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Welcome to the Time Tales section of Doctor Who Online.
Time Tales are Doctor Who dioramas (picture stories), based on characters
and worlds inspired by Doctor Who, and written and shot by Malcolm
Orr. |
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Sigmund Freud wasn’t quite sure what to make of his client. For a start none
of his clients had ever offered him a jelly baby half way through a
counselling session before, but he supposed there was always a first time
for everything. The Doctor’s thoughts were, typically for him, disjointed
and alien, hiding a deep intelligence underneath. It was a year ago when
Freud first met the Doctor during the terrible events at Renwick Asylum, and
he had thought about their meeting every day since. Freud realised he wasn’t
going to get very far discussing the Doctor’s thoughts with him and he
wondered, in fact, whether the Time Lord was waiting for Freud to discuss
his own thoughts. Freud did have a question for the Doctor, but it probably
wasn’t the one the Doctor was expecting...
One year earlier...
Renwick, Essex, England. October 15th, 1926
Sigmund Freud stepped out of the taxi and walked up the stone path towards
the large wooden doors of Renwick Asylum. Freud had been invited at the
request of Doctor James Bell, an eminent British doctor who ran the asylum.
These days, however the asylum was more or less closed down as the Bell
family fortune continued to slowly shrink, meaning that the once great
building was now looking slightly worse for wear. Doctor Bell had tantalised
Freud with the chance of providing an opinion on a patient he described as
‘the most curious case of madness I have ever seen.’ Dr Bell greeted Freud,
and welcomed him into the asylum and it wasn’t long before Freud requested
the case notes of the patient. Freud sat down in an old leather chair in Dr
Bell’s office and started to read the case files, but he was slightly
distracted by his host who was fidgeting and appeared to be waiting for
something to happen, or perhaps someone else to arrive.
In the grounds of the asylum a battered police box materialised out of the
ether, with a wheezing-groaning sound that ended with a resounding ‘thunk!’
The creaky door was pulled open with a slight dramatic flair and a tall man
strode out, his scarf trailing in the grass behind him. Robyn Brooks and K9
followed. ‘History!’ the Doctor exclaimed as he strode off towards the doors
of the asylum.
The Doctor, Robyn and K9 were wandering down a corridor when they saw two
figures walking in their direction. The Doctor beamed as he recognised one
of them immediately. He grabbed Freud by the hand and introduced himself and
his companions. Robyn was amazed. She had already met some of history’s most
famous people in the intergalactic ‘Happy Zodin’ club, but this was the
first time she had met someone famous in their actual historical context. Dr
Bell was slightly upset at the fact that the Doctor had managed to grab
Freud’s attention and so he protested that they were in the middle of
important work. He tugged the Doctor’s hair and complained that this asylum
could do without the distraction of ‘long haired ruffians’. The Doctor
pulled his hair back out of Dr Bell’s hand, an offended expression carved on
his face. When the Doctor heard that Freud was here to provide an opinion on
a curious case involving an insane patient he invited himself to join them
in their assessment.
Robyn looked at the patient, standing there calmly behind a huge
rusty metal cell door, and she couldn’t stop staring at the man’s eyes. The
patient was staring past the group that had gathered in front of his cell, a
look of glee in his swollen red eyes, a look of satisfaction, though Robyn
didn’t want to know what thoughts were running through his mind. He was
bound in a tight straight jacket, and a metal and leather mask had been
strapped to his face. He reminded Robyn of Hannibal Lector in ‘Silence of
the Lambs’ but this was actually real and all the scarier for it. The
patient’s long dank hair stuck to his head and snaked down his shoulders. Dr
Bell explained to the group that the man was found wandering out of a
deserted house, the ‘Romfield House’, and he was already insane when the
police found him curled up in a ditch outside of it. He only repeats the
same three verse rhyme, over and over again. Robyn listened carefully and
could hear the lunatic’s voice repeating the rhyme Dr Bell had mentioned:
There’s a knocking in the cellar,
Sometimes in the night.
Poor Old Joe went down there,
But his soul died of fright.
There’s a knocking in the cellar,
A nightmare waits for you.
Nancy went to have a look,
But they took Nancy too.
There’s a knocking in the cellar,
Sometimes in the night.
Men will die and widows cry,
When the Rag Men come to life...
The Doctor looked closely at the patient. There was a certain familiarity
there, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He’d seen madness before,
of course, but this type of insanity unnerved him the most – a tortured and
insane mind trapped inside an unmoving body, the very embodiment of a lost,
distressed soul. He knew that he wanted to help him, but it wouldn’t be
easy. He wanted to know what had driven this man to madness and how he could
be brought back to sanity. The Doctor turned around to see that Robyn was
scared, as were the others, so he suggested that they retire to Dr Bell’s
office.
