A LONG WINTER NIGHT
WRITTEN BY SAMUEL MALESKI
There was someone in the house.
It wasn’t some nocturnal bird flapping about, or the floor creaking, or some subconscious fear suddenly taking shape. The child knew, he positively knew, that there was someone in the house. Few would have believed him, despite the long-proven fact that children, their senses not yet dulled by the lullabies of your ordinary, working life, sense more than others, discern the shadows lurking at the edge of reality, find real meaning in seemingly inconsequential whispers or scribbles. And, in the long winter nights, where the wind seems to carry the whispers of some strange being dancing among the snows and storms, such knowledge can be invaluable. It can save your life. More than your life, really, the very fabric of your being.
There was someone in the house, and he was alone.
His parents had been invited over to the Mulligans, at the other end of town. They were celebrating their wedding anniversary – which was a concept the child never really grasped, to be honest. Was spending all your time with someone you are madly in love with such a chore that it required celebration each time a milestone was reached? Well, the point was that they wouldn’t be back before the morning. They would gladly have taken the child with them, but he wasn’t exactly what you would call interested. So they fixed him dinner and sent him straight to bed, leaving him a spare phone if some emergency were to suddenly erupt, and, if reality were always a straight, linear, singular affair, it would have been the end of it, and Bob would have been your metaphorical uncle. But, around midnight, the child woke up. And he knew there was someone in the house.
Not because of a suspicious sound, or because of a shape passing behind the blinders, no. There was just something off. The world around him seemed to echo, to vibrate. Everything in his small, cozy bedroom suddenly seemed to have a strange edge, an alien quality. He couldn’t shake it off, he couldn’t sleep. He was afraid, but his fear was mixed with a tiny twinge of curiosity. Not everyone runs away when afraid: there are thrills to be found when facing your nightmares, having a good, long look at them. The child was afraid because he didn’t know what was going on – he henceforth made the logical decision of going downstairs, to see what was there. And if the thing below was a very bad thing? Well, the door was downstairs too. He could always run, run without a look backwards, to one of the neighboring houses. So, the little child put on his slippers, went down the stairs, and turned the lights on.
Nothing and no one in the living room. It was large, though, and garnished with an abundant variety of furniture, thus offering plenty of little hiding places for some malevolent gremlin. But nothing. And no one. Just a fat, old, grey cat that let out a displeased meow, his slumber disturbed by the electrical light.
“Shut up, Wolfy”, whispered the kid.
He inspected meticulously every corner of the house. Nothing out of the ordinary. A little bit of dust, cat hair, some personal belongings lying here or there. Not exactly the stuff of night terrors. Still, that feeling remained. He was ill-at-ease, and restless, incapable of letting a minute pass without many, many concerned glances at the windows or the house’s corners. Eventually, he sat down in an armchair, grabbed the first book in reach, and started reading. A healthy call: you’d be surprised to hear how many lives are saved because of good books every year. After a few minutes, he was already feeling more relaxed, his nerves soothed. Even if the strange omens that had been tickling his mind for some time had not disappeared, they had considerably dimmed, and he started to think about returning to his bed and dreams when the singing started.
It was a beautiful, heart-wrenching song. It had this universal appeal to a shared grief and passion, so typical of your old folk tune, and at the same time the dramatic size and scope, the solemn and terrible grandeur of an opera. Its words gave the impression to be beautiful, intriguing and complex, but the child couldn’t quite make them out, the meaning slipping in and out of his mind. It was a lullaby, and a requiem; a call to war, and a cry of pain. An impossible piece of music, tearing through the night. The child remained still for some time, a minute perhaps, fascinated, deeply touched. In a few notes, he had the impression to hear all his little griefs and all his great joys, all his successes and failures, all the smiles his parents ever cracked, all the strange, sorrowful gazes his mother made sometimes when she thought nobody was watching her … But this bizarre hypnosis didn’t last, and soon, his curiosity piqued, he burst free, out of those invisible bounds of sound, and looked around, trying to find their origin.
Slowly, he rose from the chair. He looked left, and right – nothing. And then, he turned back, facing the French window.
There was a woman in the garden.
How she got there, it was impossible to tell; but there she stood, very still, her long red curls falling on her face. Her snow-like complexion and thin, frail body gave an impression of weakness, and, in a certain way, of wasted potential – she probably had been a stunning beauty, once, but some dire disease or intense anemia must have had taken a considerable toll on her. Beautiful as a barren desert, and just as lifeless. She was draped in a long, white dress which had been crafted with care and an impressive attention to detail, but her attire had suffered from what seemed a long, long walk in the mud and the trees. And this scarecrow in haute couture, this silent spectre, was singing. He could make out, behind the curtain of hairs, her lips moving fast, swallowing gallons of words. After the mandatory startle, the boy was for a moment reassured. It’s just a woman, a woman singing. Yes, finding a stranger in your garden is odd to say the least, and perhaps she meant to do bad things, but it’s not like he was going to open her the door. And she wasn’t carrying a gun, or a knife, or something sharp and dangerous and deadly. Perhaps she was even looking for shelter! A homeless woman, exiled from her residence … He was almost tented to let her in ; or at least, to try and talk to her, figure out why exactly she was there, serenading him. He took a few steps in the direction of the window, before he realized something strange. Why had he been, a few moments before, incapable to locate the origin of the song simply by ear? Why had he been incapable to tell that she was behind him?
Because she wasn’t singing.
The sound did not come from her direction, from her moving lips, it was everywhere, it originated from every angle of the house, from the sky, from the ground. The song did not echo through the night, it echoed directly through his head.
Now, he was afraid. Very, very afraid. He took one step back. And then another. And then, she cast her hair aside with a movement of her head, and stared straight at him.
Her eyes were pitch-black. No white, no color, just two pits of infinite darkness. The black of the sky seemed positively jolly compared to those two little gateways to the void. She turned her head sideways, looking somewhat curious – a predator before a tasty slice of meat. And yet, she didn’t move a finger. She just kept staring, and kept singing, pouring her words and her notes into his head. The noise was getting louder, and louder, and he felt more and more oppressed, each beat of his heart now echoing in his head like an inexorable, fateful drumming. He ran upstairs, in his bedroom, locked the door. She is outside. She can’t get in. It’s impossible. None of this is possible. It must be a bad dream, a feverous fit striking him during the night and calling forth creatures of smoke and shadow.
He stayed there. Sitting in the dark, waiting. The song was weaker now, its grasp less intense. It had almost completely faded; remained only faint echoes, sad sounds, sounds that made him think of days never lived, of long-forgotten battlefields drown under the snow … But the quiet had come back. At long last.
He tried to call his parents. Once. Twice. Thrice. No answer. The mechanically polite voice at the other hand of the line blamed it on some interferences.
The cat was there too. He had crawled under the bed, apparently equally ill-at-ease with the mysterious woman’s aura. So the two of them sat there, in a pool of moonlight coming down from the window. Still wary, and worried, but safe and sound for now. The kid thought about leaving the house, going to the neighbors’ place, tell them he had a nightmare or a fever or something. But that would require crossing the living room, and perhaps she was still there, waiting, singing her hymns … He didn’t think he could muster the strength to do that. A single look into those black eyes had drained him – he wasn’t curious anymore, he was confused and terrified, lost in a nightmare, incapable of telling fantasy and reality apart. He didn’t cry and whimper, though. What good would it be? His mother had often told him that problems never fix themselves, that you have to brave and clever to overcome. So he decided he was going to be brave. It wasn’t easy, in that big house suddenly so threatening, but he solemnly swore to keep this state of mind. Besides, he was safe, now. He had to be. If the woman was a witch or a monster that eats children, she should be very powerful, she should be able to break the walls and run, run to get him. But she didn’t – she couldn’t enter. He was a bit reassured. Still, those eyes … So empty, and yet so full of cold, malevolent passion, of a weird, sadistic vitality, of a song that has lasted a billion billion years and melodies untold come now child join me you know you want to see you want to know they lied to you the world is so vast it is infinite there are no bounds they keep secrets from you child join me swim in my heart and I’ll show you all there is the universe turning burning creating destroying eternal plural join me child hear the song join me child wonders terrors and emotions leave the mundane leave the ordinary leave the flesh join me child join me join me join me join me join me JOIN ME JOIN ME JOIN ME JOIN ME JOIN ME.
The song, again. Louder than ever. And behind the song, the words, the slow, monotone voice of the woman, whispering in his brain. He covered his ears, grabbed a pillow, trying to find solace, silence, solitude, but he couldn’t, the rhythm in his skull always stronger and louder and more violent, and he started to feel real, physical pain, and he was asking himself how is this possible, she’s downstairs she can’t sing to me she can’t see me with her black eyes, it’s not possible! He rose, painfully, dazed and dazzled by the notes and the join me join me join me behind them. The window! If she had found a way into the house, if she was coming for him, he could escape by the window! There was quite a fall, but the devil you know always looks like an angel when you are facing something unknown, so alien it topples all that your reason and your life had constructed over decades … He stumbled his way across the room, flung the window and blinders wide open.
She was there. A body floating in the night, dress and hair flowing in the wind, her black eyes staring at him. She raised a carnivorous smile, and each of her movements, each of her looks was an eternity of noise, an echo and an aria, an endless, bitter, preying cacophony. The song was tearing his mind apart. He could not breathe, he could not think, he could only picture in his mind the front door of the house you can’t run you can’t hide the song is everywhere the song is everything child I can make it stop just accept me come to me join me, and the empty living room beneath him; and so he ran, without even knowing he was running, fleeing like a meek animal in front of an abominable predator, a whirlwind of teeth and claws. Down the stairs, quickly, and he’s at the door, and he can’t find the keys for a short, agonizing moment, and then he’s out, out in the open. He could feel her presence just behind; she was advancing slowly, inexorably towards him, her bare, wounded feet floating a few centimeters above the ground, a bird of prey closing on him.
The street was quiet, with no cars passing through, at this hour of the night, but the nearby houses were close, and he was started to feel a twinge of hope, when his attention was caught by an unusual sight.
A big blue box on the pavement.
And just like that, the voices in his head stopped. He looked round. The woman had vanished.
It was a police box. His mother had told him about those. There were still a few in London during her younger years – she thought they were rubbish, but in a charming sort of way, and regretted their disappearance.
The box was closer than the neighboring houses. Perhaps he could call for help? The police surely wouldn’t believe him … But surely this woman, this spectre, couldn’t harm him if he were under the watch of armed, watchful people? He would be safer that way; police wouldn’t, he hoped, consider all of this was just some child fantasy conjured in the dark and cold. What protection could a few, half-asleep people, or a few inches of brick and wood, offer against the song and the singer anyway?
Cautiously, he approached the box and opened the doors.
-
The console room was quite dark, these days. Of course, the Time Lord liked quiet lights – they reminded him of campfires and libraries and little coffee shops in the evening. Nice places. Nice places with nice people inside them. Have you ever heard of a war taking place inside a library? No, of course not. Well, sometimes it’s full of man-eating shadows, or you take the wrong turn on the roads of Time and end up on a long-lost battlefield, but that’s hardly relevant. The point is, that even if the Doctor enjoyed the majestic silhouette his wonderful, living and breathing machine, his eternal companion, took under that lightning, and had hardly ever changed it since that test run that led him in the stomach of a T-Rex and then in Victorian London, the darkness had grew thicker over the last few weeks, and the ancient, mystical-looking tubes and panels had adopted a less friendly, almost menacing appearance. A reflection of the pilot’s mood, no doubt. The TARDIS had tried to cheer him up, taking him on a grand tour across all of the noteworthy Christmas gatherings in the history of the universe. That, surprisingly, did little to lift the spirits of the great old man of Time and Space.
So, there he stood. Somewhat bored. He had stuck around after the memorable Christmas Day of the year 2024, where he had seen a foreign delegation surprisingly willing to ice-skate when the First Great Snowstorm of London struck. Not just because his more and more misanthropic self had no desire to continue this parade of cakes, carols and camouflaged depression, but also because he had heard some interesting rumors here and there, from snippets of news and nightmares told begrudgingly. Something worth investigating, at last, something to fill the void he currently felt in his life and in his head …
“Get up, off your arse, and win …” a voice seemed to whisper him.
But right now, he was alone. Waiting, peering into the unflinching abysses of the Time Vortex, as if looking for a signal, some lead that would reveal what the future held for him …
That signal came, finally, in an unexpected way, when the doors opened. Thrills, at last! Curious and excited, he jumped out of his chair and stared at the intruder, his fingers clenching around his brand new sonic screwdriver.
Just a boy.
The disappointment was biting.
“Why didn’t I lock the doors?” he asked himself. It was probably some scout trying to sell him cookies, or perhaps one of those curious brats that have nothing to do except trespassing on people’s boxes. Still, he was willing to try it:
“Are you a Christmas caroller?”
At the receiving end of that unusual enquiry, only a blank, flabbergasted pair of eyes.
“I … sing in the choir at my school. If that counts.”
“Oh, one of the carol people. Great. All I needed. I should put a sign on the door or something. Actually, no, I shouldn’t, I would just scribble insults on it.”
The boy could not comprehend where he was, or who was that strange man looking like a tuxedoed match with candy floss for hair. His jaw dropped a little. He pointed towards the gates of the ancient Gallifreyan device. And then towards the console.
“It’s bigger …”
“… On the inside, yes! Of course it is! Why are people always pointing that out! It’s like you humans can’t comprehend dimensional engineering! Well, tough luck. I don’t have to give every damn person who enters here the whole rundown. Alien time machine, deal with it, now go back serenading lollipops and eating girls, or whatever you do.”
“… Why did you ask me if I was a Christmas caroller?”
“Heard stories. About a killer Christmas carol. By which I mean, a Christmas carol that kills people. That would have been interesting. Unlike you. Remind me, why are you still here?”
It couldn’t be real. Singing ghosts haunting him, and now an old man hiding in a time-travelling cyberpunk cathedral?
“Am I dreaming?”
“Maybe.” the Doctor answered, “Maybe you’ve just sleepwalked here. Happens all the time. You go to sleep and it’s all warm and fuzzy and then you wake up in another street, or another dimension.” His eyes suddenly filled with what seemed to be a happy reminiscence. “Remind me of that time with the Sultan of Cadmir and the Lotus Machine … You know what? Free piece of advice: go back to bed and pretend it’s all a dream. Much better. Forgetting, that’s what being human is all about, no? Admitting,” he said while drawing a faint smile “there is even something to remember.”
Suddenly, a thought hit the Time Lord. Why hadn’t he noticed that before?
A child, in the middle of the night, still wearing his pajamas, wandering the streets.
Now that was odd. Proper odd. And interesting.
“You still haven’t told me why you were here, though”, he inquired with an air of authority.
He noticed, in the eyes of the kid, a flicker of fear where only confusion reigned.
“There was a woman … In my house. I was alone, and she stood there, and she was singing … Singing to me, in my head … She wanted to do bad things to me. I’m sure of it. And her eyes … She had black eyes. Just … Empty.”
The Doctor’s eyes flared up with a mixture of childish glee and vague anguish. A woman with dark eyes and rumors about music killing people? That couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Oh”, he finally said.
“Oh?”
“Well, some good news and some bad news. Good ones: based on that rumor I heard and the information you’ve just offered me, I know who, or rather what that woman is. Bad ones: she’s one of the deadliest things you can encounter in our wide wild universe. Which is fun, in a way, I must admit, and I even hoped I would come by her or one of her kind one day, if only for the conversation, but it would be a pity if anything happened to innocent bystanders like you. Except if they’re scouts. I don’t like scouts.”
The boy raised an interrogative eyebrow.
“For Gallifrey’s sake, that was a joke. Kids these days, they …”
He stopped talking.
Singing had started to fill the vast space of the Time Machine.
The Time Lord grabbed the child by the collar, closed the doors, locked them, and started thinking.
-
It had waited for so, so long.
More than needed, indubitably. That female flesh, those sinews and muscles, this energy, It liked them. But then again, they weren’t made to endure in the life It led, dancing around the stars and through the currents of time, whispering to some, serenading others, and sometimes feasting on their fear and fever, making arias and symphonies out of sublimed pain …
But the boy, he wasn’t like that. It had seen him from far away, his thoughts echoing, arpeggios in the void and the dark … So vivid. So beautiful. So tasty.
He was touched by grace, no doubt, by forces It could not entirely comprehend, echoes of some splendid, infinitely powerful sounds that had presided to the creation of this whole befouled and accursed universe. Covetous lust erupted into It. It would have the boy, now. He too would feel the glorious death and chaos of the universe decaying, exploding, twisting and turning and trembling, he too would dance to the flutes of absolute anarchy, to the sweet sweet murmur of bloody upheaval. He would join It, and make It more powerful than ever before. The notes would gnaw his flesh and wash his impurities away, and leave behind a spirit scattered, a lost wandering soul enslaved to the notes of the Original Song.
Perfection.
-
The child watched with astonished eyes as the Doctor pulled out of his pocket a sort of futuristic-looking tool (or a magic wand ? after all, everything seemed to have become possible now), and plugged into one of the consoles that stood at the center of the strange structure. He stood there for a minute, pushing a few buttons with feverish haste, and then started walking towards the doors.
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“Wait!” the child replied, alarmed. “You can’t go out there. She’s out there.”
“Well, yes. That’s the point. What am I supposed to do? I can’t fly off now. I tried. Somehow, her very presence interferes with the systems, warps the reality around her. You probably tried to call your parents, no? Well, that’s why it didn’t work. That’s the trouble with those Pantheon of Discord types. The conceptual beings, the anthropomorphic personifications …” At that point, the boy had entirely stopped understanding what the hell this weird, mad-scientist person was talking about. “And I can’t stay here, and let her do whatever she wants either.”
