The Oncoming Storm ²

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"What's it telling you?" Emma asks.

"It's telling me that you haven't been exposed to any life-threatening transmundane emanations. So, where's the ghost?" I ask.

"Show me the ghost. It's ghost time" the Doctor says.

*Time skip*

The Doctor leads the way with a three-pronged candelabra.

"I will not have this stolen out from under me, do you understand," Palmer says.

"Er, no, not really, sorry," the Doctor says.

"I will not have my work stolen, then be fobbed off with a pat on the back and a letter from the Queen. Never again. This is my house, Doctor, and it belongs to me."

"This is actually your house?" I ask.

"It is."

"Sorry. You went to the bank and said, you know that gigantic old haunted house on the moors? The one the dossers are too scared to doss in? The one the birds are too scared to fly over? And then you said, I'd like to buy it, please, with my money" Clara says.

"Yes, I did, actually."

"That's incredibly brave" I say, something creaks "listen, Major, we just need to know what's going on here."

"For the Ministry."

"You know we can't answer that," the Doctor says.

"Very well, follow me."

*Time skip*

The living room is warmly furnished. The Doctor takes photographs of himself, I look at him strangely as I stand next to Clara who sits in a chair across from Emma. Food and drink is stocked on a collapsible table.

"So, what's an empathic psychic?" Clara asks.

"Sometimes I sense feelings, the way a telepath can sense thoughts. Sometimes, though. Not always" Emma says.

"The most compassionate people you'll ever meet, empaths. And the loneliest. I mean, exposing themselves to all those hidden feelings, all that guilt, pain and sorrow and..." I cut the Doctor off.

"Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"Shush."

"Would you care to have a look?" Palmer asks. he has a lot of photographs pinned to a board "Caliburn House is over four hundred years old, but she has been here much longer. The Caliburn Ghast. She's mentioned in local Saxon poetry and parish folk tales. The Wraith of the Lady, the Maiden in the Dark, the Witch of the Well."

"Is she real? As in, actually real?" Clara asks.

"Oh, she's real. In the seventeenth century, a local clergyman saw her. He wrote that her presence was accompanied by a dreadful knocking as if the Devil himself demanded entry. During the war, American airmen stationed here left offerings of tinned Spam. The tins were found in 1965, bricked up in the servants' pantry, along with a number of handwritten notes. Appeals to the Ghast. For the love of God, stop screaming."

"She never changes. The angle's different, the framing, but she's always in exactly the same position. Why is that?"

"We don't know. She's an objective phenomenon, but objective recording equipment can't detect her..."

"Without the presence of a powerful psychic" the Doctor says.

"Absolutely. Very well done" Palmer nods.

"She knows I'm here. I can feel her calling out to me" Emma says.

"What's she saying?" Clara asks.