8 Mar 2014

Reflections (Part 2)

The Doctor dithered around outside the grand, town hall building, it’s cream bricks standing out amongst the rest of the grey, dull buildings. He walked up the small flight of about 10 steps that led to the large, wood-panelled door, and then turned the handle.

Clunk!

The door was locked.

“Oh, well,” said the Doctor. “It was worth a try.”

He looked around himself, making sure there was nobody about - silly really, he thought, as the village was completely deserted - and then pulled out his sonic screwdriver from his top pocket. He aimed the device at the lock, the end glowed red and then there was a satisfying click-click which signified that the door had been unlocked.

The Doctor pattered the screwdriver, popped it back into his coat pocket, and then push the door open.

The inside of the Town Hall was dark and the main corridor looked foreboding. All along the hallway were doors - some open, some not - that let in small shafts of light from the windows inside.

The Doctor slowly walked down the corridor, his footsteps echoing eerily. He checked each and every room. If he found a mirror in any room, he would smash it, whacking his cane into the glass.

By the time he found got to the Great Hall, he was feeling a little down. How many years bad luck was he going to get out of smashing these mirrors. Clearly none as he was so close to the end of his life now.

He walked into the door, and hanging over the large, stone fireplace was a huge mirror. It looked like someone had tried to smash it - just like the one back at the pub - but they had failed, only managing to crack it in the bottom right hand corner.

He pulled up one of the wooden chairs from underneath the mahogany table in the centre of the room and placed it in front of the fireplace. Steadily, he got up onto the chair until he was face to face with the mirror. Face to face with himself.

“Hello, Doctor,” he said to himself, his voice echoing around the room.

He brought his cane up to the level of the mirror, drew his arm back, and then swung towards the mirror.

And then stopped when he felt something prevent him from dealing the fatal blow.

He looked down, and grabbing at his arm, was another, similar arm protruding from his own reflections. He looked from the arm, back to his own face in the mirror. It was grimacing at him, it’s teeth barred.

“What are you?” said the Doctor, frozen to the spot.

The reflection smiled.

“Tell me!”

The reflection tightened it’s grip on the Doctor and began to pull him towards the glass.

“No you don’t,” said the Doctor, deliberately allowing himself to fall off the chair. For a moment he was dangling in mid-air, the reflections arm still holding on to him; it was refusing to let go.

And then he heard the cracking from behind the mirror frame. The sound of breaking plaster.

The mirror was coming away from the wall. When the weight of the Doctor had finally become too much, the mirror came free from the wall. The reflection let go and the Doctor fell to the floor, rolling out of the way as the large mirror came crashing down on top of the chair and shattering as it hit the floor.

The Doctor scrambled away on his front, grabbing at his cane, backing himself up against the wall and waiting for the reflection to crawl from under the shattered remains.

But it never came.

He got to his feet and slowly stumbled over to the frame. With a great heave he pulled the mirror up and turned it so the broken, reflected pieces were facing upwards. Cautiously he looked down. He saw his reflection again, looking angrily up at him.

And then the Doctor stamped on the remains of the mirror, smashing and hitting with his stick. When the mirror was finally in enough small pieces to be deemed safer, he turned and made his way back to the entrance.




The Alice reflection and Barry were making their way down the path towards the town hall. Alice hadn’t spoken for a good few minutes to Barry - not since they left the pub - and to Barry something didn’t feel right about her.

“Are you sure you’re ok?” asked Barry, trotting up beside her.

“I’m fine, Barry,” she said. “I was just a little spooked with the mirror.”

“Did you see something?”

She turned and then smiled at him. “Nothing to worry your little head over.”

Barry frowned. She looked a little too calm to be spooked.

They turned the corner to where the TARDIS was standing. Barry hadn’t seen the police box before and looked a little confused by it.

“It’s ours,” said Alice, pre-empting his question.

“It’s a police box,” said Barry. “They used to have one standing on the Turnpike Road back in the 60’s.”

“It’s a time machine,” said Alice, running her hand along the blue paintwork of the box, feeling the alien tingle up her fingers.

