I was walking along the streets of Bath, England on a particularly foggy day. It was starting to rain so I wanted to hurry up and get home to my one room apartment and prepare for the stormy weather.
It became harder and harder to see through the mess of thick brown hair that blew into my face as the wind picked up. The street was unusually quiet and devoid of cars, but I dismissed this and credited it to the foul weather.
Ahead of me formed the hint of a shadow, long and tall, but then it was gone again. I kept on walking, thinking it was just my eyes playing tricks on me.
As I got closer to where the phantom shadow had loomed, I heard a strange noise. It was like a badly damaged car trying and failing to start up. The shadow returned with it. This time it stayed.
I'm going mad, I thought to myself. But I kept walking. As I neared the thing, I started to go out of my way to avoid it. I kept my eyes trained on the ground.
Suddenly, just as I was in front of what I now saw was a big blue box, like a telephone booth, something slammed into me.
I fell onto the road but was immediately helped up.
I brushed myself off and looked up to see who had run into me. It was a skinny man with dark brown hair that was gelled back. He wore a dress shirt, maroon bowtie and suspenders, and a tweed coat with elbow patches. "Sorry about that," He said, "Don't usually hit people, not very polite you know, I do try to avoid it if I can. Anyways, I was wondering if you could tell me what year this is?"
Great, I ran into a madman, I thought. "2011," I said.
"Right then, great year, a lot happens. Then again I've never been to a time where nothing happens. Always an adventure, dangerous sometimes but I say Geronimo!" He paused and looked at me. "Haven't introduced myself, have I? I'm the Doctor," he said, shaking my hand enthusiastically.
"Lilly Carson," I said. "And listen, doctor-"
"Just The Doctor."
"Right then, Doctor, I must be getting home, it's starting to rain," I said, and tried to duck around him.
I was just continuing my walk home when I heard a chilling scream from one of the houses. It sounded like a child's. I sprang into action, running full speed towards the sound, not knowing what I was planning to do once I got there. I got to the door of the house and tried the handle. Locked.
I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see the Doctor coming to help.
When he got to the door, he reached into his inside coat pocket and took out a strange device. "What on earth is that?" I asked as he pointed it at the door and it made a weird, whir-like sound. Then he put it back in his pocket and opened the door.
"Sonic screwdriver," he said, grinning.
He ran inside and I followed right behind him. He started looking around the downstairs level for the source of the scream. I decided to take the upstairs.
As soon as I was on the second level, I opened the door to my right.
Lying motionless on the ground was a little boy, deathly pale, staring at the ceiling and letting out another scream.
I looked up to see what was making him so frightened.
Hovering there was an evil-looking creature that made my blood run cold. It had long black wings that kept it aloft, and an eerily human looking face atop a grotesque and contorted body.
"DOCTOR!" I yelled.
I heard his footsteps on the stairs, but he was coming too late. The creature screeched and flew away in a blur, leaving behind a trail of a sort of black mist.
He finally came to my side. "What happened?" he asked.
"I- it- there was-I don't know what that thing was. It was- it had wings and a weird body and-"I trailed off, not knowing how to explain it and thinking that he'd think I was mad. I thought I probably was.
He took out his Sonic Screwdriver again and scanned the length of the room, and then the boy.
He looked at something on the end of it and muttered something I didn't catch.
"What?" I asked.
"The Black Death," he said. He looked gravely out of the window. "You've learned about the Plague I assume?"
"Sure," I answered, "but what's that got to do with that… thing?"
"That 'thing' is what caused the plague. They call themselves the Mist, but they're more scientifically known as Morte Nera, literally translated to 'black death.' Nasty blighters."
Instead of trying to decipher all this, I asked, "Is the kid alright?"
He nodded, "Should be," he said, bending to pick up one of the child's toys and putting it in his pocket. "Ought to set him in bed though, so he can think the whole thing was a nightmare or something. It'd be best not to scare the poor boy."
I nodded and tucked the little boy into bed comfortably, noticing that his face was slowly turning back to its normal colour.
