Doctor Who_ Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman [22]
‘Bees?’ said the Doctor. ‘In December?’
Woodworth smiled mysteriously. ‘Look around you.’
The Doctor glanced around — and saw a trickle of buzzing insects, racing through the rain. ‘There’s a small hive in the far room,’ said the ghosthunter.
‘Remarkable,’ said the Doctor.
‘Do you fancy helping me set up the tent fly?’
Why not?’ The Doctor followed the wall until he found a charred gap, the remains of a doorway. ‘You can tell me more about your ghost,’ he said.
She unzipped the heavy bag of equipment. ‘Remind me to buy you a drink later.’
Joel sat on his bed, leafing through his ‘zine collection. The little photocopied newsletters lived in a couple of big cardboard boxes, neatly organized into folders by year and topic. Well, they were neatly organized up until about the beginning of 1983, when Isaac had given Joel the job of archiving them.
He rummaged through the last year’s worth. There were UFO bulletins, Professor X fanzines, some New Age and witchcraft ‘zines, and — ah! That was the issue of Who’s Who and What’s That? he was after.
He turned the pages. There. A blurry, but recognizable photo of the TARDIS.
Or possibly of a police box. The trick of reading ‘zines was working out which bits were made up, which bits were distorted versions of real events, and which were the real thing.
Joel peered into the box of ‘zines. There were a lot of questions the Doctor could answer.
Someone knocked on the open door. The Doctor’s companion Chris was there. ‘Hi,’ said Joel.
The man beamed at him. ‘Hi,’ he said. He wandered into the room, taking up rather a lot of the available space.
‘Can I do something for you?’ said Joel, putting down the fanzine.
‘I just noticed your models,’ said Chris. In fact, he’d had to duck under a Millennium Falcon to get into the room. Now his face was level with a Y-Wing. ‘I used to build model Spaceships when I was a kid.’
Joel blushed a little. ‘Yeah, well, you can’t get those kits any more where I’m from.’ He pulled out a cigarette and his lighter.
‘They’re neat.’ Chris looked around the room. It always looked like a complete mess, though everything was where it was supposed to be, including the piles on the floor. Joel wished he could convince the Admiral of that. There were shelves crammed with books, and the desk was hidden under the Commodore 64 and a bunch of stuff.
Joel pushed the window open an inch and blew out a stream of bluish smoke. ‘What’s it like, being a companion?’
Chris had his nose up to a noticeboard with a big green map pinned to it. He laughed. ‘I never really thought about it before.’ The map had a series of concentric circles drawn on it, with the middle labelled GROUND ZERO. ‘Good fun,’ he said, after some thought. Little Caldwell had a pin stuck in it, inside the ONE MILE radius. ‘Most of the time.’
Go on, thought Joel, tell him.
Chris said, ‘What’s it like working for Admiral Summerfield?’
Joel shrugged. ‘Good fun,’ he said, grinning. ‘It’s a great way to meet people, so long as you don’t mind how many eyes they’ve got.’
‘Hey, what’s this?’ asked Chris.
Joel craned his neck around. Chris was pointing at a small cane hoop, strung with a web of fishing line, with three feathers hanging off the bottom. It was nailed to the wall over Joel’s bed. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That’s a dreamcatcher. I get nightmares sometimes.’
‘Me too,’ said Chris.
‘About Daleks, right?’
‘No,’ said Chris, ‘Not real-world stuff, just weird things.
There was one, once, with me and Roz trapped inside this giant hourglass. The sand poured down all over us, burying us together. What do you figure it means?’
‘I think it means you watched the wrong Batman cliffhanger as a kid,’ grinned Joel. ‘I wasn’t allowed to watch Professor X for years because of the nightmares. Missed lots of classic episodes. Still, I’m getting a chance to see them now.’ Oops. No, it didn’t mean anything to future boy.
Chris sat on the end of the bed and picked up the fanzine. ‘Hey, that’s the TARDIS,’ he said.
‘Yeah.’
‘Wow.’ Chris was scanning the ‘zine. ‘You guys really have been studying the