Tyler (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} blinovitch) wrote,@ 2008-02-10 00:44:00 |
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Lookee That
I'm posting this because I am absolutely shocked I was able to write it. It's the first complete piece of fiction I've written in years, probably. It's nothing special, and I'm sure Rose Rita's characterization is all wonky because it's been years since I read The Figure in the Shadows or The Letter, the Witch and the Ring, but I'm happy with it because a) I've finally been able to sit down and write something and b) it's that Doctor Who/Bellairs crossover I wanted to do.
There's no telling what come of this. I may yet find the passion to write a screenplay.
Title: The Shack, the Whistle and the Time Lord
Characters: The Second Doctor and Jamie, from Doctor Who; Lewis Barnavelt and Rose Rita Pottinger from the Lewis Barnavelt novels by John Bellairs.
Rating: PG for fireworks and mild arson.
Spoilers: None, unless you consider Rose Rita's existence a spoiler.
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters presented in this story. Some belong to the BBC and the others to the estate of John Bellairs. I wrote it for my own amusement and that of any person who happens across it.
Summary: Lewis Barnavelt and his new friend, the Doctor, must rescue their friends from the mysterious house in which they disappeared.
Deep in the Capharnum County State Park, there was a house. It was barely a house and more like a semi-enclosed and extremely dilapidated lean-to. Lewis didn't know much about it, except that it had been there for much longer than there had been a Capharnum Country State Park. Last night, Uncle Jonathan and Mrs Zimmermann had spoken quietly and at length about it in the kitchen over cider and doughnuts. At the time, Lewis and his friend Rose Rita had been eavesdropping at the secret door behind the china hutch.
"There was an article in the Register," Mrs Zimmermann had remarked. "About lights at the Windrow house."
"Hmm?" Lewis imagined his uncle looking up, beard liberally dusted with doughnut crumbs.
"You know, Mushbrain," Mrs Zimmermann said impatiently. "That shack out in the state park. You know the one where it happened, back in the 20s?"
"Oh, yes," Jonathan had replied, and the conversation then descended into murmurs that Lewis and Rose Rita couldn't make out.
Naturally, Rose Rita had wanted to check out the Windrow house for herself. And equally naturally, it hadn't taken much for her to convince Lewis to come along. So now he stood here, a dozen paces from the old shack. It leaned to the left. He could see the slanted gaps between the remaining panes of glass and the window frames. Lewis had always liked to imagine houses smiling with their windows and doors. This one seemed to offer a gap-toothed grin at best.
Lewis continued to hover at the edge of the clearing, by his and Rose Rita's bicycles. Rose Rita had gone into the shack what seemed like a very long time ago. She had barged straight ahead, as she always did. Lewis had intended to follow, had even taken a few steps forward, but found himself delaying each step longer than the one before. Finally, he had stopped entirely and begun to retreat to the relative safety of the bicycles.
"Hallo!" The voice came from behind Lewis. He jumped, silently scolding himself as he did so. He turned, and saw a funny little man in an oversized black coat approaching. He almost looked like that silent film comedian Lewis had seen at the Bijou film festival with his uncle. He smiled at Lewis.
"H-Hello," Lewis ventured. He found himself at a loss for words.
The little man continued to smile gamely. "I'm the Doctor, by the way. And these are -- well, it's just me, I suppose. And what's your name?"
Lewis introduced himself. The Doctor seemed very taken with his name and pumped Lewis' hand up and down enthusiastically. "I say, Lewis, this seems a rather lonely spot for a young chap like yourself. What brings you out here?"
He had to suppress a smile. He hadn't heard anything like the Doctor's accent, outside Sherlock Holmes films. "Me and my friend came out to look at the Windrow house. She went in, and I, uh, stayed out here." Lewis dug his toe into the dirt.
The Doctor smiled kindly. "Yes, that's rather what happened to me, as well. My friend went in and I didn't. There's something about dark houses, isn't there? The secrets they hide in their shadows, the things that happened there once, long ago. It can all be rather intimidating, can't it?"
Lewis nodded, surprised this man knew so much about old houses. "It's like," Lewis ventured, "the more you want to know, the more you can tell it wants to keep you out, to keep its secrets."
