Robin's Tale

I'm not sure what it is about these people that makes me feel like I can tell them the whole story when I couldn't tell the police for fear they'd think me mad. Maybe it's the fact that they all look so odd it makes what's happened seem just a tiny bit less strange. Maybe it's just the look on the white-haired guy's face, like he's willing to believe anything I've got to tell him. Maybe it's just that when something like this happens to you, you've got to talk about it to somebody. OK, maybe they'll think I'm nuts. At least I'll have got it off my chest.

"I suppose it's my fault, really," I begin. "Colin wanted to call ahead and reserve a hostel room, but I said 'No, it's fine, we'll just find somewhere when we get there'... and, of course, everywhere was full. So I found this place where I figured we could sleep. An old crypt, with a pumping house attatched to it."

The red-haired woman who apparently isn't actually Colin's cousin sits up and looks especially interested at that. "Could you show us the place?"

"Yeah," I say, although I really don't feel inclined to go back to that place.

"Go on," says the white-haired guy -- the Doctor, I remember he calls himself. Wonder what he's a doctor of?

"Well, we bedded down for the night -- the place seemed deserted -- and I fell asleep right away. But something woke me; I think it was a flash of light, but I'm not sure. And when I got up, Colin was gone. Just... completely vanished."

"And?" prompts the Doctor gently.

"And this is the part you're not going to believe," I sigh. "I got out my torch and went looking for him, and found this weird stone thing, sort of a big oblong stucture. I'd almost swear it wasn't there before. There was some sort of a noise and this door opened up in it, and out came a... some sort of a creature. Some big lizard-thing, I don't know what it was. It fired some kind of... of ray gun or something at me, and it missed. But it disintigrated a stone statue, I saw it! Well, I went running into the pump house and out the service exit, and I... I didn't know what to do! I suppose I could have gone to the police then, but I'd lost my passport, and I... Well, anyway, I hid in the bushes until daylight, and then I went back to look for Colin. And I found him, but he, he was like a zombie! All pale and just dead. He just kept staring straight ahead, like he didn't even see me, didn't know who I was. Just kept doing something with the pumping machinery. I don't know what. But it was all too much for me. I went running off, decided to go to the police, after all, and, well, you know the rest."

I look around at their faces, waiting to see whether they look ready to send for the burly men carrying the straightjacket and the stretcher. But they don't look like they disbelieve me. They look weirdly like they've just heard exactly what they expected to hear. Who are these people?

1. "Show us," says one of the women I haven't been properly introduced to.

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