"What could possibly be in the cemetery for them?" Jenna wondered.
That question led the trio to ask Ottis about the reasons why the village abandoned the old cemetery and move the bodies. Ottis' reluctant, but Jenna coaxed him into telling them what happened when the village decided to move the bodies.
"It just happened one day. Some storms came through here, bad ones, that tore through most of the village before it moved towards the hills. End of times sort. When everything settled, I went up to the hill to see if there any damages," Ottis described the day when the village experienced a strong storm that caused damages to the buildings. Some collapsed due to the winds, but they rotted from time, and nobody hurt.
Around that time, the man and the woman came to the village and started asking questions to Ottis about the cemetery. It made no sense to him why they'd be interested in an old cemetery, but when they disappeared, that's when Ottis started noticing peculiar things happening in the cemetery.
"We didn't have money for anything fancy for our cemetery, so imagine my surprise when I saw one lonely statue in the centre of the cemetery. Didn't know where it came from, nobody here could've moved a statue without us knowing. Something odd though, I got the feeling it didn't want me in the cemetery."
It started off as one angel statue, but Ottis didn't know where it came from. Could've been a sign from God, all he knew, hadn't he gotten the feeling something's amiss, and his gut feeling proved true when the second one showed up without any reason.
"When the second one showed up, I thought it was a trick. Only, this one's different than the first one, and I didn't see any tracks to the cemetery," Ottis regaled the story about the angel statues. At first there's one, then two, and slowly, it amassed to six angel statues, and by then, Ottis realized that there's something going on. He noticed graves disturbed, dirt removed, but the caskets remained undisturbed for the most part. It tipped him off further when he noticed one of the angels' having muddy hands.
"So, they just showed up, like that, after the man and woman disappeared?" Matt asked Ottis.
Ottis nodded. Like he said, the man and woman appeared after the storm hit and when they disappeared, the angel statues appeared in their place.
"How'd the village take to it?" Ripley wanted answers about the villagers' reaction to the sudden appearance to the statues.
Ottis told her the moment he gotten a bad feeling from the angel statues; he convinced the villagers that Old West Berry Hill's a health hazard due to the mudslides.
A lot of the villagers' too old to make the trip to visit loved ones, so he convinced the villagers to move their dead somewhere else. A flatland that never flood or eroded, would've been perfect since there's no steep hills to climb.
"What about the angels, how did they take the others in the cemetery?" Jenna inquired.
Ottis felt too many people in the cemetery with the angels would've resulted in unnecessary panic, and instead convinced the villagers to plot the new cemetery as he spent time relocating the bodies himself.
It took time, but he did it, and he almost had someone go up to the hill because she didn't believe him when he said it's a hazard.
Desperately, Ottis tried to keep the old woman from making a trip to the old cemetery, even despite Ottis moving her family to the new cemetery, headstones, and all, but "Stubborn coot didn't want to listen to me!"
Stubbornly, she chose to ignore him, wanting to ensure he didn't forget anything.
It felt like hours when she went up to the old cemetery, but she came down, pale as a ghost, and didn't what happen in the cemetery. She ended up passing away a day later, grey, frail, like she died of fright.
"She didn't say anything?" Jenna blinked as Ottis sipped on his tea.
Resting the tea cup on the table, Ottis replied that he knew that she seen the angel statues, and knew too late that he wasn't lying.
The village played it off as simply old age caught up to her and left it at that.
"They dug up the plots," Ripley scratched her chin as she pondered the reasoning for the angels' appearance. "Ottis, what can you tell me about the cemetery?"
Ottis replied that's just an ordinary cemetery and he's certain there's nothing there that the angels would've wanted.
"Okay, Ottis, I need your help. We can't go back through the path, on the account if we do, we're not coming out of there, alive. Is there a way back to the village from here?" Ripley asked for guidance on finding their way back to the village without taking the path again.
Call it a hunch, but Ripley knew that the angel that tried to grab Jenna would've stayed around, lingering, and with the uneven terrain to get to the path in the first place, it's a safe bet that they take a different path in case they need to run again.