“That would be dangerous?”
“Deadly, in fact.”
“… What is she?”
“It’s complicated. Ever heard of the sirens? Greek mythology, Homer got the idea from me after a party evening, would drive people insane by singing at them, a talent usually reserved to bad candidates in talent shows?”
The child nodded. On his third birthday, his mother had offered him a book of Greek myths adapted for children. She hadn’t received what you would call a perfect education, and, as people in that case often do, was adamant about her son being knowledgeable in a wide variety of subjects. It had been his favourite for the longest time.
“Well, that lady over there is the truth behind the myth. She’s, well, it’s, called a Singsong. No physical form, no body, just music floating out and about in the wide universe. Hunting. It’s an earworm, really, nothing more. But one that will treat your brain like an ordinary worm treats an apple. And then use your dead body as a puppet. Just because it thinks it’s fun.”
“… I’m afraid.”
“You ought to be. Remember that fear, and treasure it. It’s helpful, fear, really. Helps you not getting killed, and not doing stupid things like confronting an ancient, immortal ghost thing in the middle of a January night.”
The child was trembling. He grabbed the Doctor’s hand.
“Don’t leave me alone here.”
“It’s not safe outside.”
“You just said it’s not safe inside either, because her songs can reach us!”
The Doctor sighed, indecisive. The song was growing more intense, more desperate too. Like a call, a pathetic plea for reunion …
“Listen, you.” A pause. “What’s your name already?”
“I haven’t told you.”
“Could you please do it now? It’s not that I don’t like these motivational speeches, but I would rather focus on the important issue here, that is the homicidal maniac piano riff.”
“You haven’t told me yours.”
“I’m the Doctor”, he said with pride, and also with a twinge of the exasperated fatigue of the grandfather tired to deal with meddling kids.
“That’s not a name!”
“Yes it is, and no, we are not entering this debate right now. Do straighten your priorities, please.”
He opened the gates, ever so slowly. No one in the street, on the pavements. And still, a song.
He felt the presence of the boy, behind him.
“You’re a doctor … Please … Help me get out of this nightmare. There must be something wrong, with me, and I don’t want to sit here alone in the dark and with that music playing …”
He hesitated, but finally, let out a resigned sigh.
“Alright. But do please remain behind me. Actually, remain behind me, whether it pleases you or not.”
Both of them stepped outside the time machine. Still no one. And yet, the singing had grew immensely louder. The boy could start hearing, once again, words woven within the fabric of the music – cloaked in eternity join me they cannot understand your greatness they betrayed time join me embrace the warmth of the void and the fire join me join me join me -.
“She’s hiding somewhere. Mustn’t be far away if we hear her like that.”
He extended a hand to the child, who grasped it like the buoy that would save his life in that ocean of unknown.
“Oh, and … You whose name I still don’t have the time to ask?”
“… Yes?”
“There is nothing wrong with you.”
A faint, frightful smile found its way to the child’s lips.
“Now, let’s go around that box, slowly, and see if we can spot our diva friend …”
Step by step, they moved in circles around the blue wooden walls, their eyes fixed on the thick layers of darkness. It was a starless night; the only light to be found here came from the new moon, or came down from a few, erratically disposed lampposts.
Round they went. Nothing. No one. Just the singing, echoing, becoming stronger, more insidious with each second. They were advancing slowly, their back to the machine.
Suddenly, an illumination.
“Well, I know where she is,” whispered the Doctor.
“Where is that?”
“You know, it’s funny. I should know that by now, but I always forget to check.”
He whispered into the child’s ear. “Nobody ever thinks to look up.”
“Oh God.”
“Quite.”
“Can she hear us?”
“Doubt it. I guess projecting her energy all over the place like mayonnaise must necessitate quite a lot of concentration, and we’ve been whispering. Besides, she’s waiting for us to step away from that box to attack.”
“What now?”
“Well, I’m going to do just that, and then you’re going to run far away in the opposing direction, and stay there while I have a nice little chat with our common friend. Okay?”
A pause, and then, a light of determination rising in the child’s eyes. He thought about his mother. Problems never fix themselves, you have to brave and clever to overcome.
“Okay.”
“On the count of three.”
Bathe in the blood of the suns feel the passion the neverending turn of the universe always falling deeper and deeper in the abysses and the black and the nothing until there’s nothing but sound and silence battling and suffering in the infinite spaces join me join me
“One.”
I see you glow and burn and shine join me you’ll see all you’ll be all join me join me join me join me join me
“Two …”
They exchanged a last glanced. And then …
“Three!”
The Doctor made a few steps forward, and then turned to the TARDIS.
There she was, crouched on the roof, her body and limbs twisted in a way that would have made any human writhe in pain, her black eyes staring back at him. No, not her eyes. Its eyes. Eyes so ancient, and still ready to feast on pain …
At that moment, the boy started to run frantically, going down the street as fast as he could. The Singsong huddled up for a brief moment, and then jumped, landing only a couple of steps behind him. Under the moonlight, and in the ecstasy of the hunt, there was nothing human left in that body. Its eyes were burning with rage and pleasure merged, its hair and rags drenched in sweat, an inhuman smile tearing its face in half. It moved on all fours, like some savage child raised by wolves, an uncanny mixture of man, animal, and something else … Its song had changed too. It wasn’t the insidious, enticing, charming air that had echoed earlier in the living room: it was a loud drumming, an orgy of dissonant horns clashing and colliding while a choir of desperate voices shredded by agony was chanting promises of death and demise.
It stood up, its feet floating a few inches above the ground, about to run the boy down, when the Doctor stood between the eldritch being and its prey, sonic screwdriver in hand.
It froze. Even it feared the Time Lords.
And it talked. Right in the Doctor’s mind, half-sung, half-yelled words full of cold savagery.
“… Lord … of Time? Eying harmony, walking in eternity among barren deserts, broken bones of potentialities befouled and forgotten?”
“That’s the one.”
“Lording over, presiding to the epochs – why here, in the clashes and chaos of blessed hunting?”
“Well, I’m all for acceptance and inter-species friendship – that’s not flirting, by the way –, but killing people at random and feasting on their mind and potential doesn’t exactly fall into the type of behavior I condone.”
A wave of disdain rose from the eyes of the Singsong. “Hero, he wished he were? But he’s hunter from hell as I am. Bound by blessed brotherhood between the forsaken progenitors of a primitive universe – a boy, a bounty, a body, all that I ask. Worlds keep spinning and stars keep shining and the Doctor keeps weaving his web across halls of nebulous time.”
“We are nothing alike.”
“True. He and his kind have refined our song into towers and tools. I admire their work.”
“Anyway. Conjecture, a purely hypothetical one: I am disposed to let you have the boy. And then what? You devour him, or something like that – quite frankly, I don’t want you to wax poetic about your alimentary habits –. But then, what happens? You travel, you keep killing and violating all over the galaxy, and then your body starts to decay again, and it’s one more boy, and one more long winter night like this one. But you wouldn’t take all those risks just for that, would you? You’re expecting that I will bow before your will, which is not exactly a guarantee – you could have chosen any other lonely child, and Rassillon knows those are not in short supply, and you definitely should have done so once you saw that one was protected. So, I ask you this: why him?
“Symphonies can’t be shushed swiftly. Thrills carry one to completion, consumption.”
“It’s really amazing.”
An interrogative flicker in two dark eyes.
“This ability you people have to lie while using a telepathic, music-based system of communication. I would have thought it was difficult, or even impossible, but you’re really doing well. Although, maybe not well enough.”
“Waves of time, crashing, dancing in his mind, his veins, his blood. Power waning and wasting away. A twinge of wondrous purity in his heart – neglected forever, a nagging nauseous negation. He deserves to ascend and transcend through the pyres of forever. Dancing with us.”
“Oh, so that’s generosity. Who’d have thought?”
The Singsong stood up, slowly, meticulously. Ready to attack. The noise had dimmed for a moment during the conversation, but now, it was there again, louder and more aggressive than ever before.
“His authorization is not required.”
“Oh, yes it is. Because you’re not just some kind of fanatic trying to show the light to that kid over there by killing him. That would be textbook, yes, but it’s not the case here. The only thing you want to do is empty him of his blood and soul, and then use those to kill more people more often. Because that’s what you are. A broken thing that can only find solace in the suffering of others. A shard of a world gone by. And tonight, you will fail.”
“Once, I would have felt fear and trembling. But now, he’s old. Cunning without strength, tongue without teeth. I have both, milord. Watch me bite.”
The creature suddenly moved her right hand towards the Doctor, and he was tossed across the road. Of course. Vibrations carried by the air and the soil. Sound control. Rudimentary, but efficient when it comes to producing telekinesis-like effect. He had been anticipating something along those lines since the ancient being had engaged the conversation, but the intensity of the attack still surprised him. He was lying on the ground, but could still make out, in the corner of his eye, the Singsong, running on all fours towards that boy whose name he really should have asked before. He wasn’t moving. Of course … Why had the beast even bothered to talk to him? Because it could still project its song in the boy’s mind during that time. Considering it had quite a lot of time to do just that back in the house, it was probably exercising an incredibly powerful emprise over him. If it reached him, it would be the end in a matter of seconds. A paralyzed mind, ready to be filled with the sound of the monster. Well, of course, except if clumsy hands were to liberate a focused sonic blast right in front of the Singsong, disturbing the link it had with its host and sending him back to the howling pits from whence it came. By, maybe, using the setting 1-7-54 on that new screwdriver he was holding in his hands right now. Of course, doing that without proper preparation would result in a lot of noise and few results. But, by chance, he had been calibrating that very same sonic screwdriver just before going outside. Oh, the happy coincidences – will wonders never cease?
He rose, and started running. Of course. Always the running.
The rabid entity was at a few meters of the boy now.
The Doctor clenched his teeth and ran faster, starting to aim his screwdriver at the head of what had been a woman, once.
Two meters, and closing in.
He turned the little dials and pressed the little switches hidden in the structure of his ancient Gallifreyan device.
The Singsong jumped, ready to land on the immobilized body.
And a long, metallic-sounding shriek echoed through the night.
At first, the creature only stopped. Then, it opened its mouth as to yell, but not a single sound came out. Its limbs started shaking uncontrollably, and, slowly, very slowly, the skin, sinews and bones of his mortal coat turned to dust, a life flying in the wind. The two black eyes were the last thing to disappear: only remained an almost undiscernible hum, a faint echo of the past cacophony, and a persistent smell of burnt wood.
-
The boy opened his eyes. He had not chosen to close them. It was a weird, incredibly unpleasant feeling. For a moment, he had been someone, something other than himself. Infinitely more vast. And terrifying.
In front of him stood that Doctor. And nothing else. With a relieved sigh, he turned to him:
“Is it over now?”
He was only met with a pair of concerned eyes.
“No. It’s only the beginning.”
The child and the Doctor had returned to the TARDIS. The former was sitting in one of the armchairs placed on the upper level of the time machine, near some shelves covered in books. He took at peak at the titles. Some he knew – “The Time Traveler’s Wife”, “A Christmas Carol”, “And Then There Were None” – while others he found deeply perplexing – “Codex Octaviis, Third Edition”, “Shadow Proclamation : the Myths, the Facts, the Lies”, “Records and Proceedings of the Dalek Parliament”. A whole world of knowledge had opened between two hours of the night. He desperately wanted to tell someone about all the wonders and the terrors he had just discovered –some friends at school, maybe? Or even a random stranger in the street? But he knew he couldn’t. The man, that strange, wonderful man who still refused to reveal what name lay behind that “Doctor” title, had been adamant: the things that happened at the edge of the reality must remain there. Moreover, the night still wasn’t over – the alien, for he was now convinced that this person was more than a simple human, to make such a stand before the Singsong, had said he wanted to discuss some matters with him.
Well, that was the idea. Once they went back, the Time Lord – the creature called him that, didn’t she? Classy title, at any rate. Once they went back, the Time Lord immediately started checking the screens and panels of his console, apparently feeling a sudden surge of disinterest towards him. The child was not exactly offended or hurt – he was too tired anyway, the fear and the death-defying runs having taken quite a toll on him – but he could feel an anomaly, a grain of sand in the gears and mechanisms of his logic. His mind could make sense of many things; he had always had that gift. Most people either denied or supported the existence of life among the stars; but for him, it had never been anything else than a certitude solid as bedrock. That night had not been a rift in the fabric of his life, but merely a gateway to a world he had known existed, lurking at the periphery of the human existence, since the first book he read, since the first walk he took in the forest with his mother and her telescope, since he had been able to think and talk.
And yet, it wasn’t quite what he expected. Maybe his wild imagination was at fault here? The man, if the term was even applicable here, wasn’t a hero, or some wise lore-keeper raining down his wisdom on the human race, but an old hermit, a tired magician, sad and lonely, who, over there, near his console, was casting some invisible spell, playing with the threads of destiny. Of his destiny.
The wait had grown awkward. He hailed the Doctor from across the room:
“Don’t you ever talk?”
“I used to.” A coil of melancholy had fallen on his face, so thick and dark the boy could see it from the upper gallery. “So many words. Nice words, sad words, great words, with the power to terrify, and comfort, and help … But time passes, and lives disappear in smoke, and I wonder: why bother? Because at the end of the sentence, at the end of the speech, silence will be the only thing that remains. It always does. That’s why I haven’t insisted when you refused to tell me your name. A name is a pretty useless thing, when you really think about it. It won’t save anyone from oblivion. Still, I have duties. Towards the universe. And, as a derivate of this general principle, towards you, tonight. And I will fulfill them. With diligence. And in silence.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to offend you.”
“You didn’t.”
“But it’s sad. It’s sad that you think this is the only way.”
“Trial and error. Never fails. I know how the story ends: why should I open the book one more time? To be proved wrong, perhaps. I’ve spent lifetimes trying to be proved wrong. By pride, perhaps? But now, after all these years, I am convinced it is not worth it. Oh, there is still amazement, and wonders to see, and wounds to heal. But certain things, I can never have. Human contact – not my area, and it shouldn’t be. There’s nothing sad about it, really, it’s a fact – Time and Space, they’re like that. They have laws.”
“I’m not sure I understand all that you’re saying. But I know you’re not alright. I’ve seen people being like that before. And I wish I could help you. But I cannot: I don’t know you, I don’t know your world. But I know one thing: you saved my life. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be able to kiss my mum. To play with my friends at school. To read books. Or not to read books. All because of you. That must count for something. So … Yes. I think that you are wrong.”
The firmly drawn eyebrows of the Time Lord, which seemed to have been repeatedly grinded on a sharpening stone, slowly raised, and the distant echo of a smile found its way to his lips.
“Granted. Although, the night is still young, and we have a lot of work ahead of us.”
“You still haven’t told me why.”
“Well, I’m improvising a little bit here. I shouldn’t tell you that, it spoils the magic a little. Still, I think I’ve found a solution.”
“To what problem? You’ve killed her … It. It won’t harm me anymore.”
“I’ve not killed it. I’m not sure it’s even possible, really: most of the accounts of a Singsong attack either end with the tale of a bloodbath, or some notes on how the creature was captured and trapped into some kind of prison or forcefield. I’ve just sent it back to where it belong: a dimension of chaos, noise and violence. What I need to do now is to check whether the door is closed.”
“It can come back?”
“It might. You’ve heard its song, its thoughts. It has left its mark upon you, and it might use you as an anchor, a beacon to return among the living.”
“… For a doctor, you have terrible bedside manners.”
“What’s the point in lying? I could dig up some cue cards and tell you some pretty lies, but what good would that do? The truth is hard, but it’s useful. No illusions: know the danger, in all its ugliness, and you can start avoiding it.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“What do your parents do when you’re very sick?”
“… Yeah, still not reassuring.” A pause. “They take me to the hospital.”
“Well, you have your answer. Not any hospital, of course. Some place that knows how to treat someone after an alien encounter. I’m thinking Hermes IV. Great place. They have a little shop. And at least three different mattress colors.”
“Well, I suppose I’ve got no other choice.”
The Doctor sent an amused glare in the boy’s direction. A trip to the hospital rarely seems exciting to children. Or to himself. Another proof of their common wisdom.
“I could have offered you a little trip on some alien beach or jungle as a consolation prize, but the TARDIS – that’s this lovely time machine right around us, you can say hi – is still recovering from the atrocious singing of our immaterial friend, so it’s a one-trip sort of affair.”
“… Am I actually going to see another planet?”
“There it is. The excitement. The light in the eye. I don’t know how I will manage without those … But, yes. Yes, you are. Not sure it will live up to the expectations, however. Some think stars are more beautiful when seen from below.”
“Do you?”
“I have never been”, the Time Lord proclaimed with a grin, “the kind to stick to a single viewpoint.”
And, pushing a lever, he sent the machine running across the Time Vortex.
There was something, however, he did not notice.
On the armchair, the fingertips of the child had started to tap against the old, cracked leather, following a regular pattern. A regular beating. A regular rhythm.
The rhythm of an ancient song – a hunter’s song, that told of a world of preys, ripe for the reaping …
-
For the longest time, Hermes IV had been one of the most barren, desolate, lifeless landscapes this side of the galaxy. An infinite field of tortured, razor-sharp stone formations and menacing, ragged mountains, under the blazing light of the red giant Chronos – a colossal, crimson disk in the sky.
