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The room hadn’t been aired out since he was gone. The stale air rushed out, flooding Turlough’s senses. It smelled as bad as anticipated, filled with dirty clothes, an unmade bed, and half-finished science experiments that may or may not have included a cup of tea. A thin film of dust coated everything, and made him sneeze. The room had been so neglected, there were still some random items on the bed and floor, clothes scattered around the wardrobe and hamper.
He had to go back to his room and regroup after Terminus. The Black Guardian had told him he had one chance left. He had tried blunt force, and sabotage, but nothing seemed to stick. He wasn’t quite sure how, yet, but he’d figure something out. His training on Trion had to be worth something.
He tried to remember what was the name of the boy who used to live in this room. Something with an ‘A.’ Tegan said he an Alzarian, and younger than him. They didn’t mention him much, if at all. Had he been traveling with them, and decided to stay behind, like Nyssa? Tegan and Nyssa’s general skepticism towards him kept him from asking, and the Doctor never seemed like one to talk about the past, despite the nature of his ship.
There was a star map on the wall, charming for its futility. A couple of notebooks littered the room, filled with half-finished equations. Turlough was tempted to toss the dirty laundry out the TARDIS door, or burn it; the clothes smelled musty and sweaty.
He grabbed the molding cups of half-drunk tea and emptied them in the sink at the end of the hallway. He didn’t want to get comfortable – what’s the point, if he’s going to kill the captain of the ship – but the smell and grime of decay pervaded the room. He flipped through the books on the shelves, and found a name scribbled on the inside covers: “ADRIC.”
So that was the boy – Adric. He seemed much more real now that he had a name. Turlough snapped the book closed and shelved it. A loose piece of paper fluttered to the ground; he picked it up and unfolded it. Thin, cramped letters lined the page, in a ranked list:
1.) Let him know how you feel and hope it gets better
2.) See if you can go back to E-Space and have Romana take care of you
3.) See if he’ll take you to Gallifrey
Turlough pressed his lips together, feeling like he interrupted a terribly intimate scene. He crumbled the note and tossed it into the wastebasket next to the desk. He went back to the bed and laid down, too tired to mind the sour smell coming from the bedclothes.
___
He felt a hand on his shoulder. It wasn’t terribly large, like the Doctor’s, or insistent, like Tegan’s. He turned to see who it was, and saw a dark-haired, teenage boy staring at him. Turlough screamed, but the boy clamped his hand over his mouth.
“Listen to me if you want to live!” he whispered. Turlough swallowed his scream. The boy pulled the desk chair out and turned it to him, sitting down. Turlough sat up in the bed. He couldn’t tell if he was dreaming, hallucinating, being haunted, or all three at once.
“Who are you?” Turlough sputtered.
“I’m Adric. This was my room before you came.” He wore brightly colored, childish-looking clothes, like he was dressed for bedtime. Turlough supposed the boy was younger than him by a few years, but his small build seemed to belie his age.
“What happened to you? They don’t really talk about you.” Adric winced at the admission. Turlough would’ve felt bad if he wasn’t convinced he was being haunted by a ghost.
“Sounds about right for the lot of them,” he sighed. “I died. In a shipwreck, on earth.”
A dull shock went through Turlough. The Black Guardian said the Doctor was evil, but he couldn’t believe he would let a boy in his care die. “I’m sorry. Was it an accident?”
“Somewhat. I could’ve saved myself, if I wanted to, but I didn’t in time.” He looked around the room, then wiped his fingertips on the desktop. “They really wanted to forget me, didn’t they?”
“Are you the Black Guardian? Or are you a warning of his?” Turlough pleaded.
“The Black Guardian? I have no idea who that is.” He locked eyes with Turlough. “I’m here to warn you – the Doctor is not as kindly as he seems.”
Turlough felt for the crystal in his pocket. Enough strange things had happened to him in the last week this didn’t faze him too much, but he still felt cautious around this strange apparition. “Why should I trust you – or even think you’re real?”
