Chapter Text
The TARDIS lands with its usual grating wheeze and the Doctor strides out of the blue door, pulling his leather jacket over his turtleneck as a barrier against the cold. Anyone looking out of the darkened windows of the houses, staring from either side of the street, might have seen the thin wedge of dim yellow light and the idea of the improbably huge dimensions beyond. Then the Doctor pauses for an instant, grimacing at his uneven parking in the shadow of a tall tree overhanging the house on the corner and shuts the door of the strange box, locking it with a gentle click. The street is thrown back into grey twilight, coloured only by a dusting of white snow, like powdered sugar on a cake.
The Doctor takes a deep breath, the cold air almost burning in his lungs. “London, December, 1992,” he mutters to himself, a habit he’s never lost even though he no longer has an audience to listen to him.
He starts walking towards the far end of the street, moving with confidence. The sense of urgency, of a promise unfulfilled that had summoned him is still ringing in his head. The TARDIS assured him that he was in the right place, that she had followed the summons exactly, and yet, there’s no one here. Nothing but black night and the white/silver dusting of snow. The snow isn’t deep enough to leave footprints, but nonetheless, the heat of his light tread melts the thin covering of flakes, allowing the glistening black tarmac to gleam up at him. Only half a dozen steps onward, and the Doctor stops again, his instincts prickling.
He looks around, wondering what it is that is making him so uneasy, but he sees nothing, the street is dark. Unusual in itself, he allows, evening is setting in, but it is still only evening. He would expect at least some of the families who inhabit these big houses to be sitting down for dinner, but there are no lights at all. Not even, he notices with another chill, the streetlamp he is leaning on.
His breath puffs up before him like a white cloud and he bites his bottom lip, hands digging into his pockets as he rocks on his heels and thinks. Something is wrong here. Despite the darkness he is sure he is being watched.
The Doctor listens carefully, but can hear nothing and his hearts give a warning double thump as he realises he can hear nothing . He’s in the middle of London. It’s barely 6pm. He should be able to hear cars and pedestrians, if not on this street then the ones beyond. But nothing.
“Hello!” he calls out. Someone called him here after all. “I know you’re there.”
There’s no response, but he hears a quiet scuff that could be a footstep, dragging through frosty leaves. He whirls quickly, peering into the garden he’s standing beside. Beyond the fence, the light is becoming more purple and black than grey, and he makes out little but shadows: trimmed back hedges, and a bare skeletal tree, robbed of its summer covering. There is no movement, whatever it was, he can’t see it now.
The Doctor looks around again, fingers twitching around the screwdriver in his pocket before letting it go and withdrawing his hand. His eyes miss little and he doesn’t necessarily want whatever he cannot yet see to be aware of the technology he has access to. He casts a reflexive glance over his shoulder, confirming the TARDIS is locked. Even at this distance, he can barely see her, the dim lighting pressing against his eyes like a covering, but he can just make out the sharp rectangular lines, casting eerie shadows of her own, and despite the fact that cold bothers him much less than the humans who should be here and aren’t, he shivers.
He moves forward a few more paces, gaze still sweeping left to right. Midstep, he freezes as his eyes catch on something in the large bay windows overhanging the front garden of number 41. Beyond the black pool of the winter-bare flowerbeds, there is something pressed against the glass. For a fraction of a second, he thinks this is his mysterious watcher, and then realises that it’s worse.
It’s a Christmas tree.
A spark of anger electrifies him, making him feel his pulse in his fingertips. Whatever danger is here, it’s attacking families, children and it’s Christmas . The Doctor’s lips purse.
He reaches out to the hulking black shape of the expensive looking car parked on the curb. It is as cold and dark as the street, but despite the chill that sinks from the metal body work to his fingers, it is clean - no sign of the frost that gives the pavement an ethereal air. His lips tighten still further. It is as though the owner of the car drove home from work, parked in front of their house, and simply vanished. Abruptly, the Doctor realises there are no tyre marks through the frost on the road and he is overwhelmed with a sense of dizziness as his sense of time is abruptly assaulted. The car that is parked here has not yet arrived .
A breath hisses from between his teeth and his righteous anger burns a little hotter. How dare someone mess with time , don’t they realise how dangerous such an action is? The possible consequences of such hubris? The tragedy that can be wrought?
He puts a hand on the garden gate in front of him. It’s barely waist height and made of curved bars of iron. The frost adhering to the metal makes his hand wet and the gate swings open without a sound. The Doctor walks up the path with firm strides, stopping in front of the door and knocking sharply.
The sound echoes around the street like gunshots.
“Hello,” he calls again.