And then came the Caduceus Company. A ragtag bunch of physicians and healers from all across the galaxy, bound together by the strength of a common philosophy. They believed in Life; and, as every living thing was according to them an embodiment of the vital energy that had been running since the dawn of time in that great body called Universe, in the preservation of all individual lives. Rich lives and poor lives, lives from the past and the future, mundane lives and extraordinary lives. Their influence, wealth, and political weight had slowly grown over the course of several centuries, and, by the dawn of the forty-ninth century, at the edge of the Noth Wars, they were the greatest purveyors of free medical care in reckoned history, with several cutting-edge, properly gargantuan health centers – barely hospitals anymore, and more like fortified monasteries, outposts of serenity, learning and healing. A little more fashionable than your average monastery, of course. Your ordinary monk generally never receives generous donations from rich sick people having made a miraculous recovery, and thus has no means to hire really good architects and a crew of top-of-the-shelf terraformers. It was indeed a tradition: every building erected by the organization had to stand in a perfectly unhospitable place – as a reminder life could prevail anywhere.
And Hermes IV fit that criteria perfectly. It was a small moon, orbiting with three sisters around Hermes Major, which had been a long time ago just as barren, but which was now a sprawling economic and cultural center. The other moons had hosted scientific stations and a few factories and mines, but that one had nothing of value except a succession of aggressive, pointy rocks stretching as far as the eye could see. But, these days, a myriad of shuttlecrafts and private ships navigated between the eden-world below and Hermes IV’s Sofia Neeva Health Centre, which stood at the top of an incredibly high and large bluff whose extremity, enclosed in an invisible, spherical forcefield, presented the lush and green appearance of a perfectly ordered English landscape garden – little pond and river included. The building itself, several stories high, was of a refined and elegant design. Black stone, steel and wood formed an intricate architectural web, whose cohesion was sometimes artfully broken by a pillar, an arch, or thick one-way windows – sometimes hidden behind an ingenious trompe-l’oeil.
Behind one of those windows, Doctor Channary Deauclaire was enjoying a nice cup of black, sugarless coffee. She had belonged to the Company since the beginning of her medicine studies, and now, at age thirty-eight, enjoyed an impressive reputation as one of its top neurologists. She was a beautiful woman, stern and severe without being austere, charismatic without being arrogant, devoted to her beliefs without ever letting them eat away her common sense. Her dark, copper-colored skin and short black hair contrasted with a pair of pale green eyes, often tired, always sharp and determined.
Today, however, they were especially tired. Hence this moment of leisure – a luxury she would never have afforded herself under normal circumstances. She was distractively flipping through some personal files, and a couple of articles on neural decay among the Judoon she intended to get published. Simple enough subject, but she found that the technical documentation of the subject to be clearly lacking. A mistake to rectify; one more. Well, a mistake she had rectified, by now – she was starting to think she really ought to get back to work – even though, considering the current events, that work really amounted to very little. She hastily rose, her coffee not even finished, and aimed for the door, and the neurology ward beyond.
She never reached it. She passed the frame of the door, and made a few steps in what should have been a perfectly ordinary, if tastefully arranged, corridor. And then realized she had actually entered a familiar-looking vast space, halfway between the derelict spaceship and the little comfy bookshop with a grumpy owner. Her face went through a rapid succession of surprise, exasperation and amusement. Out of nowhere, a blue doorway to untamed potentialities, distant age and forgotten worlds had materialized right in front of her door.
Again.
She noticed the Time Lord behind his console. Her astonishment had given him some discrete, caustic joy, at the very least – but he still looked preoccupied.
Of course. He ought to. If the weight of the universe rests on your shoulders twenty-four hours a day (well, based on the Standard Galactic Time, of course), you’ve got to be pretty darn preoccupied to go visit a doctor.
Maybe he was just uncomfortable around needles, too. It’s more common that people think.
“Colleague!” she shouted. “What did we say about materializing in front of my office? We have parking. Quite comfy parking, actually.”
“Not discrete enough for my tastes”, he answered with badly-acted embarrassment. “And the decoration is revolting.”
“At the very least, find a service area, a disaffected corridor, something! I like my office. I like getting in and out of my office. And with all the artron energy, I’ll need to spend a week recalibrating the scanners. Which all cost enough money to feed a small space colony for two months, for the record.”
“Sorry, I was in a bit of a hurry. Thought about stopping during the road to buy you some macarons as a consolation prize, but that could have provoked a rupture in the space-time continuum, with dire consequences and destruction and the usual things. How are Rita and the kids, by the way?”
“She’s starting to do some knitting. I insisted that she pass a neurological scan. At her age, seriously. But yes, they’re all fine and good.” A pause. “Now, could you tell me why you have mentioned my family?”
“I … was trying to be nice?”
“No, you weren’t. You have better things to do than be nice.”
In a hesitant voice, he answered. “I’ve got a patient for you.”
He pointed at a young, dark-skinned boy, sitting in one obscure corner of the room, looking very tired.
She waved at him and immediately smiled. She adored children. And had way too many, too – she never understood why people assumed that her success as a practitioner would mean the end of her family life. That one reminded her of her eldest; that same light of intelligence in the eyes, that same vivacity that almost seemed to bleed through the air around him …
And suddenly, a shiver went down her spine.
If the Doctor had come to her, from what was probably the other end of the space-time continuum, that could only mean one thing: the boy was in mortal danger.
Instantly forgetting the incongruity of the situation and sliding back into her well-practiced medical role, she asked –
“What seems to be the problem?”
-
“A Singsong? Well, that explains the readings. All those electric flux, it’s like there’s a rave party in the frontal lobe … Still, it’s strange.”
They were now sitting in one of the examination rooms, a few levels below the neurologist’s office, having left the TARDIS in a service corridor a few meters away. The architect had apparently tried to make it look somehow welcoming, preferring black linen and wooden surfaces to the classic clinical white, but even if you try very hard, you can’t make a series of diagnosis machines and analysis tools easy on the eyes.
The boy wasn’t very reassured. The Doctor seemed bothered by the whole situation.
And Deauclaire seemed somehow embarrassed.
“Does all that surprise you?” asked the Doctor.
“A little. They … They generally don’t leave survivors. So, obviously, we lack intel.”
“That means you don’t know how to heal me?” whispered the kid.
“I did not say that, dear. Many civilizations have encountered those creatures, since the dawn of time, so there’s a little bit of literature going around. I can devise counter-measures that should in all logic work. Honestly, it’s a shame you came here at that time – I’m not the most knowledgeable here on the subject. The one to see would be professor McCullough, from the Alien Wildlife Department.”
“Well, can’t we go and meet him, with your introduction.”
“No, I’m afraid not. Look around you. Does it look like there are many people here?”
The child and the Doctor exchanged a worried look. They hadn’t noticed anyone except her.
“Exactly. They’ve all left.”
“Why would they do such a thing? Humans, they’re so slippery, with their short lives and little twisted nerves …”
“Says the time traveler who got married eight times. Alas, it’s not just some kind of brusque craze. I thought you’d know. The Noth fleets are on the move. Three outposts have been obliterated in the Perseus Nebula, and they’ve just raided Elsar Kalza, just one star system away from Chronos. Half the medical personnel has gone to help the wounded there, and the other to transfer our patients to less vulnerable health centers. The facility remains here, though, along with two or three patients we can’t displace without risks and some nurses, so I’m playing the watchdog.”
“Oh, yes. The Noth Wars. Sorry ‘bout that. I meant to warn you …”
“But the laws of time and destiny, et caetera. I don’t blame you, Doctor. I blame the universe and bad timing. Much simpler, and much easier that way.”
“Aren’t doctors supposed to get along?” asked the boy.
“Oh, don’t let my demeanor fool you, dear, we get along just fine, despite some ideological head-butting. Even though – and I cannot emphasize this enough, he did not actually graduated from medical school.”
“I am a Doctor of many things. Just because I don’t know how to deal with a Singsong infestation doesn’t mean I’m not good at medical science.”
“He doesn’t know how to use a stethoscope”, she whispered at the child with a friendly wink. “But, back on track. As I said, we have developed a method that could work. See, the Singsong see the world, the human body, all of this, as a complex concerto – a partition it can alter according to its wishes; and the first step to do that is to modify the brainwave patterns of the subject, through a telepathic influence that takes the form of music. And from there, it extends its control. So, the only way is to push in the other direction, to counter those modifications.”
“Will that require blasting some Tchaikovsky right into his brain? Because I’ll be curious to see that.”
“Sorry about that. That’s his idea of a joke. It’s nothing like what the grey-haired skeleton just suggested. No, we have some machines with very complicated names that can amplify certain brain patterns. Make some thoughts bigger, so to speak. We create a train of thought, a sequence of activities in certain areas of the brain, through stimulus, and then we boost it until it drowns the music.”
“So, you’re talking about healing him through the literal power of love?”
“If that’s the way you want to put it. I mean, the process would probably be more pleasant with some nice memory full of joy, but it’s the quantity that matters. The list of US presidents or my favourite amok trey recipe would do the trick, too. Does that sound good, dear?” she asked to the kid.
“Oh. Great. I … suppose. It’s a little …”
“Confusing? Mad? Definitely. Don’t worry, it shouldn’t take us more than an hour, and then you’ll get right back to your home. As would say what’s-his-name, fire and lamp, and meat and bread, and then to bed!”
She rose from her seat.
“So! Shouldn’t we be going now? We can stop at the cafeteria if you want, there should still be a couple of vending mach-“
Suddenly, the dark.
The electric lights went off, leaving only the faint red glow of the bloated star creeping through the windows in faint rays …
The child was holding the alien’s hand, and Deauclaire was petrified, standing still, anticipating the arrival of some nebulous, unthinkable power …
After a dozen of agonizing seconds, the power came back.
“… It probably wasn’t anything serious” stated the neurologist, her voice shaking and unconvinced. “Power fluctuations. They happen. They’ve been re-routing the power, down on the planet, all to the defense shields … No one can enter. It’s deadlock-sealed.”
“Would you bet your life on it?” the Time Lord asked, corrosively. “Would you bet his?”
“… No. You better go and check the lover levels. The generators are two floors below us. I’ll escort him to the treatment room. They have transmitted the security privileges to me, so I will block the elevators as soon as you get there, and then make sure the emergency seals activate behind the two of us. You’ll be able to sonic yourself through anyway. I’ll tell the personnel to keep an eye out, too. Just in case. Don’t worry too much, dear”, she continued while walking alongside the boy towards the door, “this hospital has been conceived to resist invasions, bombings, the whole package. We got a pack of rampaging Zarbis in the corridors a few months back and not a single person got injured! But still, we’re going to do our maximum to keep you safe. Come with me now.”
Halfway through the door, she turned back to the Doctor.
“Keep him safe. You must, colleague.”
“A duty of care, eh?”
“Someone has to care. Alas, it fell on us.”
The Time Lord stood alone for a moment, lost in thoughts. Sometimes, he wondered if he did what it did because of habit alone. Why struggle, why keep on raging against the death and the darkness, when, at the end, all that remained was cruel, bitter oblivion?
That thought crossed his mind for one second. And then the image of the boy crossed his mind. Everything that he was, everything that he could be …
And then, his doubts, his anguish, it all faded away.
Maybe the universe didn’t make bargains. Maybe joy was something he would never taste, lost in a neverending, star-lit winter. But that didn’t matter. He was the man who fought, the man who saved people, the Doctor. On and on, the wheel span, and he had to, once again, get up and win. Trying to be a good man, which was its own reward. Trying to make Her proud. Trying to make them proud …
Time to go and be a Doctor, then. Forever forwards.
-
“Wow.”
The child was gawking. Below him, a lush, green garden spread before suddenly stopping, replaced, hundreds of feet down, by colossal, rocky formations – a sublime oxymoron of a landscape, under a powerful, unflinching red light.
“Quite the view, isn’t it?”
“It’s amazing. A few hours ago, I’d never thought I live to see something like that.”
He turned back to Channary, who was busy pressing some buttons on a discretely hidden panel. After she completed the sequence, a blue-tinted field of energy rose from the floor and blocked the corridor behind her.
“How many planets are there, in that whole sky? Like, how many bear life, with towns and people?”
“More than you could count. More than you could see, even if you lived ten thousands of human lives.”
“Doesn’t that make you feel small? Like you don’t matter?”
“Sometimes, it’s a little intimidating, yes”, she said while starting to walk and signaling him to follow. “That’s one of the reason doctors like me created that whole brotherhood thing. To remind ourselves, and the world, that even in this infinite space through which we wander, that we have colonized, there is nothing more important, more valuable, than a human life. That’s why we need doctors for.”
She stopped at an intersection, near a couple of closed offices. A few comfy chairs were lying around.
“Let’s stop there, for a moment. Don’t like that place ahead. Lots of corridors, turns, and conduits carrying air and water. If I wanted to set an ambush, I’ll do it here, so I’m going to run a security diagnosis first.”
The boy sent a half-impressed, half-surprised look her way.
“I was in the military for a couple of years. Even the squaddies need someone to patch them up. That’s where I met our grey-haired friend, actually. Well, he had curls and a scarf back then. Why don’t you grab a magazine and sit down, it shouldn’t take long.”
But the child didn’t. He stayed near her, as if wanting to ask a question. Eventually, he talked.
“Miss …”
“Call me Chan. What is it, dear?”
“I’m afraid.”
“I know. To be fair, I’m not reassured either. I could try to awkwardly hug you? Would that help?”
He smiled. And then, that smile faded away as he gathered his strengths to address the topic that was bothering him.
“It’s not … just that. I mean, I come from the past … I just can’t help it, I keep thinking about the fact that, right here, right now, I’m dead. And have been for thousands of years. What would happen if I didn’t came home, too? If something went wrong, and if tomorrow, my parents found an empty house …”
“Oh, god. I was talking about awkward hugs? Brace yourself, here I come.”
She knelt before the boy, and put her arms around him, with genuine – if extreme – tenderness.
“I can’t delay that much longer, by the way. What’s your name?”
“… You only ask that now?”
“Well, the Doctor didn’t tell me, so I assumed there must have been some big, important reason. Like a curse on your name or something. Or maybe he just have had some bad experiences with asking the name of young boys … I don’t know, really. Doesn’t matter. I want to know.”
The child leaned forwards, and whispered something in her ear.
“Oh. That’s unusual,” she answered. “I love it! And, since that diagnosis is still running, I may have a way to comfort you a little while we wait …”
While she started to explain her idea, the child rose an arm, touching the back of her head.
And his fingers started beating, again and again, the rhythm of a song, a rat-a-tat through the red night …
-
While they were walking though the dark rooms of the hospital, the child remembered …
Scenes from his life seem to spring to existence, brought before his eyes by the lack of sleep, and the strange, still atmosphere that seemed to reign supreme in this part of the future. The only sounds he could hear, here where silence had lease – the soft voice of the doctor near him and the buzzing of electronics – were starting to blur and merge, sending him back to a distant (o so distant, in these circumstances …) past …
It wasn’t the first hospital he visited. Far from it.
There were a few ordinary visits, of course … A nasty fever, an appendicitis …
And, of course, the thing.
His parents and he had this tacit agreement not to talk about it. Not anymore. It was just “the thing”. A part of the backdrop of their lives. Almost ordinary.
He didn’t know exactly when it started. When he first realize that his mother wasn’t well. “Wasn’t well”. A euphemism. He sometimes felt like life was just a long string of euphemisms.
The language helped, though. To say that it was all good, all part of the plan. Like a little magic charm, words could bring back smiles, bring back warmth into worried eyes.
They wouldn’t drown the voices, though, or make the dreams go away. Not entirely. She was still hearing them and dreaming them. He couldn’t quite understand what it felt like, what it caused in her. He didn’t think it was comparable to what the Singsong had put him through, no, from what she had told him once, it was more of … A companion. A constant companion, always there. She was like a woman with two souls, but she had only room for one, and the other was just hanging there, whispering …
She wasn’t in pain. She didn’t feel anguish or agony. But she was concerned. About herself, of course, but mostly about her family.
She went to see doctors. They couldn’t seem to find a problem.
Still, they insisted on seeing him, too. Might be congenital, ya’see?
He thinks that it was at that time he started to feel so … Insignificant. He had no control over it all. He couldn’t fix her, he couldn’t fix himself, he felt like he, his family, his whole life were collapsing; a tidal wave had entered their house and had sent them all deep within the belly of the whale …
And it stopped.
Not the problems, not the voices. But the tempest and turmoil. If you can’t beat it, live with it. That was what she said, or something like that. She wasn’t sure about her decision, of course, who would be, but she wanted to be happy. And they were, in fact. Sometimes, her eyes would drift away, as if to catch that invisible kingdom, that life never lived that crept at the edge of her reality. Sometimes she would feel fear, or unexplained joy that was as powerful as dread. But life kept on unfolding …
Well, until tonight, until the Woman of Many Songs and the Doctor in his big blue box came knocking at the door, as if to show him that the world maybe was this made place of uncontrolled voices, this beautiful, beautiful chaos …
An important night. A night that was showing him that frontiers between a single life and the vastness and space perhaps weren’t as solid, as clearly defined.
It reminded him of another important night. One from his dark days, where he feared all the time what might come, where he thought of himself as insignificant.
His mother came to him. Reassuring him. Telling that she and his father would love him until he loved himself …
“You’ll need to love me for a long time, then”, he said.
“There are worse things than to be loved forever...” she answered.
As Deauclaire was leading him into one of the rooms nearby, he kept thinking about that sentence.
There are worse things than to be loved forever...
-
The nurse was tired.
She liked her job. She liked it a lot. And she didn’t see any problems in staying to take care of five patients, four of which were in a coma.