"Precisely!" The Doctor clapped his hands. "And that is exactly why you've got to go in. It's not just finding out what's in there, but the act of doing so that matters. So, shall we go find our friends?"
Lewis' expression brightened at the thought. Having the Doctor at his side seemed oddly comforting, even though he had barely met the man and was usually very careful around strangers. "All right," he said, feeling much more confident than he had a minute ago. "Let's go!"
At the door, the Doctor graciously ushered Lewis in with a wave of his arm. Keeping a firm mental grip on his courage, Lewis stepped over the threshold and into the shack. He could feel the Doctor standing right behind him. It was a surprisingly ordinary, if dirty, room. A few shafts of muted sunlight filtered in through the windows. A layer of dirt covered the floor of rough hewn planks. Muddy tracks crossed and crisscrossed the floor, made indistinct as they passed over others. A few pieces of rude furniture were scattered about: a chair, a table broken in two and a bed that seemed to have made of saplings lashed together.
"My word," the Doctor said, forcing a chuckle. "This place could do with a bit of tidying." He gingerly picked at one half of the table. "Oh my word," the Doctor murmured, looking more closely.
Bending close to see the table fragments, Lewis made out strange symbols carved into the top. They went all around in a rough circle. "What are those, Doctor? Do they make a spell?"
The Doctor looked thoughtful. "A spell? Why should you think that, Lewis?"
Lewis felt his face grow hot. "I-I've just seen things like that. In books." He looked down. Lewis didn't think now was the time to mention his uncle was a wizard. The Doctor seemed to like him, and Lewis wasn't at all sure how he might take the suggestion that magic was real.
"I wouldn't call it a spell, no, Lewis," the Doctor said. "But it's not unlike one. There are certain symbols, procedures, that can have influence over forces of the universe, much in the way the symbols in your arithmetic lessons affect the answers you get. Some people might call that magic." The little man harrumphed. "But I find most instances magic to be simply a natural fact of the cosmos we have yet to understand."
The Doctor stood up abruptly. "Well, that's all very interesting, but those symbols were obviously made a long time ago. Our friends came in here much more recently than that. Now where could they have got to? I don't see another room or another exit. And they certainly didn't go out the front door, or you'd have seen them."
Unsure what to do, Lewis began to look aimlessly around the room. One corner had a small cupboard. Another held a cast iron stove. Next to that was the woodbox -- the woodbox!
"Doctor," Lewis said, "look at the woodbox." He pointed at the floor. Plainly etched in the dirt was a set of tracks that matched the outline of the woodbox. Excited by the discovery, Lewis ran over to the box and immediately began to tug on it. It moved, but slowly. When the Doctor lent his own strength, the box finally began to slide across the floor as they both huffed and puffed. At last, the moving box revealed a rectangular hole cut in the floor. The Doctor and Lewis looked at each other, and then down the hole. It was rather dark.
"Oh my," said the Doctor. Reaching into one of his over-sized jacket's pockets, the Doctor pulled out a small tin of matches. He struck one and dropped it down the hole. Before it blew out, the two could see the dirt floor below, as well as a series of wooden rungs fixed to the wall below the hidden hole.
"This time, Lewis," the Doctor said, "I believe I shall take the lead." The Doctor nimbly slipped his feet through the hole and climbed down the ladder. He quickly passed out of sight. A moment later, Lewis heard the scratch of a match head and smoky red light flared below. The Doctor appeared as a black silhouette, backlit by the match's glow.
"You can come down, Lewis," said the Doctor quietly, "but mind your step."
Hands slightly sweaty, Lewis clung to the ladder as his feet scrabbled for purchase. On what turned out to be the last rung, it seemed an impossible distance until his foot touched the ground. He nervously wiped his hands on the seat of his dungarees. The Doctor struck a second match, offering it to Lewis. He took it carefully, noting with interest that the flame did not appear to consume the matchstick, but burned merrily on the very tip. That was a trick Uncle Jonathan would surely appreciate, when his hookah stubbornly refused to stay lit.
