The shopkeeper wasn't the friendliest when he spoke with Theodore and Lila, but the curiosity only strengthened when he refused to sell the dolls much less Theodore and Lila touch them, fearing they'd break them, too.
When asked about what happened with the broken doll, the shopkeeper said a little girl tried to take the doll from the wall despite him telling her she wasn't allowed and she broke it when he refused to sell it to her, even warning her that he only buys dolls, not sell it, but the stubborn girl wouldn't listen to him, determined to get the doll.
She broke it during the confrontation with him and fled before the shopkeeper could've kept her at his shop until her parents came so he could yell at them for their incompetence and receive compensation for the losses.
If he finds her, it won't be a pleasant experience for her, he vowed.
He sounded nasally while riled up, but the two got the gist that he wasn't in a good mood about losing his precious doll to the insolence of a little girl.
Remembering the little girl earlier complaining that a man didn't want to give her a doll that looked like her friend, the two shared a subtle look, and it's enough for them to covertly work out a plan to steal a piece of the porcelain from the rubbish can.
Keeping him occupied wasn't too hard, but he wasn't the conversationalist, he's adamant about having people who weren't selling him dolls in his shop, but Theodore managed to keep him from looking behind while Lila stole a big enough piece of porcelain.
It's flat enough that she hid in her pocket without it bulging or digging into her leg.
Once she successfully squirreled away the piece of porcelain, the two headed out of the shop, at the shopkeeper's insistence, and already the plan changed with Theodore wanting surveillance on the shopkeeper.
"Al, we're coming back to you, prep the lab, we've got something for you," Theodore tells the TARDIS that they got a piece of porcelain that needed scanning, and Al said he'll wait for them.
Working through crowds of people, they made their way back to the TARDIS, patiently waiting for them, and upon entering, Al's in his avatar form waiting for them.
"Have you found anything, yet?" Theodore asked him as he closed the door behind them.
His loud coloured puffy shoulders shrugging, Al said that he found that there's nothing in the sewers except built up sewer gas and unmentionables.
Which surprised him, considering that at this period, there's plenty of rats making headway into terrorizing house wives and being used as punchlines for jokes.
Using that, Al's finding that there's a drop in infestation, which again, surprised him, since rats aren't known to turn away from easy living in a decent sized city.
Even New York City's rats wouldn't give up their little empire without a fight, why, they'd stage incursions before they're driven away from their kingdom.
Ireland couldn't even get rid of them and they got rid of snakes!
"Why's that relevant?" Lila asked Al why this mattered and the avatar stated that the drop in rats corresponds when the Bogeyman started his hold over the city.
Animals can sense things that normal humans can't, when they sensed something that's dangerous, especially when it comes to something like rats, of course they're going to dip.
"How does this help us find where he's keeping his victims?" Theodore asks how this helped them and Al replied that he's sure that the rats avoided the Bogeyman, so it's a matter of narrowing down where the rats don't go, and go from there.
Of course, there's always a chance that the Bogeyman's eating them, though, Al doesn't think so, or hopes he doesn't, on grounds that it wasn't sanitary.
"Well, we have a suspect in mind if it helps," Lila says that they encountered who they think's the Bogeyman in disguise.
Giving the description, Al zoned out as he used the description for his scanners, before saying that since he doesn't have the shopkeeper's heart rate, it's not exact, in his scanners, but he has an idea on what they're looking for in the search.
"Oh right, hey, Al, the thing," Lila reached into her pocket, grabbing the broken porcelain piece.
As she's reaching into her pocket, her fingers sorted through the loose change, expecting to feel the edge of the porcelain, Lila became visibly confused, her brow raising.
Noticing it immediately, Theodore asked what was wrong, and Lila retracted her hand from her pocket…
"Oh! Oh, that is… oh!" Lila instinctively tossed the dribbling piece of flesh from her pocket, onto the white flooring, blood oozed from underneath the strip of flesh as ruby red glistened on her fingers as she's shocked at the sight.
It was porcelain!
She and Theodore saw it as porcelain!