But the constant stream of red light, and the little snippets of news that came from the New Athens TV channels … That made her nervous. It was hard to sleep, too. It was too quiet, too … Unreal of a place, without the schedule, the problems to solve, the immediate demands.
The fact that Deauclaire was now calling her and her colleagues every five minutes on their communicators, to deliver cryptic, tense warnings wasn’t soothing her nerves either.
“Excuse me?”
She startled. A strange-looking man in a suit of red velvet was walking down the corridor.
“You wouldn’t happen to have seen a being of pure music fooling around?”
“Who … who the devil are you?!”
“I’m the Doctor. And I’m in a hospital. A doctor, in a hospital. Everything normal. Sorry, I realize this was a stupid question. You can’t see a being of pure music. Although some people do see music. The Three Seers of Raj’Hel, for instance. Are you related, by chance? No, silly me. Not enough tentacles. Oh well. Sorry about the inconvenience. Lovely hospital, by the way. Very clean. “
“… Thank … you.”
“To be fair, I think I’ve been sent on a wild goose chase. Nothing here. And the red light doesn’t work well with that suit. At all. Sorry, must be going, chop-chop.”
The woman stayed there, gawking for a moment.
Her communicator rang.
Deauclaire. Again.
“Still nothing here, Miriam?”
“Well, there was a tall man with grey hair …”
“Oh, yes. He was … An inspector.”
“Again this month, doctor? With the war brewing?”
“Well, yes, the inspectors really do love their … inspecting. I’ll get back to you soon.”
Channary whistled a little, embarrassed tune, and then closed the channel.
Miriam kept walking, having to visit another patient.
A corridor, then another.
She started whistling that tune, too.
“Damn”, she thought “it is an earworm.”
-
Channary put the strange device she had grabbed a few seconds ago into her pocket.
“Sorry about that. So, what do you think?”
“It’s … rather impressive.”
The device occupied the center of the room: a massive, purplish amalgamation of metallic layers that looked like a strange cross between a 3D-printer and a sewing machine from the old days.
Strangely enough, the rest of the room was more reminiscent of a post office than anything. Lots of postcards, stamps and envelopes meticulously disposed on shelves, with price tags.
“But, uh, what does it do and what does it have to do with me?”
“Well, you see, you’re not exactly the first time-traveler we got here. We’re in the forty-ninth century, now, and while it’s not exactly commonplace, it tends to happen. The Caduceus Company’s talent for the medical science has got us a lot of publicity, across the galaxy, but also across time. So, sometimes, people come for a check-up or to see if we can solve their weird medical problem. I mean, it is sometimes tricky, especially considering that half the time, they’ll want you to come back with them and examine their family, relatives, hometown and whatever-you-want …”
The question the child was about to ask died in his throat.
“… but, the point is, we have a lot of those. But, if they are here for a long time, or if they are worried about their condition, well, they need to have a way to talk to or warn their families. So, we got this.” She gestured towards the apparel. “A gift from the Time Agency. Allows you to send messages through time. They take a look first, of course, censor them a bit, to verify that it doesn’t contain any information that might unravel the web of time, but then, they appear where and when you want them. So, there’s no need to worry about your mother and father never hearing from you again. Take some time, write a letter to your mother, and then, we really ought to keep going – the scan revealed nothing.”
“Don’t we have to pay for those …?”
“Oh, I’ll take it off my salary, don’t you worry about that.”
The child scribbled a few words on a postcard. Platitudes, maybe, but powerful ones. Love you, don’t worry, I’m safe. Small worlds, but the kind that echoes through the big night of the universe. He noted his mother’s name and address, and put it in the only slit he could find on the machine. A white light crossed the structure and wave of heat crossed the room, and the little piece of cardboard disappeared.
“So! We keep going?” went Channary, whistling.
-
Still nothing.
He had looked behind every bed, in every office and empty room, in every closet and corner. He had even taken a short trip through the maintenance shafts, deactivating the safeties with nothing more than a wave. Humans, humans. Always so … Lovely, in a primitive kind of ways.
A fool’s errand, this whole business. An apt metaphor, too. To save the life of a beautiful, unique, human specimen, one must walk through empty, strangely-lit corridors for half an eternity. The story of his lives, really.
A last grand tour of the empty hospital, then. And after that, back to the matter at hand. Talking with the humans. Tricky business. But interesting, in its own …
The Doctor stopped, and raised an eyebrow.
There was a comatose woman walking through the corridor.
She seemed to be doing alright. Walking straight ahead, with purpose, with determination. But she still wore the white, neutral hospital clothing he knew signaled a long-term patient; and her eyes were closed.
She tilted her head towards him, and she smiled.
Smiled and ran. Fast.
Running. Always the running. He was a doctor, not the White Rabbit, for goodness’s sake …
The Singsong.
It had to be. If not … It, directly, then it was a result of its influence. It had found a way in, a way back.
How?
The woman was fast. Faster, much faster, that she should be – especially after, what, a few years in a coma, if her looks were anything to go by. He had trouble keeping up.
It can’t just come back as it wants, it needs to have a gateway opened …
The boy. Of course. That’s why he wanted him to get treatment.
A turn, and another turn. He was closing in. Pulling his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, he found back the setting he used a few hours ago, back in the street.
But It is clever. It couldn’t possess the boy straight away, so It jumped from a body to another until he found one that wouldn’t oppose any resistance … The Leadworth scenario, all over again … But a creature of sound doesn’t just wonder around, it doesn’t move like one of us fleshy things … How could It …
The woman had starting whistling. And those little, infinitely small notes became larger and more powerful, forming words that penetrated the Time Lord’s brain like needles of fire.
“Through time, through the endless paths I thread … I’m here for the last song, in this war-torn age …”
He ran towards the creature’s host, raising his screwdriver, ready to unleash another blast of sound.
Channary. It had to be. From the boy to her, from her to every single person she could contact, and from those to their patients.
Sound strategy – now, if he could …
Wait a second. Every single person she could contact?
That meant …
Another turn.
In front of him, an elevator. The doors were opened.
And within it, a dozen people. The woman. The nurse he had run into a few moments back. Coma patients. Medical personnel. All their eyes closed. All their mouths chanting words no ear could pick up …
A wave of sound came crashing down on him – the most dissonant, most unpleasant harmonics imaginable, shrieks of torture and agony, were broadcasted straight into his brain
“DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE“
He fell onto his knees, his hands covering his ears.
“Some measure of strength, some sprit of battle and success left into him, as I saw. I believed you unfit and unworthy, and I would almost emit an apologetic arpeggio for this offense. I shall not misjudge the strength of your song again.”
“If only you knew what my Song looks like ...”
“Irrelevant. You’ll die in golden glory, tonight, traveler, for standing in the path of fire and darkness. You’ll see your precious protégés and faithful friends dig and claw your own flesh. What wonders, what knowledge will we find in your broken bones, I do wonder … Leave me some meagre moments, and you shall bear witness to my ascension.”
“You can’t harm me. Not now, anyway,” he stated, slowly rising. “You’re not powerful enough to understand my … Being. You can’t break it apart.”
“Time tells the truth.”
“That elevator is blocked, too. You’ll never be able to bypass the locks.”
-
“That’s the door we’re looking for!” said Channary, happily.
And, while she opened it and showed the boy the wonderful tools the Company had devised, slowly, without even realizing it, she grabbed her communicator, and pushed a couple buttons. And then, everything proceeded as normal.
-
Power was restored to the elevator; the lights flared, and a deep, mechanical buzzing filled the space occupied by the strange congregation of possessed bodies.
“Oh. Well, I’m wrong. In public. I hate it when that happens. I supposed there is no more room in there for me?”
For all answer, the Singsong hosts shrieked.
“DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE“
Once again, he fell to the ground.
“I guess … that means … no.”
The doors slowly closed, giving him time to watch a dozen faces twisting into a dozen joyless, cold, smiles.
Advanced neurology room. Two, three minutes of the elevator, maybe a little more if Channary doesn’t de-activate all the force fields. The stairs are one minute and twenty-eight seconds away, plus one minute to climb, plus four minutes to advanced neurology. Doesn’t bode well. They’ll be there before him. Unless, of course …
-
“Quite funny, really. I was sure, I was really sure that I had taken my access keycard …”
“That’s because you’ve just dropped it on the table, over there.”
Channary looked worried.
“… Good point. It’s strange, I really don’t have a clear mind tonight. Maybe it’s just the nerves.” She chuckled. “Or maybe I’m losing it and should start to think about retirement, writing books, having even more kids. For some, it’s stamps, for me, it’s children. Everyone’s got a hobby. So – here’s the thing.”
The “thing” she mentioned, looked, for all intended purposes, like an armchair, above which was suspended, floating in the air, a strange device which looked like it had been formed by the uncontrolled merging of several sheets of glass – a technological flower that was much more art nouveau than cold, smooth, futuristic design.
“Time to sit. Don’t worry, that won’t involve any needles. That’s something you feared, back in the days? Needles? I think I remember a joke about that …”
He proceeded. Deauclaire came closer, standing immediately next to him, pressing a couple buttons – the crown, or whatever the hell what that thing above his head, started to slowly vibrate. And then, at the moment where she was going to push a last one, she stopped. Hesitating.
“What does that one do?” asked the boy.
“It’s the one that activates the restraints. It’s stupid, really. Why … would I even think about activating it?” She hadn’t interrupted her gesture, and her fingers lingered still near the big red dot. “I … don’t need it. At all …”
The child was thinking. He was good at thinking – and, more importantly, he was fast. So many delays, so many interruptions … The letter, the forgotten keycard … Impulses and ideas, in her head, that weren’t hers. Another mind. Another voice. Another song.
He rose up instantly, and, for a second, crossed eyes with the woman. She looked confused. Unstable. And then, he gave her a tiny push – which was more than enough. She fell onto the chair, and he immediately activated the containment program. Crackling energy surrounded Channary’s arms and legs, freezing her into place.
She held her head down. They, slowly rose it – but her eyes had changed. Beyond the green, a darkness was expending, moving, covering the entire eyeball at one point before disappearing entirely a second later.
“Boy …”
He ran, to the door. The night would apparently finish as it had begun …
But behind it, in the corridor, he saw them. Others, like Channary, running almost like animals, towards him, and always that voiced, echoed, and echoed, and echoed in the hospital and through time itself.
“Boy …”
He braced for impact, and closed his eyes.
But nothing hit him. And when he opened his eyes, after a few agonizing seconds, instead of the corridor, the insides of a familiar-looking time machine were expending before him.
He could still hear a “how?” repeated time and again, in a corner of his mind.
“Well, you were right on one thing”, explained the time traveler, facing the possessed neurologist. “I could definitely not get here on time. So, instead, I went all the way up to my TARDIS. Took me, what, a good, solid ten minutes? But it’s a time machine. I went back, to the exact second. Also, you know what’s a bad idea? Trying to set up an ambush in a room with only one exit. The good ol’ materializing-in-front-of-a-door trick. You’ve never heard of a barricade? And I can tell you something, that blue little thingy makes for a hell of a defense. Three Dalek death squads couldn’t breach it, so, if you plan to sing it to death, better start soon. With Carmen, maybe? I’ve always liked Carmen. Reminds me of a friend.”
“And despite all of that, we still are. We still are in his head. Make us leave. Wave your devices. What will you do, next? Take him to the end of the universe itself? Isn’t the place where you take your dying pets? We’ll be here, waiting, wanting. He shall join us.”
“Well. That’s up to him, really. Because, if I have to continue your performance review, there’s also the fact you ignored the amusing things that happen when you combine a neural amplifier with some sonic tweaking …”
He turned to the boy, and took hold of his hand.
“What Channary told you earlier, about thinking that thing out of existence? Time to go.”
He pointed his screwdriver at the glass crown.
For a moment, the boy could almost feel, physically feel, his thoughts and emotions. A heap of broken images, surrounding him. He was swimming in his own life – joy and despair, laughter and tears had become shapes, colors.
And he could see, beyond Channary, beyond her fear, the Singsong. Chaos, and loathing, and a brutish, childish appetite for destruction.
“Join us join us join us join us join us joins us join us join us through the ages and the fire join us join us”
For a moment, it all went dark, he could feel hands coming out of the walls to grab him, he could feel the floor disappearing and him falling, falling in a dark chasm …
“You’ll need to love me for a long time, then”
The darkness were growing thicker …
“There are worse things than to be loved forever...”
And suddenly, they recoiled.
He focused on that moment. Remembered it, seized it.
“There are worse things than to be loved forever...”
He remembered his mother’s hair, her perfume, he remembered the rain outside of his bedroom and the night beyond …
“There are worse things than to be loved forever...”
The tendrils of darkness were writhing now, the Singsong’s melody dissolving into screams of anger, dissonant piles of poorly cobbled together tonic cords.
“CHAOS! DESTRUCTION! OBLIVION!”
“… to be loved forever.”
“JOIN. US.”
“Love. Forever.”
And then, it was gone. Channary, in the chair, had fallen unconscious.
No music left. Just silence. In the room, in the corridor, on the entire planet.
-
The next day, doctor Deauclaire woke up in a perfectly tidy hospital, where each patient had regained his bed.
There was a box of macarons on her desk, as well.
She would have liked to thank the Doctor and the boy, but they were long gone. And the boy, technically speaking, had been dead for millennia, now.
He had a nice name, that kid. She ought to write it down somewhere. Could come in handy.
She checked her message. As she found out, the war had been declared overnight.
So. Back to it.
-
“What did the Singsong wanted with me in the first place? Why did it choose me?”
The boy was exploring the TARDIS. Quite a wonderful sight, for a young mind. Leave it abandoned, for a bit, and it could make a nice playground.
“Good question. Those things, they love time energy. Nothing like a big, juicy paradox to generate the chaos they feed on. So, it’s probably because you have been exposed to time travel at some point.”
“I think I would have noticed!”
“Well, it might all be a close time-loop. Maybe it’s that trip, the one we are taking right now, that will draw the Singsong to you. Maybe its attack was caused by its attack – time is very much relative, for a great number of us aliens.”
“You don’t seem entirely convinced.”
“I’m not. There must be a better explanation, something obvious, but really, I can’t find it. Well. There’s a time for everything. Speaking of, we’ve just arrived.”
They passed the door. It was his bedroom. Back to the beginning.
“And so … What happens now?”
“I’m not great at baby-sitting, honestly. But I guess you need to sleep a bit before tomorrow.”
“I’ll have a lot to tell …”
“If you even remember any of it. Channary’s machine has done a lot of things to your brain. Might affect your memory. And humans are great at forgetting, anyway.”
“I don’t think I could ever forget you. I don’t want to! You’re amazing! And the planet, there, and your TARDIS, all of it, it was … Beautiful. Wonderful! I would like to keep these memories, forever …”
The Time Lord stared in the dark, a long while.
Words were coming back to him …
“Tomorrow is promised to no one, but I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that.”
And then he answered. Answered the boy, and perhaps, someone else. Himself. Or Her. He couldn’t tell.
“But memories must disappear. One day or another. Even the things you love and cherish the most will at some point darken and blur. I barely remember my own family, you know. And … Some persons, I can’t remember at all. But, you know, maybe, in the end, it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s the way things are. Because oblivion doesn’t have to beget pain, and anguish, and heartbreak. It may be sad, but it’s not cruel. I think … That sometimes, to forget is to stay alive. Sure, you forget good things. Beautiful sights and wonderful words, and friendships and loves … Gone. Dust and smoke in the wind. But sometimes, you need to forget the pain. To forget the struggles and the hardships, to forget your regrets and your remorse. Forget your past life and your past selves, and keep on living. Keep on fighting. Keep on trying to be a good man. And maybe that, in the dark of the night, or at the break of day, a familiar song or a long-lost face will find its way back into your world, if only for an instant. Little pieces of broken glass, shards of diamond, that shine only brighter because of the darkness around them. That’s what this night will be for you. A little, beautiful light shining through every long night to come. Does it need to be more?”
“When I hear you, Doctor, it’s like the whole world, this whole, scary place, is suddenly making sense.” A sigh. “But I guess I must try to understand things myself. Thank you, though. For everything.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“And, Doc’?”
“Yes?”
“Will you remember me?”
“A child with such a striking face and no name, defeating the hordes of chaos? Never. You’re going to be a hell of a shard.”
“… Goodnight, then.”
“Goodnight. Sleep well. You’ve earned a rest.”
The child turned off his night light, and, a few seconds afterwards, fell into a deep slumber, like one falls into some hidden abyss. There are people who can thirst for sleep more than water …
The Doctor remained there, for a long while. His thoughts for sole companion.
-
When the boy got up, the next morning, he found his parents, sitting around the breakfast table, as usual. Welcoming him with loving eyes and kind words.
He smiled. The sun was shining.
At last.
“I had this amazing dream …”
-
Someone once said that the Doctor never stops, and never stays.
Not always true, but true enough.
He took a long look at the sleeping bot, and then tiptoed back to the time machine. It took off, taking him nowhere and everywhere, as usual.
If, instead of sitting silently in his TARDIS and hoping the next step in that Christmas tour of his, the human settlement of Mendorax Dellora, would be a good one, he had waited for the parents to come back, or had taken a peak at some family picture laying in plain sight, he would have understood all the events that had led to this chase.
But he didn’t. And, sometimes, among the vastness of space, he still wonders about the strange events that occurred on that long winter night.
There is something else drifting in the vastness of space.
A postcard, which might never reach its destination. A little rectangular piece of paper, lost in time.
It’s addressed to a Mrs. Donna Noble.
