The four were back in the Tardis and Astro was analysing the ball, when he got what he needed he sent the data he gathered onto the monitor on the console. "Here we go, thank you Astro. Let's have a look. Get out of here." The Doctor said as they looked at the screen. "What's it say?" Rose asked as Galaxy pulled out one of her erasers and rubbed it on the ball.
"It's graphite. The same material used for HB pencils, thought I recognised the smell from somewhere." Galaxy explained, she didn't think nothing of it really since she herself usually had the smell of pencil on her from all her time spent sketching. "I was attacked by a pencil scribble?" Rose asked. "Scribble creature, brought into being with ionic energy. Whatever we're dealing with, it can create things as well as take them. But why make a scribble creature?" The Doctor asked.
"Maybe it was a mistake I mean, you scribble over something when you want to get rid of it, like a, like a drawing. Like a, a children's drawing. You two said it was in the street." Rose said. "Probably is." Astro said. "The girl." Rose said. "Of course! What girl?" The Doctor asked and Galaxy shook her head. "Something about her gave me the creeps. Even her own mum looked scared of her." Rose told them. "Are you deducting?" Galaxy asked her smiling. "I think I am." "Copper's hunch?" "Permission to follow it up, Sarge?"
-9-
The four stood in front of a door and the Doctor rang the doorbell before rattling the letter box and eventually a woman that Rose found out was called Trish answered the door. "Hello. I'm the Doctor, this is Galaxy and Rose. Can we see your daughter?" The Doctor asked her. "No, you can't." "Okay. Bye." The Doctor said and they turned to walk away. "Why? Why do you want to see Chloe?" Trish asked them making them stop. "Well, there's some interesting stuff going on in this town, and I just though. Well, we thought, that she might like to give us a hand." The Doctor answered.
"Sorry to bother you." Rose said. "Yes, sorry. We'll let you get on with your day. Bye again." Galaxy added. "Wait! Can you help her?" Trish asked them. "Yes, we can." The Doctor said smiling and she let them inside her house.
"She stays in her room most of the time. I try talking to her but it's like trying to speak to a brick wall. She gives me nothing, just asks to be left alone." Trish told them as they talked in the living room. "What about Chloe's dad?" Rose asked her. "Chloe's dad died a year ago." Trish answered. "I'm sorry." "You wouldn't be if you'd known him." "Well, let's go and say hi." The Doctor said. "I should check on her first. She might be asleep." Trish said. "Why are you afraid of her?" Galaxy asked her, she could see it on her face that she was.
"I want you to know before you see her that she's really a great kid." Trish told them. "I'm sure she is." The Doctor said. "She's never been in trouble at school, you should see her report from last year. A's and B's." "Can I use your loo?" Rose asked her and she nodded her head. "She's in the choir. She's singing in an old folks home. Any mum would be proud. You know I want you to know these things before you see her, because right now, she's not herself."
The three and Astro go the kitchen while Rose was still upstairs and they saw Chloe getting a drink of milk from the fridge. "All right, there? I'm the Doctor, this is Galaxy and Astro." The Doctor said when he saw her. "I'm Chloe Webber." "How are you doing, Chloe?" Galaxy asked her. "I'm busy. I'm making something, aren't I, mum?" Chloe said as she looked at Trish. "And like I said, she's not been sleeping." Trish said.
"But you've been drawing, though. I'm rubbish. Stick men are about my limit unlike Galaxy here, she can make anything that looks like it could pop out of from the page." The Doctor said and Galaxy felt herself blush at the praise, she was used to him praising her from the times he would do so when they spent hours in her arts room but she wasn't used to him praising her to others. "Can do this, though." The Doctor carried on and gave Chloe the Vulcan salute. "Can you do that?"
"They don't stop moaning." Chloe said. "Chloe." Trish said. "I try to help them, but they don't stop moaning." "Who don't stop?" Galaxy asked her frowning a bit. "We can be together." "Sweetheart." Trish said and went to her daughter. "Don't touch me mum." Chloe said and Trish hesitated from placing her hands on her daughter's face which had Galaxy frown more, she didn't like that Trish was afraid of Chloe.
"I'm busy, Doctor." Chloe said. "Come on, Chloe. Don't be a spoil sport. What's the big project? I'm dying to know. What're you making up there?" The Doctor asked her and Galaxy was reminded of when he used to bug her with telling him about the galaxy she was painted on her wall. "Doctor! Galaxy!" They heard Rose scream from upstairs and they quickly went upstairs and right into Chloe's bedroom.
I'm coming to hurt you. Galaxy was the first one into the bedroom and she pushed Rose out the way and closed the doors to the closet. "Look at it." Rose said. "No, ta." The Doctor said as he and Galaxy turned to the drawings on the walls, Galaxy always spoke about how she would draw things based on how she was feeling if she never wanted to talk about them so the two took that into consideration and Galaxy could see that Chloe had a talent.
"What the hell was that?" Trish asked. "A drawing. The face of a man." "What face?" "Best not." Rose told her. "What've you been drawing?" Trish turned to Chloe. "I drew him yesterday." Chloe answered. "Who?" "Dad." "Your dad? But he's long gone. Chloe, with all the lovely things in the world, why him?" Trish asked her. "I dream about him, staring at me." Chloe said and that reminded Galaxy of her talking about drawing things based on how one is feeling. "I thought we were putting him behind us. What's the matter with you?"
"We need to stay together." Chloe said. "Yes, we do." "No. Not you, us. We need to stay together, and then it'll be all right." "Trish, the drawings. Have you seen what Chloe's drawings can do?" Rose asked her. "Who gave you permission to come into her room? Get out of my house." "Chloe, tell us about the drawings." Galaxy said as she turned to the girl. "I don't want to hear any more of this."
