The pickaxe bit into the tiles with a short, sharp clang. The Doctor lifted it back up, continuing with his story.
‘The girl had a favourite tree and, whenever she could, she used to scramble up into its branches and hide away from the world.’
Clang. Again, he struck the floor. The tiles cracked.
‘What she didn’t know was that there was something buried beneath the tree.’
Clang. He was through the tiles now, kicking them out of the way to reveal smooth concrete.
‘It was a Boggart who had been caught and trapped hundreds of years before …’
‘By the Fairy Finder!’ Bill cut in, realising where he was going with this.
The Doctor shot her a look. ‘Whose story is this?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Where was I?’
‘The Boggart was trapped,’ Masie reminded him.
‘Ah yes …’
Clang. Now, the Doctor went to work on the concrete.
‘Bound in iron, the Boggart was cast into a deep hole …’
Clang. Plumes of dust accompanied every strike.
‘A tree planted on the spot. As it grew, the roots stretched down into the ground …’
Clang. Cracks started to appear in the concrete.
‘Wrapping themselves around the Boggart, making sure it could never escape. Now, it’s hard to kill a member of the Fair Folk …’
Clang. The concrete around the Doctor’s feet now resembled a jigsaw.
‘Some would say it’s impossible. Instead, the Boggart fell asleep …’
‘Like a hedgehog?’ Noah asked.
The Doctor stopped digging and looked at the boy. ‘What?’
‘Hedgehogs hibernate for winter.’
The Doctor considered this. ‘That they do. Good point.’
Noah beamed.
‘Instead, the Boggart hibernated …’
Clang. The Doctor finished loosening the concrete. He threw the pickaxe aside and started prising great chunks out of the ground. Bill let Hilary take Sammy’s weight and rushed down into the pool.
‘So what happened to the Boggart?’ she asked, dropping to her knees to help.
‘It was forgotten,’ the Doctor said, lugging lump after lump of concrete out of the hole. ‘The tree grew large, and the Boggart slept. But the tree’s roots sucked up a little of its magic, keeping the tree alive long past its sell-by date, long enough for the little girl to climb into its branches centuries later. The magic flowed into her. It didn’t do her any harm – and thankfully it didn’t give her any superpowers. The world’s had enough of that kind of thing recently. In time she grew up and had children of her own.’ He glanced up at Sammy. ‘A daughter called Masie and a son called Noah.’
Masie’s eyes went wide. ‘The little girl is Mum?’
The Doctor nodded, indicating the hole. ‘And the tree used to stand right here.’
The concrete was cleared away now, leaving nothing but compacted earth.
‘Noah,’ he said, standing up and rubbing his hands down, ‘I need a shovel. Can you get one for me? Out where I found the axe?’
The boy hurried out into the growing darkness, returning with a spade that was almost as tall as he was. He passed it down to the Doctor, who returned to the hole and resumed both his excavation and the story.
‘A link was established between the Boggart and the girl. She never knew about it, and neither did the Boggart. It was lost in its dreams, until the tree was grubbed up.’
‘To build this place,’ Bill said, watching him dig.
The Doctor threw a shovelful of dirt over his shoulder. ‘The Boggart woke up deep within the ground. All it could hear from above was noise and confusion. It was scared.’
‘So scared,’ Sammy said, gasping as the Doctor’s foot pushed the shovel back into the exposed ground.
A breeze ruffled Bill’s hair. The Doctor looked up, alarmed.
‘No!’ he said firmly, glancing up at Sammy. ‘No, tell it we’re trying to help.’
Bill staggered. She knew why the Doctor was worried. This was like before, in the TARDIS.
‘Just want to be home,’ Sammy whimpered as the wind intensified.
‘What’s happening?’ Noah cried, hugging his sister close to him.
Bill was struggling to stand. The wind was blowing them back from the hole.
‘It’s trying to protect itself,’ he shouted above the storm. ‘It’s scared.’
Masie screamed as lights appeared all around the outhouse. Shining Men stared in through the windows, light streaming from their eyes and mouths.
‘I know how it feels,’ Bill said.
‘I’m trying to get you home,’ the Doctor cried out as Bill was blown from her feet to skid across the tiles. The Doctor’s shovel clattered to the floor. He had fallen on his back, buffeted by the winds.
Above them, the Shining Men had slipped through the walls of the outbuilding. They didn’t walk. They barely moved. They just shifted forward in the blink of an eye.
‘I thought the Shining Men were an attack,’ the Doctor shouted, crawling back towards the hole. ‘Breaking through the veil between the Invisible and the Visible, but I was wrong. They were a cry for help. The Boggart was already here and it was alone.’
‘Alone!’ Sammy and the Shining Men wailed in unison.
‘Even now it can’t help it. It has no way to understand what’s happening. The Shining Men are manifestations of its fear; its mind splintered over and over again. That’s why people feel trapped in their presence, why they feel they can’t get away.’
He’d reached the hole in the floor now and was hanging on to the broken concrete.
‘When one of its avatars met Sammy, their minds linked, thanks to the special bond they already shared. Meanwhile, across the veil, the Fae heard the cry of their prodigal son. They came looking, but we couldn’t understand them. And we were afraid.’
Bill didn’t know who he was talking to, her or the Shining Men. He started digging into the dirt with his bare hands. She crawled forward, fighting against the wind, and helped, clawing through the earth.
‘It’s forgotten what it’s like not to be scared. Everything is a potential threat, even the sound of someone trying to dig it out.’
The light from the chorus of eyes shone brighter than ever, reflecting painfully from the swimming pool’s white tiles.
Bill looked down, grit and dirt in her eyes. There was something there, in the earth. It glinted in the light.
‘Doctor!’
He saw it, shoving his hand deep into the earth.
‘That’s what fear does,’ he shouted, his voice hoarse as he tried to drag what they’d uncovered from the ground. ‘It blots everything else out. You can’t think straight. Even if someone tells you one thing, you believe the other. Once you give into fear, it consumes you, remaking you in its image.’
Bill plunged her own hand into the ground, her fingers touching something hard and cold. It felt like the links of a chain. She wrapped her fingers around the metal and pulled.
‘That’s it,’ the Doctor yelled. ‘Nearly there.’
The wind was so strong now that she thought she was going to be lifted from the floor. She pulled and she pulled, but the thing in the ground wouldn’t budge.
‘Doctor?’
‘Just a little more!’
The light from the Shining Men was intense. She couldn’t see anything but the glare, not the Doctor, not her own hand. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t breathe, and as the wind raged, she couldn’t hear.
All she knew was that she was very, very afraid.