It wasn’t some nocturnal bird flapping about, or the floor creaking, or some subconscious fear suddenly taking shape. The child knew, he positively knew, that there was someone in the house. Few would have believed him, despite the long-proven fact that children, their senses not yet dulled by the lullabies of your ordinary, working life, sense more than others, discern the shadows lurking at the edge of reality, find real meaning in seemingly inconsequential whispers or scribbles. And, in the long winter nights, where the wind seems to carry the whispers of some strange being dancing among the snows and storms, such knowledge can be invaluable. It can save your life. More than your life, really, the very fabric of your being.
There was someone in the house, and he was alone.
His parents had been invited over to the Mulligans, at the other end of town. They were celebrating their wedding anniversary – which was a concept the child never really grasped, to be honest. Was spending all your time with someone you are madly in love with such a chore that it required celebration each time a milestone was reached? Well, the point was that they wouldn’t be back before the morning. They would gladly have taken the child with them, but he wasn’t exactly what you would call interested. So they fixed him dinner and sent him straight to bed, leaving him a spare phone if some emergency were to suddenly erupt, and, if reality were always a straight, linear, singular affair, it would have been the end of it, and Bob would have been your metaphorical uncle. But, around midnight, the child woke up. And he knew there was someone in the house.
Not because of a suspicious sound, or because of a shape passing behind the blinders, no. There was just something off. The world around him seemed to echo, to vibrate. Everything in his small, cozy bedroom suddenly seemed to have a strange edge, an alien quality. He couldn’t shake it off, he couldn’t sleep. He was afraid, but his fear was mixed with a tiny twinge of curiosity. Not everyone runs away when afraid: there are thrills to be found when facing your nightmares, having a good, long look at them. The child was afraid because he didn’t know what was going on – he henceforth made the logical decision of going downstairs, to see what was there. And if the thing below was a very bad thing? Well, the door was downstairs too. He could always run, run without a look backwards, to one of the neighboring houses. So, the little child put on his slippers, went down the stairs, and turned the lights on.
Nothing and no one in the living room. It was large, though, and garnished with an abundant variety of furniture, thus offering plenty of little hiding places for some malevolent gremlin. But nothing. And no one. Just a fat, old, grey cat that let out a displeased meow, his slumber disturbed by the electrical light.
“Shut up, Wolfy”, whispered the kid.
He inspected meticulously every corner of the house. Nothing out of the ordinary. A little bit of dust, cat hair, some personal belongings lying here or there. Not exactly the stuff of night terrors. Still, that feeling remained. He was ill-at-ease, and restless, incapable of letting a minute pass without many, many concerned glances at the windows or the house’s corners. Eventually, he sat down in an armchair, grabbed the first book in reach, and started reading. A healthy call: you’d be surprised to hear how many lives are saved because of good books every year. After a few minutes, he was already feeling more relaxed, his nerves soothed. Even if the strange omens that had been tickling his mind for some time had not disappeared, they had considerably dimmed, and he started to think about returning to his bed and dreams when the singing started.
It was a beautiful, heart-wrenching song. It had this universal appeal to a shared grief and passion, so typical of your old folk tune, and at the same time the dramatic size and scope, the solemn and terrible grandeur of an opera. Its words gave the impression to be beautiful, intriguing and complex, but the child couldn’t quite make them out, the meaning slipping in and out of his mind. It was a lullaby, and a requiem; a call to war, and a cry of pain. An impossible piece of music, tearing through the night. The child remained still for some time, a minute perhaps, fascinated, deeply touched. In a few notes, he had the impression to hear all his little griefs and all his great joys, all his successes and failures, all the smiles his parents ever cracked, all the strange, sorrowful gazes his mother made sometimes when she thought nobody was watching her … But this bizarre hypnosis didn’t last, and soon, his curiosity piqued, he burst free, out of those invisible bounds of sound, and looked around, trying to find their origin.
Slowly, he rose from the chair. He looked left, and right – nothing. And then, he turned back, facing the French window.
There was a woman in the garden.
How she got there, it was impossible to tell; but there she stood, very still, her long red curls falling on her face. Her snow-like complexion and thin, frail body gave an impression of weakness, and, in a certain way, of wasted potential – she probably had been a stunning beauty, once, but some dire disease or intense anemia must have had taken a considerable toll on her. Beautiful as a barren desert, and just as lifeless. She was draped in a long, white dress which had been crafted with care and an impressive attention to detail, but her attire had suffered from what seemed a long, long walk in the mud and the trees. And this scarecrow in haute couture, this silent spectre, was singing. He could make out, behind the curtain of hairs, her lips moving fast, swallowing gallons of words. After the mandatory startle, the boy was for a moment reassured. It’s just a woman, a woman singing. Yes, finding a stranger in your garden is odd to say the least, and perhaps she meant to do bad things, but it’s not like he was going to open her the door. And she wasn’t carrying a gun, or a knife, or something sharp and dangerous and deadly. Perhaps she was even looking for shelter! A homeless woman, exiled from her residence … He was almost tented to let her in ; or at least, to try and talk to her, figure out why exactly she was there, serenading him. He took a few steps in the direction of the window, before he realized something strange. Why had he been, a few moments before, incapable to locate the origin of the song simply by ear? Why had he been incapable to tell that she was behind him?
Because she wasn’t singing.
The sound did not come from her direction, from her moving lips, it was everywhere, it originated from every angle of the house, from the sky, from the ground. The song did not echo through the night, it echoed directly through his head.
Now, he was afraid. Very, very afraid. He took one step back. And then another. And then, she cast her hair aside with a movement of her head, and stared straight at him.
Her eyes were pitch-black. No white, no color, just two pits of infinite darkness. The black of the sky seemed positively jolly compared to those two little gateways to the void. She turned her head sideways, looking somewhat curious – a predator before a tasty slice of meat. And yet, she didn’t move a finger. She just kept staring, and kept singing, pouring her words and her notes into his head. The noise was getting louder, and louder, and he felt more and more oppressed, each beat of his heart now echoing in his head like an inexorable, fateful drumming. He ran upstairs, in his bedroom, locked the door. She is outside. She can’t get in. It’s impossible. None of this is possible. It must be a bad dream, a feverous fit striking him during the night and calling forth creatures of smoke and shadow.
He stayed there. Sitting in the dark, waiting. The song was weaker now, its grasp less intense. It had almost completely faded; remained only faint echoes, sad sounds, sounds that made him think of days never lived, of long-forgotten battlefields drown under the snow … But the quiet had come back. At long last.
He tried to call his parents. Once. Twice. Thrice. No answer. The mechanically polite voice at the other hand of the line blamed it on some interferences.
The cat was there too. He had crawled under the bed, apparently equally ill-at-ease with the mysterious woman’s aura. So the two of them sat there, in a pool of moonlight coming down from the window. Still wary, and worried, but safe and sound for now. The kid thought about leaving the house, going to the neighbors’ place, tell them he had a nightmare or a fever or something. But that would require crossing the living room, and perhaps she was still there, waiting, singing her hymns … He didn’t think he could muster the strength to do that. A single look into those black eyes had drained him – he wasn’t curious anymore, he was confused and terrified, lost in a nightmare, incapable of telling fantasy and reality apart. He didn’t cry and whimper, though. What good would it be? His mother had often told him that problems never fix themselves, that you have to brave and clever to overcome. So he decided he was going to be brave. It wasn’t easy, in that big house suddenly so threatening, but he solemnly swore to keep this state of mind. Besides, he was safe, now. He had to be. If the woman was a witch or a monster that eats children, she should be very powerful, she should be able to break the walls and run, run to get him. But she didn’t – she couldn’t enter. He was a bit reassured. Still, those eyes … So empty, and yet so full of cold, malevolent passion, of a weird, sadistic vitality, of a song that has lasted a billion billion years and melodies untold come now child join me you know you want to see you want to know they lied to you the world is so vast it is infinite there are no bounds they keep secrets from you child join me swim in my heart and I’ll show you all there is the universe turning burning creating destroying eternal plural join me child hear the song join me child wonders terrors and emotions leave the mundane leave the ordinary leave the flesh join me child join me join me join me join me join me JOIN ME JOIN ME JOIN ME JOIN ME JOIN ME.
The song, again. Louder than ever. And behind the song, the words, the slow, monotone voice of the woman, whispering in his brain. He covered his ears, grabbed a pillow, trying to find solace, silence, solitude, but he couldn’t, the rhythm in his skull always stronger and louder and more violent, and he started to feel real, physical pain, and he was asking himself how is this possible, she’s downstairs she can’t sing to me she can’t see me with her black eyes, it’s not possible! He rose, painfully, dazed and dazzled by the notes and the join me join me join me behind them. The window! If she had found a way into the house, if she was coming for him, he could escape by the window! There was quite a fall, but the devil you know always looks like an angel when you are facing something unknown, so alien it topples all that your reason and your life had constructed over decades … He stumbled his way across the room, flung the window and blinders wide open.
She was there. A body floating in the night, dress and hair flowing in the wind, her black eyes staring at him. She raised a carnivorous smile, and each of her movements, each of her looks was an eternity of noise, an echo and an aria, an endless, bitter, preying cacophony. The song was tearing his mind apart. He could not breathe, he could not think, he could only picture in his mind the front door of the house you can’t run you can’t hide the song is everywhere the song is everything child I can make it stop just accept me come to me join me, and the empty living room beneath him; and so he ran, without even knowing he was running, fleeing like a meek animal in front of an abominable predator, a whirlwind of teeth and claws. Down the stairs, quickly, and he’s at the door, and he can’t find the keys for a short, agonizing moment, and then he’s out, out in the open. He could feel her presence just behind; she was advancing slowly, inexorably towards him, her bare, wounded feet floating a few centimeters above the ground, a bird of prey closing on him.
The street was quiet, with no cars passing through, at this hour of the night, but the nearby houses were close, and he was started to feel a twinge of hope, when his attention was caught by an unusual sight.
A big blue box on the pavement.
And just like that, the voices in his head stopped. He looked round. The woman had vanished.
It was a police box. His mother had told him about those. There were still a few in London during her younger years – she thought they were rubbish, but in a charming sort of way, and regretted their disappearance.
The box was closer than the neighboring houses. Perhaps he could call for help? The police surely wouldn’t believe him … But surely this woman, this spectre, couldn’t harm him if he were under the watch of armed, watchful people? He would be safer that way; police wouldn’t, he hoped, consider all of this was just some child fantasy conjured in the dark and cold. What protection could a few, half-asleep people, or a few inches of brick and wood, offer against the song and the singer anyway?
Cautiously, he approached the box and opened the doors.
-
The console room was quite dark, these days. Of course, the Time Lord liked quiet lights – they reminded him of campfires and libraries and little coffee shops in the evening. Nice places. Nice places with nice people inside them. Have you ever heard of a war taking place inside a library? No, of course not. Well, sometimes it’s full of man-eating shadows, or you take the wrong turn on the roads of Time and end up on a long-lost battlefield, but that’s hardly relevant. The point is, that even if the Doctor enjoyed the majestic silhouette his wonderful, living and breathing machine, his eternal companion, took under that lightning, and had hardly ever changed it since that test run that led him in the stomach of a T-Rex and then in Victorian London, the darkness had grew thicker over the last few weeks, and the ancient, mystical-looking tubes and panels had adopted a less friendly, almost menacing appearance. A reflection of the pilot’s mood, no doubt. The TARDIS had tried to cheer him up, taking him on a grand tour across all of the noteworthy Christmas gatherings in the history of the universe. That, surprisingly, did little to lift the spirits of the great old man of Time and Space.
So, there he stood. Somewhat bored. He had stuck around after the memorable Christmas Day of the year 2024, where he had seen a foreign delegation surprisingly willing to ice-skate when the First Great Snowstorm of London struck. Not just because his more and more misanthropic self had no desire to continue this parade of cakes, carols and camouflaged depression, but also because he had heard some interesting rumors here and there, from snippets of news and nightmares told begrudgingly. Something worth investigating, at last, something to fill the void he currently felt in his life and in his head …
“Get up, off your arse, and win …” a voice seemed to whisper him.
But right now, he was alone. Waiting, peering into the unflinching abysses of the Time Vortex, as if looking for a signal, some lead that would reveal what the future held for him …
That signal came, finally, in an unexpected way, when the doors opened. Thrills, at last! Curious and excited, he jumped out of his chair and stared at the intruder, his fingers clenching around his brand new sonic screwdriver.
Just a boy.
The disappointment was biting.
“Why didn’t I lock the doors?” he asked himself. It was probably some scout trying to sell him cookies, or perhaps one of those curious brats that have nothing to do except trespassing on people’s boxes. Still, he was willing to try it:
“Are you a Christmas caroller?”
At the receiving end of that unusual enquiry, only a blank, flabbergasted pair of eyes.
“I … sing in the choir at my school. If that counts.”
“Oh, one of the carol people. Great. All I needed. I should put a sign on the door or something. Actually, no, I shouldn’t, I would just scribble insults on it.”
The boy could not comprehend where he was, or who was that strange man looking like a tuxedoed match with candy floss for hair. His jaw dropped a little. He pointed towards the gates of the ancient Gallifreyan device. And then towards the console.
“It’s bigger …”
“… On the inside, yes! Of course it is! Why are people always pointing that out! It’s like you humans can’t comprehend dimensional engineering! Well, tough luck. I don’t have to give every damn person who enters here the whole rundown. Alien time machine, deal with it, now go back serenading lollipops and eating girls, or whatever you do.”
“… Why did you ask me if I was a Christmas caroller?”
“Heard stories. About a killer Christmas carol. By which I mean, a Christmas carol that kills people. That would have been interesting. Unlike you. Remind me, why are you still here?”
It couldn’t be real. Singing ghosts haunting him, and now an old man hiding in a time-travelling cyberpunk cathedral?
“Am I dreaming?”
“Maybe.” the Doctor answered, “Maybe you’ve just sleepwalked here. Happens all the time. You go to sleep and it’s all warm and fuzzy and then you wake up in another street, or another dimension.” His eyes suddenly filled with what seemed to be a happy reminiscence. “Remind me of that time with the Sultan of Cadmir and the Lotus Machine … You know what? Free piece of advice: go back to bed and pretend it’s all a dream. Much better. Forgetting, that’s what being human is all about, no? Admitting,” he said while drawing a faint smile “there is even something to remember.”
Suddenly, a thought hit the Time Lord. Why hadn’t he noticed that before?
A child, in the middle of the night, still wearing his pajamas, wandering the streets.
Now that was odd. Proper odd. And interesting.
“You still haven’t told me why you were here, though”, he inquired with an air of authority.
He noticed, in the eyes of the kid, a flicker of fear where only confusion reigned.
“There was a woman … In my house. I was alone, and she stood there, and she was singing … Singing to me, in my head … She wanted to do bad things to me. I’m sure of it. And her eyes … She had black eyes. Just … Empty.”
The Doctor’s eyes flared up with a mixture of childish glee and vague anguish. A woman with dark eyes and rumors about music killing people? That couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Oh”, he finally said.
“Oh?”
“Well, some good news and some bad news. Good ones: based on that rumor I heard and the information you’ve just offered me, I know who, or rather what that woman is. Bad ones: she’s one of the deadliest things you can encounter in our wide wild universe. Which is fun, in a way, I must admit, and I even hoped I would come by her or one of her kind one day, if only for the conversation, but it would be a pity if anything happened to innocent bystanders like you. Except if they’re scouts. I don’t like scouts.”
The boy raised an interrogative eyebrow.
“For Gallifrey’s sake, that was a joke. Kids these days, they …”
He stopped talking.
Singing had started to fill the vast space of the Time Machine.
The Time Lord grabbed the child by the collar, closed the doors, locked them, and started thinking.
-
It had waited for so, so long.
More than needed, indubitably. That female flesh, those sinews and muscles, this energy, It liked them. But then again, they weren’t made to endure in the life It led, dancing around the stars and through the currents of time, whispering to some, serenading others, and sometimes feasting on their fear and fever, making arias and symphonies out of sublimed pain …
But the boy, he wasn’t like that. It had seen him from far away, his thoughts echoing, arpeggios in the void and the dark … So vivid. So beautiful. So tasty.
He was touched by grace, no doubt, by forces It could not entirely comprehend, echoes of some splendid, infinitely powerful sounds that had presided to the creation of this whole befouled and accursed universe. Covetous lust erupted into It. It would have the boy, now. He too would feel the glorious death and chaos of the universe decaying, exploding, twisting and turning and trembling, he too would dance to the flutes of absolute anarchy, to the sweet sweet murmur of bloody upheaval. He would join It, and make It more powerful than ever before. The notes would gnaw his flesh and wash his impurities away, and leave behind a spirit scattered, a lost wandering soul enslaved to the notes of the Original Song.
Perfection.
-
The child watched with astonished eyes as the Doctor pulled out of his pocket a sort of futuristic-looking tool (or a magic wand ? after all, everything seemed to have become possible now), and plugged into one of the consoles that stood at the center of the strange structure. He stood there for a minute, pushing a few buttons with feverish haste, and then started walking towards the doors.
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“Wait!” the child replied, alarmed. “You can’t go out there. She’s out there.”
“Well, yes. That’s the point. What am I supposed to do? I can’t fly off now. I tried. Somehow, her very presence interferes with the systems, warps the reality around her. You probably tried to call your parents, no? Well, that’s why it didn’t work. That’s the trouble with those Pantheon of Discord types. The conceptual beings, the anthropomorphic personifications …” At that point, the boy had entirely stopped understanding what the hell this weird, mad-scientist person was talking about. “And I can’t stay here, and let her do whatever she wants either.”
“That would be dangerous?”
