On stage, Sammy Star emerged from his grave, dressed as a skeletal monster. The mist cleared. The Doctor and Amy watched as the monster crept up behind the young girl.
She shrieked and tried to run, but sharp spikes shot through the stage floor in front of her. She backed away, but spikes sprang up behind. The ‘monster’ began to pluck apples from a twisted tree and throw them. They stuck, proving the sharpness of the spikes.
More and more spikes herded the girl towards the base of the tallest tree. She began to climb. The bark of the tree fell away, revealing a spiral walkway. Sammy Star scooped up an armful of daggers and moved underneath.
The girl was running now. Sammy Star thrust his daggers up through the walkway, each just missing the girl’s feet. Following her, behind and below, he rammed home dagger after dagger. The blades stuck there, pointing upwards, a dangerous, glittering path.
The girl reached the top of the walkway. There seemed to be no escape for her. Sammy Star was still climbing up behind, weaving his way through the dagger points. Below, the spikes gleamed.
Finally the girl could go no further. She turned round and there was the monster, facing her. He held up a hand and opened it to reveal an apple. The girl tried backing away, but there was nowhere to go. Sammy Star threw the apple...
The apple hit the girl. With a scream she toppled backwards, falling towards the spikes.
Amy gasped. Everyone in the audience gasped, except the Doctor.
The very instant the girl began to fall, there came a blinding flash of light from the stage.
Amy blinked her eyes. When her vision cleared, she could see that the girl had gone. In the centre of the spiral, amid the spikes, stood the angel statue.
The crowd began to applaud loudly. There were even some cheers and whistles.
Amy didn’t clap or cheer. Neither did the Doctor.
‘The angel moved...’ Amy whispered.
‘Oh yes,’ replied the Doctor grimly. ‘The angel moved.’
‘So it’s...’
‘It’s a Weeping Angel,’ said the Doctor. ‘A stone-cold killer. A lonely assassin.’
As the applause died away, the lights on the stage faded. There was only one spotlight, and it was on the Weeping Angel.
‘We have to keep looking at it...’ said Amy under her breath, scared. ‘If we stop looking at it, it’ll move. It’ll get more people.’
The curtain fell.
Amy jumped up, thankful she was in the front row. She ran to the stage and clambered onto it. The audience murmured, wondering if this was part of the act. She scrambled under the curtain.
Two men were carrying the Angel off stage. ‘Hey!’ Amy called after them.
‘Who are you?’ said a voice. Amy spun around. Sammy Star had come back onto the stage. He was no longer in his graveyard outfit and was now wearing a purple suit. ‘Look, I’ll sign your programme if you wait at the stage door, but get out of here now, OK? Time for me to take a bow.’
‘I’m not a fan!’ Amy told him. ‘I’m trying to save people’s lives! Do you know what that statue is?’
The Doctor pushed through the curtain. ‘Oh, I’m quite sure he doesn’t,’ he said. ‘He only knows what it can do. He’s just using it.’
Sammy Star stared at them for a moment. The look on his face scared Amy, it was so fierce.
‘No one is going to ruin this for me,’ he snarled. ‘No one. Do you hear me? This is my moment.’ He turned to the side of the stage and beckoned. Two burly men appeared. ‘Throw them out!’ he hissed. ‘Make sure they don’t set foot in this theatre again.’
‘Time to go!’ said the Doctor. He took Amy by the hand and pulled her to the edge of the stage. They ducked under the curtain, jumped down and ran up the centre aisle. The security men were close behind them.
As the audience began to applaud Sammy Star’s curtain call, the Doctor and Amy made it to the exit. They raced through the foyer, nearly knocking over a lady selling It’s Magic! T-shirts. ‘Oooh,’ said the Doctor, pausing for a second.
‘You don’t need another T-shirt!’ Amy yelled, dragging him to the doors.
The security men didn’t chase them once they were out of the theatre. They just stood in the doorway looking fierce.
‘Yeah, and stay out!’ the Doctor shouted at them, waving his fist in the air. ‘Oh, hang on, might not have got that quite right...’
The summer sun was low in the sky now. Amy and the Doctor walked to Trafalgar Square and sat at the base of Nelson’s Column.
