The Story of Emily Evans

XXXII: Accident Prone And A Talk

Everyone now sat in the living room of the house as the maid stood around the table, pouring tea into some cups which laid upon said table. Charles sat at the table, the master of the house sat in an arm chair, Rose paced around the room, the Doctor leaned against a wall in the corner of the room while I sat at the table reading a book. It was a work in progress of one of Charles book's, he wanted me to read it after he found out that I actually liked to read just about anything...more so if it was one of his books.

Although, this book wasn't in the library, nor the archives of it, that I worked in in the year 2005. Then again...Charles will die soon and some of his writings weren't completed at the time of his death...perhaps this was one of them. Which meant...that I was one of the few who could've possibly read it. The problem I had with it...it was a work in progressed...it wasn't even halfway finished yet. Which explained how he could've fit the unfinished manuscript into one of his inside coat pockets. I seemed to tune out Rose's discussion...more so her just yelling at the house's master as she paced around.

"It's not my fault...!" I heard the house's master tell Rose, in his defense...if he even had one. "It's always had a reputation. Haunted. But I never had much bother until a few months back, and then the stiffs...."

"What you call the zombies...?" I asked him, looking up from the manuscript.

"The dear departed started getting restless." The house's master stated.

"Tommyrot." Charles told him, denying the existence of the zombies back there.

"You witnessed it!" The house's master told Charles, not believing that Charles could've possibly dismissed it. "Can't keep the beggars down, sir. They walk. And it's the queerest thing but they hang onto scraps of who they once were. One old fellow who used to be a sexton almost walked into his own memorial service. Just like the old lady going to your performance, sir."

"Morbid fancy." Charles replied as he stood up, dismissing...everything.

"Oh, Charles, you were there." The Doctor told him.

"I saw nothin but an illusion." Charles responded.

"If you're going to deny it, don't waste my time, just shut up." The Doctor told him. "What about the gas...?"

"That's new, sir. Never seen anything like that." The house's master told the Doctor.

"Means it's getting stronger, the rift's getting wider and something's sneaking through." The Doctor replied, as if it were obvious that that was happening.

"What's the rift?" Rose asked the Doctor.

"A weak point in time and space. A connection between this place and another." The Doctor explained it to Rose. "That's the cause of ghost stories, most of the time."

"Only most of the time...?" I asked him. "What about the other half...?"

"Hallucinations and cheap tricks." The Doctor told me. "And people only speculating at what they saw, which could be something as simple as an alien."

"Of course...." I stated as I went back to the manuscript I had been reading. "Because aliens are such simple creatures to understand."

A door slamming shut behind me seemed to startle me as I let the paper of the manuscript run past my finger. "Ouch...." I stated before I dropped the manuscript as I lifted up my finger, blood beaded up on the surface.

"Are you alright...?" The Doctor was immediately by my side.

"Y-yeah...." I told him, as I showed him. At least the cut wasn't on my hand that had the burn, it was at the top of my pointer finger on the other hand. "It's just a paper cut."