“Deadly, in fact.”
“… What is she?”
“It’s complicated. Ever heard of the sirens? Greek mythology, Homer got the idea from me after a party evening, would drive people insane by singing at them, a talent usually reserved to bad candidates in talent shows?”
The child nodded. On his third birthday, his mother had offered him a book of Greek myths adapted for children. She hadn’t received what you would call a perfect education, and, as people in that case often do, was adamant about her son being knowledgeable in a wide variety of subjects. It had been his favourite for the longest time.
“Well, that lady over there is the truth behind the myth. She’s, well, it’s, called a Singsong. No physical form, no body, just music floating out and about in the wide universe. Hunting. It’s an earworm, really, nothing more. But one that will treat your brain like an ordinary worm treats an apple. And then use your dead body as a puppet. Just because it thinks it’s fun.”
“… I’m afraid.”
“You ought to be. Remember that fear, and treasure it. It’s helpful, fear, really. Helps you not getting killed, and not doing stupid things like confronting an ancient, immortal ghost thing in the middle of a January night.”
The child was trembling. He grabbed the Doctor’s hand.
“Don’t leave me alone here.”
“It’s not safe outside.”
“You just said it’s not safe inside either, because her songs can reach us!”
The Doctor sighed, indecisive. The song was growing more intense, more desperate too. Like a call, a pathetic plea for reunion …
“Listen, you.” A pause. “What’s your name already?”
“I haven’t told you.”
“Could you please do it now? It’s not that I don’t like these motivational speeches, but I would rather focus on the important issue here, that is the homicidal maniac piano riff.”
“You haven’t told me yours.”
“I’m the Doctor”, he said with pride, and also with a twinge of the exasperated fatigue of the grandfather tired to deal with meddling kids.
“That’s not a name!”
“Yes it is, and no, we are not entering this debate right now. Do straighten your priorities, please.”
He opened the gates, ever so slowly. No one in the street, on the pavements. And still, a song.
He felt the presence of the boy, behind him.
“You’re a doctor … Please … Help me get out of this nightmare. There must be something wrong, with me, and I don’t want to sit here alone in the dark and with that music playing …”
He hesitated, but finally, let out a resigned sigh.
“Alright. But do please remain behind me. Actually, remain behind me, whether it pleases you or not.”
Both of them stepped outside the time machine. Still no one. And yet, the singing had grew immensely louder. The boy could start hearing, once again, words woven within the fabric of the music – cloaked in eternity join me they cannot understand your greatness they betrayed time join me embrace the warmth of the void and the fire join me join me join me -.
“She’s hiding somewhere. Mustn’t be far away if we hear her like that.”
He extended a hand to the child, who grasped it like the buoy that would save his life in that ocean of unknown.
“Oh, and … You whose name I still don’t have the time to ask?”
“… Yes?”
“There is nothing wrong with you.”
A faint, frightful smile found its way to the child’s lips.
“Now, let’s go around that box, slowly, and see if we can spot our diva friend …”
Step by step, they moved in circles around the blue wooden walls, their eyes fixed on the thick layers of darkness. It was a starless night; the only light to be found here came from the new moon, or came down from a few, erratically disposed lampposts.
Round they went. Nothing. No one. Just the singing, echoing, becoming stronger, more insidious with each second. They were advancing slowly, their back to the machine.
Suddenly, an illumination.
“Well, I know where she is,” whispered the Doctor.
“Where is that?”
“You know, it’s funny. I should know that by now, but I always forget to check.”
He whispered into the child’s ear. “Nobody ever thinks to look up.”
“Oh God.”
“Quite.”
“Can she hear us?”
“Doubt it. I guess projecting her energy all over the place like mayonnaise must necessitate quite a lot of concentration, and we’ve been whispering. Besides, she’s waiting for us to step away from that box to attack.”
“What now?”
“Well, I’m going to do just that, and then you’re going to run far away in the opposing direction, and stay there while I have a nice little chat with our common friend. Okay?”
A pause, and then, a light of determination rising in the child’s eyes. He thought about his mother. Problems never fix themselves, you have to brave and clever to overcome.
“Okay.”
“On the count of three.”
Bathe in the blood of the suns feel the passion the neverending turn of the universe always falling deeper and deeper in the abysses and the black and the nothing until there’s nothing but sound and silence battling and suffering in the infinite spaces join me join me
“One.”
I see you glow and burn and shine join me you’ll see all you’ll be all join me join me join me join me join me
“Two …”
They exchanged a last glanced. And then …
“Three!”
The Doctor made a few steps forward, and then turned to the TARDIS.
There she was, crouched on the roof, her body and limbs twisted in a way that would have made any human writhe in pain, her black eyes staring back at him. No, not her eyes. Its eyes. Eyes so ancient, and still ready to feast on pain …
At that moment, the boy started to run frantically, going down the street as fast as he could. The Singsong huddled up for a brief moment, and then jumped, landing only a couple of steps behind him. Under the moonlight, and in the ecstasy of the hunt, there was nothing human left in that body. Its eyes were burning with rage and pleasure merged, its hair and rags drenched in sweat, an inhuman smile tearing its face in half. It moved on all fours, like some savage child raised by wolves, an uncanny mixture of man, animal, and something else … Its song had changed too. It wasn’t the insidious, enticing, charming air that had echoed earlier in the living room: it was a loud drumming, an orgy of dissonant horns clashing and colliding while a choir of desperate voices shredded by agony was chanting promises of death and demise.
It stood up, its feet floating a few inches above the ground, about to run the boy down, when the Doctor stood between the eldritch being and its prey, sonic screwdriver in hand.
It froze. Even it feared the Time Lords.
And it talked. Right in the Doctor’s mind, half-sung, half-yelled words full of cold savagery.
“… Lord … of Time? Eying harmony, walking in eternity among barren deserts, broken bones of potentialities befouled and forgotten?”
“That’s the one.”
“Lording over, presiding to the epochs – why here, in the clashes and chaos of blessed hunting?”
“Well, I’m all for acceptance and inter-species friendship – that’s not flirting, by the way –, but killing people at random and feasting on their mind and potential doesn’t exactly fall into the type of behavior I condone.”
A wave of disdain rose from the eyes of the Singsong. “Hero, he wished he were? But he’s hunter from hell as I am. Bound by blessed brotherhood between the forsaken progenitors of a primitive universe – a boy, a bounty, a body, all that I ask. Worlds keep spinning and stars keep shining and the Doctor keeps weaving his web across halls of nebulous time.”
“We are nothing alike.”
“True. He and his kind have refined our song into towers and tools. I admire their work.”
“Anyway. Conjecture, a purely hypothetical one: I am disposed to let you have the boy. And then what? You devour him, or something like that – quite frankly, I don’t want you to wax poetic about your alimentary habits –. But then, what happens? You travel, you keep killing and violating all over the galaxy, and then your body starts to decay again, and it’s one more boy, and one more long winter night like this one. But you wouldn’t take all those risks just for that, would you? You’re expecting that I will bow before your will, which is not exactly a guarantee – you could have chosen any other lonely child, and Rassillon knows those are not in short supply, and you definitely should have done so once you saw that one was protected. So, I ask you this: why him?
“Symphonies can’t be shushed swiftly. Thrills carry one to completion, consumption.”
“It’s really amazing.”
An interrogative flicker in two dark eyes.
“This ability you people have to lie while using a telepathic, music-based system of communication. I would have thought it was difficult, or even impossible, but you’re really doing well. Although, maybe not well enough.”
“Waves of time, crashing, dancing in his mind, his veins, his blood. Power waning and wasting away. A twinge of wondrous purity in his heart – neglected forever, a nagging nauseous negation. He deserves to ascend and transcend through the pyres of forever. Dancing with us.”
“Oh, so that’s generosity. Who’d have thought?”
The Singsong stood up, slowly, meticulously. Ready to attack. The noise had dimmed for a moment during the conversation, but now, it was there again, louder and more aggressive than ever before.
“His authorization is not required.”
“Oh, yes it is. Because you’re not just some kind of fanatic trying to show the light to that kid over there by killing him. That would be textbook, yes, but it’s not the case here. The only thing you want to do is empty him of his blood and soul, and then use those to kill more people more often. Because that’s what you are. A broken thing that can only find solace in the suffering of others. A shard of a world gone by. And tonight, you will fail.”
“Once, I would have felt fear and trembling. But now, he’s old. Cunning without strength, tongue without teeth. I have both, milord. Watch me bite.”
The creature suddenly moved her right hand towards the Doctor, and he was tossed across the road. Of course. Vibrations carried by the air and the soil. Sound control. Rudimentary, but efficient when it comes to producing telekinesis-like effect. He had been anticipating something along those lines since the ancient being had engaged the conversation, but the intensity of the attack still surprised him. He was lying on the ground, but could still make out, in the corner of his eye, the Singsong, running on all fours towards that boy whose name he really should have asked before. He wasn’t moving. Of course … Why had the beast even bothered to talk to him? Because it could still project its song in the boy’s mind during that time. Considering it had quite a lot of time to do just that back in the house, it was probably exercising an incredibly powerful emprise over him. If it reached him, it would be the end in a matter of seconds. A paralyzed mind, ready to be filled with the sound of the monster. Well, of course, except if clumsy hands were to liberate a focused sonic blast right in front of the Singsong, disturbing the link it had with its host and sending him back to the howling pits from whence it came. By, maybe, using the setting 1-7-54 on that new screwdriver he was holding in his hands right now. Of course, doing that without proper preparation would result in a lot of noise and few results. But, by chance, he had been calibrating that very same sonic screwdriver just before going outside. Oh, the happy coincidences – will wonders never cease?
He rose, and started running. Of course. Always the running.
The rabid entity was at a few meters of the boy now.
The Doctor clenched his teeth and ran faster, starting to aim his screwdriver at the head of what had been a woman, once.
Two meters, and closing in.
He turned the little dials and pressed the little switches hidden in the structure of his ancient Gallifreyan device.
The Singsong jumped, ready to land on the immobilized body.
And a long, metallic-sounding shriek echoed through the night.
At first, the creature only stopped. Then, it opened its mouth as to yell, but not a single sound came out. Its limbs started shaking uncontrollably, and, slowly, very slowly, the skin, sinews and bones of his mortal coat turned to dust, a life flying in the wind. The two black eyes were the last thing to disappear: only remained an almost undiscernible hum, a faint echo of the past cacophony, and a persistent smell of burnt wood.
-
The boy opened his eyes. He had not chosen to close them. It was a weird, incredibly unpleasant feeling. For a moment, he had been someone, something other than himself. Infinitely more vast. And terrifying.
In front of him stood that Doctor. And nothing else. With a relieved sigh, he turned to him:
“Is it over now?”
He was only met with a pair of concerned eyes.
“No. It’s only the beginning.”
The child and the Doctor had returned to the TARDIS. The former was sitting in one of the armchairs placed on the upper level of the time machine, near some shelves covered in books. He took at peak at the titles. Some he knew – “The Time Traveler’s Wife”, “A Christmas Carol”, “And Then There Were None” – while others he found deeply perplexing – “Codex Octaviis, Third Edition”, “Shadow Proclamation : the Myths, the Facts, the Lies”, “Records and Proceedings of the Dalek Parliament”. A whole world of knowledge had opened between two hours of the night. He desperately wanted to tell someone about all the wonders and the terrors he had just discovered –some friends at school, maybe? Or even a random stranger in the street? But he knew he couldn’t. The man, that strange, wonderful man who still refused to reveal what name lay behind that “Doctor” title, had been adamant: the things that happened at the edge of the reality must remain there. Moreover, the night still wasn’t over – the alien, for he was now convinced that this person was more than a simple human, to make such a stand before the Singsong, had said he wanted to discuss some matters with him.
Well, that was the idea. Once they went back, the Time Lord – the creature called him that, didn’t she? Classy title, at any rate. Once they went back, the Time Lord immediately started checking the screens and panels of his console, apparently feeling a sudden surge of disinterest towards him. The child was not exactly offended or hurt – he was too tired anyway, the fear and the death-defying runs having taken quite a toll on him – but he could feel an anomaly, a grain of sand in the gears and mechanisms of his logic. His mind could make sense of many things; he had always had that gift. Most people either denied or supported the existence of life among the stars; but for him, it had never been anything else than a certitude solid as bedrock. That night had not been a rift in the fabric of his life, but merely a gateway to a world he had known existed, lurking at the periphery of the human existence, since the first book he read, since the first walk he took in the forest with his mother and her telescope, since he had been able to think and talk.
And yet, it wasn’t quite what he expected. Maybe his wild imagination was at fault here? The man, if the term was even applicable here, wasn’t a hero, or some wise lore-keeper raining down his wisdom on the human race, but an old hermit, a tired magician, sad and lonely, who, over there, near his console, was casting some invisible spell, playing with the threads of destiny. Of his destiny.
The wait had grown awkward. He hailed the Doctor from across the room:
“Don’t you ever talk?”
“I used to.” A coil of melancholy had fallen on his face, so thick and dark the boy could see it from the upper gallery. “So many words. Nice words, sad words, great words, with the power to terrify, and comfort, and help … But time passes, and lives disappear in smoke, and I wonder: why bother? Because at the end of the sentence, at the end of the speech, silence will be the only thing that remains. It always does. That’s why I haven’t insisted when you refused to tell me your name. A name is a pretty useless thing, when you really think about it. It won’t save anyone from oblivion. Still, I have duties. Towards the universe. And, as a derivate of this general principle, towards you, tonight. And I will fulfill them. With diligence. And in silence.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to offend you.”
“You didn’t.”
“But it’s sad. It’s sad that you think this is the only way.”
“Trial and error. Never fails. I know how the story ends: why should I open the book one more time? To be proved wrong, perhaps. I’ve spent lifetimes trying to be proved wrong. By pride, perhaps? But now, after all these years, I am convinced it is not worth it. Oh, there is still amazement, and wonders to see, and wounds to heal. But certain things, I can never have. Human contact – not my area, and it shouldn’t be. There’s nothing sad about it, really, it’s a fact – Time and Space, they’re like that. They have laws.”
“I’m not sure I understand all that you’re saying. But I know you’re not alright. I’ve seen people being like that before. And I wish I could help you. But I cannot: I don’t know you, I don’t know your world. But I know one thing: you saved my life. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be able to kiss my mum. To play with my friends at school. To read books. Or not to read books. All because of you. That must count for something. So … Yes. I think that you are wrong.”
The firmly drawn eyebrows of the Time Lord, which seemed to have been repeatedly grinded on a sharpening stone, slowly raised, and the distant echo of a smile found its way to his lips.
“Granted. Although, the night is still young, and we have a lot of work ahead of us.”
“You still haven’t told me why.”
“Well, I’m improvising a little bit here. I shouldn’t tell you that, it spoils the magic a little. Still, I think I’ve found a solution.”
“To what problem? You’ve killed her … It. It won’t harm me anymore.”
“I’ve not killed it. I’m not sure it’s even possible, really: most of the accounts of a Singsong attack either end with the tale of a bloodbath, or some notes on how the creature was captured and trapped into some kind of prison or forcefield. I’ve just sent it back to where it belong: a dimension of chaos, noise and violence. What I need to do now is to check whether the door is closed.”
“It can come back?”
“It might. You’ve heard its song, its thoughts. It has left its mark upon you, and it might use you as an anchor, a beacon to return among the living.”
“… For a doctor, you have terrible bedside manners.”
“What’s the point in lying? I could dig up some cue cards and tell you some pretty lies, but what good would that do? The truth is hard, but it’s useful. No illusions: know the danger, in all its ugliness, and you can start avoiding it.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“What do your parents do when you’re very sick?”
“… Yeah, still not reassuring.” A pause. “They take me to the hospital.”
“Well, you have your answer. Not any hospital, of course. Some place that knows how to treat someone after an alien encounter. I’m thinking Hermes IV. Great place. They have a little shop. And at least three different mattress colors.”
“Well, I suppose I’ve got no other choice.”
The Doctor sent an amused glare in the boy’s direction. A trip to the hospital rarely seems exciting to children. Or to himself. Another proof of their common wisdom.
“I could have offered you a little trip on some alien beach or jungle as a consolation prize, but the TARDIS – that’s this lovely time machine right around us, you can say hi – is still recovering from the atrocious singing of our immaterial friend, so it’s a one-trip sort of affair.”
“… Am I actually going to see another planet?”
“There it is. The excitement. The light in the eye. I don’t know how I will manage without those … But, yes. Yes, you are. Not sure it will live up to the expectations, however. Some think stars are more beautiful when seen from below.”
“Do you?”
“I have never been”, the Time Lord proclaimed with a grin, “the kind to stick to a single viewpoint.”
And, pushing a lever, he sent the machine running across the Time Vortex.
There was something, however, he did not notice.
On the armchair, the fingertips of the child had started to tap against the old, cracked leather, following a regular pattern. A regular beating. A regular rhythm.
The rhythm of an ancient song – a hunter’s song, that told of a world of preys, ripe for the reaping …
-
For the longest time, Hermes IV had been one of the most barren, desolate, lifeless landscapes this side of the galaxy. An infinite field of tortured, razor-sharp stone formations and menacing, ragged mountains, under the blazing light of the red giant Chronos – a colossal, crimson disk in the sky.