‘Weeping Angels can send people back in time,’ Amy said to the Doctor. ‘So when the falling girl vanished, she must have been zapped into the past.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Oh yes, it’s all been very carefully planned. A Weeping Angel can’t move if anyone’s looking at it. The audience can see it the whole time. Even if they’re not looking straight at it, it’s in everyone’s field of vision. In the corner of their eye. Until the very end. The light flashing so brightly dazzles them all. The Angel is free and can move. The nearest target is the falling girl. It touches her and sends her into the past. Yum yum, nice bit of time energy for the Angel, and a nice trick for Sammy Star. All the people applaud.’
‘There’s one thing I don’t get, though,’ said Amy. ‘How does he bring her back? How does he do the trick night after night?’
The Doctor didn’t answer. He got up and walked over to a lamp post. A poster had been stuck to the black metal and he pulled it off. He came back and handed it to Amy without a word.
‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?’ she read. ‘Kylie Duncan, nineteen. Long dark hair and green eyes. Last seen wearing blue jeans and a red T-shirt.’ She looked up at the Doctor, puzzled.
‘Have you seen this girl?’ he echoed. ‘Last seen wearing a long white nightie.’
Amy’s mouth fell open as she stared at the photo on the poster. ‘That’s her! That’s the girl we’ve just seen vanish!’
‘People are worried,’ said the Doctor. ‘Worried enough to report her missing. I expect Kylie Duncan’s mum is crying herself to sleep every night. She doesn’t know she’ll never see her little girl again. No one from this time will ever see her again.’
He jumped up and began to walk around the edge of the square. There were posters every few metres. ‘Molly Crane. Brittany Hughes. Amber Reynolds. Lauren Peters,’ he read as he ripped them all down. ‘Each of these girls has a mum waiting at home. None of those mums will ever see their daughters again.’ Amy had rarely heard him sound so angry. ‘Sammy Star doesn’t bring his assistants back from the past. He doesn’t have to. There are hundreds of girls out here, friendless and helpless. They come to London looking for a new start. Of course they’ll jump at the chance to get into showbiz!’
‘Oh no,’ whispered Amy. ‘You mean... it’s a new girl every night? Every show someone else gets sent back in time? But it’s sold out for months and months!’
‘Then the theatre will have to give everyone their money back,’ said the Doctor grimly. ‘Tonight was Sammy Star’s last show. His last show ever.’
* * *
Chapter Four
RORY HELPED WALK Mrs Collins and Mrs Hooper back to their minibus. He had an arm round Mrs Collins and could feel her shaking. Miss Leake was leading Mrs Hooper.
Miss Leake was in charge of Golden Years Home for the Elderly. She told Rory this, and a lot of other things that didn’t interest him, as they walked to the car park. She also kept being cheerful at the old ladies. ‘Now, don’t let’s be sillies!’ she said. ‘It was just a silly old magic trick, nothing to be scared of. Fancy being scared of ghosties and ghoulies at your age, Mrs Collins and Mrs Hooper!’
‘Monster...’ muttered Mrs Hooper.
‘It wasn’t a real monster, it was just a young lad. Like this lad here!’ Miss Leake said, waving a hand at Rory. ‘You’re not scared of him, now, are you?’
Rory thought that Sammy Star must be at least fifteen years older than him. He didn’t mention it, though. It was
hard to get a word in edgeways when Miss Leake was talking.
‘Lost,’ said Mrs Collins. ‘So lost.’
‘You’re not lost, Mrs Collins! We’re in London – LONDON,’ said Miss Leake loudly. ‘Now you just need to get on the bus and we’ll take you home. I said, we’ll take you BACK HOME. Back to lovely Golden Years for a cup of cocoa then beddy-byes.’
Miss Leake unlocked the minibus and Rory helped the two ladies up the steps. ‘Now I’m going to ask this young man to be very kind,’ said Miss Leake to her charges. ‘I’m going to ask him to stay here with you while I go back for the others. I hope they’ve not got up to mischief while I’ve been gone!’
She turned to Rory and gave him a would-be winning smile. ‘Now, you don’t mind waiting, do you? I won’t be long. I can’t leave my girls alone, though!’
Rory nodded. ‘That’s fine.’
‘There, do you hear that? He says it’s fine. It’s FINE. You don’t have to worry, because he’s a nurse,’ Miss Leake said, with a little giggle in her voice. ‘Oh, they love a male nurse, do my old dears! Maybe you should be the one to worry!’
