Chapter Text
It had begun as a normal day. Or, at least, a normal day for Alison. Time The Captain’s morning run, put on The Cure for Thomas, write down the crossword answers for Robin, you know, normal things. It didn’t matter that to an outside voyeur these were what appeared to be the actions of a mad woman. And god, if she ever told anyone other than Mike what her normal was, she would be on the fastest truck to the insane asylum. But the ghosts… their general weirdness was normal to her now. That was the point.
This, however, was not. Now, there’s a limit to how much weirdness a person could take, and this, whatever this was, really breached that limit. Perhaps ten times over.
As previously mentioned, it had been a normal day. And then… a creeping sense of wrongness permeated the very air that circulated Button House, slithering through the halls, seeping into the cracks, melting into every inch of the building until everyone was choking in its evil. 1
“Uh, Mike!” Alison had called from the upstairs hallway to wherever her husband had wandered.
“Is this ghost stuff? Because this feels like ghost stuff.” Mike answered, coming out of the bedroom to stand next to her.
Was this ghost stuff? Alison knew that Robin could manipulate electricity, that Julian could move things, that Fanny could be photographed, and when Mary was alive - er, not alive but not completely gone - when walked through one could smell burning. But those were events related to how they died more or less, and this was something entirely different. What sort of death could produce this amount of a reaction? Perhaps the plague ghosts, but that didn’t make much sense either.
“I don’t-” she began, before hearing her name being yelled quite frantically by all of the ghosts downstairs.
“Ghosts?”
“Yep.” She deadpanned, grabbing Mike’s hand and dragging him behind her. Perhaps this was ghost stuff. Perhaps everything could be easily sorted out. Perhaps this was nothing to worry about. Perhaps-
-there was a giant fucking tear in the living room. And not an explainable tear, because that would be too fucking normal. No, this was a tear that hung in the air, that glowed a dull green and was in the middle of the fucking air.
“We not do that.” Said Robin, pointing at the extremely obvious tear in the middle of the room.
“So… is it ghost stuff?” Mike - completely oblivious to Robin’s declaration of ignorance - asked again, voice raising in pitch as though he knew that whatever this was, it was most definitely not ghost-related.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, is it safe?” Mike reached out towards the tear before having his hand slapped away by Alison.
“Mike!”
“What?”
“Don’t touch it, what if it kills you or something?”
“What’s going on?” an unheard voice piped up from the corner of the room: Humphrey. 2
“Bit drastic, isn’t it?” Mike replied.
“Mike,” Alison stared incredulously at him. “A massive glowing tear is in the middle of our living room! What makes you think you should touch it?” 3
He paused for a second, before realising that Alison had a point. “Yeah, okay, fair enough.”
“That’s right Michael,” The Captain snapped into action. “Everyone stand back from the, uh, the tear.”
“It looks quite scary,” Kitty fretted. “Is it going to kill us!?”
“Kitty, pet,” Pat gently placed his hand on her shoulder. “We’re already dead. Remember?”
“Oh, yes, that’s right,” Kitty giggled. “I forgot.” 4
“We gathered that.” Julian scoffed.
While the ghosts descended into their own conversation about the matter, Alison turned to Mike and raised the all-important question: “What do we do?”
Mike, too, was dumbfounded. “I don’t know, call someone?”
“Who, Mike? Who do we call about something like this?”
Silence was her answer. Well, silence from Mike that was.
“Whoever you call, they must remove this-” Fanny gestured vaguely towards the tear “- monstrosity from my living room.”
“I know, but first I need to figure out who exactly I need to call.”
“Well, whoever you employ make sure they do a better job than your husband did of fixing my wall.”
“Noted.”
Before any more could be said the tear began opening its jaws and from its ragged maw dripped all that was crippling fear and abject horror and absolute dread. It swallowed each member of the room completely, burrowing its way into the deepest part of their hearts. Alison opened her mouth to scream, and perhaps she did or perhaps she didn’t, she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t be sure. Not of anything.
She reached out her hand to find Mike. All that was there was loneliness.
She tried to run. There was no escape, for she was hunted.
She tried to hide. She could not, for she was so very painfully seen .
She stumbled her way towards the basement. The house was labyrinthian, full of twisting, spiralling halls that had not been there before.
On and on she went, stumbling around in the dark, brushes of the unknown, the burning, the dead, and the dangerous grabbing at every inch of her until her face was wet with tears. Nausea and vertigo plagued her, and the crushing weight of when can this be over was buried deep within her chest.