"Now the problem is how we are going to get rid of them," the Doctor went on.
"We?" I said. I didn't want any more to do with those demonic creatures of any other lurking dangers or strange things that seemed to be attracted to this man like a magnet.
"Well I thought- I mean, you can't just leave now can you? Not after what you just saw?"
I raised an eyebrow, still not following why he simply assumed I'd be going with him. "Doctor, I don't even know what it was that I saw, I hardly know you, and for all I know I could just be dreaming up this whole thing. Why would I go and help you deal with 'mort- whatever'?"
"Morte Nera," he said. "And I really hope you will come. You seem like the type that's quite brilliant." And he walked out of the room.
I stared after him. I could've been at home right then, eating frozen pizza and waiting out the storm, when instead I was getting wrapped up in some crazy and far-fetched scenario.
I shook my head in an attempt to clear it and turned to face the boy, now asleep and back to a healthy looking pallor. I looked over his face, noting how his eyebrows were slightly furrowed and his eyes were squeezed tightly shut. It was in that moment that I realized the Morte Nera could be out there right then, terrorizing millions of other helpless people. It was in that moment that I realized I had to go with the Doctor.
I ran after him, flying down the steps and out the door. "Doctor!" I yelled.
He looked back over his shoulder.
"I'm coming with you!"
He grinned and waited for me to catch up. "Geronimo," he said, "I thought you would change your mind. Now then, shall we go on?"
"Where?" I asked, wondering how he was planning on tracking down the monster or possibly multiple monsters.
In response he pointed at the sky.
I looked up and saw a thin black line trailing out of the window of the house we'd just visited. The mist, I realized.
Suddenly I heard the low rumble of thunder.
"We'd best hurry," he said, "Rain will wipe out our chances of finding the Nera. It does have a nasty habit of hiding things."
We began jogging, following the trail of black mist. We went at it for several minutes, until I looked around and couldn't recognize our surroundings. It began to drizzle, and I couldn't see the mist anymore. It was a lost cause.
"Doctor, it's over, we can't find it in this weather." I said.
"Oh no?" he replied smugly.
He ran ahead of me to an old warehouse that was closed for the night.
Not wanting to be left behind alone on an unfamiliar street, I ran after him. He pulled out his sonic and within seconds had the door open. We rushed inside and he started frantically looking around.
"What are we looking f-" I started to ask him, but he raised a finger to his lips to warn me to be quiet.
We continued like this for several rooms, finding nothing. We covered the whole ground floor and moved on to the second. In the first room we searched, the Doctor found strange, iridescent goo on the north wall. He scooped some up with his fingers and sniffed it.
I could sense what he would do next and I shook my head frantically to try and stop him. My attempts were futile, and he lifted his fingers to his mouth and tasted the substance.
His face scrunched up and he looked baffled though unphazed by the taste of it. He looked back up and searched for where the goo was secreting from. It ran from the ceiling to the floor. He whipped out his sonic again and scanned it as he had done the mist earlier.
After looking at the results, he turned to me and pointed upwards, signaling to go and check out the room above us.
We crept up the stairs to the third floor slowly, looking out for anything odd. There was nothing in the stairwell, but as we crept closer to one of the rooms a strange smell that I couldn't place overwhelmed me. The Doctor sensed it too, and we let our noses lead us to where the monsters were.
We came upon another locked door, but as long as he had his sonic that was no problem. I held my breath as he eased the door open.
The goo that we had seen earlier covered the room. The stench that I had thought was overpowering in the hallway was nothing compared to that which now invaded my nose and almost induced my gag reflex. The Doctor went right on in, but I stayed in the doorway, not wanting to have any contact with anything that smelled like spoiled food and sweat.
Attached to the wall were a series of black cocoon-like structures that were covered in the goo. The Doctor walked over to one and scanned it with his screwdriver. He then prodded it with his finger. Nothing happened.
He turned to me, raised his eyebrows, and whacked the cocoon off the wall.