“Get away!” laughed Barry.

Alice snapped her head around to look at him. “Why would I lie, Barry?”

“Alice,” came the Doctor’s voice from down the street,

Alice rolled her eyes and removed her hand from the TARDIS.

“Did you do it?” asked Barry nervously. “Did you break all the mirrors?”

“I did,” said the Doctor, stopping beside the lamp post beside the curb and catching his breath. “And I had a little run in with myself.”

Alice narrowed her eyes. “Your reflection?”

“That’s right,” said the Doctor.

“See! See!” said Barry. “I told you it was all true! We need to get out of here now. Tell the army to level this place to the ground.”

“Steady on,” said the Doctor, frowning. “We can’t just destroy a place without trying to save it first.”

“But there’s nobody to save. Everybody’s gone.”

“Not necessarily,” said the Doctor. “My reflection tried to drag me into the mirror.”

“To kill you,” said Barry exasperated.

“Again, not necessarily.” He went into his coat pocket and pulled out the TARDIS key. “I believe that those mirrors lead to another dimension.”

“Don’t be so absurd!” chuckled Barry.

“Any more absurd than smashing mirrors in case the reflections climb out and get you?”

Barry frowned. “Okay, so what if I believe you? What do we do?”

“What I need to do,” said the Doctor, unlocking the TARDIS, “is to find out how all of this started.”

“I told you,” said Barry, trying to peer inside the darkened TARDIS, “it started after we heard that boom at the camel hills.”

“And that’s where I need to go,” said the Doctor. He stepped inside the box, followed by the very quiet Alice. Barry was about to follow when the Doctor held up his hand. “This will be too much for you, my friend. Stay here. We’ll be out in a minute.”




Inside the TARDIS Alice was already at the console, running her hands gently along the controls, caressing the stone panels and array of dials and switches.

“I can’t have another long discussion about explaining the dimensions of the TARDIS,” said the Doctor, leaning his stick up against the console and standing next to Alice.

“Do we go to the hills in this?” said Alice.

“No,” said the Doctor, switching on the scanner and bringing up a map of the surrounding area, “I don’t want to put any kind of high technology in their path.”

“In whose path?” said Alice, gazing at the scanner.

“In the reflections path,” said the Doctor. “I really must come up with a good name for them,” he said, looking with interest at Alice. “I made up Apparites for Apparitions, Cakeyans for the Cheesecake Monsters….how about Reflectoids?”

Alice looked at him and laughed. “You do make me laugh. How about…Retarans?”

The Doctor frowned. “Interesting name. How do you get that one?”

“Just a wild guess, I suppose.”

“Hmmm,” said the Doctor, “we’ll see.”

He went under the console to pull out his bag when he suddenly felt a sharp pain through his hearts. He collapsed to the ground, clutching at his chest and then rolled onto his side.

“Alice…Alice…” he gasped…. “in my other bag….the pills….”

Alice looked at him with curiosity.

“Please…!” he gasped.

She slowly walked over to the Doctor’s brown, medical bag that was perched on the arm of the sofa. Opening the bag, she took out his pills and then handed them to him.

He snatched them from her and quickly swallowed three of them. After a few minutes, he began to regain his composure.

Alice was crouched over him, looking at him with interest. “Are you ok?”

“I stopped taking them a while back. I didn’t see the point anymore. But that fight with my reflection took it out of me.” He popped the packet of pills into his pocket. “I need to remember that I’m not invincible.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” said the Doctor. He looked at her as he struggled to his feet. “Actually, I’d appreciate you moving a little quicker next time.”

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

“You looked spaced out, Alice. Spaced out!”

“It’s this place,” she said, quickly, not wanting to be caught out. “I hate it. It’s like a nightmare world.”

“Then we have to put this nightmare world to rights,” he said, grabbing what looked like a remote control for a toy car with a spiralling aerial on the top.

“What’s that for?”

“It detects disturbances in the fabric of every day objects. Like mirrors.”

“So you’ll know a bit more about what these things are?”

“When I get to the camel hills, yes.”