The Doctor had already begun to move down what proved to be a tunnel. Lewis hurried to catch up with him. At first, the tunnel was earthen, with whole tree limbs pressed into service as support beams. There were more muddy footprints down here. After a dozen paces, the earth gave way to stone. The footprints became clearer on the stone floor. They didn't seem to be made by boots or shoes at all. Lewis shivered and diverted his attention to the stone walls. It looked like a sedimentary kind of stone to Lewis. Probably limestone; he remembered Uncle Jonathan saying much of Capharnum County was built on sedimentary deposits and many farmers had discovered limestone caverns while clearing their fields. Certainly this stone had been worn smooth, probably by running water.
"Doctor," Lewis said quietly, not liking how his voice echoed in the tunnel, "where do you think this leads?"
Before replying, the Doctor paused a moment. "I rather suspect it leads below that little rise behind the shack. Apart from that, I'm afraid I really can't say."
After a few more paces, Lewis asked, "Why did your friend come down here?"
"That, I'm afraid, is my fault," the Doctor admitted. "We had been rather intrigued by reports of something strange being seen in the park. While I visited the library, my friend went ahead to investigate. When he didn't come back, I knew something must had happened. I just hope that if he's down here, he's safe."
"I hope Rose Rita's all right," Lewis said fervently. "I don't know how I'll explain to Mrs Pottinger what happened if she isn't."
Ahead in the pitch darkness, Lewis thought he saw a blue-green glow. At the same time, the Doctor cupped his hand over his match, telling Lewis to do the same. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, the sickly glow became much more distinct. Lewis found himself keeping behind the Doctor as they walked forward. He could see the tunnel opened up into a larger space ahead. At the tunnel mouth, the Doctor pressed himself and Lewis to the wall. They craned their necks forward.
The space was far larger than Lewis had suspected. The tunnel opened high above a pool, lit from below by that strange blue-green light. Shadows rippled on the walls of the cave that didn't quite seem to match how the water below moved. In the center of the pool, standing on a narrow outcropping of rock, stood two figures. One was a young man Lewis didn't recognize, while the other was Rose Rita! Lewis suppressed a gasp; he thought he felt the Doctor do the same.
Just as Lewis began to wonder why Rose Rita and the Doctor's friend were just standing in the middle of the pool, the water began to froth and churn. From the depths rose a bizarre trio of creatures, the likes of which Lewis had never seen before. They had strange beaked faces, like a snapping turtle's. Their eyes, one on either side of the pointed face, did nothing more than flick side to side. Each was draped in a shimmering grey shift of some sort, dripping with water.
"Oh my giddy aunt," whispered the Doctor.
The creatures seemed to confer among each other with a series of clicks and whistles, and then turned their attention to Rose Rita and the Doctor's friend. For a moment, the young man and the girl seemed to tussle over who was going to stand protectively in front of other. Eventually, they compromised by standing back to back and glaring fiercely at their captors.
"What do ye want from us?" the boy asked in a Scottish brogue. Rose Rita threw in an affirmative "yeah!"
The creatures clicked and whistled some more. When neither Rose Rita or the Doctor's friend responded, the lead creature raised a hand -- almost a paw, Lewis thought, but it did have fingers ending in sharp talons. There was a high pitched whine. The two prisoners clapped their hands over their hands and, despite trying to remain silent, moaned in pain.
"Sonics?" the Doctor muttered to himself. "Could it be that simple?" He scrabbled in his pocket for a moment and then pressed something small and metallic in Lewis' hand. "Now, Lewis, you go left and I'll go right. Blow this hard and as often as you can. When I say run, you run. All right?"
Steeling himself, Lewis nodded. He looked at the thing the Doctor had given him. It looked like one of those dog whistles people couldn't hear. He held it tightly in his hand, half believing it was a protective charm against those monsters in the cave.
"Right," said the Doctor after rummaging in another pocket. "Off we go!"