The Doctor asked Dr Bell about the history of the Romfield House. Dr Bell
explained that the house was, for many years, the property of the Romfield
family, a well respected family in the area for generations. In fact they
used to regularly hold well renowned social events there until about 5 years
ago when Mrs Romfield died from consumption. Then, about 3 months ago, there
was an incident in which two family members, Joseph Romfield and his
daughter Nancy died in the house, supposedly of fright. The remaining family
left the very next day and boarded up the house. A couple of weeks after the
house was abandoned, the patient in the cell they had just examined emerged
from the house singing the rhyme he was muttering just a few moments ago. He
always sings it, just under his breath. Following the deaths, the house
seemed to take on a much darker shade, and the foliage around it became
twisted and overgrown. It had earned a name in the local community as the
‘Witch House’. Dr Bell lifted some books off a shelf and placed them on his
desk, saying that they were local records of the village. The Doctor
announced that he would like to take a look at this ‘Witch House’, and
suggested that Robyn stay here with K9 to examine the local records. Sigmund
Freud requested that he accompany the Doctor, prompting a smile from the
Time Lord. ‘I’d be delighted,’ the Doctor beamed.
Freud looked at the outside of the house from the safety of the road and
realised that Dr Bell’s description was not hyperbole – in fact even without
the brief horrific story about the house’s history any sane man could see
that this was a place of evil. He was trembling slightly at the sight of its
dark, twisted architecture. He felt nauseous, as if someone had just found
the hole you’d been hiding in all your life. He turned his attention to the
Doctor who appeared undaunted by the sight and was striding enthusiastically
towards the front door. Twice now Freud had seen the Doctor in situations
that would send shivers down the spine of any man, but the Doctor seemed
impervious to the fear. Freud wondered what the Doctor would be scared of,
if not things like this. An interesting case for psychoanalysis, he thought,
but he’d already gathered that the Doctor didn’t share his deeper thoughts
that easily, preferring to project a brash and jovial exterior. The Doctor
tried the door to the house, but it was locked. He fished the sonic
screwdriver out of his pocket and opened the door. It was dark inside, and
it seemed to Freud that something evil was tempting them to enter.
Robyn sighed and scratched her head. The books were written in a combination
of Latin and an elaborately structured formal ‘Olde’ English. She had found
a few pages on the Romfield House – apparently built in 1543 by Cornelius
Romfield who moved to the area from Yorkshire. He was a cotton merchant who
had retired and had looked for pastures new. The family history, though, was
otherwise unremarkable, beyond a twice yearly social evening that the whole
community used to look forward too. Dr Bell had managed to salvage some
newspaper cuttings from the incident where two family members had died, and
had attached them inside the records. Apparently the deaths were recorded as
‘from fright’ though there were no signs of subsequent investigations. Robyn
looked down at K9 who appeared to be sleeping or in ‘power conservation
mode’ as he preferred to call it. She was still haunted by the face of the
man in the cell. The wind had whipped up in the night sky outside, and the
single burning candle was starting to give her a headache. But truth be
told, it was curiosity that was really starting to gnaw at her, and she
decided she would have to go down and see the patient again. Maybe there was
some clue there.
The inside of the Witch House was black with deep shadows. The house already
seemed to be decaying even in the three months since the house became
cursed. White sheets had been used to cover the furniture, but they were
turning yellow-grey with dust. The Doctor saw an open door and decided to
have a look inside. Disturbingly the room was full of gravestones, most of
them blank with the names of the dead yet to be chiselled into them. The
Doctor walked inside to have a closer look, but suddenly he felt dizzy and
collapsed to the floor, a wave of nausea rising through him, and a feeling
that he couldn’t breathe, like he was drowning in air.
Blackness closed on his vision and everything blurred. A sound of scraping
stone started to well up in his ears, and the gravestones started to close
in on him, crushing his body as he struggled to lift himself from the floor.
The gravestones pressed down hard on his chest and he struggled even more to
breathe. A hand grabbed his wrist and yanked him from the room. It was
Freud. The Doctor panted and looked back into the room, sweat dripping from
his brow. It was the same size as before, but the gravestones he saw were
not there – just furniture covered in sheets. It had been a hallucination,
but somehow something more real than that. ‘So you do get scared,’ mused
Freud. ‘You’re just as human as the rest of us.’