Rory forced a smile onto his face. ‘I’m sure we’ll be OK.’
Miss Leake went off, still giggling a little to herself. Rory shut the door of the minibus, and sat down on a seat. Mrs Collins and Mrs Hooper were in the seat behind, and he swivelled round to talk to them. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
They nodded slowly. The tears had stopped falling now, but both old ladies still looked sad. They had a haunted look, Rory thought, as if they were thinking of a past tragedy.
They all sat in silence for a while. The two women were holding hands tightly, clinging to each other for comfort.
‘What was it, Mrs Collins?’ Rory asked softly after a while. ‘What’s the matter? What scared you?’
‘Kylie,’ she said.
Rory just gazed at her in surprise. It seemed a very odd thing to be scared of.
‘Kylie,’ she repeated. ‘My name. Call me Kylie. Not Mrs Collins.’
‘Amber,’ said Mrs Hooper. ‘I’m Amber. I’m not mad.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ said Rory. ‘Who says you are?’
‘We have to be careful,’ said Mrs Hooper. She didn’t seem to be talking to Rory, her eyes were looking far away. ‘We mustn’t tell the truth. They’ll think we’re mad.’
‘We’ll get locked up if we tell the truth,’ added Mrs Collins.
‘Is something bad going on?’ Rory asked, worried now. ‘Is something bad going on at the Golden Years home?’
To his relief, Mrs Hooper shook her head. ‘Not there,’ she said. ‘A long time ago. A very long time ago.’
Mrs Collins nodded fiercely. ‘A very long time ago,’ she agreed. ‘Today. A very long time ago today.’
Rory had thought he was getting somewhere, but that answer made no sense at all.
‘It was VE Day,’ said Mrs Hooper. ‘Victory in Europe. I didn’t know what that meant, then. We didn’t do it at school.’
‘They asked me why I was in my nightie,’ said Mrs Collins. ‘Why I was walking around in a daze.’
Mrs Hooper almost smiled. ‘I was dazed too. They said there was a girl like me, a girl who was confused. They wondered if we knew each other. That’s how we met. We’ve stuck together ever since.’ She squeezed her friend’s hand.
‘They said it must have been a bomb,’ said Mrs Collins. ‘A bomb must have come down and hurt our heads. That’s why we didn’t know what had happened.’
Mrs Hooper nodded. ‘They said they’d thought the last Doodlebug had fallen months ago. People were upset to think there’d been more bombs. They said it would be the last one, though. There was peace in Europe at last. We knew it wasn’t a bomb, but we didn’t know what had really happened. So we went along with it.’ She paused. ‘We knew there must have been other girls, but we didn’t look for them. It’s not the sort of thing you can ask people.’
‘They made us join their party,’ said Mrs Collins. ‘It was the biggest party I’d ever seen. Right there in Trafalgar Square. They were all so happy. We danced and danced and danced. We were so scared and so lost, but we danced.’
‘I danced with a soldier,’ said Mrs Hooper. ‘His name was Albert. It was a summer’s day like this when we got married...’ Tears began to fall from her eyes again, and she began to sing. ‘It may be an hour, it may be a week...’
Mrs Collins lifted her voice and joined in. ‘It may be fifty years...’
Rory felt tears pricking at his eyes too. The two old ladies were so sad, yet so dignified.
The moment was broken. The door to the minibus clunked open, and Miss Leake began helping elderly people up the steps. ‘Everything all right?’ she called to Rory, but didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I’m sure you’ve been fine, even with that cheeky pair! Mrs Collins and Mrs Hooper are so naughty sometimes. They do play such jokes. Why, the other day they tried to tell me they were born in 1993! 1893 more like, I said, didn’t I, Mrs Hooper? But you will have your little joke.’ She didn’t seem to care or even notice that Mrs Hooper ignored her.
When the old people were seated, Rory got up and walked down the bus to the door. ‘Bye then,’ he said to Miss Leake.
‘Goodbye, and thank you so much,’ she replied, sitting herself down in the driver’s seat. ‘Oh! By the way! You know those friends you were with? That nice red-haired girl and the young man in the plastic bowler hat?’ Rory nodded. ‘Well, they got thrown out of the theatre! Awful, isn’t it? So I wouldn’t go back there looking for them if I were you.’