"Oh, uh, of course," Ottis led them through his home to the back where he showed them another path, cleared, and maintained.
Leaving them to clean up, Ripley turned her head to Matt as she said, "They're going to want the TARDIS. What better source of energy than a trans dimensional time machine?"
If she's right, then the angels' zeroed in on the TARDIS the moment it materialized in the atrium. Which meant they'll try to get their hands on it anyway they can.
"What if you're wrong?" Jenna spoke up.
Ripley chewed on her inner lip as she replied, "One of them was at my window, it scouted for the TARDIS. One of them watched us going in, remember?"
When Ripley got that feeling, she deduced one of the angels watched them going towards the TARDIS. The same one followed them to the general store.
"What do we do?" Jenna inquired what they needed to do.
Matt pondered this and responded, "If they need energy, then maybe we can cut them off. There's something in that cemetery that draws them, then that's gotta be a source."
The source of energy the angels needed originated in the cemetery, appearing after the storm, but if that's the case, then they wouldn't need the TARDIS.
"Unless it's finite," Ripley scratched her chin.
Energy from the cemetery would've started waning since the six angels relied on it, if the storm that came through not too long ago didn't replenish it then it's still waning, and in desperation turned to the TARDIS as another source.
What better source of infinite energy than the blue beauty?
"They know where it is, they're going to come for it," Ripley warned.
When the time comes, the angels depart from the cemetery and hunt the TARDIS. Under the cover of darkness, another storm, something to that effect, they'll use for their own gain.
"Jodie would've fought them off, right?" Jenna remained hopeful that the TARDIS' tricks could've easily disposed the angels if they ever tried to take her, but Ripley wasn't sure and didn't want to be wrong.
"We'll get back to the village and talk about it more," Matt spoke up.
Ottis poked his head through the doorway as he told the trio that the man who went missing asked him about a missing key.
"K-key?" Jenna blinked as Ottis confirmed that the man looked for a missing key.
He said that the key's very important and Ottis thought it's the standard gold key, but the man inferred it's not the key that one expected.
"What'd it look like?" Matt asked about the key.
Ottis recalled the description that the man gave him.
"Oh, the long kind, looks like something for a pump," he gestured at Matt.
Remembering the rod, she picked up during the walk through the path, Ripley retrieved it and showed Ottis. Ottis confirmed that it's the key the man looked for. Ottis didn't know what it opened, but the man's incessant that it's the key he's searching for.
Looking at the key, the trio didn't know what to think of it, but Ripley opted to keep it with her, and thanked Ottis for his time before leaving his cabin with Matt and Jenna.
The maintained path guided them back to the village and watchful, none of them saw the angels, but given there's not enough trees and darkened areas to hide behind, it allowed the trio to breathe finally.
Upon returning to the village, the trio found their way back to the general store and headed up to the rooms where they discussed the plan to deal with the angels.
"Okay, so, the key goes to something. What?" Ripley looked at the rod as she tried to come up with an idea on where the key went.
None of them saw anything out of the ordinary aside the angels in the cemetery. Ottis said they dug the plots, but as he said, nothing's disturbed.
"Might be buried in the ground," Jenna suggested that whatever the angels' looked for's somewhere in the ground. They disturbed the plots, probably trying to find it, and apparent that the caskets and the bodies weren't what they're looking for.
"Can't even check," Matt frowned as he brought up a problem.
None of them can check for certain because of the angels.
If one of them gone up to the cemetery, then for certain the angels would've grabbed them or worse.
Even if they could, there's still a chance that they won't find what they're looking for and end up in a peculiar situation.
"All we know is that none of this happened until it stormed, right?" Jenna looked between them. "What changed?"
If before, it stormed as normal, but this storm caused something to change.
Either it's coincidental or the cause of the disturbance.
Pondering, the trio concluded that it's possible that the lighting storm set off a chain of reactions that resulted in the disappearances of the man and woman as well as the angels' appearances.
"Why didn't we disappear?" Matt wondered aloud.
If the man and woman disappeared the moment they went to the cemetery, then Matt wondered why the same didn't happen to him and the women.