The first few steps, Lewis slowly inched his way along the cave wall. Every scrape against the stone echoed in his ears, but the things in the pool didn't seem to notice with all their clicking and chirping. Opposite him, the Doctor crept closer to the creatures, fumbling with something. Then another match flared. Seconds later, a spinning riot of gold and silver sparks launched from the Doctor's hand and began to describe crazy loop-de-loops in the air. Lewis stared in amazement, whistle momentarily forgotten. It was a flying Catherine wheel!
"Lewis!" the Doctor shouted. "The whistle!" The Doctor pulled another firecracker from his pocket to light. Lewis shook himself and began blowing the whistle as hard as he could. The whispery fwee of rushing air was drowned out by the cracking and snapping Catherine wheel as it zoomed overhead.
Below, when the first firecracker went off, the creatures looked up in confusion. When Lewis began to blow the dog whistle, all three staggered. Their chirps and whistles became frantic, rising in tone so as to hurt one's ears. One raised its hand toward Lewis. He could a silver disc held in its palm. There was a whine. For an instant, Lewis couldn't breathe. He could feel a trickle of something warm run from his left ear. Then a stray Roman candle fired past its face and the whine abruptly stopped.
"Jamie!" shouted the Doctor. "Come on! Lewis, run!"
Below, Lewis could see the boy, Jamie, grab Rose Rita's hand. Together, they made a standing leap across the pool and managed to land on the rocky ledge. They scrabbled up towards the tunnel. Still puffing into the whistle, Lewis ran for the exit as well. Out in the tunnel, he waited for Rose Rita and Jamie, then half-led, half-dragged them to the ladder to safety. Behind them came the sound of pelting footsteps. The Doctor, lit from behind by a few last parting shots, was hot on their heels. Waiting for his turn to climb up, Lewis through he could hear the distant whine of that strange disc again.
One after another, the foursome scrambled up the ladder and into the ramshackle hut. Without stopping for pause, they burst into the sunlight. The Doctor and Jamie each grabbed a bicycle and, after hoisting a passenger onto the handlebars, began to pedal. It wasn't until they reached the top of the first hill that they stopped to look back. In the distance, they could see a thin wisp of smoke lazily curl up from the trees.
"Oh dear, oh dear," the Doctor, kneading his sooty fingers. "Do you suppose I caused that?" He grinned disarmingly. "Nevermind, I suppose. We should be sure to tell the park ranger on our way out, though. It wouldn't do to let that spread." With that, the Doctor and Jamie began to pedal again, back towards New Zebedee.
"Rose Rita!" Lewis exclaimed, trying not to think about his precarious perch on his own handlebars. "This is my new friend, the Doctor."
She grinned. "And mine is Jamie. Where have you been, Lewis? You missed all the fun!"
* * *
Somewhere in the city limits, the Doctor and Jamie unanimously declared that walking built character, and everyone could do with a little more character. So it was on foot that the friends, old and new, came to the town square. On Marshall St the bright new red fire engine had tore past them, evidently on its way out to the state park.
In the bright sunlight of the late afternoon, Lewis could hardly believe what had just happened. Uncle Jonathan and Mrs Zimmermann would never believe it, and they had some stories of their own to tell. But they stood there, grimy and disheveled from their flight through the tunnel. The Doctor looked even more rumpled than he had when Lewis first met him.
"Well, Lewis and Rose Rita," said the Doctor, "this really has been a delight. But I'm afraid Jamie and I -- "
"Hey, Pottinger!" shouted one of the boys just exiting McGraw's Pharmacy. "Have you and Barnavelt been rolling in the hay again?"
Lewis grabbed Rose Rita's forearm. "Not now," he said. "Not when -- hey, where'd they go?"
The two looked around the square. The Doctor and Jamie seemed to have disappeared. Then Rose Rita spotted the tail of the Doctor's coat disappearing behind the New Zebedee First Methodist Church. Ignoring the jeers behind them, Lewis and Rose Rita ran to catch up. Panting, Lewis rounded the corner of the church just as the door slammed on a strange blue wooden phone booth standing in the cemetery behind the church. The light atop the phone booth began to flash and an a-rhythmic groaning echoed through the air.
Aside the blue box faded from sight, Rose Rita remarked, "Even your uncle isn't going to believe this one, Lewis."
