Not all basements could be a lair of horrible things, Ophelia mused as they kept on trying to find something useful. Back on her other life, you only went to this place if you had high enough clearance or a death wish because, unlike here, those laboratories were anything but safe. This basement was just a little scary for her, almost nothing when her mind realized that due to the walls being made of stone and dirt, no dryads would be able to reach them as easily. Plus her hand was still being held by a certain time lord's in a silent message of protection, so she'd choose sticking by his side anytime. Doing so proved to be a good thing because soon the Doctor found a storeroom filled with boxes.
Ophelia turned on the light to reveal six cardboard containers on top of a table, each filled with a variety of items like a lost and found. Their little group split up to see if anything useful could be found.
"Maybe it belonged to a family that used to live here?" Harry's high pitched voice sounded wrong in such a place.
"Harry, there's six boxes." The Doctor's grave voice pulled her attention from a first edition copy of The Sorcerer's Stone.
"Tenancy agreement." Their new friend found a clue. "Same as ours. Six signatures. Jake Christie, Annie Wren, Jonathan Frost."
"What's the date?" She interrupted him with a question while her time lord friend put down a Polaroid camera.
"Er, 1997." The boy's eyes seemed to be permanently wide open. "Sarah Tiller, Mark Hopethorne, Carl Richards."
"They move in." The Doctor flipped through some instant pictures showing a happy group of college kids, a girl by herself. "Relax, go to their rooms, then panic." A picture of a girl frozen mid scream. "Infestation."
He turned an image of many of those insects to the boy while Ophelia'd been looking over his shoulder. If all six had been in the first couple of pictures then who had taken them? Was it possible that mister creepy landlord had been around for that long? Her internal monologue got cut off as her feet crossed an open archway, eyes beholding a sad sight.
"Doctor." He rushed to her side with Harry.
There were more sets of boxes. She and college kid went to look in one while he looked over another. Harry's eyes widened even more, if such thing was possible, as he picked up a David Bowie single - Heroes by the look of the photo on the sleeve - and his companion found another tenancy agreement.
"1977." The Doctor hastily found another agreement.
"1957. Every twenty years."
A door being opened broke their tense silent, followed by footsteps on a wooden staircase.
"There's something coming." Harry stammered.
"Good."
They put things back to place and walked one more time past the most recent boxes, coming face to face with the Landlord. Down he here he looked even more like a walking corpse, shadows creating deeper holes for his eyes and Ophelia did not like how he stared at her and Harry.
"Christie, Wren, Frost, Tiller, Hopethorne, Richards." The Doctor's voice trembled with barely contained anger.
"Fine young men and women." The old man looked nowhere in particular while remembering those people.
"As were all the others." That smile made her understand why some called him the oncoming storm. "Where are they?"
"In the house." Oh.
"What? Where?" Harry's wide eyes squinted for once. "We haven't seen them."
"He means they're in the house." Her time lord friend turned to look at them. "The wood."
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ADIUTRIX | DOCTOR WHO
Fanfiction"you can always trust the helper." The Doctor expected many things from a twentieth-second century party, not one of them had included a new companion. {I also don't own Doctor Who}