And then came the Caduceus Company. A ragtag bunch of physicians and healers from all across the galaxy, bound together by the strength of a common philosophy. They believed in Life; and, as every living thing was according to them an embodiment of the vital energy that had been running since the dawn of time in that great body called Universe, in the preservation of all individual lives. Rich lives and poor lives, lives from the past and the future, mundane lives and extraordinary lives. Their influence, wealth, and political weight had slowly grown over the course of several centuries, and, by the dawn of the forty-ninth century, at the edge of the Noth Wars, they were the greatest purveyors of free medical care in reckoned history, with several cutting-edge, properly gargantuan health centers – barely hospitals anymore, and more like fortified monasteries, outposts of serenity, learning and healing. A little more fashionable than your average monastery, of course. Your ordinary monk generally never receives generous donations from rich sick people having made a miraculous recovery, and thus has no means to hire really good architects and a crew of top-of-the-shelf terraformers. It was indeed a tradition: every building erected by the organization had to stand in a perfectly unhospitable place – as a reminder life could prevail anywhere.
And Hermes IV fit that criteria perfectly. It was a small moon, orbiting with three sisters around Hermes Major, which had been a long time ago just as barren, but which was now a sprawling economic and cultural center. The other moons had hosted scientific stations and a few factories and mines, but that one had nothing of value except a succession of aggressive, pointy rocks stretching as far as the eye could see. But, these days, a myriad of shuttlecrafts and private ships navigated between the eden-world below and Hermes IV’s Sofia Neeva Health Centre, which stood at the top of an incredibly high and large bluff whose extremity, enclosed in an invisible, spherical forcefield, presented the lush and green appearance of a perfectly ordered English landscape garden – little pond and river included. The building itself, several stories high, was of a refined and elegant design. Black stone, steel and wood formed an intricate architectural web, whose cohesion was sometimes artfully broken by a pillar, an arch, or thick one-way windows – sometimes hidden behind an ingenious trompe-l’oeil.
Behind one of those windows, Doctor Channary Deauclaire was enjoying a nice cup of black, sugarless coffee. She had belonged to the Company since the beginning of her medicine studies, and now, at age thirty-eight, enjoyed an impressive reputation as one of its top neurologists. She was a beautiful woman, stern and severe without being austere, charismatic without being arrogant, devoted to her beliefs without ever letting them eat away her common sense. Her dark, copper-colored skin and short black hair contrasted with a pair of pale green eyes, often tired, always sharp and determined.
Today, however, they were especially tired. Hence this moment of leisure – a luxury she would never have afforded herself under normal circumstances. She was distractively flipping through some personal files, and a couple of articles on neural decay among the Judoon she intended to get published. Simple enough subject, but she found that the technical documentation of the subject to be clearly lacking. A mistake to rectify; one more. Well, a mistake she had rectified, by now – she was starting to think she really ought to get back to work – even though, considering the current events, that work really amounted to very little. She hastily rose, her coffee not even finished, and aimed for the door, and the neurology ward beyond.
She never reached it. She passed the frame of the door, and made a few steps in what should have been a perfectly ordinary, if tastefully arranged, corridor. And then realized she had actually entered a familiar-looking vast space, halfway between the derelict spaceship and the little comfy bookshop with a grumpy owner. Her face went through a rapid succession of surprise, exasperation and amusement. Out of nowhere, a blue doorway to untamed potentialities, distant age and forgotten worlds had materialized right in front of her door.
Again.
She noticed the Time Lord behind his console. Her astonishment had given him some discrete, caustic joy, at the very least – but he still looked preoccupied.
Of course. He ought to. If the weight of the universe rests on your shoulders twenty-four hours a day (well, based on the Standard Galactic Time, of course), you’ve got to be pretty darn preoccupied to go visit a doctor.
Maybe he was just uncomfortable around needles, too. It’s more common that people think.
“Colleague!” she shouted. “What did we say about materializing in front of my office? We have parking. Quite comfy parking, actually.”
“Not discrete enough for my tastes”, he answered with badly-acted embarrassment. “And the decoration is revolting.”
“At the very least, find a service area, a disaffected corridor, something! I like my office. I like getting in and out of my office. And with all the artron energy, I’ll need to spend a week recalibrating the scanners. Which all cost enough money to feed a small space colony for two months, for the record.”
“Sorry, I was in a bit of a hurry. Thought about stopping during the road to buy you some macarons as a consolation prize, but that could have provoked a rupture in the space-time continuum, with dire consequences and destruction and the usual things. How are Rita and the kids, by the way?”
“She’s starting to do some knitting. I insisted that she pass a neurological scan. At her age, seriously. But yes, they’re all fine and good.” A pause. “Now, could you tell me why you have mentioned my family?”
“I … was trying to be nice?”
“No, you weren’t. You have better things to do than be nice.”
In a hesitant voice, he answered. “I’ve got a patient for you.”
He pointed at a young, dark-skinned boy, sitting in one obscure corner of the room, looking very tired.
She waved at him and immediately smiled. She adored children. And had way too many, too – she never understood why people assumed that her success as a practitioner would mean the end of her family life. That one reminded her of her eldest; that same light of intelligence in the eyes, that same vivacity that almost seemed to bleed through the air around him …
And suddenly, a shiver went down her spine.
If the Doctor had come to her, from what was probably the other end of the space-time continuum, that could only mean one thing: the boy was in mortal danger.
Instantly forgetting the incongruity of the situation and sliding back into her well-practiced medical role, she asked –
“What seems to be the problem?”
-
“A Singsong? Well, that explains the readings. All those electric flux, it’s like there’s a rave party in the frontal lobe … Still, it’s strange.”
They were now sitting in one of the examination rooms, a few levels below the neurologist’s office, having left the TARDIS in a service corridor a few meters away. The architect had apparently tried to make it look somehow welcoming, preferring black linen and wooden surfaces to the classic clinical white, but even if you try very hard, you can’t make a series of diagnosis machines and analysis tools easy on the eyes.
The boy wasn’t very reassured. The Doctor seemed bothered by the whole situation.
And Deauclaire seemed somehow embarrassed.
“Does all that surprise you?” asked the Doctor.
“A little. They … They generally don’t leave survivors. So, obviously, we lack intel.”
“That means you don’t know how to heal me?” whispered the kid.
“I did not say that, dear. Many civilizations have encountered those creatures, since the dawn of time, so there’s a little bit of literature going around. I can devise counter-measures that should in all logic work. Honestly, it’s a shame you came here at that time – I’m not the most knowledgeable here on the subject. The one to see would be professor McCullough, from the Alien Wildlife Department.”
“Well, can’t we go and meet him, with your introduction.”
“No, I’m afraid not. Look around you. Does it look like there are many people here?”
The child and the Doctor exchanged a worried look. They hadn’t noticed anyone except her.
“Exactly. They’ve all left.”
“Why would they do such a thing? Humans, they’re so slippery, with their short lives and little twisted nerves …”
“Says the time traveler who got married eight times. Alas, it’s not just some kind of brusque craze. I thought you’d know. The Noth fleets are on the move. Three outposts have been obliterated in the Perseus Nebula, and they’ve just raided Elsar Kalza, just one star system away from Chronos. Half the medical personnel has gone to help the wounded there, and the other to transfer our patients to less vulnerable health centers. The facility remains here, though, along with two or three patients we can’t displace without risks and some nurses, so I’m playing the watchdog.”
“Oh, yes. The Noth Wars. Sorry ‘bout that. I meant to warn you …”
“But the laws of time and destiny, et caetera. I don’t blame you, Doctor. I blame the universe and bad timing. Much simpler, and much easier that way.”
“Aren’t doctors supposed to get along?” asked the boy.
“Oh, don’t let my demeanor fool you, dear, we get along just fine, despite some ideological head-butting. Even though – and I cannot emphasize this enough, he did not actually graduated from medical school.”
“I am a Doctor of many things. Just because I don’t know how to deal with a Singsong infestation doesn’t mean I’m not good at medical science.”
“He doesn’t know how to use a stethoscope”, she whispered at the child with a friendly wink. “But, back on track. As I said, we have developed a method that could work. See, the Singsong see the world, the human body, all of this, as a complex concerto – a partition it can alter according to its wishes; and the first step to do that is to modify the brainwave patterns of the subject, through a telepathic influence that takes the form of music. And from there, it extends its control. So, the only way is to push in the other direction, to counter those modifications.”
“Will that require blasting some Tchaikovsky right into his brain? Because I’ll be curious to see that.”
“Sorry about that. That’s his idea of a joke. It’s nothing like what the grey-haired skeleton just suggested. No, we have some machines with very complicated names that can amplify certain brain patterns. Make some thoughts bigger, so to speak. We create a train of thought, a sequence of activities in certain areas of the brain, through stimulus, and then we boost it until it drowns the music.”
“So, you’re talking about healing him through the literal power of love?”
“If that’s the way you want to put it. I mean, the process would probably be more pleasant with some nice memory full of joy, but it’s the quantity that matters. The list of US presidents or my favourite amok trey recipe would do the trick, too. Does that sound good, dear?” she asked to the kid.
“Oh. Great. I … suppose. It’s a little …”
“Confusing? Mad? Definitely. Don’t worry, it shouldn’t take us more than an hour, and then you’ll get right back to your home. As would say what’s-his-name, fire and lamp, and meat and bread, and then to bed!”
She rose from her seat.
“So! Shouldn’t we be going now? We can stop at the cafeteria if you want, there should still be a couple of vending mach-“
Suddenly, the dark.
The electric lights went off, leaving only the faint red glow of the bloated star creeping through the windows in faint rays …
The child was holding the alien’s hand, and Deauclaire was petrified, standing still, anticipating the arrival of some nebulous, unthinkable power …
After a dozen of agonizing seconds, the power came back.
“… It probably wasn’t anything serious” stated the neurologist, her voice shaking and unconvinced. “Power fluctuations. They happen. They’ve been re-routing the power, down on the planet, all to the defense shields … No one can enter. It’s deadlock-sealed.”
“Would you bet your life on it?” the Time Lord asked, corrosively. “Would you bet his?”
“… No. You better go and check the lover levels. The generators are two floors below us. I’ll escort him to the treatment room. They have transmitted the security privileges to me, so I will block the elevators as soon as you get there, and then make sure the emergency seals activate behind the two of us. You’ll be able to sonic yourself through anyway. I’ll tell the personnel to keep an eye out, too. Just in case. Don’t worry too much, dear”, she continued while walking alongside the boy towards the door, “this hospital has been conceived to resist invasions, bombings, the whole package. We got a pack of rampaging Zarbis in the corridors a few months back and not a single person got injured! But still, we’re going to do our maximum to keep you safe. Come with me now.”
Halfway through the door, she turned back to the Doctor.
“Keep him safe. You must, colleague.”
“A duty of care, eh?”
“Someone has to care. Alas, it fell on us.”
The Time Lord stood alone for a moment, lost in thoughts. Sometimes, he wondered if he did what it did because of habit alone. Why struggle, why keep on raging against the death and the darkness, when, at the end, all that remained was cruel, bitter oblivion?
That thought crossed his mind for one second. And then the image of the boy crossed his mind. Everything that he was, everything that he could be …
And then, his doubts, his anguish, it all faded away.
Maybe the universe didn’t make bargains. Maybe joy was something he would never taste, lost in a neverending, star-lit winter. But that didn’t matter. He was the man who fought, the man who saved people, the Doctor. On and on, the wheel span, and he had to, once again, get up and win. Trying to be a good man, which was its own reward. Trying to make Her proud. Trying to make them proud …
Time to go and be a Doctor, then. Forever forwards.
-
“Wow.”
The child was gawking. Below him, a lush, green garden spread before suddenly stopping, replaced, hundreds of feet down, by colossal, rocky formations – a sublime oxymoron of a landscape, under a powerful, unflinching red light.
“Quite the view, isn’t it?”
“It’s amazing. A few hours ago, I’d never thought I live to see something like that.”
He turned back to Channary, who was busy pressing some buttons on a discretely hidden panel. After she completed the sequence, a blue-tinted field of energy rose from the floor and blocked the corridor behind her.
“How many planets are there, in that whole sky? Like, how many bear life, with towns and people?”
“More than you could count. More than you could see, even if you lived ten thousands of human lives.”
“Doesn’t that make you feel small? Like you don’t matter?”
“Sometimes, it’s a little intimidating, yes”, she said while starting to walk and signaling him to follow. “That’s one of the reason doctors like me created that whole brotherhood thing. To remind ourselves, and the world, that even in this infinite space through which we wander, that we have colonized, there is nothing more important, more valuable, than a human life. That’s why we need doctors for.”
She stopped at an intersection, near a couple of closed offices. A few comfy chairs were lying around.
“Let’s stop there, for a moment. Don’t like that place ahead. Lots of corridors, turns, and conduits carrying air and water. If I wanted to set an ambush, I’ll do it here, so I’m going to run a security diagnosis first.”
The boy sent a half-impressed, half-surprised look her way.
“I was in the military for a couple of years. Even the squaddies need someone to patch them up. That’s where I met our grey-haired friend, actually. Well, he had curls and a scarf back then. Why don’t you grab a magazine and sit down, it shouldn’t take long.”
But the child didn’t. He stayed near her, as if wanting to ask a question. Eventually, he talked.
“Miss …”
“Call me Chan. What is it, dear?”
“I’m afraid.”
“I know. To be fair, I’m not reassured either. I could try to awkwardly hug you? Would that help?”
He smiled. And then, that smile faded away as he gathered his strengths to address the topic that was bothering him.
“It’s not … just that. I mean, I come from the past … I just can’t help it, I keep thinking about the fact that, right here, right now, I’m dead. And have been for thousands of years. What would happen if I didn’t came home, too? If something went wrong, and if tomorrow, my parents found an empty house …”
“Oh, god. I was talking about awkward hugs? Brace yourself, here I come.”
She knelt before the boy, and put her arms around him, with genuine – if extreme – tenderness.
“I can’t delay that much longer, by the way. What’s your name?”
“… You only ask that now?”
“Well, the Doctor didn’t tell me, so I assumed there must have been some big, important reason. Like a curse on your name or something. Or maybe he just have had some bad experiences with asking the name of young boys … I don’t know, really. Doesn’t matter. I want to know.”
The child leaned forwards, and whispered something in her ear.
“Oh. That’s unusual,” she answered. “I love it! And, since that diagnosis is still running, I may have a way to comfort you a little while we wait …”
While she started to explain her idea, the child rose an arm, touching the back of her head.
And his fingers started beating, again and again, the rhythm of a song, a rat-a-tat through the red night …
-
While they were walking though the dark rooms of the hospital, the child remembered …
Scenes from his life seem to spring to existence, brought before his eyes by the lack of sleep, and the strange, still atmosphere that seemed to reign supreme in this part of the future. The only sounds he could hear, here where silence had lease – the soft voice of the doctor near him and the buzzing of electronics – were starting to blur and merge, sending him back to a distant (o so distant, in these circumstances …) past …
It wasn’t the first hospital he visited. Far from it.
There were a few ordinary visits, of course … A nasty fever, an appendicitis …
And, of course, the thing.
His parents and he had this tacit agreement not to talk about it. Not anymore. It was just “the thing”. A part of the backdrop of their lives. Almost ordinary.
He didn’t know exactly when it started. When he first realize that his mother wasn’t well. “Wasn’t well”. A euphemism. He sometimes felt like life was just a long string of euphemisms.
The language helped, though. To say that it was all good, all part of the plan. Like a little magic charm, words could bring back smiles, bring back warmth into worried eyes.
They wouldn’t drown the voices, though, or make the dreams go away. Not entirely. She was still hearing them and dreaming them. He couldn’t quite understand what it felt like, what it caused in her. He didn’t think it was comparable to what the Singsong had put him through, no, from what she had told him once, it was more of … A companion. A constant companion, always there. She was like a woman with two souls, but she had only room for one, and the other was just hanging there, whispering …
She wasn’t in pain. She didn’t feel anguish or agony. But she was concerned. About herself, of course, but mostly about her family.
She went to see doctors. They couldn’t seem to find a problem.
Still, they insisted on seeing him, too. Might be congenital, ya’see?
He thinks that it was at that time he started to feel so … Insignificant. He had no control over it all. He couldn’t fix her, he couldn’t fix himself, he felt like he, his family, his whole life were collapsing; a tidal wave had entered their house and had sent them all deep within the belly of the whale …
And it stopped.
Not the problems, not the voices. But the tempest and turmoil. If you can’t beat it, live with it. That was what she said, or something like that. She wasn’t sure about her decision, of course, who would be, but she wanted to be happy. And they were, in fact. Sometimes, her eyes would drift away, as if to catch that invisible kingdom, that life never lived that crept at the edge of her reality. Sometimes she would feel fear, or unexplained joy that was as powerful as dread. But life kept on unfolding …
Well, until tonight, until the Woman of Many Songs and the Doctor in his big blue box came knocking at the door, as if to show him that the world maybe was this made place of uncontrolled voices, this beautiful, beautiful chaos …
An important night. A night that was showing him that frontiers between a single life and the vastness and space perhaps weren’t as solid, as clearly defined.
It reminded him of another important night. One from his dark days, where he feared all the time what might come, where he thought of himself as insignificant.
His mother came to him. Reassuring him. Telling that she and his father would love him until he loved himself …
“You’ll need to love me for a long time, then”, he said.
“There are worse things than to be loved forever...” she answered.
As Deauclaire was leading him into one of the rooms nearby, he kept thinking about that sentence.
There are worse things than to be loved forever...
-
The nurse was tired.
She liked her job. She liked it a lot. And she didn’t see any problems in staying to take care of five patients, four of which were in a coma.
But the constant stream of red light, and the little snippets of news that came from the New Athens TV channels … That made her nervous. It was hard to sleep, too. It was too quiet, too … Unreal of a place, without the schedule, the problems to solve, the immediate demands.