"I suppose there's only one way to find out." Lewis cocked his head. "Race you to the khaki mailbox?"
I'm posting this because I am absolutely shocked I was able to write it. It's the first complete piece of fiction I've written in years, probably. It's nothing special, and I'm sure Rose Rita's characterization is all wonky because it's been years since I read The Figure in the Shadows or The Letter, the Witch and the Ring, but I'm happy with it because a) I've finally been able to sit down and write something and b) it's that Doctor Who/Bellairs crossover I wanted to do.
There's no telling what come of this. I may yet find the passion to write a screenplay.
Title: The Shack, the Whistle and the Time Lord
Characters: The Second Doctor and Jamie, from Doctor Who; Lewis Barnavelt and Rose Rita Pottinger from the Lewis Barnavelt novels by John Bellairs.
Rating: PG for fireworks and mild arson.
Spoilers: None, unless you consider Rose Rita's existence a spoiler.
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters presented in this story. Some belong to the BBC and the others to the estate of John Bellairs. I wrote it for my own amusement and that of any person who happens across it.
Summary: Lewis Barnavelt and his new friend, the Doctor, must rescue their friends from the mysterious house in which they disappeared.
Deep in the Capharnum County State Park, there was a house. It was barely a house and more like a semi-enclosed and extremely dilapidated lean-to. Lewis didn't know much about it, except that it had been there for much longer than there had been a Capharnum Country State Park. Last night, Uncle Jonathan and Mrs Zimmermann had spoken quietly and at length about it in the kitchen over cider and doughnuts. At the time, Lewis and his friend Rose Rita had been eavesdropping at the secret door behind the china hutch.
"There was an article in the Register," Mrs Zimmermann had remarked. "About lights at the Windrow house."
"Hmm?" Lewis imagined his uncle looking up, beard liberally dusted with doughnut crumbs.
"You know, Mushbrain," Mrs Zimmermann said impatiently. "That shack out in the state park. You know the one where it happened, back in the 20s?"
"Oh, yes," Jonathan had replied, and the conversation then descended into murmurs that Lewis and Rose Rita couldn't make out.
Naturally, Rose Rita had wanted to check out the Windrow house for herself. And equally naturally, it hadn't taken much for her to convince Lewis to come along. So now he stood here, a dozen paces from the old shack. It leaned to the left. He could see the slanted gaps between the remaining panes of glass and the window frames. Lewis had always liked to imagine houses smiling with their windows and doors. This one seemed to offer a gap-toothed grin at best.
Lewis continued to hover at the edge of the clearing, by his and Rose Rita's bicycles. Rose Rita had gone into the shack what seemed like a very long time ago. She had barged straight ahead, as she always did. Lewis had intended to follow, had even taken a few steps forward, but found himself delaying each step longer than the one before. Finally, he had stopped entirely and begun to retreat to the relative safety of the bicycles.
"Hallo!" The voice came from behind Lewis. He jumped, silently scolding himself as he did so. He turned, and saw a funny little man in an oversized black coat approaching. He almost looked like that silent film comedian Lewis had seen at the Bijou film festival with his uncle. He smiled at Lewis.
"H-Hello," Lewis ventured. He found himself at a loss for words.
The little man continued to smile gamely. "I'm the Doctor, by the way. And these are -- well, it's just me, I suppose. And what's your name?"
Lewis introduced himself. The Doctor seemed very taken with his name and pumped Lewis' hand up and down enthusiastically. "I say, Lewis, this seems a rather lonely spot for a young chap like yourself. What brings you out here?"
He had to suppress a smile. He hadn't heard anything like the Doctor's accent, outside Sherlock Holmes films. "Me and my friend came out to look at the Windrow house. She went in, and I, uh, stayed out here." Lewis dug his toe into the dirt.
The Doctor smiled kindly. "Yes, that's rather what happened to me, as well. My friend went in and I didn't. There's something about dark houses, isn't there? The secrets they hide in their shadows, the things that happened there once, long ago. It can all be rather intimidating, can't it?"
Lewis nodded, surprised this man knew so much about old houses. "It's like," Lewis ventured, "the more you want to know, the more you can tell it wants to keep you out, to keep its secrets."