“You don’t have to do either of those things. I would, however, not like to see what happened to me happen to someone else.” Adric sighed and looked around his room, staring at the mask hanging on the wall. His feet barely touched the floor. He wasn’t pale or shimmering, but solid. His clothes were wrinkled, but he had no visible wounds or blood on his body, no signs of death.
“Is it a grudge? Is that why you’re haunting me?” Turlough asked.
“I suppose. I wouldn’t say I’m haunting you specifically, though, or even the TARDIS. Maybe just this room. I’ve been stuck in here since I died, and haven’t really been able to do much here, not even turn on the lights.” He crossed his arms. “I spent most of my time in here, towards the end of my stay. I seemed to make everyone mad, so I kept to myself.”
Turlough stared at the blanket on his bed. He wasn’t sure how to comfort a moody ghost who seemed to be more haunted by himself than anything else.
“I stowed away in the TARDIS when my brother died and I had no one else to go to. I said I wanted to see the universe, but really I didn’t have anyone else in authority to turn to except for him and another woman he was traveling with at the time, Romana.” He swallowed, contemplating continuing. “The Doctor was different, then. Much more fun and nicer to me. Then he regenerated, and Nyssa and Tegan came onboard, and everything changed.”
When my brother died.
The phrase rattled in Turlough brain. He thought of his own brother and father, somewhere out there, unknown. Was this what the Doctor did – take in strays, make himself feel important, and leave them when he had enough? Nyssa had mentioned offhandedly that she was the last Trakenite; did he let her go once he got tired of her?
“He’s not a kind man; he’s mercurial and temperamental. I wouldn’t stay long with him, if I were you,” he said.
“No huge pronouncements, no evil secrets?” Turlough asked.
“No more than usual. He’s just a man, and he will let you down. And maybe the let down is deadly.” Adric stared through the wall. Turlough felt sorry for the boy; abandoned and alone, and the one person that could take care of him had left him to be killed by his own careless actions.
Turlough cleared his throat after a few minutes of silence. “I’m sorry they gave me your room. It feels a little disrespectful now.”
“Don’t apologize; did you ask for it?” His gaze focused back on Turlough.
“Yes, it’s…close to the console room.” Turlough dropped the convenience of sabotage from his sentence.
“I did like that accessibility. It was easier to get there when something exciting happened than from the girls’ room.” He stood up and walked around his room, examining the notebooks and trinkets strewn about. “Are you a human, like Tegan?”
“No. I’m from Trion. It’s a planet outside of the solar system.” Turlough tried not to think about the fact that he was sharing a room with a ghost.
“Good. Humans are show terribly irrational. I don’t care much for them at all. Tegan could tell, though.”
“Earth is terribly awful. I do like tea, though,” he admitted.
“Me too! I think I left some cups in here, sorry for the mess.” He smiled at Turlough – his first smile the whole conversation. “If you need to clean out my room, I don’t mind. It might be why I’m stuck here.”
“Are you sure?” Turlough asked. “Were these the only things you had left?”
“Yes. But it doesn’t really matter now, does it?” His voice was even, but his eyes were unfocused.
“I will have to get rid of some things – I don’t think your clothes would do me much good,” Turlough admitted. “I’ll probably box everything else up, though.”
“I will ask – don’t get rid of my starfield poster. I know it’s silly, but it kept me anchored to something. Traveling with the Doctor can leave you incredibly unmoored.”
“All right,” Turlough said.
“You know, I don’t think I got your name.” Adric crossed his arms and examined him.
“Turlough. Vislor Turlough. No one calls me by my first name, though.”
“Thanks, Turlough.”
Turlough looked away for a moment, and Adric was gone. He shook his head and shuddered, trying to see if that was a dream or a hallucination. He was sitting up in the bed, his eyes wide open. He had seen stranger things since the car crash.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. The chair Adric had been sitting in was still turn to the bed. He pushed it back in and picked up the clothes around the hamper, stuffing them inside and trying not to breathe. He pulled the remaining clothes in the wardrobe and stuffed them inside, too.
The crystal in his pocket glowed with warmth. He wasn’t any closer to a plan, but he could see the Doctor a little more clearly now, even after all of his heroics.