There would be no getting out of this.
This was death.
This was hell.
This was-
-over.
She took a deep breath, peering around the living room slowly, carefully, scared of what she might find. Everyone seemed to be in a similar state to herself: tear-stained and gasping, sheer terror engraved in the lines of their faces. And then she dared to look to the centre of the room.
The tear was gone.
In its place, however, were two bedraggled men.
~*~
“I’ll uh, go put the kettle on then?” Mike walked out of the room before he had even gotten an answer.
The two men were sat on the sofa, hand in hand, looking quite embarrassed about the whole situation.
The first, who - with a hoarse voice - introduced himself as Jon, looked emaciated. He was short, and had long, tangled hair that was black - or was it just dark brown? - and shot through with grey. He looked to be a little older than Alison, but his eyes, god, his eyes… they held eans of years in them, heavy eyebags only adding to the effect. His brown skin was riddled with jagged scars that gave Alison the uncomfortable impression that something had tried to- to burrow beneath the thin layers of flesh and sinew on this skeleton of a man. His stomach was coated in blood, as though he had been bleeding out, but he showed no signs of any severe injury. If Mike had not been able to see the man in front of her, if Mike had not been able to touch the man to help him to the sofa if, Mike had not worn the mirrored impression of horror that she wore on her own face… well, what other conclusion could she have drawn other than Jon was simply another ghost.
His partner, 5 Martin, was not much better. Like Jon, grime and gore clung to his skin, though from what she did not know. He had twin scars across his pale skin, fewer than Jon perhaps, but still horrifying. He was far taller than Jon, more heavyset than him also. His round glasses had a crack across the left lens, and perhaps a splash of fresh blood across it as well. He wiped it away subconsciously with his equally blood-stained blue jumper sleeve.
What do you even say in this sort of situation? Alison thought to herself, trying to figure out how to proceed. A billion questions rattled in her head. Who are you? How did you get here? Who’s blood is on your clothes? She could ask none of these though, voice seemingly frozen in her throat.
Mike entered the room again, carrying two mugs of tea in each hand. Silently, he placed two of the mugs down on the table beside the sofa before handing one of the remaining two to Alison. Except for a muttered thanks from Martin, everything was silent for once.6
Ding-dong.
Thomas let out a high-pitched yelp at the sound. In response, Julian - not being able to help himself - said plainly, “Doorbell.”
“Yes,” Thomas took a deep breath. “I know that.”
“Can you get that, Mike?” Alison asked, taking Mike’s mug from him so that he could go answer the door.
Mike exited the room again, and it was once again quiet.
“Well,” Pat cleared his throat awkwardly. “Look on the bright side: the tear’s gone.” He chuckled awkwardly before, in an American accent,7 ending his observation with “Am I right?”
“Ah, yes, sorry about that,” Jon apologised awkwardly. “I believe that was our fault.”
“Jon?” Martin questioned suspiciously. “Who are you talking to?”
“Wait, you can see him?” Alison pointed at Pat.
“Um, I think so? Yes, yes I can see him, everyone in fact,” Jon stammered, looking from Martin, to Alison, to Pat. “Should I not be able to?”
“I mean,” Alison began. “They’re ghosts, so…”
“Are they?”
“There’s an arrow sticking out of my neck, mate!”
Jon shrugged. “Unbelievably, I’ve seen weirder.”
“Wait, wait, hang on,” Martin shook his hands wildly as if to try and physically halt the conversation. “So you can talk to dead people I can’t see? The both of you?”
Alison and Jon both gave variations of “yes” in answer to the question.
“Right, no, that’s- yeah, that’s completely normal, but, Jon,” he turned to address Jon. “Wouldn’t you have, I don’t know, Known they were, uh, dead?”
“I-” Jon seemed to consider this for a moment. “I don’t- Martin, I don’t Know anything anymore. It’s all- it’s all gone.”
“Like, gone gone?” Martin couldn’t quite believe whatever it was Jon had had been lost. “So, no more statements?”
“I- I’m not sure.”
“And no more Kill Bill?”
Alison felt like she was missing something. Scratch that, she knew she was definitely missing something, but before she could ask any questions, two new people entered the room.
“Ah, Kill Bill; absolute rubbish,” the first said. He was an elderly guy with a long black coat, green plaid trousers, and a white T-shirt. Over his black jacket, he had a pink high-vis jacket on and was waving what looked to be a stick of metal with a blue light on it around the room. Beyond making a bzz sound like some aggravating electric bee, Alison had no idea what the device did.