It felt like it when she picked it up when the shopkeeper turned his back, she lifted it better than Billy and Ethan did Christmas presents!
His eyes widened, Theodore sees the strip of flesh, reanimated from its porcelain state, fresh enough that it's bloodied, still.
"That's… new…" Al's lost for words as he sees the bloody strip of flesh, he couldn't tell which part of the body it came from, it could've been from anywhere, even with the remnant of a muscle, he can't come up with answers.
Looking down at her stitched pants, seeing the ruby red bleeding through, Lila flinches as she's still processing what happened.
"Al… can… you?" Theodore looked up at him as he stood next to him as Al's looking at the strip of flesh, thick, he can see some muscle flesh.
It's… like a piece of bloody bacon, if that makes any definition of sense.
Nodding, Al said he can work his magic, but ordered Theodore to take care of Lila in the meantime, as she's turning a shade of green.
Moving towards her as she's looking at the blood on her fingertips, Theodore cooed into her ear as he gently led her away from the flesh on the grated ground, as he pulled her towards her room aboard the TARDIS for her to wash her hand and change out of her trousers to something else.
While helping her to her room, Theodore felt the twang in her mind, her chestnut eyes locked with the ruby blood on her fingertips, air trapped in her throat, colour leaving from her face.
He felt bits of it, not all, but felt her mind clamming up at the sight of blood, something he's noticed after the incident with the professor.
It rarely happens due to the nature of their adventures and how they change periodically during it, but when it does, it's like a whole different person, Theodore felt like.
Lila didn't like talking about it, why she clams up at the sight of blood on her hands and what the professor did to her, but any time there's red blood on her hands, even not her own, Lila clams up, her chestnut eyes fixated on the blood, she wouldn't speak for most of the time until Theodore helped wash the blood off her hands.
While it's not his place to ask, Theodore didn't want to broach the topic suddenly, wanting Lila to tell him on her own terms, if she chooses.
Even if, he'd like to know why it feels like his own mind numbs when hers clams up.
Bringing her to her room, wrapped around with bookcases, a desk with books stacked on it, some in Japanese, and a large bed in the centre, Theodore led her towards the attached bathroom where he helped wash off the blood from her hand.
Usually, once all the blood's removed, Lila snaps out of her daze, and the numbing in his brain stops.
As he dabbed a towel over her hand, gently pressing down, soaping up the soapy water mixed with blood until nothing remained on her freshly cleaned hand, Theodore feels the numbing recess from his mind, and Lila stirring.
Her chestnut eyes broke free from the trance, she's blinking several times, and when she looked around, Lila noticed she's in the bathroom of her room in the TARDIS.
"Wh-wha?" Lila winced as she blinked multiple times, before her mind caught up to her, and she looked around, seeing she's standing in the bathroom with her hand outstretched with Theodore drying it.
Theodore tells her that it happened again and flinching, Lila apologized for it, but the aloof giant told her that he understands.
"Are you all right, now?" Theodore looked at her while she lowered her hand to her side.
Slowly, as her curled chestnut hair bobbed, Lila nodded as she coughed that she's fine, just embarrassed, is all.
Showing her his pearly whites, Theodore reached out and held her smooth hands with his large rough hands, as he comforted her.
Exhaling sharply, Lila muttered that it's just her luck, before Theodore left her to change out of her trousers, returning the console room as Al waited for him.
"How's she?" Al asked about Lila.
Theodore told him and gave a knowing nod before Theodore asked what he found and there's a shift in Al's tone of voice.
There's a disheveled look on his face, after testing the piece of flesh, he found the answer to their riddle.
"It's… human…" Al summed that indeed, the piece of flesh belonged to a human.
A human girl, there's enough flesh for him to deduce it wasn't an adult.
His icy blue eyes widening, Theodore asks him how the little girl became petrified and how she came out of it postmortem.
"Well, I did some tests. Thankfully, there was enough blood for me to use, and I found that she was injected with something that basically turned her a living porcelain doll," Al began telling Theodore what he deduced from testing the blood of the girl as he pointed to the monitors above the console, showing the breakdown of what he gotten from his testing. "Think of what you know about porcelain, but replace the clay and glazing with skin and flesh, with enzymes that both breaks down and strengthens the integrity."