The man stood in the cell, his position unchanged from earlier on and he was
still staring at the wall. She couldn’t see it because of the mask, but she
could tell that he was still smiling. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, but there
was no reply. She walked closer to the cell. The iron bars in the cell door
was the only barrier between them. Once again she asked, this time standing
in his line of sight. He seemed to stare through her, at the wall. Robyn
looked down, realising that she wasn’t going to get any answers tonight.
When she looked back up the patient was staring right at her. ‘Rag Men!’ he
screamed, repeating it over and over again as he stared at her, blood lust
in his eyes. To her left she noticed that something was stirring. A laundry
basket twitched as a sheet started to lift out of it and coalesce into a
parody of human form. Another sheet moved and then another. Robyn stared,
unable to move as two creatures made from the sheets started to lurch
towards her, their arms flailing out, whipping through the air. Robyn turned
to run...
The Doctor found his way to the reception room of the house and was about to
go in when he heard a cry. The Doctor turned to look behind him. Freud had
slipped on the floor and fallen, blood tricked from the corner of his mouth
and his eyes were motionless. The Doctor felt for a pulse, but the body was
already stiff and cold. The Doctor shook his head, closed his eyes and stood
up. When he opened them Freud was standing there. The Doctor explained what
he had just seen. Freud found it interesting – the house was playing with
the Doctor’s biggest fears. Firstly the crushing gravestones played on his
fear of being restricted and held back, and the hallucination of Freud’s
death playing on fears of losing his companions. There was something in the
house itself that was affecting the Doctor’s mind, Freud mused. The
psychoanalyst told the Doctor that his fears came from insecurities, and
that he would need to conquer them if they were to move on. Should they go
forward to find answers in the midst of fear, or go back to the false safety
of ignorance, Freud asked. The Doctor smiled and twisted the handle on the
door that led them forward, opening it so they could continue into the
reception room.
Robyn ran up the stairs as fast as she could. The Rag Men were just behind
her and rags suddenly wrapped around her ankle, causing her to trip. A red
laser beam burned at the sheets allowing Robyn to escape. K9 was at the top
of the stairs. Robyn ran up the rest of the stairs, grabbed K9 and yanked
him through a doorway, slamming the door shut. Robyn stopped to breathe for
a second. The wooden door splintered and the Rag Men started to close in
again. They enveloped K9, holding his blaster away from them before throwing
the robot dog down the stairs they had just mounted. Robyn shouted to the
metal dog that she would come back for him as soon as she could as she ran
down the corridor.
The reception room was elaborately decorated, and in its prime the room
would have indeed looked grand. Freud noticed though that the walls seemed
to be rotting and decaying, like a corpse, he thought. It was interesting –
the house almost seemed to reflect the expectations one had developed of it.
The Doctor agreed – the house itself was learning to manifest itself in
direct response to the fears and expectations of the people inside. The
Doctor noticed some books on a shelf and skimmed through them very quickly.
There were no signs of anything abnormal in any of them – just diaries and
records. He noticed that the fireplace had hardly any firewood in it, and
realised that the owner must have gone down to the cellar to get some more.
The Doctor felt a sudden wave of panic again as he realised that there was
something going on in the cellar. Freud looked at the Doctor and said that
they couldn’t put off going down to the cellar any longer. Doctor opened the
other door in the reception room and started to climb down the stairs
towards the cellar. Behind them, just as they edged out of view, some sheets
that were covering the furniture started to twitch into life.
Robyn ran as fast as she could along a corridor. That gym membership she’d
been conned into buying had at last proven useful after all. She saw Dr Bell
was standing at the end of the corridor and was about to shout his name when
she noticed that a sheet was wrapped around his neck. He dropped to the
floor as a Rag Man moved from out of the shadows behind him. Robyn felt a
door behind her and quietly backed into the store room it led to. The Rag
Man walked down the corridor slowly, sensing the warmth of human flesh
nearby. It opened the store room and sensed the human inside.
The cellar was dark and dank, and full of junk and boxes. The Doctor saw
that it was only a small room, just big enough for about three people, and
for all the build up, pretty unremarkable. The Doctor was puzzled as to why
the cellar was associated with such tales of terror. Resting on the back
wall, he felt that it was humming. Examining it further, the Doctor realised
the wall was false and could open up. The wall slid away to reveal a large
room behind it. Red walls with gold hexagonal roundels and a gold console in
the middle. There was a TARDIS in the cellar of the Romfield House.
More Rag Men arrived outside the store room Robyn had tried to hide in. The
first Rag Man was flailing about, moving towards where Robyn was hiding.