“Really? I didn’t mind that movie.” added the second, smiling. She was around Alison’s age with wide brown eyes and matching brown hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She wore a black jumper and a black skirt patterned with roses. Over this outfit, she wore a yellow high-vis jacket.
“Who are you?”Alison questioned the newcomers.
“I’m Clara and that’s The Doctor,”
“Oh because that clears everything up.”
“Plumbers,” Mike offered as an explanation. “Apparently.”
“I call bull,” Julian said.
“Bull? Where?” Robin jumped up from his seat next to the chessboard.
“Not an actual bull, you-” Julian began, but Robin was already gone. Julian shook his head. “I had plumbers come around my house when I had my pool installed, and they didn’t have any of this buzzing nonsense.”
“So they’re fakes, spies perhaps,” The Captain chimed in. He took a second before blurting: “The Germans!”
“Oh for goodness sake, neither of them are Germans,” Fanny interjected before The Captain could go any further. “In fact, one of them sounds Scottish.”
“And you don’t think the Germans are cunning enough to put on accents, Fanny?”
“Right!” Alison said, perhaps a bit too loudly. “I know you’re not plumbers, so why are you here?”
The Doctor was hovering his metal thingy over Jon and Martin, both looking extremely uncomfortable. Seemingly without warning, he swung around to face Alison. “We’re here because there was a large burst of temporal energy from this location.”
“Temporal what?” Alison exclaimed, hoping for at least some insight as to what this strange man was on about.
“I think it’s for prawns,” 8 Mike added unhelpfully.
“ Temporal energy,” The Doctor began, “relates to time or dimensional travel.”
Immediately everyone looked towards Jon and Martin. Martin gave a little wave with an awkward smile on his face.
“Yes, yes I know they’re the cause of it all, I’m not stupid,”
“Debateable,” Clara muttered under her breath. The Doctor gave her a look but didn’t comment on it.
“What I’m confused about,” The Doctor spun in a circle holding his thingy aloft. “Is that my sonic isn’t recognizing a different type of energy present in this house. Now, if there’s one thing I hate more than anything it’s not knowing something, so come on, who knows anything about this? ”
He emphasised his point by thrusting his sonic into Fanny’s stomach, who immediately gagged.
“How dare you thrust that device into a lady,”9 Fanny cried indignantly. “Alison, remove them immediately.”
“It must be the ghosts,” Jon supplied in answer to The Doctor’s previous question.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” The Doctor said blankly.
“He’s telling the truth,” Alison replied, “ trust me.”
“But ghosts don’t exist, right?” Clara seemed unsure, even as she said it. “Doctor?”
“No, they don’t.” His eyes narrowed.
“Sometimes I wished they didn’t,” Alison murmured, though not quiet enough. Her comment was met with affronted cries from the aforementioned ghosts.
“But I thought we were friends,” Kitty’s bottom lip wobbled.
“Oh, no, Kitty, I didn’t-” Alison quickly tried to undertake damage control. “Of course we’re friends.”
“Oh, well that’s alright then.” 10 Kitty seemed placated.
“Creepy,” Clara marvelled.
“You’re telling me,” Mike responded.
“No, I refuse,” The Doctor announced, most likely to himself more than anyone else. “ Real ghosts don’t exist, aliens however…”
“This isn’t an episode of Star Trek, mate,” Pat chuckled.
“Come on then,” The Doctor challenged. “What species are you? What planet are you from? I can only help you if you let me.”
“Tell this gentleman,” Fanny spat the word as though she believed him to be the complete opposite. “That nobody in this house requires his assistance.”
Alison had had enough at this point. She was close to up and leaving the room and never returning when the doorbell rang again.
“Mike?” Alison sighed.
“On it,” Mike said, leaving the room equally as exasperated as his wife.
“Expecting anyone?” Alison asked The Doctor.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Moments that felt like hours passed between them, tense, uncomfortable, and so damn quiet.
“Doctor?” Clara sliced through their glares with her words.
“Hm?”
“ Are we expecting anyone?”
Before The Doctor was able to reply, Mike re-entered the room (again) accompanied by what appeared to be two other men.
The first was slim, had deep red hair, and was dressed from head-to-toe in black with a strange silver neck-scarf thing slung around his neck. He was wearing an orange high-vis over this that filled Alison’s gut with dread. Not another one, she thought to herself.
