Usually, when being escorted by people of authority, the Doctor would make a show of being completely at ease. He was a Time Lord, nothing in the universe scared him, in fact most of the universe was terrified of him, and that usually gave him immunity to otherwise intimidating people. But today he was so wrapped up in the mystery that was Andy, he barely gave indication that he was watching where the Mayor was taking him. So when there was the sound of a door closing behind him, he looked up in surprise. He was standing in a hall, with a slightly raised dais at the far end and a table near the door that was piled with pieces of leafy looking paper. To the right he saw a door slightly ajar that seemed to lead to a bedroom. He surmised that he was in the Mayor's house, then shivered as he looked towards the stone wall, wondering which one Andy had touched which showed her the chilling vision of the old Mayor's death.
"We don't get a lot of visitors, you know," he turned towards the Mayor, who had seated himself at the desk, "Gorant is a tiny planet in a large galaxy, and very few are tempted by our world. Why are you here?"
"Oh, you know, just passing through," shaken by what Andy had told him of the house, he felt as if the walls were watching him. It was not a pleasant feeling.
"Indeed? My farmers have alerted me to the fact that there is a strange box near the eastern fields, which didn't appear to be there yesterday." The Mayor's voice sharpened slightly, while the Doctor cursed himself. He must have lifted the chameleon circuit earlier that day, while Andy was fending off the villagers, and forgot to put it on again when he left. Oh, well, make the most of it.
"Yup, that's my ship. I know she doesn't look like much but she's surprisingly roomy." He didn't know why he wasn't taking control of the conversation, relaxing, being the one who asked the questions. But between the information about Andy, and the way the walls seemed to be looking at him, he was just a little uncomfortable.
"I see. And what would a man like you want on Gorant?" The Mayor's voice was dripping with scepticism.
"Excitement," the Doctor snapped back, finally breaking out of his tension, "To be astounded by how singularly stupid your people are and witness the horrible things they do a teenage girl who just tries to help." The Mayor was suddenly on his feet.
"You think it was an easy decision? She had been doing things for a long time, unnatural things, and some even asked that she be burned or killed. I came up with what seemed to be the best solution. She was perfectly placed to be called on when we needed her but it kept her safe from the villagers and their spite." The Doctor weighed up what he had just heard, but then saw a slight glimmer of malice in his eyes.
"No," he said, anger again building, "She was doing wonderful things, incredible things, which helped your farmers care for their crops in the best ways, and kept the village children safe from wandering off. But then she came back one day and could suddenly do even more incredible things, but instead of filling everyone with wonder, it terrified them. So you built her a place, just close enough, so that she could come when she was called, like a good dog, but otherwise out of sight, out of mind. Am I right?" He was almost snarling by the time he was finished. The Mayor had sat back down, and perhaps it was a trick of the light, but he seemed to have paled in the face of the Doctor's ire.
"What was I supposed to do?" he muttered, "They were out for blood, ready to tear Old Matros' place apart just to get their hands on her. She was the best asset this town has ever had. Our profits have tripled in the last year, with her instruction on how to care for the plants. I wasn't about to let her be killed because of some superstition. So, I needed her out of the way…"
"And that's what happened." The Mayor seemed to deflate in the face of this.
"What do you want?" he asked again.
"To understand," the Doctor replied, now glad to be back in control, "What is this thing they were talking about? This voice that possesses people and makes them evil." The Mayor sighed; seemingly wishing the Doctor had asked any question but that,
"It's a sort of spirit, or entity. It's said to have existed since the dawn of time, and it embodies everything evil about people. Their hate, anger, violence, madness; it's said to feed on these things, and it eventually turns its host insane."
"Host? So, it's like a parasite?"
"In a way. It has to get inside the blood stream, but it's said that a drop of blood is all it takes and then it's inside you. Once it is, it begins to turn you into everything that is evil in this world. It brings out the worst in people and eventually…"
"Drives them insane," the Doctor finished, thinking quickly, "Since the dawn of time? Really? I would have thought there'd be more myths about it,"
"It is only said to have come from the dawn of time. Who knows how old it really is?"
"You believe in it then?"
"Did you not see the demonstration outside? Everyone on this planet believes it."
"So essentially it's your version of the monster under the bed," the Doctor said, wondering if the line between fact and stories had blurred in these people's minds.
"But a very real monster," the Mayor countered sharply, "Four generations ago, a man wandered off and got lost in the night. When he returned he was barely recognisable. He wore the skins of wild animals, and had bloody and broken teeth where he had eaten the flesh and bones raw. His eyes were crazed and black as pitch, and he…"
"Wait, wait, black eyes, are you sure?" Remembering Andy's changing eye colour, he was suddenly afraid that this horror story had a grain of truth in it.
"Yes, that is how the story was always told, although it was said that until the day he set out, he had blue eyes. He went insane and killed his own family, his wife and mother, before his father finally killed him. And when they buried him, it was said that his eyes had returned to the proper colour, which meant that it had left him, and was stalking the country around the town. And that is why we do not let our children wander far, lest they be seduced by this monster and welcome it into their body."
An empty silence followed the words of this story. The Doctor supposed it was still a ghost story to terrify children, but as he went through the list of 'symptoms' for this creature, he had to admit that Andy displayed some signs of it. Eyes ranging from green to black, sudden anger flaring up out of nowhere, bitterness and resentment towards the townspeople (though he could hardly fault her for that), that hungry look in her eyes that never failed to send shivers down his back.
Could she be possessed? By this creature? And what if she was? She had said that the events that led to her ostracism had happened nine years ago. Nine years of living with this creature inside her, was it possible her mind had survived that? The man in the story had barely lasted a day. But Andy was special, in a way none of these people were. Could that have given her some immunity? Then he realised that he didn't even have a name for this…parasite.
"Doesn't it have a name?" The Mayor stiffened almost immediately,
"It is never spoken of, for to name it is to call it. I will not bring it here." With that he stood and went towards his bedroom.
"Please, I just need to know what it's called. How can you fight something if you don't even know its name?" The Mayor paused.
"You would fight it?" he asked, "You would rid us of this evil?" Could he? Could he fight something that was possibly even older than him? Could he fight Andy, whose body apparently hosted it? But he needed to know the name, so after a short pause he said,
"Yes." The Mayor stared at him for a few seconds and then turned back to the table. He pulled a thin sheet of paper towards him and wrote faintly on it. Then he quickly thrust it at the Doctor and all but ran into his room. Before he closed the door he called back,
"Please do not continue to interrogate the people of my town. What you have there should satisfy any curiosity that you have." And then he shut the door.
The Doctor was left holding a sheet of paper that contained three words and a drawing. The words were just ordinary words, but put in that particular sequence they chilled his blood. As did the drawing, although if you broke it down into single elements there was nothing scary about it. But together the three serrated horns, which almost looked like teeth, the tail that came out from the horns and curved to a point in an anti-clockwise circle, and the one staring eye that was just beneath the horns, on the start of the tail and staring right at him, it was one of the creepiest things he'd ever seen, and he'd seen vampire fish and weeping angels.
This thing was inside Andy! Supposedly. He'd seen the evidence but he hadn't seen it yet. And to name it was to call it. He looked down at the words printed on the sheet, wondering if he dared to say them aloud. But decided against it. There would be a time when it needed to be called but that wasn't now. What needed to be done at the moment was research. So he put the paper in his pocket and headed outside to the TARDIS.