This story is now available in the A Target for Tommy charity anthology. If you like it, please buy a copy for a very good cause.

I wrote this for Big Finish’s Doctor Who short story submissions contest, which unfortunately I didn’t win. Thought I might as well post it here. I don’t normally commit fanfic, of course, and this won’t be a regular thing, but didn’t want something I put a lot of work in to go completely to waste.

(Actually, it took me an hour in total to write, but after several weeks agonising before it came to me as one piece). Let me know what you think. Please note, I hadn’t seen anything of the latest series when I wrote this. The Doctor and Peri are both copyright BBC:

The Bogeyman

February 13th
Dear Diary,
Today I saw a spaceship!
It was when I was walking home from school with mummy. I pointed it out to her, but she said it was just a street light behind a tree.
Mummy says spaceships aren’t real, but I saw on TV where people went to the moon in a spaceship.
That was a long time ago, though. Maybe they don’t have spaceships any more. That would be rubbish.
We had dinner and watched the telly. Dinner was salad, because Mummy says I need to watch my weight. I hate salad. But it was good where the robots exploded.
I wonder if there are real robots.

February 14th
Dear Diary,
Sorry if I’m not spelling so good today, but I’m very tired. When I went to bed last night I heard a banging sound from the wardrobe. I was very scared, but I knew Mummy would shout at me if I asked her to get rid of the monsters. She says there are no monsters. I was very brave though, I didn’t have an accident, but I couldn’t sleep for a long time. I was all yawning in school.
We learned about gypsies in school. They do dancing and live in caravans and go around wherever they want. I told my mummy I want to be a gypsy when I grow up, on the way home from school, and she smacked me and said there was no way I was going to be a b word gyppo.
I didn’t realise it was naughty to want to be a gypsy. I’m glad mummy told me before I did it.
I’m very sleepy. I hope the monsters aren’t too noisy tonight.

February 15th
Dear Diary
The monsters were even noisier last night! Mummy shouted at me to keep the noise down, but it wasn’t me – it was the monsters! I love my mummy, but she does sometimes shout at me for things I didn’t do, and that’s not very nice.
When we got home there was a man outside the house, looking through my bedroom window. He had a thing in his hand that went beep, and he was wearing all colours like Joseph. We did Joseph in school.
This man wasn’t Joseph, though. My mummy shouted at him lots, and she must have already known him, because she knew his name it was Peter File. She said lots of naughty words to him. I told her she shouldn’t say those words, and she told me to shut up.
The man tried to talk to my mummy, but mummy just shouted louder and louder at him, and threatened to call the police, so he went away. I told my mummy that if she wanted to call the police there was a special telephone box for police that I’d seen while she was shouting, but she said not to be silly, and when I looked again it wasn’t there.
It must have been a magical telephone box.
When we got in, mummy hugged me very tight and cried. I don’t know why. He didn’t seem like a bad man, and he can’t have been a stranger because mummy knew his name.
I hope the monsters aren’t noisy tonight.

February 16th
Dear Diary
The monsters were noisy again, and I didn’t get very much sleep at all. Miss Brown, the supply teacher, told me off for falling asleep in class.
I started crying, so she took me into the cloakroom to calm down, and asked what was wrong. I told her how I hadn’t been able to sleep because of the monsters, and asked her not to tell my mummy off me.
She said she wouldn’t tell. I like Miss Brown. She is American.
America is a long way away – even further than Blackpool, my mummy says.
Mummy made me hold her hand on the way home today. She hadn’t done that since I left infants. I got upset at her because I’m not a baby.
I saw Miss Brown talking to the colourful man in the street on the way home. Mummy didn’t see, and I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t talking to mummy. I’m not a baby. I’m nearly ten!

February 17th
Dear Diary
The monsters have started whispering to me while I’m in my bed and saying they’re going to get me. I was so scared I had an accident, and mummy smacked me, and then the monsters laughed at me again.
I told Miss Brown at school today, and she looked VERY CROSS, and I asked her to please not be cross with me, and she said she wasn’t, but that she would like a word with my mummy. I hope she’s not going to tell my mummy I’ve been going to sleep in class.
Mummy made me hold her hand AGAIN all the way home. I hope I get to sleep tonight. I’m very, very tired.
We had sausage and chips tonight, and watched a thing about travelling in time. Mummy says nobody can travel in time. It’s a shame. If I could travel in time I’d go forward to when I’m a grown-up, and bring the grown-up me back to beat up the monsters.

February 18th
Dear Diary
Mummy thinks I’m lazy, because I wanted to stay in bed all morning today. I wasn’t lazy, though, I was just tired. I couldn’t go to sleep because of all the monsters whispering to me about how they were going to eat me up.
Mummy still doesn’t believe me about the monsters. She says we have enough to worry about with the Muslims without being scared of monsters.
My friend Ayeesha says she’s a Muslim, but she’s not scary at all.
Mummy must be thinking of different ones. Sometimes words can mean two things.
I saw the blue box again today when mummy and me were at the shops.

February 19th
Dear Diary
The monsters in the wardrobe are gone!
Mummy sent me to bed early last night. She said I was naughty yawning all the time, and if I wanted to stay in bed, that’s where I’d go, so she sent me to bed at teatime.
I heard a knocking at the wardrobe door, and I heard the monsters saying they were going to eat me right then. I screamed and screamed and screamed, but mummy didn’t hear me because she was watching the telly. The wardrobe door started opening, but then I heard another sound.
There was a sound like an elephant, and the blue telephone box appeared in my room – and the wardrobe door slammed shut! I think I heard a rude word from in the wardrobe, but I might be imagining things. Mummy says I do that a lot.
The door of the telephone box opened, and the colourful Joseph man stepped out. His name isn’t Joseph though, and it isn’t Peter like mummy thought either – I called him that, and he said Peter was a silly name and he’d never be called Peter, and that he was called the Doctor.
(I definitely heard a swear word come from my wardrobe when he said that).
He asked me what was up, and I told him about the monsters in the wardrobe.
He said “Oh, those aren’t monsters. They’re just Bogeymen from the planet Bogimon.”
But he had shiny eyes like grown ups do when they’re making things up to tease kids. Anyway, I know Bogeymen don’t come from other planets, because I’ve read Fungus The Bogeyman all the way through all by myself.
He told me the Bogeymen live off fear, and they scare little kids until the kids die, then drink their a word I don’t remember, it sounded like drainline. He said they do it to kids because grown-ups are harder to scare.
Actually, he said *some* grown-ups, and looked towards the room where my mum was. I wonder why.
He said that the best way to get rid of Bogeymen is just to show them you’re not scared, and to tell them their names. So he told me that when he said ‘now’ I should shout “Bogeyman!” as loud as I could, over and over again.
He got a pointy, shiny thing out of one of his pockets, and said “Now!” and flung open the wardrobe door. There were a couple of gruesome green wobbly things with noses in there, and there was all swirls behind them and I couldn’t see my clothes. I shouted “BOGEYMAN BOGEYMAN BOGEYMAN” as loud as I could, and they looked VERY scared.
The Doctor was pointing his pointy thing, too, and they looked a little bit scared of that, too, but mostly it was me.
The Bogeymen moved back, all scared, saying sorry, into the swirls, and the swirls disappeared and I could see my clothes again.
I asked the Doctor how come there was all swirls, and he said it was a dime menstrual tunnel that made my wardrobe dime menstrually trans dented. He also said that if the bogeymen came back I’d know what to do.

Tomorrow, I might ask my mummy if I can walk home from school *all by myself*. And then I’ll see about dealing with the ones under the bed.