The second, thankfully, did not have on a high-vis jacket, however, he did look as though he had stepped right out of some point in history; crisp white coat, tweed waistcoat, beige trousers, and neatly pressed shirt.
“The highlighter gang is complete,”11 he announced. “And Downton Abbey.”
“Anthony Crowley,” the man with the red hair held his hand out for Mike to shake. “Me and my friend here are just here to do some routine- what was it we said? Something to do with, uh, scaffolding right?”
“Plumbing.” His ‘friend’ provided.
“That’s it!” Anthony Crowley snapped his fingers. “Plumbing! You know, old pipes and all, they’ve gotta be checked.”
“And would you, by chance, be working for the same company as these plumbers?” Alison asked, gesturing towards The Doctor and Clara.
Alison was never given an answer because, at that moment, Clara suddenly came to a realisation, her gaze settling on Anthony. “You! You were part of the Clerkenwell diamond robbery!”
“Uh, sorry?” Anthony was taken aback.
“When did you rob a bunch of people?” The Doctor asked Clara.
“1810, you were doing something else,” Clara brushed him off.
“ Oh, I remember you, Clara Oswald,” Anthony said, memory coming back to him. “Wait, you shouldn’t be here, you should be dead. How are you here? What would that make you? Two hundred and something? How-”
“Time travel,” Clara informed him before he’d even asked the question. “The question is, how are you here, Crowley?”
Crowley ignored her, turning to his friend. “Does time travel exist, Angel?”
Ok, so more than friends, Alison guessed.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “I’d have to check back with Gabriel per-”
“Ngk,” Crowley cut him off with a grimace, as though the very mention of Gabriel left a bad taste in his mouth. “Not happening.”
“So?” Clara walked up to him. “Last time I saw you, you were 1) in a skirt, and 2) running from the police. If you didn’t use time travel to get here, I’m guessing you’re not from Earth?”
Crowley and his partner shared an awkward look. “You’d guess correctly.”
“So what planet are you from?”
“Well whatever planet he’s from, they’re copycats,” The Doctor stalked closer to the pair. “You’ve got my old face.”
“What!?”
The room descended into chaos, with The Doctor claiming that Crowley had copied an old face of his (whatever that meant), Clara trying to calm The Doctor down and Crowley’s partner, Aziraphale - or at least, Alison guessed that was the man’s name - trying to do likewise. That was without mentioning the ghosts' conversation about the goings on, Jon occasionally adding his own comments while trying to include Martin.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Mike asked.
“Not a clue,” Alison answered honestly.
The Doctor was waving his sonic in Crowley’s very annoyed face before miraculously it vanished from his hand. The Doctor stared at where his sonic had been as Crowley gave a smug smirk.
“ Thank you, Aziraphale,” he said over his shoulder with unmeasurable levels of mirth.
“Yes, thank you, Aziraphale, ” The Doctor mocked. “Now, bring back my screwdriver right now.”
“I think,” Aziraphale raised his voice. “With our hosts' permission, we best call a meeting to sort this business out.”
1. One can be certain of the level of evil this wrongness produced as even the ghosts - who obviously have no more need to breathe - were choking on it. return to text
2. During a French lesson with Robin, Pat had called everyone to attend food club. Robin had left to join in with everyone else, and, unfortunately, forgotten all about his student. Humphrey's head had been stuck in the corner for three days. return to text
3. A study done by an unnamed university (and shall remain unnamed by request and threat of a laser-filled death) concluded that interdimensional tears in the universe have the same effect as big red buttons do on humans. It is unknown why humans have this built-in deathwish considering so many of them fear death. They just can't seem to help themselves. return to text
4.Kitty forgetting that she was dead and that nothing could physically harm her had become such a common occurrence over the years, to the point not many of the ghosts even bothered to acknowledge it any more unless she was on the verge of tears. return to text
5. Or, at least, Alison assumed Martin was Jon's partner. return to text
6. Of all the strangeness to happen to Alison, the silence had been the strangest and most disturbing event of all. return to text
7. It was common knowledge that when Pat was nervous he would occasionally slip into a god-awful American accent. 7. accent return to text
8. Mike, of course, had confused "temporal" with "tempura"; a very easy mistake to make or so I'm told. return to text
9. ...that's what she said. return to text
10. Unfortunately dear readers, the author thinks they're hilarious...(click this link) return to text
11. Mike was, of course, referring to the high-vis jackets three of the members wore. He felt the insult was quite genius actually. As long as he was happy with it, that's what counts. return to text