There is still no response. The Doctor takes a step back from the door and casts a glance over the dark window. There’s not even enough light to see his own reflection. He looks up at the clean lines of the tall redbrick. Three stories and not a light on in any window. Behind him something rustles once more and he whirls around. For an instant, he senses more than sees something flutter as it scurries just out of his blindspot.
“I’m the Doctor,” he calls into the dark stillness. “I can help you.”
He waits for a span of two heartsbeats, then three more, hands loose and relaxed at his sides, body language open and welcoming. The silence waits, but on the edges of awareness the Doctor can almost sense something straining back. There is something terribly wrong here, and every instinct he has, honed over lifetimes, is screaming that there’s something in the darkness, in the shadows. The feeling of being watched intensifies. There is something here, of that he is certain…Something unnatural and otherworldly. Something cruel.
Still, the Doctor prides himself on never judging by first impressions, on waiting for actions before he condemns. He takes a careful step forward and leans into the shadow. He lowers his voice a little, they’re listening, whatever they are. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
And suddenly the silence is broken by a sound within the house. A quickly cut-off half cry/half sharp exhale and the thump of a body against the wall. He whirls back towards the door and his sonic screwdriver is in his hand. Its blue beam and squeal slice through the darkness and he lets himself into the now still and silent house.
The hallway is even darker than the outside and he curls his fingers around the light switch, set high on the wall. He presses and depresses it. Nothing.
“Typical,” he mutters and steps over the threshold.
The door slams shut behind him and his eyes narrow. The air in here is different, more oppressive somehow and not just watchful but now predatory.
“You can’t scare me,” he informs the darkness in a hard voice and whistles a few notes from Vivaldi’s L’Inverno Concerto to prove it.
He walks deeper into the house. The front room door is the first he comes to and is slightly ajar. He peers around the jamb, his eyes taking in the decorated tree, the large stacks of presents wrapped in bright paper and adorned with perfect bows, stockings on the mantelpiece. He moves on glancing into the kitchen - empty and dark, turkey defrosting on the marble countertop, an empty bottle of wine beside it and two full ones chilling in an ice bucket on the floor in front of a wooden rack half filled with the same - and then making his way up the wide sweeping staircase. He isn’t creeping, not exactly, but he is quiet, straining for any further noises.
Bathroom, airing cupboard, master bedroom…This one he goes in, hesitating for a second at the door, but the stillness and coldness tell him the room is empty. Still, he has a cursory look, seeking clues on the family. His incisive blue gaze sweeps over the improbably large bed and matching end tables on either side. One has nothing but a dusty tome on it - not read in some time. The other holds another wine bottle and a glass with a sloppy lipstick mark on the rim. Only one side of the bed holds the indent of a body. The room oppresses him with its feeling of loneliness. There is nothing here, not even the dark thing he feels taunting him from the corners. He backs out of the room and presses on, tread muffled on the thick hall carpet.
And finally, his ears are rewarded by the sound of a half stifled sob.
He follows the noise, not calling out this time; the hair on the back of his neck is still prickling with the sensation of something in the dark. Something with eyes and teeth and clawing fingers and… He shakes off the foundless nerves. At the end of the first floor hallway is a small door, angled slightly against the wall and when he stoops to pass through it, he finds himself in a charming girl’s room. It looks like something from a storybook with the slanted roof and pink and white striped wallpaper. At the far side is another frankly enormous bed - white wood, carved headboard, takes up more than two thirds of the room - made with a fluffy duvet and a lacy coverlet, buried under a truly fantastic mound of pillows, soft animals and dolls. The beaded eyes of the toys stare at him and the Doctor looks at each, ensuring that they are what he thinks they are. His gaze lingers on the stuffed lion, almost the full length of the bed, that has pride of place.
He tries the lightswitch and this one doesn’t work either, but the sharp click tells him what he wants to know. He is in the right place. He steps into the room, deliberately softening his tread. The room is full of every toy a little girl’s heart could desire. Why would this spoiled child be crying under her bed on Christmas Eve?
He paces the room, taking his time as he looks in the cupboard, hung with rows of clothes, suitable for an eight or nine year old, including a pink and turquoise party dress, likely intended to be worn for the lavish Christmas dinner clearly planned for downstairs. He settles on the edge of the bed, ankles at the corner and turns to the lion, meeting its cold beaded eyes. “What do you think, Mr Lion? Where has the family that lives here gone?”
The tiny, almost unnoticeable, noises below the bed stop and the Doctor feels another stirring of anger at the child’s evident fear. “I wish they were here because I just want to help them,” he assures the lion solemnly, hands flicking out to smooth some of the mane as though he’s petting a dog.