"Precisely!" The Doctor clapped his hands. "And that is exactly why you've got to go in. It's not just finding out what's in there, but the act of doing so that matters. So, shall we go find our friends?"
Lewis' expression brightened at the thought. Having the Doctor at his side seemed oddly comforting, even though he had barely met the man and was usually very careful around strangers. "All right," he said, feeling much more confident than he had a minute ago. "Let's go!"
At the door, the Doctor graciously ushered Lewis in with a wave of his arm. Keeping a firm mental grip on his courage, Lewis stepped over the threshold and into the shack. He could feel the Doctor standing right behind him. It was a surprisingly ordinary, if dirty, room. A few shafts of muted sunlight filtered in through the windows. A layer of dirt covered the floor of rough hewn planks. Muddy tracks crossed and crisscrossed the floor, made indistinct as they passed over others. A few pieces of rude furniture were scattered about: a chair, a table broken in two and a bed that seemed to have made of saplings lashed together.
"My word," the Doctor said, forcing a chuckle. "This place could do with a bit of tidying." He gingerly picked at one half of the table. "Oh my word," the Doctor murmured, looking more closely.
Bending close to see the table fragments, Lewis made out strange symbols carved into the top. They went all around in a rough circle. "What are those, Doctor? Do they make a spell?"
The Doctor looked thoughtful. "A spell? Why should you think that, Lewis?"
Lewis felt his face grow hot. "I-I've just seen things like that. In books." He looked down. Lewis didn't think now was the time to mention his uncle was a wizard. The Doctor seemed to like him, and Lewis wasn't at all sure how he might take the suggestion that magic was real.
"I wouldn't call it a spell, no, Lewis," the Doctor said. "But it's not unlike one. There are certain symbols, procedures, that can have influence over forces of the universe, much in the way the symbols in your arithmetic lessons affect the answers you get. Some people might call that magic." The little man harrumphed. "But I find most instances magic to be simply a natural fact of the cosmos we have yet to understand."
The Doctor stood up abruptly. "Well, that's all very interesting, but those symbols were obviously made a long time ago. Our friends came in here much more recently than that. Now where could they have got to? I don't see another room or another exit. And they certainly didn't go out the front door, or you'd have seen them."
Unsure what to do, Lewis began to look aimlessly around the room. One corner had a small cupboard. Another held a cast iron stove. Next to that was the woodbox -- the woodbox!
"Doctor," Lewis said, "look at the woodbox." He pointed at the floor. Plainly etched in the dirt was a set of tracks that matched the outline of the woodbox. Excited by the discovery, Lewis ran over to the box and immediately began to tug on it. It moved, but slowly. When the Doctor lent his own strength, the box finally began to slide across the floor as they both huffed and puffed. At last, the moving box revealed a rectangular hole cut in the floor. The Doctor and Lewis looked at each other, and then down the hole. It was rather dark.
"Oh my," said the Doctor. Reaching into one of his over-sized jacket's pockets, the Doctor pulled out a small tin of matches. He struck one and dropped it down the hole. Before it blew out, the two could see the dirt floor below, as well as a series of wooden rungs fixed to the wall below the hidden hole.
"This time, Lewis," the Doctor said, "I believe I shall take the lead." The Doctor nimbly slipped his feet through the hole and climbed down the ladder. He quickly passed out of sight. A moment later, Lewis heard the scratch of a match head and smoky red light flared below. The Doctor appeared as a black silhouette, backlit by the match's glow.
"You can come down, Lewis," said the Doctor quietly, "but mind your step."
Hands slightly sweaty, Lewis clung to the ladder as his feet scrabbled for purchase. On what turned out to be the last rung, it seemed an impossible distance until his foot touched the ground. He nervously wiped his hands on the seat of his dungarees. The Doctor struck a second match, offering it to Lewis. He took it carefully, noting with interest that the flame did not appear to consume the matchstick, but burned merrily on the very tip. That was a trick Uncle Jonathan would surely appreciate, when his hookah stubbornly refused to stay lit.
