The Doctor (12) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
passesthrough) wrote2015-02-18 05:08 pm
passesthrough) wrote2015-02-18 05:08 pm
Entry tags:
[psl] for supertemp
A hush had fallen over the empty theatre. The lights were down, the stage was empty, the playbills left behind by careless patrons swept up and binned. A lonely thing at night, a theatre, or it should be. Not this one, though.
At night, this one breathed.
It was quiet, on the edge of hearing, a subtle suggestion of a sound that set hair on end and caused the janitors to hurry through their nightly tasks to clock out early and spend the rest of the night in the pub, drinking their nerves away. Haunted, they said, by the ghost of a performer that had died on stage a century ago.
Ghosts were not why the Doctor was using the sonic to unlock the backstage entrance. Not really, anyway. Everyone knows there's no such thing as ghosts, so what was causing all the fuss? Something was undeniably up, the matinee he'd attended previously was enough to convince him of that. There had been something subtly wrong with the performance. A woodenness that might have been attributed to nerves, if not for the fact that it swept through the actors like a wave, or, he suspected, like a signal traveling through a circuit.
The interior was dim, the few points of light serving only to give form to the darkness. Musty air carrying a hint of ancient greasepaint gusted warmly out the open door. The Doctor closed it quietly behind him. He stood still, listening attentively to the creaks and banging pipes of the old building as it settled.
There it was, the breathing. He was not alone.
At night, this one breathed.
It was quiet, on the edge of hearing, a subtle suggestion of a sound that set hair on end and caused the janitors to hurry through their nightly tasks to clock out early and spend the rest of the night in the pub, drinking their nerves away. Haunted, they said, by the ghost of a performer that had died on stage a century ago.
Ghosts were not why the Doctor was using the sonic to unlock the backstage entrance. Not really, anyway. Everyone knows there's no such thing as ghosts, so what was causing all the fuss? Something was undeniably up, the matinee he'd attended previously was enough to convince him of that. There had been something subtly wrong with the performance. A woodenness that might have been attributed to nerves, if not for the fact that it swept through the actors like a wave, or, he suspected, like a signal traveling through a circuit.
The interior was dim, the few points of light serving only to give form to the darkness. Musty air carrying a hint of ancient greasepaint gusted warmly out the open door. The Doctor closed it quietly behind him. He stood still, listening attentively to the creaks and banging pipes of the old building as it settled.
There it was, the breathing. He was not alone.
no subject
Donna knew the theatre was supposedly haunted (it was in an informational pamphlet she'd read one afternoon when she'd been really bored), but one ghost couldn't possess an entire cast, assuming that there even was such a thing. Any sane person would have written the entire thing off and asked the temp agency for a different assignment, one less creepy. Certainly that's what she would have done a couple years ago. But, well, she didn't have much luck with assignments these days, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to get another if she turned her nose up at this one.
Which didn't explain why she'd stayed in the theatre well after hours. It'd been easy enough to hide; a theatre had nooks and crannies that nobody checked, and she'd tucked herself away in a corner of the wardrobe, hidden amongst dusty velvet dresses and scratchy moth-eaten furs. When she finally judged it safe to come out, she pulled her mobile out of her bag, using the dim illumination from its screen to make her way through the deserted corridors backstage. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, but she hoped she'd know it when she saw it.
She caught a crack of light coming from the open door just before it shut again - definitely not ghosts, she decided, because why would ghosts need to open a door when they could just go through it? "Is someone there?" she hissed into the darkness, feeling incredibly foolish. For all she knew, it was a mass murderer who'd snuck into the abandoned theatre for the express purpose of slaughtering temps who were daft enough to think there was a mystery that needed solving.
no subject
There was something niggling at the back of his mind, an observation that was familiar and dreadful. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, and his frown deepened. If only she'd turn the screen toward her face. Announcing his presence to whatever was here by making a beacon of himself hadn't been his intention, but it seemed he didn't have much choice, if he wanted to find out why her voice filled him with so much guilt. It was better to sacrifice a slight tactical advantage than be distracted when he needed a clear mind. He adjusted the sonic's settings.