"Could be wavering," Ripley deduced that the energy that the angels fed on's waning and whatever caused the man and women to disappeared and brought the angels' slowly fading.
Hence why none of them went missing when they visited.
"So, what do we do?" Jenna asked them.
Starving the angels of the energy seemed like a no-brainer, but that didn't solve the fact they're here and attracted to the cemetery.
The only reasonable conclusion, send them back to wherever they came from.
Assuming the man and woman's still alive, somehow bring them back to this world, and seal off the disturbance, for good.
"The TARDIS' our good chance in finding the source," Matt concluded that they needed the TARDIS for this plan.
If there's anything that can track and find disturbances, it's the blue beauty.
"Maybe it'll know what to do to close it," Ripley walked with him and Jenna towards the TARDIS and opens it for them. Entering, Matt worked with the women to find the source of the disturbances.
The TARDIS zeroed it in without skipping a beat.
Ripley's right, the energy is waning.
The source for the energy came from an unusual source, a rift.
"A rift?" Jenna blinked.
Matt nodded.
"I don't get it, we didn't see it," Jenna pointed out.
Matt explained, "Oh, it's there, we just can't see it."
The human eye can only see so much.
The trio and Ottis couldn't see it, but the angels, they see it, and they're well-aware the rift's waning.
"Where did it even come from?" Ripley wondered where the rift came from.
Matt haphazardly explained the phenomena to Jenna, "Sometimes, things get chaotic and universes rub against each other, sometimes causing a tear. Only, it's minuscule enough that it wouldn't cause any permanent harm."
It's not uncommon for a rift to appear somewhere in the world, it's just a thing that occasionally happens. Sometimes it's small, sometimes it's big, but usually harmless.
To describe a rift, imagine the infamous poltergeist phenomena. Sometimes a rift forms in homes and in turn causes a chain reaction.
When two universes with the same overlay, rub against each other, it causes a sort of feedback, like an amp and a microphone turned on in front of each other, that sometimes results in messy kitchens.
It's not uncommon for animals to see the rifts, their eyes different than humans, and it's possible for humans to mistake rifts as phantom presences. Although, technically, rifts occasionally have remnants of someone presently in another universe that bleed through, giving the idea.
Sometimes rifts disappear within minutes, hours, sometimes months, and rarely reappears.
Most times they appear in remote areas where people can't easily access and causes disturbances. The only thing affected, some trees and the wildlife.
For something life threatening, it's possible to occur, but it's rare and certain conditions needed to happen for a rift to become more than a rift. It's never come to that since Matt and the others started adventuring in the TARDIS.
If that ever happens, it's a first for them, and possibly one of the most dangerous things they'd ever experience.
As for the rift in the cemetery, it's possible the lighting gave enough energy for a rift to form. Now, the storm's passed and the one that came after the three arrived, didn't feed the rift.
The angels came from the rift, somehow, and Matt and Ripley, especially, didn't like it.
Regardless, they're not dangerous.
The rifts that happen, mere micro cuts, like a pinhole in a sweater. It's there, nobody notices for the most part, but it won't grow in size.
Rifts certainly scare people, but normally rifts shouldn't envelop people or things whole and or send something or someone through, this is something most peculiar.
"That must be why they came here," Matt deduced why the man and woman came to the village.
Somehow, they detected the rift.
What purpose that served, none of them knew.
"What about the key?" Jenna asked where it fit in this.
Ripley looked on the monitors and replied, "I don't know. Don't see anything in the cemetery with a keyhole."
The man didn't tell Ottis enough about the key, or he did and Ottis didn't understand, but the rod that Ripley picked up on the path to Ottis, seemed important that the man looked for it.
"Well, whatever it's for, we'll see soon enough," Matt clicked his tongue against his teeth as he looked at the monitor above him. "If we can get them into the centre of the cemetery, we'll be able to get them a good wallop."
It's not an easy plan, but it's a plan nevertheless.
"How're we going to keep them in place?" Jenna brought up a point.
Hearing knocking on the door, the three opened it to see a confused Graham.