“My husband, his name was Peter, received a telescope for his 10th birthday. Every night he was outside looking through it. He learned all the constellations and planets; he saw comets and meteor showers. He was fascinated by all things extra-terrestrial and dreamt of seeing a spaceship.
“When he was eleven or twelve, his dream
came true. He said he saw a bright light
in the sky that moved about quickly and freely.
It wasn’t in orbit like a satellite and it wasn’t a plane. He watched it as it came close and closer to
him. It passed by him, quite close and
he saw the unusual shape. It flew past
him and was soon out of sight. He was
quite thrilled at what he had seen, but he was even more amazed when it came
back into view and flew directly towards him.
He said the craft landed right in his yard, the door opened and a
humanoid creature stepped out.
“Peter described it as looking much like
a human except its head was slightly larger, it had four fingers on each hand
and appeared to have a greenish tint to his skin, although, Peter said that it
could have been the light from the ship reflecting off the grass that made him
look green. Peter spoke to it, welcoming
it. It spoke back to him, obviously in
its own language. After several minutes,
when they realized they could not communicate, the alien turned to leave. Peter said he called out to him. He tore a button off his night shirt and gave
it to the alien. The alien put a fist
over his chest and gave a slight bow. Peter
followed his example and then watched as the craft closed, lifted up and flew
away into the night.”
Merry paused. She looked at the Doctor. He was calmly sipping his tea, but his eyes
were bright with interest. Merry took a
sip of her own tea. Ginger tea, her
favorite.
“Shall I go on?” Merry asked.
“Please do,” the Doctor said. “I do love a good alien story.” He picked up the cookie from his plate and
took a bite.
“Alright,” Merry said. She took another sip of her tea before
continuing. “Fast forward 20 or so
years. Although life never allowed Peter
to follow his dream of becoming an astronaut, he never lost his love for gazing
into the night sky. He had never seen
another alien spaceship, until about three months ago.
“I had gone to bed and Peter was outside
with his telescope, as he was every night.
There was nothing at all unusual about the evening. About two in the
morning, I woke up and realized that Peter wasn’t in bed. That was unusual. I got up and went outside to look for
him. I practically fell over him because
he was passed out in the grass. Three
months ago it was still very cold out at night.
He was wet with icy dew.
I was able to wake him and lead him into
the house. He was shivering and
hypothermic. I’m a nurse and knew what
to do for him. He finally warmed up
enough that he was able to talk to me.
He told me that his aliens had returned.
There were two that came out of the ship this time. One of them pulled something out of a pocket
and showed it to Peter. It was the
button from his childhood night shirt. Peter
put his fist to his chest and bowed. He
said the aliens seemed happy to see him.
“It seems they tried to talk, but could
not understand each other. Peter said
they repeated three phrases over and over.
Peter repeated them back and they nodded, but it was obvious that Peter
didn’t understand. In their own ways,
they said their good-byes and the aliens left.
Peter said he pulled out his log book and immediately began to write the
words and draw pictures of the aliens and their space craft. Cold over took him and he passed out in the
grass.
“I was quite upset with him for staying
out so long in the icy night air and told him he was going to have a nasty
cold. He asked me to go and get his book
out of the grass. I did and he went to
bed.
“The next morning, as to be expected, he
was sick. We did all the usual cold
remedies, but nothing helped. After a
week and not being any better, he went to see his doctor. They gave him antibiotics, but it didn’t
help. In fact, he seemed to get
worse. He had a terrible hacking cough. He went back to the doctor. They tried a number of different treatments,
but nothing helped. A month after he had
seen his aliens and gotten sick, he was admitted into the hospital. They could not figure out what was causing the
illness nor how combat it. He was worse
than ever. Less than a week later, he
died.”
Merry choked on the tears. The Doctor sat up and leaned forward in his
chair. His eyes were sympathetic and
full of concern. Merry quickly picked up
her tea cup and drained the rest of the ginger tea down her throat. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and
wiped her eyes and face.
The Doctor leaned in closer. “Peter’s log book,” he said. “Do you have it?
Merry nodded her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She went into the house and disappeared down
the hall. The Doctor followed her into
the house, but he stopped at the thresh-hold. He looked around at the clean
house and noticed a number of pictures on the wall.
Merry’s footsteps distracted him from
the photos. Her eyes were teary, but she
was quite composed as she handed the Doctor a blue spiral notebook.
“Thank you,” he said and he turned
around and went back outside. Merry sat
down again and poured herself another cup of ginger tea. She watched the Doctor as he flipped through
the pages of the book. He stopped at the
last few pages and read them carefully.
“Merry, I’m quite good at languages,
but I don’t understand this.” He pointed
to a string of words at the end of the final page of the book.
Merry looked. It was Peter’s handwriting and she felt the
tears well up again, but she kept her composure. “That’s because it is phonetic. You see, Peter didn’t understand what the
aliens were saying, but he wanted to write down what they had said to him. He didn’t know how it would be written in
their language, so he wrote the phrase phonetically.”
“Can you read it?” he asked, holding
the book to her.