Rory sighed and shut the bus door behind him. Amy and the Doctor had been thrown out of yet another place. Lucky he still had his mobile phone. He kept it with him out of habit. At least in England around his own time it should work.
As he moved away from the minibus, he could hear the whole busload of elderly people joining in the song. ‘It may be an hour, it may be a week, it may be fifty years. But I know we will find loving hearts still entwined, on the day we meet again.’
The wartime song always made him think of Amy. He’d waited nearly 2,000 years for her. Fifty years was nothing compared to that. The song told the truth, though. Even after all that time, their love had still been strong.
Rory smiled.
* * *
Chapter Five
THEY MET IN Trafalgar Square.
‘There was a VE Day party here,’ Rory told the Doctor and Amy as he sat down beside them. He was still thinking of the two old ladies, Mrs Collins and Mrs Hooper.
The Doctor nodded. ‘Eighth of May, 1945. Thousands gathered here. Churchill made a speech and they played it over loudspeakers.’
‘Good old Winston,’ said Amy. ‘What?’ she cried as Rory gave her a look. ‘I can namedrop too! It’s not just the Doctor who’s been everywhere and met everyone.’
‘I wasn’t at the VE Day party,’ the Doctor pointed out. ‘I just heard about it from other people.’ He sighed. ‘One happy day. One great big happy day for them all. Then real life got them again. Japan was still fighting the war. Everyone had lost loved ones. Homes had been bombed. There were no bananas.’
‘They were there,’ said Rory. ‘Those two old ladies. They were at the Trafalgar Square party on VE Day. Strange to think of it, really. More than sixty-five years ago. They’d just have been teenagers, and they were dancing right here. Maybe on this very spot.’ He smiled. ‘Poor old dears. I couldn’t really follow what they were saying. I tell you what was weird, though. They were called Kylie and Amber. You don’t think of old people being called Kylie or Amber, do you?’
‘Hang on,’ said Amy, looking shocked. ‘Doctor...’
The Doctor stiffened. For a moment he didn’t say a word, then started leafing through the pile of posters beside him. He picked out the one he had shown Amy earlier, and another of a blonde girl. He held them up so Rory could see them.
MISSING: KYLIE DUNCAN. MISSING: AMBER REYNOLDS.
Rory frowned. He to
ok the poster of Amber Reynolds and stared at it. ‘I don’t understand...’
‘That’s because you missed the end of the show,’ said Amy. ‘We’ve got a lot to tell you. Sammy Star is using a Weeping Angel in his act. It’s sending girls back into the past.’
‘I think you’ve just found out where in the past they’re ending up,’ the Doctor told Rory. ‘One minute they’re in a West End theatre in the twenty-first century...’
‘... and the next they’re in 1945. At a party in Trafalgar Square,’ finished Rory. ‘Oh no.’ He jumped up. ‘We’ve got to go and rescue them! We know where they are and when they are, so we can go in the TARDIS!’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘We also know they stay there, in that time. They grow old.’
‘We could get them back to their own time!’ Rory cried.
‘They get back to their own time,’ said the Doctor. ‘They just take the long route. It takes them about sixty-seven years.’ He shook his head again. ‘I’m sorry, Rory. We can’t change that.’ He stood up. ‘But we can make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else. Come on, Ponds, we’re going back to the theatre. We’ve got less than twenty-four hours to stop Sammy Star.’
The sign above the theatre was still lit up. The words Sammy Star’s Magic Show! shone out.
‘The city never sleeps!’ the Doctor said. He rattled the theatre doors. They were locked. ‘It seems the people who work here do sleep, though. Never mind.’ He pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. ‘I have a key.’
The foyer looked haunted in the gloom, more haunted than the stage graveyard. They crept across it in silence and went through a door marked NO ENTRANCE.
‘I know the way,’ the Doctor whispered. ‘I went for a snoop around during the interval. I had a feeling something was wrong. My seventh sense.’
‘Don’t you mean sixth sense?’ asked Rory.
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘I already have six well-used senses. This was my just as well-used but often ignored Finding Evil sense. Of course all my senses are finely honed – ooof.’
Doctor Who: Magic of the Angels Page 2