A stifled half intake of breath and quick, muffled “Ssshhh!” and the Doctor revises his opinion. At least two children under the bed, an older and younger sibling most likely. He taps a finger on his leg. He doesn’t want to frighten them by making them feel trapped and suddenly looming towards them, but he must get them out from under there before whatever evil is in this house escalates.
“It’s strange,” he says, talking to the lion and focusing on the children beneath the bed, “but this whole street seems to be empty, cut off from well… anything .”
Another few heartsbeats of silence, another eternity of waiting. The darkness presses closer, listening too with a gleeful, mocking edge. The Doctor is just deciding he is going to have to talk to the children directly when a tremulous, painfully young voice says quietly, “Do you know where everybody went?”
The Doctor twists fingers through the fluffy mane one more time, watching as the amber fibres stick upright in wild spears. “No,” he admits, then amends to, “Not yet. But I am here to help.” He gives the voice under the bed time to think about that and the scuffling scratching sounds increase. The Doctor watches in part amusement and part relief as the expected small forms scramble from under the bed.
The first one is the speaker and the probable owner of the bedroom. A tiny thing, even younger than the Doctor had guessed with hair that probably started the day in two neat pigtails and is now a tangled nest. There are crumbs in it. Her face is a mess of jam around her mouth and a smudge of paint on her cheek giving her a wild, unkempt look that puts him instantly in mind of her lion.
The second child to emerge is smaller still. A chubby fist rubbing at one eye, dungarees smeared with dust from under the bed. His hair and face are similar to the girl - younger brother - and the thumb stuck in his mouth means he doesn’t have a hand free to push himself to his feet. The Doctor reaches down, instinctively picking up the toddler and pulling him into his lap. “Hello there,” he says softly.
Being rocked and comforted, the child immediately bursts into tears which roll down his dirty face. He doesn’t remove the thumb.
The third child, the Doctor doesn’t see until his hand closes over the Doctor’s forearm. He starts in shock, looking up into the pinched face of a boy of about fourteen. Keeping one arm around the younger boy’s waist to stop him falling, the Doctor raises the other non-threateningly.
“I’m sorry,” he says steadily, and passes the child back. The older boy pulls his brother close, settling him on his hip, but his grey eyes never leave the Doctor’s face. He watches the older boy reach out with his spare hand for his sister and pull her tightly against him, body angled to protect both her and the youngest one. “I’m the Doctor,” he says again and then waits, his own silence expectant now.
“Simon,” the elder boy says grudgingly.
“And I’m Lucy,” the girl says, still clutching her brother’s hand. “Are you really going to help us?”
“Yeah,” the Doctor answers, steady and sure. He looks back up at Simon and doesn’t yet move to stand, allowing the boy to tower over him for a moment. “Let me tell you what I know, and then you can help me fill in the blanks?” It’s a question, and he waits until Simon nods before continuing.
“You were celebrating Christmas. You finished school a couple of days ago and you’ve been excited about Santa coming ever since.”
Lucy looks away. “I’m not a baby,” she says with stiff, childish dignity. “Santa isn’t real.”
The Doctor notes the flash of pain that darkens Simon’s eyes at her words and wonders at it, but doesn’t press. The boy is still too unsure of him. Instead, he continues laying out what he knows.
“Then, when it started to get dark, people started disappearing.”
Simon relaxes enough to settle on the bed next to the Doctor. He idly rocks his brother. Lucy leans against him. “They all disappeared together, everyone, all at once.”
The Doctor’s gaze sharpens. “Do you know when?”
The boy shrugs. “The clocks don’t work anymore. Evening. Madeline had Lucas in the bath. That’s usually around 6:30.”
“And how do you know it’s everyone?”
“You came from outside,” the boy challenges belligerently. “There’s no one here. I went to the neighbour’s and knocked.”
“No other children?”
“None I’ve seen and no one’s knocked on our door.”
The Doctor chews on a thumb nail. “Tell me about your parents. What are they like? What do they do?”
“Father’s in politics. He wasn’t home, he was still at work.”
“And mummy was resting,” Lucy contributes in her soft voice. “I was being quiet because I’m not supposed to disturb her.”
“And Madeline was upstairs. I heard Lucas splashing and she was singing in the hallway. She must have come out to get towels.”
The Doctor raises an eyebrow sharply. “She left-”
“She always does,” Simon says bitterly and cards a hand through his little brother’s tangled curls.
The Doctor hears a wealth of information in those three words: a father who is rarely home, a mother who rests - sickness or something else, but he remembers the empty chardonnay bottle on the kitchen counter and the other on the bedside table - and a paid-for carer who leaves a toddler in the bath alone. No wonder Simon is wary of him.
“Where did you come from anyway?”
“Me? I’m just a traveller, but-” The Doctor remembers the brief command he heard, the demanding psychic ringing. “I was wanted; I was called.”
