Jeff Randall looked up at the ghost of his dead partner Marty and grimaced. He had just been whacked over the head and all Marty could think about was that his attacker was fleeing the scene. Well that was fine with Jeff. It meant he wouldn't be collecting any more lumps on the head.
"Jeff!" the apparition in white was saying through the ringing in Jeff's ears. "The witch. She's heading straight for the car and Jeanie!"
That caught Jeff's attention. Jeanie had been the late Marty's fiancΘ, but Jeff was finding himself becoming attracted to her more and more since they had started working together as detectives. Scrambling to his feet, Jeff started after the witch.
Summoning up his spirit energy, Marty disappeared from the dark wood and sent his essence across the astral plane and in front of the fleeing figure in black.
It had seemed a relatively simple case. Strange lights had been seen in and around a small area of woodland on a private estate. The owner had called in the police but they could find no evidence of a crime being committed, so had dropped the investigation. Suspecting villagers playing pranks in him, Lord Felsham, the landowner, had hired Jeff and Jeanie to watch the wood, videotape anything they discovered and would then hand it over to the police should there be any wrongdoing involved.
A simple but very boring investigation, at least for the first two nights. Jeff and Jeanie had huddled together in the darkened wood, progressively getting more and more spooked as the nights went on. But after the third night of nothing more sinister than owls hooting and foxes lurking they were convinced that nothing was going to happen. However, they had been contracted for a full five nights, so had to come back for another two at least.
Then tonight, the fourth night, everything had kicked off. Just before midnight shadowy figures had started to arrive, men and women dressed in cloaks with hoods. When they numbered a dozen a fire was lit in the centre of a clearing and the figures began to chant.
Jeff had started the video recorder but of course the battery light had begun flashing almost immediately. Jeanie had volunteered to return to the car, parked at the edge of the wood, for the spare.
She hadn't been gone long and Jeff was hoping the battery would last when Marty, whose spirit was tied to Jeff by a metaphysical connection, stepped out from behind a tree. Jeff was startled and dropped the video camera.
The noise had attracted the attention of the chanting circle, who immediately split up and ran for it. One of their number ran straight into Jeff, knocking both of them off their feet.
The hood of the cloak dropped away to reveal an old woman, her skin worn and wrinkled, her nose crooked and her teeth almost all bad. Rising to her feet, she made to dash past Jeff before he regained his footing, but he was too quick and caught her around the waist.
That was when she hit him. Hard. He had always thought people exaggerated when they said they saw stars, but now he knew exactly what it was like. The old woman, or witch, ran off, cackling.
Now Jeff was hotfooting it in pursuit of her, hoping he could overtake her before she met Jeanie either on the path or at the car.
He could just see her through the trees now, up ahead. He was gaining. Then he heard a strange sound.
It was like an elephant with extreme constipation, bellowing its unhappiness through the wood. As Jeff closed on the witch the noise grew in volume and a flashing light appeared in the darkness ahead.
The noise cut off with a loud thump and the light stopped flashing. In the following silence there was the sound of a body hitting something solid and a strangled cry of surprise.
Panting with the exertion, Jeff finally caught up with the witch. She was lying flat on her back, out cold in front of an old blue Police Box, which she had obviously run into in the dark.
"And who said the police were never around when you needed them?" Jeff grinned.
"But they're not," Marty hissed as he stepped out from behind the box. "This wasn't here a moment ago."
"Don't be silly Marty," Jeff replied. "Things can't just appear out of thin air."
"Oh can't they?" Marty shot back, summoning his spirit energy to disappear from beside his colleague and reappear on his other side.
"Well, obviously you can, you're a ghost," Jeff said, realising how ludicrous that sounded only after he had said it.
Before Marty could reply the door of the Police Box creaked open and a curly haired head popped out. The man who owned the head looked down at the stunned woman lying in front of him.
"Oh dear, I hope I didn't cause that." He looked up and saw that he also had awake company. "Hello. Is she a friend of yours?"
"Wyvern!" exclaimed Marty, seeing the similarity between the man dressed in the battered felt hat, long coat, and even longer scarf and his guide in the realm of the spirits. "I might have known it was you. But how come you look so young? And why aren't you wearing white?
The man stepped fully out of the Police Box, striding carefully over the prone body of the witch. "I'm sorry, you seem to be mistaking me for someone else," he said to Marty. "I'm known as the Doctor." He held his hand out to the spirit.
"So you're not Wyvern?"
The Doctor shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not."
Suddenly Jeff realised something. "Marty, he can see you!"
The Doctor turned to look at the shorter man. "Of course I can see him, he's not invisible." Then a thought seemed to occur. "Ah." He turned back to Marty. "You wouldn't be a ghost by any chance, would you?"
Marty grinned. "Yes, I am." Then he frowned. "How did you know that? And how come you can see me? Only Jeff can see me."
Now it was the Doctor's turn to grin. "Well you see, I'm not exactly your normal, average human. No, I'm not from your world at all. Not even the astral plane of your world."
"Are you trying to tell us you're an alien?" Jeff scoffed.
"Yes, I am," the Doctor retorted. "Do you have a problem with that?"
"Well, it is a bit of a stretch of the imagination, isn't it?"
"Not such a stretch," Marty told his partner. "After all, here we are, a live human and a ghost, chasing a witch through a wood in the middle of the night. Why shouldn't an alien land his...whatever that is, in the middle of our chase?"
The Doctor's interest had been piqued. "A witch did you say?" He bent down to look more closely at the unconscious woman on the floor of the wood.
Jeff squatted beside him. "Well, what does your alien sense tell you about her?"
The Doctor looked up at him, his eyes almost bulging from their sockets. "It tells me this woman is no more a witch than you are."
Jeff flushed slightly, glad it was dark to cover his embarrassment. "Well, I never actually said she was a witch. She and her mates were standing round a fire, chanting. What with that and her looks, it was an obvious conclusion for Marty to jump to."
"She can't help the way she looks," the Doctor told him, standing up once more. "But if she was committing some crime, I'm sure you have every right to arrest her."
"At the least she was trespassing on private property," Marty chipped in.
The Doctor grinned at him. "I'm sure that's a start." He raised his hat. "I must be going. People to see, invading hordes to stop, you know how it is. Goodbye, gentlemen."
"Bye," the two detectives called as the Doctor disappeared back into his Police Box. With the same trumpeting roar as before, it disappeared from the wood.
Marty and Jeff looked at each other. "That has to be one of the weirdest encounters I've ever had," Jeff decided.
"You should see it in the Limbo Bar on a Saturday night," Marty told him. "That would give you a new slant on weird."
"I'm sure it would. Now, we should get our witch back to the car." He looked down, to see that the old woman had vanished.
"Where did she go?" he asked his partner.
"Don't look at me, she was here a moment ago."
They both heard someone pushing through the trees. As Jeff tensed to defend himself, he saw it was Jeanie with the spare camcorder battery.
"What's wrong with you Jeff?" she asked. "It looks like you've seen a ghost!"
Jeff looked across at Marty, who winked, then winked out of existence, back to the astral plane.
"You could say that Jeanie," Jeff said with a smile. "Let's call it a night, I'm shattered."
Together the two of them walked back to the car.
***
The car was where they had left it, parked at the edge of the wood. Jeff slid into the drivers seat and Jeannie into the passenger side. As Jeff started the engine and put the car into first gear, the full Moon came out from behind a cloud.
Had either of them been looking, they might have seen the silhouette that passed in front of the Moon. The silhouette of a human figure hunched over, which appeared to be riding on a broomstick.
As the car pulled away, a faint wind stirred the trees, sounding almost like cackling laughter.