It erupted into bright blue light, or so it seemed after the darkness. The Doctor squinted, shielding the sonic with his hand. So much for night vision. He would have to remember to adjust the torch function. Maybe give it more than one setting--
"I know you." Nascent sonic improvements forgotten, he waved his pointing finger at her. The name escaped him. Big name, full of heart, and loud. "You're the mouthy one. Oh, you really shouldn't be here."
no subject
Something about the light sparked a forgotten memory, but she couldn't quite place it. It wasn't a normal torch, that much was obvious, but it seemed familiar. But then he kept talking, and she disregarded that in favour of the bit that seemed far more important. "Mouthy?" she huffed indignantly, planting her hands on her hips. She'd been called worse, of course, but he was a complete stranger, as far as she could tell, and she wasn't going to stand around and be insulted by the likes of him. "I am not mouthy!"
(Except, of course, that she was; even her own mother said as much.)
The volume of her voice rose as she spoke - not a good idea when they were both trying to remain inconspicuous (as if Donna Noble ever succeeded at being inconspicuous) - and an ominous creaking noise came from the direction of the stage. Donna glanced over her shoulder. "Definitely just the boards settling or something, right?" She really hoped that it had a perfectly normal explanation.
no subject
First order of business: getting the painfully familiar woman out. He extinguished the screwdriver and tucked it into a pocket, blinking bright splotches from his eyes. "Did I say I was a trespasser? I meant to say exterminator. Rat infestation."
Another creak punctuated the lie just as he was reaching for her elbow with the intention of steering her--with force, if need be--toward the unlocked back door.
"... big rats. Very big, about the size of a small horse. Probably plagued, so why don't you just go home and let the professional handle things."
no subject
Donna pulled her elbow out of his grasp, whipping her mobile out of her handbag with the other hand. "I ought to call the police on you, you know. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't, preferably one that doesn't involve giant plague rats." Sure, she was trespassing too, but unlike him, she could explain it away as simply working overtime (very overtime, in fact).
I swear I have a plan
That was not just a creak. Those were footsteps, shuffling uncertainly in the darkness. He turned, slowly, back toward the curtain. It was difficult to make out, but it definitely seemed to be swaying more than it had been. Almost... bulging, as though someone were trying to walk through it, rather than parting it like a sane person.
"You need to leave, now," he hissed, hand on his screwdriver. "You're in terrible danger. Not from me. Go."
It didn't matter if they were hostile or not. Exposing her to more alien technology was not a risk he was willing to take. It was his fault she was forced to forget in the first place, he was damned if she'd burn up under his watch, too.
no subject
"What about you?" she hissed. She'd only just met him, but she wasn't about to leave him behind for- whatever was waiting out there, ghosts or axe murderers or zombies. "They're bound to be just as dangerous for you as they are for me." She stared at the- torch? in his hand, not sure whether it was the weird light that was starting to give her a bit of a headache or this entire bloody mess as a whole.
no subject
His hand never touched her. The things had pushed through. They wheezed through slack jaws, staring at them with vacant eyes. Long organic cables extended from the backs of their necks and disappeared beneath the settling curtains. The Doctor's eyes moved rapidly, counting heads, taking note of the fact that more had crept to flank their sides.
They were the actors, or something that looked like them, anyway, and they were standing motionless now, as if waiting to take a bow.
no subject
"What's happened to them?" she whispered, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. She'd known several of them - not well, but their paths had crossed more than once, actors having a tendency to hang around the theatre and get underfoot even in their spare time. "They aren't them anymore, are they? They're all wrong."
"Is that what you were looking for?" Her eyes darted back to him for a moment before locking on the actors again; she didn't think he was dangerous (although she had no idea why she seemed so convinced of that fact, considering that she'd just met him sneaking about in a dark theatre), but the actors (former actors? actor-puppets?) definitely had an air of malice about them. "Not giant plague rats?"