after that.’
She regarded him with extreme suspicion as he braced himself against the console. ‘Why? What are you going to do?’
‘This!’ he announced, slamming his hand down hard on a button.
It was all back in an instant. The hail. The wind. Even the low-flying books.
‘Seriously?’ she asked, buffeted by winds that had no business to be there. ‘This is your plan?’
‘Works for me.’ the Doctor replied. ‘I stopped the storm by raising the defences.’
‘So you’ve dropped them again?’
Thunder roiled high across the ceiling. The Doctor glanced up, looking as though he was loving every terrifying moment. ‘I wonder if we’ll get lightning this time?’
So much for feeling safe in the TARDIS.
‘Just protect that guitar!’ the Doctor instructed her as his fingers went to work on the controls.
‘Forget the guitar. What about me?’
‘A little hail never hurt anyone,’ the Doctor insisted, flinching even as he said it. ‘I just need to lock on to whoever’s reaching out to us.’
‘Reaching out? Is that what you call it? ‘
Bill’s words were lost on the wind. She was blown back, lifted from her feet by a fresh squall. She crashed into the railing, still clutching the Doctor’s precious guitar. This was ridiculous. Screwing up her face, she fought against the wind, stalking back to the console, even as the Doctor let out a cheer.
‘Yes! Well done you.’
Bill heaved the guitar onto the console and smiled at the compliment, despite the weather. ‘Don’t mention it.’
Confusion flashed across the Doctor’s face. ‘I was talking to the TARDIS!’
He yanked down a lever and the time machine quaked to the sound of its own engines. ‘She’s picked up the scent!’
Chapter 3
A Cry for Help
‘No, still no sign of her, love. The kids are going spare.’
Hilary had snatched the phone from its cradle as soon as it rang, her shoulders slumping when she realised it wasn’t her daughter on the other end of the line.
It had become a familiar ritual these few days.
‘Yeah. I will, love. But I’m fine, really. Got everything in hand.’
At the very least she’d hoped it would be PC Schofield, from Huckensall Police Station, but it never was. Just the latest in a long line of well-wishers – or out-and-out busybodies like Gracie Noakes.
‘Thanks for phoning, Gracie love. Bye then. Bye.’
The handset beeped as it slotted back into the cradle. Hilary glanced up at the clock in the hallway, and willed herself not to cry. No more tears. There had been enough shed since Thursday, ever since she’d got out of the Palace Theatre to find seventeen missed calls on her mobile. Poor Masie had been so scared on the phone:
‘Nan? Mum’s gone out, and she hasn’t come back. Can you call us, please?’
Masie tried to act so grown-up all the time, but Sammy’s disappearance had only reminded Hilary how young her granddaughter still was.
Hilary plodded to the kitchen and stared at the kettle. How many times had she scolded Sammy for clicking it on whenever she walked into the kitchen? It’s just a habit, love. You hardly ever make a cup. Think of the electricity you’re wasting.
Sammy’s dad had been the same. Continually boiling the kettle whether anyone wanted a brew or not.
Hilary couldn’t give a monkeys about wasted electricity now. She just wanted her Sammy back.
She opened the blinds at the kitchen window, searching the dark street for any movement outside. The council had replaced the streetlights with those new LED lamps. They didn’t give half as much light as the old ones. Far too gloomy, if you asked her. Hilary had told their local MP exactly what she thought of them at his last surgery down at the community centre. What was the point of saving the planet if the streets weren’t safe?
That was a thought. Maybe their Right Honourable Waste of Space could help for once. She’d ring him first thing in the morning. Tomorrow would be three days since Sammy disappeared. The police would be passing the case onto the Missing People Unit, at least that’s what PC Schofield said.
‘Your daughter will be home in no time, Mrs Walsh. I’m sure of it.’
How on earth could she be sure, sitting there fresh-faced in her uniform, a mere slip of a girl?
It was true what they said. You know you’re getting old when the police start to look younger.
They’d looked younger for a long time.
She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Dropping them beside the kettle, she went to pull the blinds. That’s when she saw it, something moving at the end of the street. Snatching up her glasses, Hilary rushed to the front door, flinging it open.
‘Sammy?’
No such luck. It was just the tabby from number seven, the dirty little so-and-so that did its business beneath Sammy’s bushes.
Hilary leant on the doorframe and let out a sob. She didn’t care if any of the neighbours were watching, not this time.
‘Where are you Sammy love?’ she asked the night. ‘Come home, won’t you? Please.’
Upstairs, Noah tossed and turned in bed. He couldn’t sleep, but there was no point going downstairs. Nan would only send him back to bed, quick-smart.