The Doctor had already begun to move down what proved to be a tunnel. Lewis hurried to catch up with him. At first, the tunnel was earthen, with whole tree limbs pressed into service as support beams. There were more muddy footprints down here. After a dozen paces, the earth gave way to stone. The footprints became clearer on the stone floor. They didn't seem to be made by boots or shoes at all. Lewis shivered and diverted his attention to the stone walls. It looked like a sedimentary kind of stone to Lewis. Probably limestone; he remembered Uncle Jonathan saying much of Capharnum County was built on sedimentary deposits and many farmers had discovered limestone caverns while clearing their fields. Certainly this stone had been worn smooth, probably by running water.
"Doctor," Lewis said quietly, not liking how his voice echoed in the tunnel, "where do you think this leads?"
Before replying, the Doctor paused a moment. "I rather suspect it leads below that little rise behind the shack. Apart from that, I'm afraid I really can't say."
After a few more paces, Lewis asked, "Why did your friend come down here?"
"That, I'm afraid, is my fault," the Doctor admitted. "We had been rather intrigued by reports of something strange being seen in the park. While I visited the library, my friend went ahead to investigate. When he didn't come back, I knew something must had happened. I just hope that if he's down here, he's safe."
"I hope Rose Rita's all right," Lewis said fervently. "I don't know how I'll explain to Mrs Pottinger what happened if she isn't."
Ahead in the pitch darkness, Lewis thought he saw a blue-green glow. At the same time, the Doctor cupped his hand over his match, telling Lewis to do the same. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, the sickly glow became much more distinct. Lewis found himself keeping behind the Doctor as they walked forward. He could see the tunnel opened up into a larger space ahead. At the tunnel mouth, the Doctor pressed himself and Lewis to the wall. They craned their necks forward.
The space was far larger than Lewis had suspected. The tunnel opened high above a pool, lit from below by that strange blue-green light. Shadows rippled on the walls of the cave that didn't quite seem to match how the water below moved. In the center of the pool, standing on a narrow outcropping of rock, stood two figures. One was a young man Lewis didn't recognize, while the other was Rose Rita! Lewis suppressed a gasp; he thought he felt the Doctor do the same.
Just as Lewis began to wonder why Rose Rita and the Doctor's friend were just standing in the middle of the pool, the water began to froth and churn. From the depths rose a bizarre trio of creatures, the likes of which Lewis had never seen before. They had strange beaked faces, like a snapping turtle's. Their eyes, one on either side of the pointed face, did nothing more than flick side to side. Each was draped in a shimmering grey shift of some sort, dripping with water.
"Oh my giddy aunt," whispered the Doctor.
The creatures seemed to confer among each other with a series of clicks and whistles, and then turned their attention to Rose Rita and the Doctor's friend. For a moment, the young man and the girl seemed to tussle over who was going to stand protectively in front of other. Eventually, they compromised by standing back to back and glaring fiercely at their captors.
"What do ye want from us?" the boy asked in a Scottish brogue. Rose Rita threw in an affirmative "yeah!"
The creatures clicked and whistled some more. When neither Rose Rita or the Doctor's friend responded, the lead creature raised a hand -- almost a paw, Lewis thought, but it did have fingers ending in sharp talons. There was a high pitched whine. The two prisoners clapped their hands over their hands and, despite trying to remain silent, moaned in pain.
"Sonics?" the Doctor muttered to himself. "Could it be that simple?" He scrabbled in his pocket for a moment and then pressed something small and metallic in Lewis' hand. "Now, Lewis, you go left and I'll go right. Blow this hard and as often as you can. When I say run, you run. All right?"
Steeling himself, Lewis nodded. He looked at the thing the Doctor had given him. It looked like one of those dog whistles people couldn't hear. He held it tightly in his hand, half believing it was a protective charm against those monsters in the cave.
"Right," said the Doctor after rummaging in another pocket. "Off we go!"
The first few steps, Lewis slowly inched his way along the cave wall. Every scrape against the stone echoed in his ears, but the things in the pool didn't seem to notice with all their clicking and chirping. Opposite him, the Doctor crept closer to the creatures, fumbling with something. Then another match flared. Seconds later, a spinning riot of gold and silver sparks launched from the Doctor's hand and began to describe crazy loop-de-loops in the air. Lewis stared in amazement, whistle momentarily forgotten. It was a flying Catherine wheel!