The fact that Deauclaire was now calling her and her colleagues every five minutes on their communicators, to deliver cryptic, tense warnings wasn’t soothing her nerves either.
“Excuse me?”
She startled. A strange-looking man in a suit of red velvet was walking down the corridor.
“You wouldn’t happen to have seen a being of pure music fooling around?”
“Who … who the devil are you?!”
“I’m the Doctor. And I’m in a hospital. A doctor, in a hospital. Everything normal. Sorry, I realize this was a stupid question. You can’t see a being of pure music. Although some people do see music. The Three Seers of Raj’Hel, for instance. Are you related, by chance? No, silly me. Not enough tentacles. Oh well. Sorry about the inconvenience. Lovely hospital, by the way. Very clean. “
“… Thank … you.”
“To be fair, I think I’ve been sent on a wild goose chase. Nothing here. And the red light doesn’t work well with that suit. At all. Sorry, must be going, chop-chop.”
The woman stayed there, gawking for a moment.
Her communicator rang.
Deauclaire. Again.
“Still nothing here, Miriam?”
“Well, there was a tall man with grey hair …”
“Oh, yes. He was … An inspector.”
“Again this month, doctor? With the war brewing?”
“Well, yes, the inspectors really do love their … inspecting. I’ll get back to you soon.”
Channary whistled a little, embarrassed tune, and then closed the channel.
Miriam kept walking, having to visit another patient.
A corridor, then another.
She started whistling that tune, too.
“Damn”, she thought “it is an earworm.”
-
Channary put the strange device she had grabbed a few seconds ago into her pocket.
“Sorry about that. So, what do you think?”
“It’s … rather impressive.”
The device occupied the center of the room: a massive, purplish amalgamation of metallic layers that looked like a strange cross between a 3D-printer and a sewing machine from the old days.
Strangely enough, the rest of the room was more reminiscent of a post office than anything. Lots of postcards, stamps and envelopes meticulously disposed on shelves, with price tags.
“But, uh, what does it do and what does it have to do with me?”
“Well, you see, you’re not exactly the first time-traveler we got here. We’re in the forty-ninth century, now, and while it’s not exactly commonplace, it tends to happen. The Caduceus Company’s talent for the medical science has got us a lot of publicity, across the galaxy, but also across time. So, sometimes, people come for a check-up or to see if we can solve their weird medical problem. I mean, it is sometimes tricky, especially considering that half the time, they’ll want you to come back with them and examine their family, relatives, hometown and whatever-you-want …”
The question the child was about to ask died in his throat.
“… but, the point is, we have a lot of those. But, if they are here for a long time, or if they are worried about their condition, well, they need to have a way to talk to or warn their families. So, we got this.” She gestured towards the apparel. “A gift from the Time Agency. Allows you to send messages through time. They take a look first, of course, censor them a bit, to verify that it doesn’t contain any information that might unravel the web of time, but then, they appear where and when you want them. So, there’s no need to worry about your mother and father never hearing from you again. Take some time, write a letter to your mother, and then, we really ought to keep going – the scan revealed nothing.”
“Don’t we have to pay for those …?”
“Oh, I’ll take it off my salary, don’t you worry about that.”
The child scribbled a few words on a postcard. Platitudes, maybe, but powerful ones. Love you, don’t worry, I’m safe. Small worlds, but the kind that echoes through the big night of the universe. He noted his mother’s name and address, and put it in the only slit he could find on the machine. A white light crossed the structure and wave of heat crossed the room, and the little piece of cardboard disappeared.
“So! We keep going?” went Channary, whistling.
-
Still nothing.
He had looked behind every bed, in every office and empty room, in every closet and corner. He had even taken a short trip through the maintenance shafts, deactivating the safeties with nothing more than a wave. Humans, humans. Always so … Lovely, in a primitive kind of ways.
A fool’s errand, this whole business. An apt metaphor, too. To save the life of a beautiful, unique, human specimen, one must walk through empty, strangely-lit corridors for half an eternity. The story of his lives, really.
A last grand tour of the empty hospital, then. And after that, back to the matter at hand. Talking with the humans. Tricky business. But interesting, in its own …
The Doctor stopped, and raised an eyebrow.
There was a comatose woman walking through the corridor.
She seemed to be doing alright. Walking straight ahead, with purpose, with determination. But she still wore the white, neutral hospital clothing he knew signaled a long-term patient; and her eyes were closed.
She tilted her head towards him, and she smiled.
Smiled and ran. Fast.
Running. Always the running. He was a doctor, not the White Rabbit, for goodness’s sake …
The Singsong.
It had to be. If not … It, directly, then it was a result of its influence. It had found a way in, a way back.
How?
The woman was fast. Faster, much faster, that she should be – especially after, what, a few years in a coma, if her looks were anything to go by. He had trouble keeping up.
It can’t just come back as it wants, it needs to have a gateway opened …
The boy. Of course. That’s why he wanted him to get treatment.
A turn, and another turn. He was closing in. Pulling his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, he found back the setting he used a few hours ago, back in the street.
But It is clever. It couldn’t possess the boy straight away, so It jumped from a body to another until he found one that wouldn’t oppose any resistance … The Leadworth scenario, all over again … But a creature of sound doesn’t just wonder around, it doesn’t move like one of us fleshy things … How could It …
The woman had starting whistling. And those little, infinitely small notes became larger and more powerful, forming words that penetrated the Time Lord’s brain like needles of fire.
“Through time, through the endless paths I thread … I’m here for the last song, in this war-torn age …”
He ran towards the creature’s host, raising his screwdriver, ready to unleash another blast of sound.
Channary. It had to be. From the boy to her, from her to every single person she could contact, and from those to their patients.
Sound strategy – now, if he could …
Wait a second. Every single person she could contact?
That meant …
Another turn.
In front of him, an elevator. The doors were opened.
And within it, a dozen people. The woman. The nurse he had run into a few moments back. Coma patients. Medical personnel. All their eyes closed. All their mouths chanting words no ear could pick up …
A wave of sound came crashing down on him – the most dissonant, most unpleasant harmonics imaginable, shrieks of torture and agony, were broadcasted straight into his brain
“DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE“
He fell onto his knees, his hands covering his ears.
“Some measure of strength, some sprit of battle and success left into him, as I saw. I believed you unfit and unworthy, and I would almost emit an apologetic arpeggio for this offense. I shall not misjudge the strength of your song again.”
“If only you knew what my Song looks like ...”
“Irrelevant. You’ll die in golden glory, tonight, traveler, for standing in the path of fire and darkness. You’ll see your precious protégés and faithful friends dig and claw your own flesh. What wonders, what knowledge will we find in your broken bones, I do wonder … Leave me some meagre moments, and you shall bear witness to my ascension.”
“You can’t harm me. Not now, anyway,” he stated, slowly rising. “You’re not powerful enough to understand my … Being. You can’t break it apart.”
“Time tells the truth.”
“That elevator is blocked, too. You’ll never be able to bypass the locks.”
-
“That’s the door we’re looking for!” said Channary, happily.
And, while she opened it and showed the boy the wonderful tools the Company had devised, slowly, without even realizing it, she grabbed her communicator, and pushed a couple buttons. And then, everything proceeded as normal.
-
Power was restored to the elevator; the lights flared, and a deep, mechanical buzzing filled the space occupied by the strange congregation of possessed bodies.
“Oh. Well, I’m wrong. In public. I hate it when that happens. I supposed there is no more room in there for me?”
For all answer, the Singsong hosts shrieked.
“DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE“
Once again, he fell to the ground.
“I guess … that means … no.”
The doors slowly closed, giving him time to watch a dozen faces twisting into a dozen joyless, cold, smiles.
Advanced neurology room. Two, three minutes of the elevator, maybe a little more if Channary doesn’t de-activate all the force fields. The stairs are one minute and twenty-eight seconds away, plus one minute to climb, plus four minutes to advanced neurology. Doesn’t bode well. They’ll be there before him. Unless, of course …
-
“Quite funny, really. I was sure, I was really sure that I had taken my access keycard …”
“That’s because you’ve just dropped it on the table, over there.”
Channary looked worried.
“… Good point. It’s strange, I really don’t have a clear mind tonight. Maybe it’s just the nerves.” She chuckled. “Or maybe I’m losing it and should start to think about retirement, writing books, having even more kids. For some, it’s stamps, for me, it’s children. Everyone’s got a hobby. So – here’s the thing.”
The “thing” she mentioned, looked, for all intended purposes, like an armchair, above which was suspended, floating in the air, a strange device which looked like it had been formed by the uncontrolled merging of several sheets of glass – a technological flower that was much more art nouveau than cold, smooth, futuristic design.
“Time to sit. Don’t worry, that won’t involve any needles. That’s something you feared, back in the days? Needles? I think I remember a joke about that …”
He proceeded. Deauclaire came closer, standing immediately next to him, pressing a couple buttons – the crown, or whatever the hell what that thing above his head, started to slowly vibrate. And then, at the moment where she was going to push a last one, she stopped. Hesitating.
“What does that one do?” asked the boy.
“It’s the one that activates the restraints. It’s stupid, really. Why … would I even think about activating it?” She hadn’t interrupted her gesture, and her fingers lingered still near the big red dot. “I … don’t need it. At all …”
The child was thinking. He was good at thinking – and, more importantly, he was fast. So many delays, so many interruptions … The letter, the forgotten keycard … Impulses and ideas, in her head, that weren’t hers. Another mind. Another voice. Another song.
He rose up instantly, and, for a second, crossed eyes with the woman. She looked confused. Unstable. And then, he gave her a tiny push – which was more than enough. She fell onto the chair, and he immediately activated the containment program. Crackling energy surrounded Channary’s arms and legs, freezing her into place.
She held her head down. They, slowly rose it – but her eyes had changed. Beyond the green, a darkness was expending, moving, covering the entire eyeball at one point before disappearing entirely a second later.
“Boy …”
He ran, to the door. The night would apparently finish as it had begun …
But behind it, in the corridor, he saw them. Others, like Channary, running almost like animals, towards him, and always that voiced, echoed, and echoed, and echoed in the hospital and through time itself.
“Boy …”
He braced for impact, and closed his eyes.
But nothing hit him. And when he opened his eyes, after a few agonizing seconds, instead of the corridor, the insides of a familiar-looking time machine were expending before him.
He could still hear a “how?” repeated time and again, in a corner of his mind.
“Well, you were right on one thing”, explained the time traveler, facing the possessed neurologist. “I could definitely not get here on time. So, instead, I went all the way up to my TARDIS. Took me, what, a good, solid ten minutes? But it’s a time machine. I went back, to the exact second. Also, you know what’s a bad idea? Trying to set up an ambush in a room with only one exit. The good ol’ materializing-in-front-of-a-door trick. You’ve never heard of a barricade? And I can tell you something, that blue little thingy makes for a hell of a defense. Three Dalek death squads couldn’t breach it, so, if you plan to sing it to death, better start soon. With Carmen, maybe? I’ve always liked Carmen. Reminds me of a friend.”
“And despite all of that, we still are. We still are in his head. Make us leave. Wave your devices. What will you do, next? Take him to the end of the universe itself? Isn’t the place where you take your dying pets? We’ll be here, waiting, wanting. He shall join us.”
“Well. That’s up to him, really. Because, if I have to continue your performance review, there’s also the fact you ignored the amusing things that happen when you combine a neural amplifier with some sonic tweaking …”
He turned to the boy, and took hold of his hand.
“What Channary told you earlier, about thinking that thing out of existence? Time to go.”
He pointed his screwdriver at the glass crown.
For a moment, the boy could almost feel, physically feel, his thoughts and emotions. A heap of broken images, surrounding him. He was swimming in his own life – joy and despair, laughter and tears had become shapes, colors.
And he could see, beyond Channary, beyond her fear, the Singsong. Chaos, and loathing, and a brutish, childish appetite for destruction.
“Join us join us join us join us join us joins us join us join us through the ages and the fire join us join us”
For a moment, it all went dark, he could feel hands coming out of the walls to grab him, he could feel the floor disappearing and him falling, falling in a dark chasm …
“You’ll need to love me for a long time, then”
The darkness were growing thicker …
“There are worse things than to be loved forever...”
And suddenly, they recoiled.
He focused on that moment. Remembered it, seized it.
“There are worse things than to be loved forever...”
He remembered his mother’s hair, her perfume, he remembered the rain outside of his bedroom and the night beyond …
“There are worse things than to be loved forever...”
The tendrils of darkness were writhing now, the Singsong’s melody dissolving into screams of anger, dissonant piles of poorly cobbled together tonic cords.
“CHAOS! DESTRUCTION! OBLIVION!”
“… to be loved forever.”
“JOIN. US.”
“Love. Forever.”
And then, it was gone. Channary, in the chair, had fallen unconscious.
No music left. Just silence. In the room, in the corridor, on the entire planet.
-
The next day, doctor Deauclaire woke up in a perfectly tidy hospital, where each patient had regained his bed.
There was a box of macarons on her desk, as well.
She would have liked to thank the Doctor and the boy, but they were long gone. And the boy, technically speaking, had been dead for millennia, now.
He had a nice name, that kid. She ought to write it down somewhere. Could come in handy.
She checked her message. As she found out, the war had been declared overnight.
So. Back to it.
-
“What did the Singsong wanted with me in the first place? Why did it choose me?”
The boy was exploring the TARDIS. Quite a wonderful sight, for a young mind. Leave it abandoned, for a bit, and it could make a nice playground.
“Good question. Those things, they love time energy. Nothing like a big, juicy paradox to generate the chaos they feed on. So, it’s probably because you have been exposed to time travel at some point.”
“I think I would have noticed!”
“Well, it might all be a close time-loop. Maybe it’s that trip, the one we are taking right now, that will draw the Singsong to you. Maybe its attack was caused by its attack – time is very much relative, for a great number of us aliens.”
“You don’t seem entirely convinced.”
“I’m not. There must be a better explanation, something obvious, but really, I can’t find it. Well. There’s a time for everything. Speaking of, we’ve just arrived.”
They passed the door. It was his bedroom. Back to the beginning.
“And so … What happens now?”
“I’m not great at baby-sitting, honestly. But I guess you need to sleep a bit before tomorrow.”
“I’ll have a lot to tell …”
“If you even remember any of it. Channary’s machine has done a lot of things to your brain. Might affect your memory. And humans are great at forgetting, anyway.”
“I don’t think I could ever forget you. I don’t want to! You’re amazing! And the planet, there, and your TARDIS, all of it, it was … Beautiful. Wonderful! I would like to keep these memories, forever …”
The Time Lord stared in the dark, a long while.
Words were coming back to him …
“Tomorrow is promised to no one, but I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that.”
And then he answered. Answered the boy, and perhaps, someone else. Himself. Or Her. He couldn’t tell.
“But memories must disappear. One day or another. Even the things you love and cherish the most will at some point darken and blur. I barely remember my own family, you know. And … Some persons, I can’t remember at all. But, you know, maybe, in the end, it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s the way things are. Because oblivion doesn’t have to beget pain, and anguish, and heartbreak. It may be sad, but it’s not cruel. I think … That sometimes, to forget is to stay alive. Sure, you forget good things. Beautiful sights and wonderful words, and friendships and loves … Gone. Dust and smoke in the wind. But sometimes, you need to forget the pain. To forget the struggles and the hardships, to forget your regrets and your remorse. Forget your past life and your past selves, and keep on living. Keep on fighting. Keep on trying to be a good man. And maybe that, in the dark of the night, or at the break of day, a familiar song or a long-lost face will find its way back into your world, if only for an instant. Little pieces of broken glass, shards of diamond, that shine only brighter because of the darkness around them. That’s what this night will be for you. A little, beautiful light shining through every long night to come. Does it need to be more?”
“When I hear you, Doctor, it’s like the whole world, this whole, scary place, is suddenly making sense.” A sigh. “But I guess I must try to understand things myself. Thank you, though. For everything.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“And, Doc’?”
“Yes?”
“Will you remember me?”
“A child with such a striking face and no name, defeating the hordes of chaos? Never. You’re going to be a hell of a shard.”
“… Goodnight, then.”
“Goodnight. Sleep well. You’ve earned a rest.”
The child turned off his night light, and, a few seconds afterwards, fell into a deep slumber, like one falls into some hidden abyss. There are people who can thirst for sleep more than water …
The Doctor remained there, for a long while. His thoughts for sole companion.
-
When the boy got up, the next morning, he found his parents, sitting around the breakfast table, as usual. Welcoming him with loving eyes and kind words.
He smiled. The sun was shining.
At last.
“I had this amazing dream …”
-
Someone once said that the Doctor never stops, and never stays.
Not always true, but true enough.
He took a long look at the sleeping bot, and then tiptoed back to the time machine. It took off, taking him nowhere and everywhere, as usual.
If, instead of sitting silently in his TARDIS and hoping the next step in that Christmas tour of his, the human settlement of Mendorax Dellora, would be a good one, he had waited for the parents to come back, or had taken a peak at some family picture laying in plain sight, he would have understood all the events that had led to this chase.
But he didn’t. And, sometimes, among the vastness of space, he still wonders about the strange events that occurred on that long winter night.
There is something else drifting in the vastness of space.
A postcard, which might never reach its destination. A little rectangular piece of paper, lost in time.
It’s addressed to a Mrs. Donna Noble.
writer - SAMUEL MALESKI
cover art - JANINE RIVERS
story editors - ZOE LANCE & JANINE RIVERS
producer - JANINE RIVERS
cover art - JANINE RIVERS
story editors - ZOE LANCE & JANINE RIVERS
producer - JANINE RIVERS