Charlotte suspected that the Doctor was talking to Bill, but followed them anyway.
Someone was crying ahead. A kid, by the sound of it.
The Doctor disappeared down a bank. Bill barely hesitated before following him down the steep incline. Who were these people?
Charlotte started down the slope, slipping almost immediately. She crashed down the hill, landing with a jolt. Groaning, she looked around for her phone. The monopod had slipped from her hand mid-tumble. Where was it?
‘Here,’ said Bill, retrieving the handset from a pile of leaves and passing it over.
‘Thanks.’ She checked the screen. It wasn’t cracked, thank God.
‘You hurt?’ Bill asked, helping her up.
Charlotte could feel her face flush, despite the freezing rain. ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she lied, even though her elbow ached from where she had whacked it on her less-than-graceful descent.
‘Sorry, is something keeping you two?’
It was the Doctor calling from the bank of a brook that ran between the trees. He was crouching towards a small boy of about 7 or 8, who whimpered as he clutched his ankle. There was a girl too, a couple of years older, doing her best to put herself between him and the kid.
‘Leave him alone,’ she said defiantly.
The Doctor held up his hands. ‘I get it. Don’t talk to strange men. I try to do the same, but he’s obviously hurt, and I’m a doctor. Just ask my friends.’
Charlotte was shocked that he seemed to include her in that statement.
‘It’s all right,’ Bill told the girl. ‘We just want to help. What’s your name?’
‘Masie,’ she replied, still glaring at them both. ‘But we’re fine, really. I just need to take him home.’
It was clear that the boy was anything but fine. ‘They were chasing us,’ he snivelled, his words coming out in ragged sobs. ‘I fell down the slope.’
The Doctor’s glowing stick was out again, waving over the boy’s foot. ‘Nothing broken,’ he concluded. ‘Not even a sprain, but that doesn’t matter, does it? Because it hurts.’
The boy nodded. ‘It really does.’
The Doctor offered a handkerchief covered in question marks to the boy.
‘Don’t take it,’ the girl said.
The Doctor flicked his head towards Masie. ‘How old does this one think she is? 27? 45?’
The boy sniffed and smiled. ‘103.’
‘Hey,’ Masie complained.
‘Older sisters are the worst,’ the Doctor said, grinning back at the lad. ‘Perhaps I should ban them. I am the President of the World, after all.’
The boy laughed. ‘That’s silly.’
The Doctor grinned back at him. ‘Silly’s my middle name. What’s yours?’
‘My middle name?’
‘If you want. Or we could start with your first?’
‘Noah,’ the boy replied. ‘Noah Holland.’
‘Good to meet you, Noah Holland.’ The Doctor looked up at the girl. ‘And big sister Masie too. You don’t trust me, do you?’
She shook her head.
‘That’s fine. Totally fine. But you can trust Bill. That’s Bill over there with all the hair. Bill’s nice. Nicer than me, anyway. And she’s got a question for you, haven’t you, Bill?’
Bill crouched down beside Noah and nodded. ‘What was chasing you?’
That surprised Charlotte. Bill didn’t ask why two kids were out in the middle of the wood, or where they came from. She believed Noah’s story without question, and so did the Doctor. The two were tight, like a team. She felt a pang of jealousy.
Noah looked straight at Bill when he answered. ‘The Shining Man.’
Charlotte had dropped her smartphone down to her side as soon as they’d found the kids. Now it was up again, trained on Noah. ‘What did you say?’
The Doctor stood up and swatted the phone away. ‘Point that thing somewhere else. What’s wrong with you?’
‘No, you don’t understand,’ she argued. ‘That’s why I’m here! The Shining Men!’
‘And who are they?’ Bill asked.
Charlotte snorted. ‘You don’t know?’
‘That’s why she asked you,’ pointed out the Doctor.
Charlotte couldn’t believe it. ‘But … everyone knows about them.’
‘Bored of talking to you,’ the Doctor said, turning his back to her. ‘Going to talk to someone who really knows what’s going on.’ He crouched back down by the children. ‘Noah, Masie …. What’s a Shining Man?’
Noah shrugged. ‘I don’t know, they’re like ghosts or something.’
‘Ghosts?’
‘They’re these men who appear on street corners, with lights as eyes.’
‘I thought they weren’t real,’ Masie said. ‘That’s what Mum told me.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Adults have a habit of saying stupid things.’
Masie’s face hardened. ‘And then one took her away.’
Bill joined the Doctor. ‘A Shining Man took away your mum?’
Masie nodded. ‘That’s what we think. She said she saw one in the street, but never came home.’
‘She’s been missing for days,’ Noah added.
‘And then Noah had a dream that wasn’t a dream.’
‘They’re the worst kind,’ the Doctor said. ‘What happened, Noah?’
Noah’s words came out in a burbled rush. ‘She needed my help, and was covered in leaves, so we came here to find her and there were lights in the trees, and they chased us through the wood and—’
‘And you twisted your ankle,’ the Doctor said, calming him. He ruffled the boy’s hair, plucking what looked like an acorn from his curls. ‘Typical humans. Rushing into danger to help others. No wonder you’re my favourite species.’
‘What’s that mean?’ Charlotte asked, but Bill answered with a question of her own.
‘So what are they really? These Shining Men?’
Charlotte shrugged. ‘That’s what I came to find out. This is where it all began.’
‘In the wood?’ Bill asked, before looking over Charlotte’s shoulder. ‘What was that?’
Charlotte turned. There was nothing there. ‘What was what?’
Bill shook her head. ‘The place must be getting to me. I thought I saw something.’
‘Out of the corner of your eye?’ the Doctor said, standing up again.
‘Yeah. It’s nothing.’
‘Things in the corner of your eye are never nothing. Things in the corner of your eye are usually enough to kill you.’
Bill glanced down at Masie and Noah. ‘Doctor, you’re scaring the kids.’
‘I’m scaring myself.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Says the man who’s never scared!’
‘Never is a relative term.’ He nodded at the trees behind Charlotte. ‘Now, where was it?’
Bill pointed along the bank. ‘Over there, beside that tree with the box-thing.’
Charlotte looked at an old elm that the local wildlife trust had used to mount a bird box.
‘But I told you,’ Bill continued, ‘there’s nothing—’
Lights appeared behind the tree. Two lights, like eyes.
Charlotte brought up her phone. She wasn’t about to miss this, even though her camera seemed to have trouble focusing on the orbs.
‘It’s him,’ Noah snivelled. ‘He’s come back for us.’
‘The Shining Man,’ Charlotte said in awe. This was it, what she’d come for. She took a step forward and froze.
She was scared. Really scared, deep in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t even run. But she wanted to. She really really wanted to.
The eyes blazed in the night, and Charlotte heard a whimper. She thought it was one of the kids and then realised that it was her. Her cheeks were wet, but it had stopped raining. She was crying, her hands shaking, her legs going to jelly. She wanted for the ground to open up beneath her feet, for hands to drag her down into the earth to safety, anything to escape the awful glare of those two piercing eyes.
And then there were more, appearing behind every tree, along the top of the bank, on the other side of the brook. Dozens and dozens of glowing eyes, staring at her. Staring through her.
She dropped her phone, sinking to her knees. It felt as though the wood was contracting around her, the air itself pressing in tight, crushing, suffocating.
The Shining Men reached out as one, skeletal fingers searching for her. She rolled into a ball, waiting for their nails to rake against her skin. This had been a mistake. A terrible, stupid mistake, but it didn’t matter any more. The Shining Men had come for her.
She was lost.