"Lewis!" the Doctor shouted. "The whistle!" The Doctor pulled another firecracker from his pocket to light. Lewis shook himself and began blowing the whistle as hard as he could. The whispery fwee of rushing air was drowned out by the cracking and snapping Catherine wheel as it zoomed overhead.
Below, when the first firecracker went off, the creatures looked up in confusion. When Lewis began to blow the dog whistle, all three staggered. Their chirps and whistles became frantic, rising in tone so as to hurt one's ears. One raised its hand toward Lewis. He could a silver disc held in its palm. There was a whine. For an instant, Lewis couldn't breathe. He could feel a trickle of something warm run from his left ear. Then a stray Roman candle fired past its face and the whine abruptly stopped.
"Jamie!" shouted the Doctor. "Come on! Lewis, run!"
Below, Lewis could see the boy, Jamie, grab Rose Rita's hand. Together, they made a standing leap across the pool and managed to land on the rocky ledge. They scrabbled up towards the tunnel. Still puffing into the whistle, Lewis ran for the exit as well. Out in the tunnel, he waited for Rose Rita and Jamie, then half-led, half-dragged them to the ladder to safety. Behind them came the sound of pelting footsteps. The Doctor, lit from behind by a few last parting shots, was hot on their heels. Waiting for his turn to climb up, Lewis through he could hear the distant whine of that strange disc again.
One after another, the foursome scrambled up the ladder and into the ramshackle hut. Without stopping for pause, they burst into the sunlight. The Doctor and Jamie each grabbed a bicycle and, after hoisting a passenger onto the handlebars, began to pedal. It wasn't until they reached the top of the first hill that they stopped to look back. In the distance, they could see a thin wisp of smoke lazily curl up from the trees.
"Oh dear, oh dear," the Doctor, kneading his sooty fingers. "Do you suppose I caused that?" He grinned disarmingly. "Nevermind, I suppose. We should be sure to tell the park ranger on our way out, though. It wouldn't do to let that spread." With that, the Doctor and Jamie began to pedal again, back towards New Zebedee.
"Rose Rita!" Lewis exclaimed, trying not to think about his precarious perch on his own handlebars. "This is my new friend, the Doctor."
She grinned. "And mine is Jamie. Where have you been, Lewis? You missed all the fun!"
* * *
Somewhere in the city limits, the Doctor and Jamie unanimously declared that walking built character, and everyone could do with a little more character. So it was on foot that the friends, old and new, came to the town square. On Marshall St the bright new red fire engine had tore past them, evidently on its way out to the state park.
In the bright sunlight of the late afternoon, Lewis could hardly believe what had just happened. Uncle Jonathan and Mrs Zimmermann would never believe it, and they had some stories of their own to tell. But they stood there, grimy and disheveled from their flight through the tunnel. The Doctor looked even more rumpled than he had when Lewis first met him.
"Well, Lewis and Rose Rita," said the Doctor, "this really has been a delight. But I'm afraid Jamie and I -- "
"Hey, Pottinger!" shouted one of the boys just exiting McGraw's Pharmacy. "Have you and Barnavelt been rolling in the hay again?"
Lewis grabbed Rose Rita's forearm. "Not now," he said. "Not when -- hey, where'd they go?"
The two looked around the square. The Doctor and Jamie seemed to have disappeared. Then Rose Rita spotted the tail of the Doctor's coat disappearing behind the New Zebedee First Methodist Church. Ignoring the jeers behind them, Lewis and Rose Rita ran to catch up. Panting, Lewis rounded the corner of the church just as the door slammed on a strange blue wooden phone booth standing in the cemetery behind the church. The light atop the phone booth began to flash and an a-rhythmic groaning echoed through the air.
Aside the blue box faded from sight, Rose Rita remarked, "Even your uncle isn't going to believe this one, Lewis."
"I suppose there's only one way to find out." Lewis cocked his head. "Race you to the khaki mailbox?"