Alice was screaming. She was crying. She was wailing. She was in absolute agony - the worst she had ever felt. Even worse than when she woke up momentarily from the car crash before slipping unconscious again.

The world around her felt…wrong. It felt like Jelly. Painful jelly. If she wasn’t in so much pain she would have laughed at that analogy. How could jelly be painful, she thought to herself?

“Keep calm,” came a woman’s voice in the distance.

She turned to look and all she saw was a black mass moving towards her.

“Leave me alone!” she screamed.

“I won’t hurt you,” came the voice.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” she screamed again, turning to run.




Alice and the Doctor emerged from the TARDIS to find Barry sat on the curb, looking rather nervous.

“Alright Barry?” said the Doctor, locking up.

“I heard sounds, coming from the houses over there.” He pointed back up the way they had come. “I smashed all the mirrors.”

“Look, Barry,” said the Doctor, pocking his remote-control device, “you can’t be sure you smashed them all.”

“I know, but-”

“Just keep calm.”

“Are we ready to go then?” said Alice.

“I am. Not you.”

“What?!” spluttered Alice.

“It’ll be getting dark soon. I need you to stay here with Barry. If thing’s go wrong, get into the TARDIS and lock yourself inside.”

“I want to come with you,” said Alice, blankly.

“It’ll be safer for you here.”

“Not in the dark,” said Barry, staring to panic. “Not again. I can’t stand another night of it.”

“Everything will be okay,” said the Doctor. “Go to the pub, lock the doors and stay inside. I’ll be back in a few hours once I’ve found out exactly what happened.”

“But Doctor-”

The Doctor held his finger up to her and guided her away from Barry’s listening ears. “Alice, I can’t have Barry with me up there. He’s scared and unpredictable. Normally I’d let you come, but I need you to stay with him. Keep him calm. Keep an eye on him.”

Alice narrowed her eyes and then her lips curled into a smile. “Okay.”

“Oh,” said the Doctor, arching his eyebrows. “I thought I’d have more of a battle on my hands than that.”

“Just you be careful, Doctor,” she said. She leaned forward and gave him a gentle kiss on his cheek and then made her way back to Barry.

The Doctor touched his cheek where she’d kissed him. He hadn’t been expecting that. And something about it didn’t feel right.

“Come on Barry,” said Alice, guiding him back towards the pub.

“Stay safe!” said the Doctor. “And remember, if anything happens, go to the TARDIS.”

“Will do,” said Alice.

The Doctor watched as the two disappeared into the pub at the end of the street, and then he turned and made his way back towards the outskirts of the village.




In the pub Barry had settled down at one of the tables and was anxiously pulling at an already dog-eared beer mat.

“A sign of nervousness, that,” said Alice, slinking behind the bar.

“I know,” said Barry. “That’s because I am bloody nervous.”

“Don’t be,” said Alice. “Have a pint.”

“I can’t get drunk. Not now.”

“Yes you can,” she said, pouring him a cold pint of ale and getting herself a whiskey and coke. “Drink it.”

“Alice, how can you be so calm?”

She smiled down at him. “All in a days work for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I’ve fought metal tank creatures and been to another planet. I know the score now. Reflection monsters? They’re nothing.”

“You’ve changed since we were last here. Since you smashed that mirror.”

“Drink,” said Alice.

Out of fear, Barry took a big gulp of ale and then wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jumper.

“Ah,” said Alice as she downed her whiskey and coke, “these Earth drinks can be so agreeable.”

“You’re not from Earth then?” said Barry.

She smiled at him. “Not exactly, my dear.” She pulled up a stool and sat next to him. “Maybe I’ll show you where I come from. Very soon. But for now,” she said, eyeing up the cricket bat beside the broken pieces of mirror, “we’re just going to have as much fun as we possibly can.”


Next week: Alice finds herself an ally on the "other side" and the Doctor learns where the mysterious reflections came from. Coming Saturday 15th March 2014.


If you want to read back on all previous Darkpaths stories up to the present without trawling through the blog menus, then why not visit the Story Index which will bring up all stories and all chapters.

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