Merry didn’t need to see the
book. Peter had insisted that she learn
the phrases by memory. She had thought it incredibly silly, but she had wanted
to honor Peter’s wishes. It was so
important to him that she learn it.
“Jodhei tam medodiks. Nsme pyutk
aigros. Nsme nkejo inciver,” Merry recited.
The Doctor’s eyes were wide. He turned the page of the notebook back one
page. Peter had drawn some rough
sketches of the aliens and their spaceship.
The Doctor held out the book to her.
“Is this them?” he asked.
“Yes,” Merry answered.
The Doctor sat back in his chair and
looked at the sketches again. He quietly
repeated the words Merry had recited.
One word he repeated several times as he seemed to consider its
meaning. After several moments, his gaze
returned to her. “Merry, you haven’t
told me the entire story, have you?”
Merry was surprised. She wondered how he could have possibly known that.
“Have you?” the Doctor repeated.
Merry shook her head. “No,” she squeaked out. She was on the verge of crying again.
The Doctor was kneeling in front of her
in one quick motion. He took her hands
in his. They were surprisingly cool, but it was a soothing kind of coolness. She looked into his eyes and felt she could
tell him the entire story. She had never
told the entire thing to anyone.
“We had children,” Merry’s voice
whispered. “We had two beautiful
children. Twins. A boy and a girl, Liam and Ailish. They were only 18 months old.” Merry’s voice quivered, but she went on. She had the strongest need to tell someone
the entire story. Why this stranger, she
wondered? “The children got sick, too,
about a week after Peter got sick. To
tell the truth, I wasn’t surprised. In a
family, when one person catches a cold, so does everyone else. But, like Peter, no medicine helped. They got sicker and sicker until they too,
finally died. About three days after Peter. First Liam and then Ailish.”
Tears were flowing freely down her face
and splashed onto the Doctor’s hands which were still holding hers. Her voice, however, grew stronger. “They were just babies and so innocent of
what happened to them! Doctors and the police
questioned me. Why had my husband and
children died within days of each other and I didn’t even get sick? I had no answers to their questions and in
the end, they could find nothing to prove that I had somehow killed them and
they left me alone.
“I don’t know why them and not me? If I could have traded places with them, I
would have. I would have gladly given my
life if it could have spared them theirs.
My life ended that week, Doctor.
It ended. Since the funeral, no
one has spoken to me. No one knows what
to say, but it doesn’t matter because I’ve not wanted to talk to anyone
either.” Merry’s cry turned into a deep
sob.
The Doctor pulled his hands away from
hers. He reached into a chest pocket on
the inside of his velvet coat and produced a beautiful handkerchief. He handed it to her. She buried her face in it and cried. The handkerchief was soft and smooth and had
a very pleasant, but unfamiliar odor to it.
She held it against her face for several minutes, inhaling the calming
smell and finally regaining her composure.
When she lifted her face from the
handkerchief, she saw the Doctor sitting in the chair opposite her. His hands were dry of her tears and he sat
quite still. She noticed his eyes were moist with tears.
“Do you know what I think?” Merry
asked. Her voice was quite calm now.
The Doctor shook his head.
“I think the aliens got him sick.”
The Doctor leaned back in his
chair. “Did you tell this to the doctors
or police?” he asked.
“No, I couldn’t. Things were difficult enough, but if I had
told them about aliens, they would have locked me away in a mental
institution,” Merry chuckled darkly.
The Doctor smiled a little half smile
and nodded his head. Without warning,
the Doctor bounced out of his chair and began to pace. His hand stroked his chin.
“I think you are quite right Merry,” he
said. He paced a few more times before
turning back to face her. “Would you
like to know the meaning of the message left by Peter’s aliens?”
“Do you know what it means?” Merry
asked.
“Most of it. I told you, I’m quite good at languages. Once you spoke the words to me, I
understood. Well, all except for one
word.” He looked straight into her eyes
and took a deep breath, “Where is the healer?
We are sick. We need inciver.”
Merry stared at him, “The healer? As in ‘The Doctor’? Were they looking for you?”
The Doctor nodded.
“And what about inciver? What does that mean?” Merry asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Most
likely, it is a name for something or someone and has no translation.”
Merry repeated the word several
times. Why did it seem familiar to
her? Suddenly a thought struck her. “Wait a moment. How do you know what that says?” she asked.
The Doctor smiled, “I told you, I’m good
at languages.”
Merry stood up, “No wait. I’ve got a cousin, Tim, who speaks 12
languages, but he never could have figured this out. This came from an alien with eight fingers
and flies around in a spaceship.”
“So do I. Well, I fly around in a spaceship, but I have
10 fingers, like you.” The Doctor looked
down at his hands. He seemed rather amused
by them.
“Wait, wait, wait. You have a spaceship?” Merry asked.
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing him say.
“Of course. That is how I came to be in your
neighborhood.”
“That is impossible,” Merry said.
The Doctor smiled an impish half
smile. He leaned towards her and said,
“I love the impossible.”