Simon doesn’t respond and, though he is sure that the call must have come from here, the Doctor is equally sure that Simon was not the one to demand help. The tense set of the boy’s shoulders and the lines in his young face tell him more than words ever could. This boy would never think to call for help. He’s been taught that it won’t come. Come to think of it, he’s not even certain the call was for help, it was just a screaming demand that sliced into his mind and could not be ignored.
The Doctor knows that neither probing questions nor sympathy will meet a warm reception. He puts a hand on the boy’s arm and watches his young face twist into a scowl of rejection, but before he can say anything or pull away, the Doctor simply asks, “How long has it been like this?”
“What- what do you mean?”
“It’s been longer than one evening, right? How long have you been waiting for a Christmas that never comes?”
It’s more effective than any attempt, however sincere, to bond could have possibly been. Simon’s whole body lightens as though someone has taken an impossibly heavy load from him and he abruptly looks his age: a gangly teen with arms and legs he has yet to grow into, fashionable jeans paired with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt. “Really?” he says, and his voice cracks, heightening the impression of his youth.
The Doctor forces himself to smile. “Trust your senses, Simon. You know it’s been too long. Three days or so, I’d say. Something has gone wrong with time.”
“And you’re going to fix it?”
He turns the smile up another couple of watts. “That’s what I do.”
The boy nods, accepting that very calmly all things considered, clearly more than happy to hand over the reins to someone who is at least willing to pretend they know what is happening. “How?”
“First thing, time disturbances like this don’t just happen, not very often anyway. No. This is much more likely to be interference from something. Anything else you can tell me that might help me guess what or who it is? Do your parents have any enemies?”
“Not ones who can stop time,” the boy says. “Although, father says people of quality will always have enemies.”
“The riff-raff are jealous of what we’ve worked for,” little Lucy chips in.
The Doctor bites down harder on his nail, shocked to hear such a thing come from such a tiny child. Still, now is not the time for a lesson on socialism so he presses on with his questioning. “Anything dangerous on the street? Rumours? Stories? Even fairy tales?”
“There’s a monster under my bed,” Lucy says.
“No, there isn’t,” her brother snaps. “We’ve been hiding under there for simply ages and I didn’t see anything.”
“Well, let’s have a look, rule it out,” the Doctor bends down, pulling his sonic out once again and passing it once quickly from left to right. He’s not really expecting anything beyond a young child’s quite natural fears, but it’s as well to check. There are far stranger things in the universe than monsters under beds.
Behind him, Lucy says hotly, in the tone of one who has made this insistence many times before. “Well, you wouldn’t see it. It’s a scaredy cat monster. You were holding one hand, but the monster was holding the other and I was squeezing him tight so he wouldn’t get scared and roar.”
The Doctor blinks. Something in the darkness blinks back. “Hello?” He says tentatively.
“You don’t have to humour her,” Simon says. “She’s just an attention seeking little-”
“Hello,” something under the bed answers
The Doctor considers, but Lucy was right, there is indeed something under the bed. He has no reason to doubt her belief that it’s friendly. Still, he shifts his weight a little, better balanced if something should lunge at him, and more firmly between it and the children. “Won’t you come out?” The Doctor asks, “So we can talk.”
“Don’t like the out,” the monster under the bed answers. “Too big and wide.”
The Doctor nods as though this is a normal conversation and quells his ridiculous urge to giggle. “What are you? Where are you from?”
“From here.”
“Who are you talking to?” Simon demands almost angrily.
The Doctor takes a moment to be surprised. “You can’t see it? Interesting.” Then he turns back to the space between bed and floor, nodding thoughtfully. The thing under the bed seems to have the vocabulary of a young child. He pulls his knees under him as though to stand and then, though he is sure of the answer, asks, “You weren’t watching me?”
“Watching-?”
“From the corners?”
It shrinks back, and the Doctor has an impression of a massive hairy body. “Not me. That was the Listeners.”
“What are the Listeners?” The question is reflexive, but the thing pulls itself into a tighter curl and shakes its head hard.
It’s Lucy who eventually says, “They’re the bad things in the shadows. They listen to us and make fun. They know when you’re scared. I hate them.”
This time, Simon doesn’t dispute her claim. The monster he can’t see, but the evil in the walls he can’t possibly doubt.
The Doctor feels the hair on his arms rise into goosebumps. Something here is rotten to the very core. “And did the Listeners take everyone else away?” He asks, unable to help the hard quality of his voice.
It nods, fur rustling against the floor.
“Where?”
“Away.”
It refuses to say anything more and after a moment the Doctor hauls himself to his feet. “Well, that’s somewhere to start,” he says with forced cheer. “Let’s go and catch ourselves a Listener.”