Donna gave a cry and jumped, when, in a flash of lightning, she saw a pale face hovering mere inches in front of her nose. She sighed with relief when she heard the familiar noise of the sonic screwdriver, and it's tiny blue light showed that it was only the Doctor standing there. In the crashing of the storm, which was becoming more ferocious, she didn't hear him come up to her.

“Sorry about that.” The Doctor apologized.

Donna punched him in the arm.

“Wot'cha do that for?” He asked in a hurt voice.

“What'dya think?” Donna huffed at him. “That's for scaring me half to death, which, after everything that's happened today, is really saying something”

“Personally speaking, Donna,” The Doctor spoke laconically, rubbing his arm, “I think the ghosts should be more scared of you, than you of them.”

“Oi!” She said, readying her fist for another punch. Then she smiled. “Too bad we can't just shout them away. Don't suppose it would make them seem so scary, though, if we could.”

“Or be as much fun.” The Doctor agreed. “Let me see if I can get at least some of the lights working again.” So saying, he slipped on his eyeglasses, and ran the sonic over a nearby lamp's cord, trailing the cord to where it was plugged into to an outlet in the wall.

The wild storm sent the curtains in the broken window flying inwards into the room. Heavy rain was tipping down outside. Blown into the library by the high winds, it now began soaking the large oriental carpet underneath the window, and drove occasional icy droplets into the centre of the room. Some of the rain spritzed Donna's arms and the back of her neck. It made her feel chilly, all of the sudden. She rubbed her arms and instinctively turned towards the broken window. Only to see the gauzy curtains suddenly begin to take shape.

“Doctor....” She said tentatively, staring as the curtains slowly began to mesh into a human-like form.

“In a minute, Donna. I think I've got this.” The Doctor murmured, hunched over the wall outlet with his sonic, intent on the task at hand.

“I'm guessing that's not exactly Casper the Friendly Ghost.” Donna said to herself, as the curtains suddenly had a head, arms and glowing red eyes.

The lightning was coming with more frequency now. With a ripping sound, the pair of curtains detached themselves from the curtain rod. In the white-hot glare of a stroke of lightning, Donna caught a better glimpse of the thing. The arms waved in the air like Medusa's hair of snakes, as the thing slowly approached her. The lamp came on. In its light, Donna gasped as she saw the curtain creature also had a mouth full of sharp teeth. It bore a grin, but it wasn't a smiley face.

“DOCTOR!” Donna shouted at the top of her lungs.

“What is it, what's wrong?” The Doctor said, looking up with alarm. Since they became best mates, Donna didn't bellow at him so much anymore, unless there there was a genuine reason for her to.

“Look--oh. It's gone.” Donna said, confused. In the very few seconds she'd turned away to warn the Doctor, then look back at the window again, the curtains had returned to normal. Merely lifeless fabric, rustling in the wind, hanging down from the curtain rod as they had done all day.

“What was it? What did you see? Because whatever it was, Donna, I promise I'll believe you.” The Doctor asked, looking into her eyes, his voice soft, filled with concern for her.

“This would sound daft to anyone but you, I suppose,” She told him, giving a shudder of fear, “but those curtains by the window came alive, Doctor. Head, arms, big nasty teeth. I swear to God.”

“It's OK Donna, it can't hurt you.” The Doctor sighed sadly, gave her a quick hug of reassurance. He really needed to learn to keep a closer eye on his companions in situations like this. He pulled away, rubbing his chin and looking grim. “No, I think it's just our friend playing mind games again. Psychic warfare. Planting images in your head that seem so real, they can drive some people to their deaths.”

Abruptly, the Doctor slapped his forehead. Donna raised an eyebrow.

“One of these days you're going to hurt yourself doing that.” She said.

“Oooh, I'm so thick! It's like I'm turning into a Tory!” He shouted at himself. “Why didn't I think of this before?”

“Think of what?” Donna asked him, having no idea what the Doctor was on about this time. Nothing unusual there, she thought.

“Donna,” The Doctor said, almost hesitantly, his eyes searching her own, “I need you to trust me, absolutely.”

“What are you going to do?” Donna asked, meeting his eyes with a searching gaze of her own. She supposed his statement meant that the Doctor would ask her to do something which would either violate her personal space, or, was hideously dangerous. Knowing the Doctor, she thought, probably both.

“I'm going to block your mind from receiving the core sentient alpha-wave pattern Legion is using to attack you. That's why I haven't been seeing the same things as you. I managed to block it out. But,” He apologized, “In order for me to do this, I'll need to get inside your head for a few seconds.”

“The effects won't be permanent, will they? I mean, you will remember to un-block my head when this is all over. Yeah, Doctor?” She asked nervously. “And, you'e not like, going to poke around in there, digging up some embarrassing moment in my past for a laugh, are you? Cos' I would so have to kill you if you did that.”

The corners of the Doctor's eyes crinkled in in amusement, when Donna said that. He flashed her a fond smile and shook his head.