Raising his brow, Theodore struggled as he tried to understand what Al said to him, until Al spelled it out.
The little girl calcified from the inside out by a spider bite, becoming stiff as a doll, to the point that it looked like your standard porcelain doll.
When the other little girl broke her in her tantrum, the venom dissipated when exposed to fresh air, starting the reversal of the calcification, and, well, Theodore knew the rest.
Horrified, Theodore stared at Al as he confirmed from his tests that right after they left, those broken porcelain bits returned to their natural state.
"Can it be reversed?" Theodore asked the chances that it's possible for them to reverse the calcification on intact victims, without any issues, and Al says that he only has one sample, but the bigger problem came when he identified the culprit.
Something Theodore and Lila encountered a while ago.
Arapulo
That was a version of the name that Al found stowed away, but the original didn't exactly roll off the tongue, so he broke it down.
Or as David aptly dubbed, "spider people."
Stepping out of the hallway in a changed pair of trousers, a darker shade than the previous, but same style that went with her attire, Lila blinked as she looked between Theodore and Al as they're talking.
"Remember Basil?" Al asked Lila as she joined Theodore's side, confused, and as she processed the question, she nods.
Hard to forget that nightmare, dead or not, even if he was as friendly as David said he was.
Al tells her that their culprit is the same species as Basil and has the same fixation on humans, with a different twist.
"You got that from running a test?" Lila's miffed that Al deduced everything from multiple tests and Al responded he's been putting his circuits to work ever since Layne and Theodore fixed him.
Gesturing, Al says that outside David and an unnamed Doctor, nobody encountered this type of alien. They're generally rare, usually lived underground, which made sense why the Bogeyman's stories had him coming out of the sewers, and why he had no trouble getting around.
"Yeah, but what're the odds that this one has interest in humans, too?" Lila crossed her arms, her stitched sleeves crumpling as she did.
It didn't seem possible that two different… whatever… had the same fascination with humans, with varying degrees of collecting them and Al said that he can't find much, but he doubted that all were like Basil and this one.
"So, what you're saying is, that Basil possessed venom as well and that the jars he had were what his venom digested for him?" Theodore summed as Al nodded, affirming that his summarization's correct.
On their own, they can't eat much, their frames are too narrow for eating something like fruit whole or not.
Biting and injecting their foods, letting them ferment in pots as they dissolved and brokedown, like the spiders do for their prey wrapped in silk.
"I'm not following, how did this one turn them into living dolls?" Lila looked at him as he moved around in his loud colored outfit.
Yellow canary zoom suit with a white dress shirt and black tie, complete with a brown suede Stetson.
Frowning, Al said that's the issue he had with Theodore's previous question that he'll get to, now.
"It's like earth spiders. Only, if you're their size or smaller. The venom takes, there isn't much I can do, this isn't like a snake bite where we sequester where it entered from the rest of the body. Once those enzymes start their thing, I can't do anything, and whatever damages I can stop, won't be enough to make a success story," Al bitterly told them that as much as he should've been able to do everything under the sun with what he knows, he can't reverse engineer the venom used to subdue and turn people into living dolls, as this is only one sample.
Like everything in life, he can't make a miracle out of one sample.
He'd need a dozen more samples, each different than the last, to make sure he's doing it right, but with the arapulo being rare encounters, it's a tall order, and they don't exactly have time running around collecting venom from the arapulo they managed to find.
They're not native to earth, obviously, and if Basil's any indicator with how he was able to spy on humans, it's probably because of a tear that allowed this one to end up here, and it quickly positioned itself into luring unsuspecting people into its traps.
"Basically, when we do find them, don't expect miracles. It's been days since they went missing, that kind of exposure to the venom, I'm sorry, kid, I'm a machine of science, not miracles," Al summed their situation before taking a deep breath with the cigarette in his mouth, before he exhaled, smoke pouring out of his mouth.