As the shadow inevitably drew closer to her, Donna was quite prepared to give whomever, or whatever it was, a serious headache. It had reached the other side of the support beam. She stood poised between it and the wine rack, trying her best to control her quaking knees.

Donna frowned. Why did she suddenly feel like a school girl who'd been dared into going inside a haunted house? That thought was interrupted when she clearly heard a single, cautious step. One more, and whoever belonged to that shadow would be right in front of her. Then it came, another step. Involuntarily closing her eyes, Donna swung the bat with all of her might.

“Whoa!” Came a startled cry.

With amazingly quick reflexes, the Doctor somehow managed to duck under Donna's swing, albeit just barely. The cricket bat whiffed past his hair by mere centimeters. Donna stood for a moment, open-mouthed, staring at the Doctor in disbelief. She barely noticed when he reached over and gently prised the cricket bat out of her hand.

“I used to have one just like this.” The Doctor said, looking at the bat,. “I wonder where it got to?”

“Doctor!” Donna shouted gladly, launching herself into his arms. “Oh, am I glad to see you!”

“Hullo, Donna!” He grinned, returning the hug. Backing away, he looked at her, “Although,” the Doctor said, letting her go and hefting the wooden bat with a cheeky glint in his eyes, “if this is your way of showing how glad you are to see me, I'd hate to see what you'd do when you aren't!.”

“Sorry,” Donna said contritely, “I thought you were a giant wasp or something.”

“What giant wasp?” The Doctor asked.

A few minutes later they were back upstairs, standing in the room where Donna had heard the wasp crash through the window. It apparently was a combination office and library. Only now, all the windows were intact, and there was no sign that the creature had ever been there.

“I swear, Doctor, it was there, just like the one with Agatha Christie back in the nineteen-twenties.” Donna told him anxiously. “I wasn't imagining it.”

“I'm sorry, Donna, it's not your fault,” the Doctor said apologetically, placing a kindly hand on her shoulder, “but I'm afraid that's exactly what you were doing.”

“You'd better not be suggesting that I'm going 'round the bend!” Donna said, stepping back and giving him an indignant glare, “Cos' I'm telling you, Doctor, it was real, it was there!”

“No, Donna,” The Doctor said reassuringly, “I don't think you're mad. I think your lift indeed does indeed go all the way to the top and that you've a full load of bricks, and any other tired old cliché about that sort of thing, of which there's probably hundreds, but which I don't have time to go into right now. Thing is though,” The Doctor continued, plunking himself down in an overstuffed armchair near the library fireplace, “some force we cannot see is tinkering with our minds, trying to instill fear and terror. And, apparently it's not confining itself to the mind anymore. I saw what it did to your friend's husband, and I know I didn't imagine that.”

“That was horrible.” Donna agreed sadly. “But why did it start in on me? I only just got here yesterday.”

“I don't know why, Donna. Because you were there?” The Doctor sighed. “With this thing, anything could be possible. Which makes all this very interesting, but bit of a challenge, as well. When you were on the phone with me, you mentioned the wasp. It's possible that whatever is here, somehow picked up that image from your mind, and made you believe it was real.”

“Hang on, a minute ago you said, 'our' minds, Doctor.” Donna pondered, sitting in a matching chair on the other side of the fireplace.”Do you mean that it's been playing these games with you as well?”

“It's been trying to,” the Doctor answered with a nod of his head, “but I've been ignoring it.. My mind is my own, and I'd like to keep it that way, ta. But, whatever it is Donna, for it to get inside my head at all, it's got one heck of a powerful mojo.”

“But,” she asked, “if this is some kind of invisible force, how can you fight something you can't see?”

“The sun with his great eye, sees not so much as I.” The Doctor said cryptically, leaning towards her.

“We're facing some unseen evil, bent on killing us, and you're sitting there acting all smug, quoting Keats at me?” Donna raised a questioning eyebrow at him.

“Yes, yes I am.” The Doctor smiled. Then paused, and said, “I didn't know you liked poetry, Donna. “Daisy's Song”, nice little poem, thankfully written before the invention of the spy cam. Though I did try to warn him to take that bit about being with the sheep out.”

“I always thought that poem was a bit pervy.” Donna shrugged. “Guy I dated once, thought the quickest way to get a leg over was to spout love poems at me half the night. Well, that and getting me blootered on champagne.”

Without warning, the fireplace—which had no logs in it, suddenly burst into great gouts of flame. Before she could react, the chair on which Donna was sitting suddenly gave a great lurch, tipping her towards the roaring fire.