"ARE YOU CRAZY?" I whisper-yelled at him. Who knows what those things were or what that could've done! He again motioned for silence. He crept over to inspect what he had knocked off the wall.
"Looks safe," he said aloud. I rolled my eyes.
"Great," I said, "Just go whack a strange black thing covered in goo off a wall and hope for the best. What could go wrong?"
"No need to be such a worry-wart, Lilly, really," he said. "Worry-wart," he said again as if trying out the word in his mouth, "worry- wart. Strange, don't think I've ever said that before. Don't particularly care for it."
Something about his face when he went into a tangent like that made me laugh. He looked up at me and grinned, then stood and clapped his hands together which echoed off the walls. "Now then. What should we-"
His sentence was cut short. There was a massive crash and the shattering of glass from the window of the door, and an angry screech resounding from the dark creature I had encountered earlier that day. Its looks still made me shiver and for a minute I was paralyzed in fear, but the doctor sprang into action,
"Those cocoons must've been the Nera's eggs," he shouted as he parried the creature and scanned it with the sonic.
He was slowly backing himself into a corner and I saw that there would soon be no place for him to get away from it, so I gathered myself and picked up the cocoon (or the egg) and threw it at the Nera.
It bellowed another screech and turned to face me, charging at full speed. I turned to run but to my horror my left foot was sunk down too far into the muck that I couldn't lift it to move at all.
I braced myself for its attack, hoping the Doctor would think of something fast.
It leaned in to bite at my arm, but I hit it with all my strength and it flew back. But the fight was far from over. It recovered from my blow and came to bite me again. Ready to fight back this time, I drew my arm back to throw another punch.
"Lilly!" the Doctor yelled.
I turned and he threw me the toy he had picked up earlier. I caught it, but my attention had been diverted for too long. I felt a searing pain in my arm as the creature bit into my flesh. I cried out and dropped the toy. The Doctor didn't pause for a moment and dived next to me, retrieving it and, before the Morte Nera could strike him, stuffing it into his mouth.
It screeched once more then choked and fell to the ground dead.
For a while we sat there, breathing heavily. He never took his eyes off the Nera. I looked down at my arm, which was throbbing and hurting like crazy. There were crescent- shaped tooth marks on my forearm, bleeding profusely. I applied pressure to the wound with my other hand.
Eventually, the Doctor rose. He helped me to stand and we knocked the rest of the pod-like eggs to the ground. He led me outside and we headed back to where the whole adventure had started. The mysterious blue box.
He looked at me and smiled. "Lilly Carson," he said fondly. "You were absolutely brilliant."
"Thanks," I said, smiling. "But I still think this whole thing was a dream. A strange, strange dream."
He laughed. "What if I could show you even crazier, even unbelievable-ier things?"
I giggled. "That's not even a word," I said. "But what do you mean?"
"Come on," he said, and disappeared into his blue box.
Going to be a rather tight fit, I thought uncertainly. And I opened the door.
"How'd you do that?" I asked, eyes practically bulging out of my skull. I was certain that it was nothing more than a tiny box. But inside, it was way bigger than any building I'd ever been in.
"Time Lord technology," he said, clicking on various buttons and turning knobs seemingly at random on a sort of control panel in the center of the room.
"What?" I asked, utterly confused.
"Oh yeah, didn't I mention? I'm a Time Lord. Got all of space and time at my fingers and I've chosen you to come along with me. Doesn't that make you feel special? Now where would you like to go?"
I laughed. "You can't be serious. You want me to believe that you've got a sort of time travelling thingy and that you're some sort of new species? Please, that is so sci-fi."
"Gallifreyan born and raised," he said, "and please, it's not a 'time travel thingy', it's the TARDIS."
"The what?"
"Time And Relative Dimensions In Space."
"Right."
He smiled again. "Want to see what this old girl can do? Just hit that button to your left. But I've got to warn you, it can be a dangerous thing, travelling with me."
I rolled my eyes once more, not believing what he was saying. Part of me was incredulous, part of me was excited, and part of me was nervous as I reached out my good arm to push the button.