SCARIEST PLACE ON EARTH
Chapter Four The Master stiffened when he noticed a beam of light was coming from a doorway off to his right. He stepped back towards the locked front door and grinned when he saw the Doctor and Rose enter the room. He made sure his hood was pulled up over his blonde hair and stood still while the Doctor shined his flashlight at the staircase. "Shall we go up then?" the Doctor said, looking back at Rose. "Nah, Jack and Donna went up, we should go down," Rose said. "Well, where did Martha go then?" the Doctor said. "I don't know, I'm just thinking that since Jack and Donna went upstairs, they have it covered and we should go downstairs." "How about we go up and up and up until we reach the tippy top?" the Doctor said. "Why?" Rose said, frowning. "Because I want to see if any ghosts committed suicide," the Doctor said. "You know…lovers who couldn't be together who flung themselves off the ramparts onto the rocks below. That whole sort of I can't live without you thing. I figure it might be interesting to see some suicidal ghosts, eh?" "Doctor, it's cold up there." "It's cold in here or haven't you noticed," the Doctor said. "What's the difference? Unless you wanna dare start a fire in one of the fireplaces? Perhaps the ghosts will be a lot less hostile if they're warm." Rose was about to answer when suddenly they heard a scream coming from below them. "Bloody hell!" they heard Martha yell. "On the other hand, downstairs is good. Come on, Rose!" the Doctor said to her. The Master kept to the shadows and followed them while the Doctor and Rose ran to the stairs and went down. "Christ, get out of here!" Martha was yelling as the Doctor and Rose went downstairs. "Martha, we're coming!" the Doctor yelled while they headed downstairs. The Master gasped when his foot hit a step in the dark and he nearly tripped. He stopped, his arms splayed out against the stone wall while he watched the Doctor and Rose head on down the steps. The light went with them and the Master cursed softly when he was once again plunged into total darkness. "Martha! Where are you?" the Doctor said when he and Rose reached the basement. "In here, with the ruddy bats!" Martha yelled. They followed her voice and turned to the right. They walked into a little room and ducked when squeaking bats threatened to smack into them. Martha was crouched on the stone floor, pointing her torch up at them while the bats flapped overhead. "I came in here to check out the room," Martha said to the Doctor. "And the moment I do, these bats woke up and started flying around my head." "No worries, I'll handle this," the Doctor said, whipping out his sonic screwdriver. He was about to use it when Rose tapped him on the shoulder. He looked over his shoulder at her and she pointed at the camera aimed at his face. The Doctor gave her a confused look, looked at his camera and then looked back at her with a questioning look. Rose gave him a withering look. "Alien tech," she mouthed to him. "You have a camera on ya." The Doctor looked at his camera and held up the sonic screwdriver. "I happen to know a friend who is an amateur ghost…finder…person and this is a tool he uses to search for ghosts," he said to the camera. "It's nothing more than that so don't infer anything else from my use of it." He looked at Rose. "Feel better now?" he said to her. "It's your screwdriver," Rose said with a shrug. "You wanna show it to the people watching the telly, go right ahead." "Thank you and now, my dear Martha; I will rid us of these pesky bats once and for all!" He turned on the screwdriver and Rose gasped when the bats zeroed in on the sonic noise and began to swarm them. Martha gave the Doctor several sarcastic claps when the Doctor waved his arms around, trying to beat off the bats that were now swarming around him and the screwdriver. "Get off me, you winged menaces!" the Doctor said. "BOOOOWAHWAHWAHWAHWAH!" he screamed as he batted at the bats. Rose crawled away when the bats began to fly away from him and head out the doorway. Finally, after a few minutes, the Doctor finally managed to get the bats to leave and he breathed a sigh of relief as he sat down on the floor. "Well, that was a hell of a lot more interesting than finding ghosts," he said to Rose and Martha. "Are you okay?" Martha said, walking over to him and shining his flashlight on him. "Oh yeah, nothing a rabies shot won't cure. I'm joking, I'm joking!" he added quickly when he saw the horrified look on Martha's face. "They didn't bite me, just swarmed around my face. Anyway…" he said, getting to his feet. "What's in here besides pesky flying rats?" "Nothing," Martha said with a shrug. "Oh come now, gotta be something in here. After all, the purpose of this little adventure is to scare us out of our little cotton socks, right?" the Doctor said. "Well, I tried my Geiger counter thing in here and wait…" Martha said when she held it up and it started making a staticky sound. "Odd, that didn't happen before." "It's because this ghost is following the Doctor," Rose said, pointing to her thermal imager. "It's hanging on to him, see?" "It is? I wondered what I still felt warm and comfy," the Doctor said when Martha came over to look at the imager. "Perhaps the boy was responsible for fending off the bats and preventing them from biting me. If so, mucho thanks, little boy and…" "AAARGH!" The three of them froze when they heard a man yelling outside the room. The Master clamped his hand over his mouth. He had just succeeded in navigating his way down the steps in the dark but the moment he hit bottom, he ran into some bats and let out a surprised yell. He stumbled back up the steps the moment the Doctor, Rose and Martha stepped out and shined their torches around. "I heard a man yell, didn't you?" Rose said to Martha while they shined their torch lights around. "Yup, clear as a bell. But I don't see anything," Martha said. "And what does the skeptic think?" Rose said to the Doctor. "I think the bats did it," the Doctor said. "I think one flew into another one in the dark and scared the poor blighter, I'm sure the rodents have a surprised yell in their repertoire." "So you accept that a boy ghost is keeping you warm but you can't accept that something just yelled out here," Rose said. "I'm not accepting anything," the Doctor said. "I'm just playing along for shits and giggles. You ever stop to think that perhaps it's one of Robson's cronies that has been paid to scream through a hidden microphone? Ever think of that, huh, huh?" he said, poking Rose in the arm. "Well, why don't you scan for the hidden microphones with your…ghost finder thing?" Rose said. "Because I don't want to spoil the techies' fun. I'm sure they're bored watching us and probably need to scare us on occasion to stay awake. Anyway, mustn't disappoint them so let's move on to another room so they can fake haunt us there. Come along, I think there's another room across the way. Onward, companions." "Yeah, yeah, yeah," Rose muttered as she and Martha followed him past the staircase and into another room.
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