"But that drawing of her dad. I heard a voice. He spoke." Rose said. "He's dead. And these, they're kids pictures. Now get out!" "Chloe has a power. And I don't know how, but she used it to take Danny Edwards, Dale Hicks. She's using it to snatch the kids." Rose told her. "Get out." Trish said. "Have you seen those drawings move?" "I haven't seen anything." Trish scoffed. "Yes, you have, out of the corner of your eye." The Doctor spoke up. "No."
"And you dismissed it, because what choice do you have when you see something you can't possibly explain? You dismiss it, right? And if anyone mentions it, you get angry, so it's never spoken of, ever again." "She's a child." Trish said. "And you're terrified of her. And there's nowhere for you to turn to because no one would believe what you see out of the corner of your eye. Well, expect for us." Galaxy said to her, from looking at the pictures she felt a loneliness with them, and in her opinion that could point to many things.
"Who are you?" Trish asked them. "We're help."
-9-
The group were back in the kitchen and the Doctor was absently picks up a jar of marmalade and started eating it with his fingers and Galaxy and Rose stare at him as he does so. "Ahem." He looked at them and realised what he was doing and put the jar back on the counter. "Those pictures, they're alive. She's drawing people and they end up in her pictures." Rose told them. "It's the ionic energy. Chloe's harnessing it to steal the kids and then place them in a sort of prison that's made up of ionic power." Galaxy said.
"And what about the dad from hell in her wardrobe?" Rose asked. "How many times do I have to tell you he's dead." Trish said sighing. "Well, he's got a very loud voice for a dead bloke." "If living things can become drawings, then maybe drawings can become living things. Chloe's real dad is dead, but not the one who visits her in her nightmares. That dad seems very real. That's the dad she's drawn and he's a heartbeat away from crashing into this world."
"She always got the worst of it when he was alive." Trish told them. "How can a twelve year old girl be doing any of this?" Rose asked the Time Lords. "Let's find out." The Doctor said and they all went upstairs to Chloe's room, who did the Vulcan salute to the Doctor when he entered first. "Nice one." He told her before he placed his fingers on her temple and her eyes rolled up.
"There we go." The Doctor said once he had her lay on the bed she was on. "I can't let him do this." Trish said and she started to walk toward the bed but Galaxy and Rose gently stopped her. "It's okay, Trish. Trust him." Galaxy told her. "Now we can talk." The Doctor said. "I want Chloe. Wake her up. I want Chloe." Chloe said or what was in her and her voice had a whisper to it, almost like it was echoing. "Who are you?" "I want Chloe Webber."
"What've you done to my little girl?" Trish questioned. "Doctor, what is it?" Rose asked him. "I'm speaking to you, the entity that is using this human child. I request parley in compliance with the Shadow Proclamation." "I don't care about shadows or parleys?" "So what do you care about?" "I want my friends." "You're lonely, I know. Identify yourself." The Doctor said as he crouched next to Chloe. "I am one of many. I travel with my brothers and sisters. We take an endless journey. A thousand of your lifetimes. But now I am alone. I hate it. It's not fair, and I hate it."
"It's Isolus." Galaxy said once she understood what the voice said and she suddenly understood why she got a lonely feeling to the pictures in Chloe's room, because the Isolus was alone. "Our journey began in the Deep Realms when we were a family." The Isolus said as he drew on a nearby piece of paper. "What's that?" Trish asked as they saw the drawing unfold.
"The Isolus Mother, drifting in deep space. See, she jettisons millions of fledgling spores. Her children. The Isolus are empathic beings f intense emotions, but when they're cast off from their mother, their empathic link, their need for each other, is what sustains them. They need to be together. They cannot be alone." The Doctor explained. "Our journey is long." "The Isolus children travel inside a pod and they ride on the heat and energy of solar tides. It takes them thousands and thousands of years to grow up." Galaxy added to the explanation.
"Thousands of years just floating through space. Poor things. Don't they go mad with boredom?" Rose asked them. "We play." "You play?" "They play games as they travel, use the ionic power of theirs to create imaginary worlds to play in." "In flight entertainment." Rose said. "Help keeps them happy. While they're happy, they can feed off each others love. Without it, they're lost. Why did you come to Earth?" The Doctor asked the Isolus. "We were too close."
"That's a solar flare from your sun. Would have made a tidal wave of solar energy that scattered the Isolus pods." The Doctor said seeing the new drawing the Isolus did. "Only I fell to Earth. My brothers and sisters are left up there, and I cannot reach them. So alone." "Your pod crashed. Do you know where it is?" Galaxy asked, no one should be alone, especially not a child. "My pod was drawn to heat, and I was drawn to Chloe Webber. She was like me, alone. She needed me, and I her." "You empathised with her. You wanted to be with her because she was alone like you." The Doctor noted. "I want my family. It's not fair."
"I understand. You want to make a family. But you can't stay in this child. It's wrong. You can't steal any more friends for yourself." "I am alone." The Isolus said and a crash came from the wardrobe and they saw a red glow coming from the inside of it as the doors shook and so was Chloe. I'm coming to hurt you. I'm coming. "Trish, how do you calm her down?" Galaxy asked the woman turning to her. "What?" "When she has nightmares, what do you do?" The Doctor questioned her this time, knowing what Galaxy was getting at. "I...I..." "What do you do?" "I sing to her." Trish told them. "Then start singing." Chloe I'm coming.
"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree. Merry, merry king of the bush is he..." Trish started to sing as she sat by Chloe on the bed and the Doctor went back to Rose's and Galaxy's side. Chloe. Chloe. Chloe. Chloe. "Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra, gay your life must be. Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra, gay your life must be." Sure enough, Chloe fell asleep and the noises from the wardrobe quietened down. "He came to her because she was lonely. Chloe, I'm sorry."