As he turned over everything he'd learned in his head, his feet began leading him off in a random direction. He wasn't looking where he was going, too caught up in his thoughts, so it came as a surprise when he walked into someone.
"Oh, I'm so sorry madam, wasn't…" A sudden crack filled the air where a hand landed on his cheek, "Ouch!" he shrieked (manly, of course), and reflexively brought his left hand up to his stinging cheek.
"What the hell have you been asking my Merrick?" the woman shouted. Suddenly he remembered her face, the mother from the stall who had glared at him like a mother bear whose cub was being threatened.
"I…I was just curious," he said, trying to defend himself.
"Curious about the devil girl! Why would anyone be interested in that freak?"
"She is not a freak," all the built-up anger he had repressed finally burst, "All she's ever done is help you, saved you. Do you know how many times she's wanted to run away, leave you to your miserable lives? But she didn't, because she believes it's her duty to protect you, and your children," he paused; the scene had gathered quite a crowd. Everyone was staring, "You moan about her, say she isn't one of you, but she still tries to protect you when no one else could. So this…this hatred, this loathing, this superstitious nonsense," here he glared pointedly at the woman in front of him, "Stops now."
Silence filled the square, as everyone was sent, hopefully, reeling by these new discoveries. But then the spell broke when Merrick's mother began to sneer and said,
"She must have done a number on you. How many spirits did she have to summon up to get you to say all that?"
"See, that," the Doctor said, pointing at her, "It's that kind of thinking that makes me so angry…"
"She's possessed, by the blackest devil that's ever existed." Merrick's mother shrieked and then, almost as one, the village lifted their right hands to their left shoulders and appeared to brush something off. The Doctor stared around at them all and suddenly wondered if, just perhaps, there wasn't some truth to their words.
"What's possessed her?" he asked at random, though directing his words to the woman in front of him. She made the sign again, "Come on, tell me what is it?" She continued making the sign.
"Something we leave well enough alone, as she should have done," turning the Doctor saw it was an old man who had spoken, "Stupid little girl had no idea what she was doing, but even a five year old knows you don't follow whispering voices."
"The game of hide-and-seek, where she said she followed a voice, the voice is what possessed her?" trying hard not to think back to the planet Midnight, and the woman who had been possessed by a mimicking alien.
"What made the voice, that's what possessed her," the man said, again making the sign, and everyone around him copying.
"What does it do? This thing that possesses?" This time, his words were followed by a hiss.
"You really don't want to live, do you?" Merrick's mother said, "You don't play games with this thing, once it's got you, it never lets you go." Shocked at this new revelation, he said,
"So…if Andy is possessed, she'll die with that thing in her?" Merrick's mother scoffed,
"Not before it's driven her insane first," and then she smiled, as if this was an amusing thought. The anger that had died down slightly flared back in the Doctor's veins,
"Then she doesn't deserve that. After everything she has done for you…"
"What she's done is show off her witchy powers," Merrick's mother retorted, and several people behind her nodded, "She was always wrong, that child, never could play properly, always knew things that it wasn't possible to know, the little freak, she probably called it, asked it to come to her."
"What are you talking about?" The Doctor snarled.
"To name it is to call it," she said, and the entire town seemed to shiver simultaneously, "every child is told the story at least once in their childhood, of the name they never speak, or it comes to them and takes their soul in the night, and they're left, mad and empty and outcast," Even although he didn't quite believe everything she was telling him, the Doctor also couldn't hold back a shiver, "I reckon the power wasn't enough for her, she had to have more. So that day, she went out and spoke the name and called it to her. And she's been possessed ever since, sending the rock falls to us so that she can pretend to be the hero, all the while knowing that she created them."
The Doctor didn't know what to think, didn't know what to say. He desperately wanted to defend Andy, but this…thing, this bogeyman, the monster under the bed, sounded very intriguing. And he had noticed that perhaps Andy wasn't quite all there. Not that she was mad or something, just that perhaps she wasn't in fact one hundred percent Andy. It had felt like there was something else in there with her. Something that was trying to break its way through.
"What are the signs of it?" he wanted to know. The mother smirked, seemingly proud that she had brought him round to their way of seeing things,
"Madness, anger, violence. It makes you evil. And that's all she is," instead of a sign this time the woman spat, "Pure evil."
Sighing at her words, thinking he probably wouldn't get a true answer from her, he turned towards someone else. But before he could say anything, a voice rang out from the back of the crowd,
"What are you all doing standing around here?" Everybody turned to look. The man in the fur coat, the Mayor, was standing by the well with his hands on his hips. The women suddenly looked ashamed, and scuffed their feet, while the men simply looked away, not meeting his gaze, "Do you not realise that harvest starts soon? That it's nearly time for the milking? And I'm sure there are kids in the houses feeling a little hungry, right?" There was a small murmur of agreement from the women in the crowd, "Well then, you'd better get to it then." And just like that, the crowd began to disperse. Merrick's mother shot the Doctor one last look of contempt and said,
"You're as mad as she is, if you try to go looking for that thing." She made the sign to ward off evil and then turned towards her house. The Doctor turned away from her and found himself looking at the Mayor's chin. Startled back a little and looking up to see an expression of frustration and weariness he heard the Mayor say,
"And you, good sir, are coming with me."