“I didn’t hear any spaceship land in the
neighborhood. And if there was a
spaceship parked along the street somewhere, the neighbors would be all over
it. There would be a huge commotion and
I would have noticed that.”
“Well,” the Doctor smiled, “my ship is
small and unassuming on the outside.
Most people don’t notice it at all.”
Merry ran to the fence and threw open
the gate she and the Doctor had come through when he first arrived. She looked up and down the street. It took her a few moments before she noticed
the only different thing on her street.
Two houses away, sitting on the sidewalk was a blue police phone
box. She had seen them in old movies,
but never in person and never on her street.
Why hadn’t she noticed it right away?
Merry watched as two people walked right passed it.
“How do they not notice it?” she asked.
The Doctor was standing by her side,
smiling. “It’s got a perception filter
on it. It is there and anyone can see
it, but only if they want to. If you
know to look for it, it is there, but to anyone else, while it is there, they
just don’t notice it. It’s quite a handy
trick, really.”
“So that police box is your
spaceship?” Merry looked at it
doubtfully.
“Yes.
It’s called a TARDIS. She’s an
old girl, but a good one.”
Merry smiled. “Perhaps I’m not the one that should be taken
off to a mental institution.”
The Doctor laughed. Merry turned to look at this strange
man. Everything about him was so
unusual. His clothes, his way of
speaking, and his ease with discussing extra-terrestrial material. Her mind told her this man was completely
crazy, but she had the oddest feeling to trust him. Perhaps it was the eyes – happiness and
sadness, age and youth all rolled into one.
“So, are you ready?” he asked.
“Ready for what?”
“Ready to go help the Weyk’s?”
“Ready to go help the Weyk’s?”
“What is the Weyk’s?” Merry asked.
The Doctor smiled, “Not a what, but a
who. The Weyks are Peter’s aliens.”
Merry looked skeptically at the Doctor,
“What? You mean they’re real?”
“Well of course they are real. And, if their message is true, they are sick
and need our help.”
Merry walked back to the porch and began
gathering the tea things, putting them back onto the tray. Her mind was in a whirl. “How do we go help them?” she asked.
“I take you there in the TARDIS of
course,” he answered.
Merry picked up the tray. “You mean in that police box? It’s a little small isn’t it?”
“Only on the outside, but the inside is
the gateway to the universe.” His eyes
glanced up at the sky. Merry followed
his gaze. She saw a bright blue sky,
fluffy clouds and birds flying overhead.
She hadn’t properly looked at the sky in a very long time. She smiled.
To really go up into the sky… Peter would have loved this. Her musings were interrupted by the sound of
her back door being opened. The Doctor
held the door open and Merry carried the tea tray into the house. She set it down on the counter and began to
unload its contents. Her mind was
spinning – spaceships, aliens, and this man who called himself the Doctor.
“Do you know, I’ve been to Earth many
times and drunk many cups of tea, but with the exception of being in the
company of royalty or high ranking Lords, I’ve never had so formal a tea served
by a common everyday human, in such an informal a place as an everyday
backyard,” the Doctor said.
Merry chuckled. “My grandmother was from
England. When I got married, she
insisted I have proper tea things. I’ve
hardly ever used them. Peter never cared
much for tea, but, I don’t know, you seemed a person who would appreciate a tea
served. Maybe it was the clothes or your
foreign accent, but I wanted to put my best foot forward and serve my company a
proper tea.”
“I thank you for your thoughtfulness,”
the Doctor said. He walked to the wall
and looked at the pictures that hung there.
One picture in particular held his gaze.
It was Merry, in obviously happier times. Her eyes were bright and her smile
broad. In her lap sat a little girl with
dark, curly hair. Next to them was a
smiling man holding a little boy. “Your
family?”
Merry stood beside the Doctor and looked
at the picture. “Yes. This was taken at the twin’s birthday. I’m holding Ailish and Peter is holding Liam.”
“Ailish looks a lot like you,” he said.
Merry nodded. “That is what everyone said. She was a doll. They both were. I miss them so much. I miss their voices, the sound of their feet
running across the wooden floor, their laugh and the way their little arms
hugged me when they woke up in the morning.”
Merry turned away. She pulled the
Doctor’s handkerchief out of her pocket and buried her face into it. It seemed to have magical properties. From the moment it touched her face and she
inhaled its fragrance, she felt calmer.
The Doctor laid a hand on her
shoulder. “It’s alright to cry and mourn
for those we’ve loved and have lost. I’m
going to help you, Merry. I’m going to
help you find peace and closure.”
“I don’t think that is possible Doctor. However, if these Weyks are truly sick and
you can help them, then I want to come and help you,” Merry said.
“Are you ready, then?” the Doctor asked.
“What?
Now?” Merry was surprised.
“Of course. No time like the present,” he said. He turned and went out the back door. Merry felt a bit like a rat following the
Pied Piper. She couldn’t explain herself,
but she just had to follow him. A quick
thought came to her and she grabbed a small black box off her coffee table and
stuck it into her pocket. She turned and
followed the Doctor out the door.
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