“I won't go anywhere you don't want me to go, Donna.” He reassured her. “And, it'll only be for a few seconds.. Just imagine your memories as a bank vault, and slam and lock the door on anything you don't want me to see. Oh, and yes, I will remember to un-do what I've done. Venusian Boy Scouts honour.” The Doctor held up his thumb and two fingers, and put his other hand over his hearts in the VBS pledge. “I'm an honourary lifetime member, you know. Got all the badges and everything. Don't like to go to their jamborees, though. It's co-ed with the Venusian Girl Scouts. That lot give the term 'dirty weekend' a whole new meaning, let me tell you!”

“Getting off-topic is a real problem for you, isn't it?” Donna said archly, shaking her head.

“Trust me, Donna.” He said more seriously, “this will keep you safe.”

“Well, duh!” Donna retorted, but with a smile. “You dumbo! Do you think I'd be here, if I didn't trust you? So, let's get this over with, before I change my mind and trade you in for my mate Veena.”

The Doctor returned her smile, with gratitude. One thing he'd always have with Donna was honesty. Instructing her to close her eyes, he lightly placed the tips of his fingers on her temples. As gently as possible, he merged with her mind and traced a path to the synapses which controlled that part of her brain which was most vulnerable to psychic attack.

As the Doctor went inside her mind, there came the picture of a younger Donna and a blond haired bloke in a football jersey, huddled in the back of a Ford Escort. Suddenly, he got a vision of a big metal door slamming in his face and a lock slamming home. 'Whoops. Sorry, wrong door.' He thought nervously, never comfortable about invading people's most intimate thoughts. Finding the area of her brain he needed to access, the Doctor put a mental block on it. Then he accidentally read a subconscious thought flitting through her mind, which he took exception to.

“What! Donna, I do not fart when I get nervous!” He blurted out indignantly.

Pulling his fingers away before she could yell at him for reading her private thoughts, the Doctor stepped back a pace and looked at Donna, whose eyes were still closed. For the briefest of moments, there was just a trace of deep sadness in his expression. Then, he turned his back to her.

“You can open your eyes now, Donna. That should take care of the things that aren't there.” He told her, reaching into his coat pocket, “Now we can concentrate on the things that are.”

Once again the Doctor pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket. Checking the settings, he aimed his sonic towards the windows. The instrument gave off a low warbling noise. Peering at the readings, the Doctor gave a silent nod in agreement.

“You picked an odd time to check on the weather.” Donna quipped. “It's positively tipping it down out there, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“Is it?” The Doctor asked, seemingly surprised.

Donna wasn't sure if he was being serious or was taking the mickey, so she let it slide. She looked on as he waved the sonic around like a magician's wand. It gave out a series of regular short bleeps whenever he pointed it at the fireplace. Or, to be more precise, a portrait hanging over the fireplace.

It was another portrait of the Napoleonic-era officer, whose painting hung in the entry hall outside the library door. Only in this portrait, he was roughly twenty years older and considerably heavier. In this painting he was dressed in early Victorian period fox hunter's togs. This picture depicted him standing in a pasture beside a saddled chestnut hunter, which was being held by a groom. A black and white spaniel lay sprawled at the ex-officer's feet. The man's dark features seemed cold and haughty to Donna. For someone who appeared as if he'd never had to do anything more stressful than hang about looking posh and giving orders to lackeys, the man looked to her as if he'd been a right old misery guts.

Noticing the Doctor's interest, Donna told him what she knew about the man in the painting.

“Violentia told me that this painting and the one's out in the hall were about the only things that were saved when the old priory burnt down in the eighteen-fifties.” She said. “The man who bought the property, bought the paintings from the estate. His only heir was some distant cousin, who apparently didn't want the paintings.” She told him.

“I can see why. He does look rather grim, doesn't he?” The Doctor nodded, putting on his glasses and leaning in to gaze at the painting.

“Yeah.” Donna agreed. “You'd think with all he had, he'd at least manage a smile. But I suppose some people are never happy, no matter what their circumstances.”

“Why make the effort to be happy or content, when it's so much simpler to be mean and miserable?” The Doctor said a trifle sarcastically, standing on his tip-toes, looking hard at the artist's signature painted in the right hand bottom corner.

“According to local lore,” Donna explained, turning to gaze out at the still-raging storm. She vaguely heard the Doctor making some odd noises behind her, but reckoned he was just doing some alien thing.

“Seems that bloke in the painting found out his wife was flirting with a young, handsome tenant farmer. Old misery guts in the picture there killed his wife and children in a fit of jealous rage, then set fire to the place, before taking his own life. No ever tried to prove it, apparently that sort of thing wasn't supposed to be talked about in that day and age. At least, that's what I was told by Violentia this morning. God,” Donna sighed. “That seems like ages ago, now.”

Something caught the corner of Donna's eye. She looked in the direction of the sofa, where the Doctor had left his little box with the paranormal device. Its big red light was flashing.

“Doctor, the warning light is going off again. Is it supposed to do tha--?” She started to say, but as she turned, the sight that greeted her was like nothing she'd ever seen before.

The fox hunting gentleman was no longer in the painting. He was there, life sized, standing in front of the fireplace with both hands around the Doctor's neck, strangling him!