Suddenly it smashed the cupboard she was hiding behind and tried to grab
her. Robyn grabbed a claw hammer and ripped at the Rag Man, embedding the
hammer into wood, tethering the Rag Man down. As the others closed in she
battered open a window and climbed outside. The madman stared at the window,
unblinking, and ordered his Rag Men to follow her and kill her.
The Doctor stared at the main computer readout and everything now was
fitting into place. This TARDIS had been forced to bond with its
environment. Something called a ‘Talon Virus’ had infected this TARDIS
through its chameleon circuit, permanently grounding it and causing it to
distort the Romfield House into this ‘Witch House’. From what he could tell
this weapon had been deployed against all TARDISes, but because his TARDIS
had a broken chameleon circuit it was ‘immune’ and was now the only working
one in existence. The Doctor looked further and could see that the
telepathic circuits had also been affected – creating the fear and
nightmares in the house and probably driving it’s pilot to the depths of
insanity. The Doctor’s face was suddenly serious – they had to get back to
the asylum. The patient in Renwick Asylum was a Time Lord.
Robyn ran as fast as she could to try and escape the Rag Men that were
following her. She was outside the asylum now, in the grounds where the
TARDIS had landed. She could see the TARDIS just ahead of her and she made
her way towards it. She got to the door and tried to force it open, but it
would not budge. Rag Men surrounded her, and it looked like this time there
was little chance of escape.
Two Rag Men stood at the door to the cellar and closed in on the Doctor and
Freud. Freud asked what on Earth those creatures were. The Doctor replied
that they were projections of the psyche of the patient in the asylum, made
corporeal by the telepathic circuits in the grounded TARDIS. He tried to
pull Freud back into the TARDIS, but Freud had been grabbed by one of the
Rag Men and was being strangled. The Doctor managed to reach the console in
the TARDIS, but soon he too was being attacked by a Rag Man. The Doctor
pulled at the telepathic circuits in the TARDIS as his neck was slowly being
constricted. He managed to get a good finger hold on the circuit controls
and tore the telepathic circuits from the TARDIS console, causing the Rag
Men to fall to the floor.
Robyn tore at the sheets as they consumed her, but suddenly they dropped
limp and became lifeless again. She let out a sigh of relief as she realised
that the Doctor must have found out what has animating them and stopped it.
From inside the asylum she could hear the madman screaming in agony.
The Doctor and Freud had made their way back towards Renwick Asylum. Robyn
was pleased to see the Doctor, and was glad that this whole experience was
over. It had certainly been a baptism of fire, and she could see how
dangerous travelling with the Doctor could be. The Doctor and Robyn made
their way into the asylum to see that the insane Time Lord had collapsed to
the floor, dead. The Doctor realised that tearing out the telepathic
circuits must have triggered a huge mental strain in him. He explained to
Robyn that his people could renew their bodies when they were mortally
wounded, but even regeneration couldn’t repair massive mental damage. Freud
looked at the Doctor and placed a hand on his shoulder, reassuring the Time
Lord that he had not had a choice. The Doctor said that he had removed the
time-space element from that TARDIS – the Witch House was just another old
house again, though local legends would probably never accept that – they
never do. The Doctor covered the body of the Time Lord with a sheet. Robyn
heard the story about the Talon virus that damaged the TARDIS in the cellar
of the Romfield House and asked the Doctor who was attacking the Time Lords,
but the Doctor was as much in the dark as she was…
One year later...
The Doctor was munching on his jelly baby waiting for Sigmund Freud to ask
his question – the one he’d waited almost a year to ask. The Doctor wondered
whether Freud wanted to know how he travelled in space in a wooden police
box, or what the Rag Men represented, but he was surprised when the actual
question came. ‘Who are the Target Group?’ Freud asked. The Doctor sat bolt
upright, a look of confusion on his face. Freud handed the Doctor some
sheets of paper. The Doctor looked through them – they were all hand written
accounts of the Doctor’s travels in the late 19th and early 20th Century,
and they seemed to talk about him as being a ‘time alien’ from another
world. The pages were from the ‘Target Group’ and requested their agents to
collect samples from the Doctor should he ever show up near to them, so they
could be added to the ‘Book of Descendants.’ The Doctor rubbed his scalp
where Dr Bell had removed a piece of his hair. ‘It would seem, Doctor,’
Sigmund Freud noted, ‘that your travels through time are being followed very
closely indeed.’
©
Copyright Malcolm Orr & Doctor Who Online, 2008. |
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Page Last Updated: |
13/12/2008 |
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