The fields surrounding Ringstone were wreathed with mist as the morning sun slowly started to inch its way above the crow-filled trees. Abruptly, the chattering birds were sent spiralling into the air, cawing in annoyance as a grating, grinding rasp shattered the peace of the English countryside, and the bulky, blue shape of the TARDIS slowly faded into existence.
The instant it had fully materialised, the door was snatched open and the Doctor poked his head out into the morning air. In this incarnation the Doctor was a tall, thin-faced man with a tousled mop of silver-grey hair and intense eyes framed by unruly, expressive eyebrows.
Satisfied that he was in the right place, he stepped from the TARDIS, allowing a young, elfin-faced woman to follow him out.
‘Where’s this then?’ asked Clara, looked around with mistrust. ‘Distant past? Far-flung future? Alien planet that just happens to look like the English countryside?’
The Doctor glared at her. ‘Wiltshire.’
‘Wiltshire?’ Clara gave him a nod of mock approval. ‘You really are showing me the exotic corners of the universe.’
‘Not entirely my choice,’ said the Doctor turning slowly around on the spot as he tried to get his bearings. ‘The TARDIS picked up some ley-line disturbance. Not much, but enough to warrant a brief investigation.’
‘Ley lines?’ Clara stared at him in disbelief. ‘Please don’t tell me that you’ve regenerated into a hippie.’
‘I’ll have you know that my tambourine solo was one of the highlights of Woodstock. Ah, There we are …’ The Doctor was squinting through the clearing mist at a distant church spire. ‘So, that should mean …’ He traced an imaginary line in the air from the spire to the TARDIS then onwards to the far side of the field. ‘This way.’
He set off through the mist, arm held out in front of him like some suited and booted scarecrow. With a sigh of weary resignation Clara pulled the TARDIS door shut and set off after him.
As soon as it was light, Kevin hurried downstairs and, pulling wellingtons on over his pyjamas, unlocked the back door and cautiously made his way over to where he had seen the fox.
Secretly he was hoping that there would be nothing to see, that he could dismiss what he had caught a glimpse of last night as nothing more than the result of an overactive imagination, but as he approached the end of the garden he could see a bundle of reddish-brown fur lying in the flowerbed.
Nervously, Kevin approached the remains of the dead fox. It looked strange – shrunken somehow. Picking up a discarded bamboo cane from his dad’s vegetable patch, he prodded at the corpse. As he did so the fox seemed to collapse in on itself. To Kevin’s horror he realised that there was nothing left of the flesh of the animal; it had all been eaten away by something. All that was left was skin and bone, a shell.
As Kevin knelt down to get a closer look, something rustled in the shrubbery, and he caught a glimpse of something black and shiny scuttling along the bottom of the fence that bordered next door’s garden. Gripping his stick, Kevin pushed aside the branches, trying to get a better look at whatever the creature was.
With a sudden burst of speed, it vanished into a burrow in the earth. Kevin poked his stick into the hole. It was about the size of a rabbit burrow, but whatever had made this was no rabbit. In the darkness of the earth Kevin was certain he could see shapes moving. Wet, black shapes.
He leaned forward.
‘Kevin?’
He jumped as his mum’s voice rang out from the kitchen doorway. ‘What are you doing out there in your pyjamas? You’re going to be late for school again. Get back inside this instant!’
‘I’m coming.’ With a final poke into the hole, Kevin abandoned the bamboo cane and hurried back indoors.
As the door slammed shut something black and shiny poked its head from the burrow, long antennae twitching in the morning air.
Clara wandered along the well-worn footpath through the field, enjoying the quiet stillness that was peculiar to early morning in the English countryside. It was rare that she had the opportunity to enjoy such moments of calm. Life with the Doctor – and life with the pupils of Coal Hill School for that matter – tended to be a lot more frantic.
She stopped, closing her eyes for a moment, listening to the hum of bees in the wild flowers, the cawing of the circling crows and the distant drone of a tractor. Shoreditch was never this tranquil. She wondered if Danny Pink would like the countryside. He didn’t strike her as a country boy, but then Danny was always surprising her. Perhaps when she got back she should suggest a trip out somewhere, do a nice walk, and find a pub garden to have lunch in.
Aware that she was starting to daydream, Clara set off along the path once more. When she finally caught up with the Doctor, he was squatting in the centre of a wide circle of standing stones, peering at readings on his sonic screwdriver.
There were about a dozen or so of the stones, some no more than stubs of rock, others taller than she was. Each of them was inscribed with swirling, Celtic-looking patterns, the grooves in the stone worn shallow from hundreds of years of British weather.
‘OK,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Ley lines it is, then.’
The Doctor had risen to his feet and was using his sonic screwdriver to scan the air above his head.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Checking to see whether there’s a trapped spacecraft hovering in the hyperspatial dimension above the circle or not.’
‘And … that happens a lot does it?’
‘More often than you might think. But not this time.’ He snapped the screwdriver closed and slipped it into his jacket pocket. ‘This was the source of the energy reading that the TARDIS picked up, all right.’ He waved an arm expansively around the circle. ‘But the old girl has got her timing out a bit. This is totally dormant. Has been for years.’
‘And you can tell that because …?’
‘One of the stones is missing.’ The Doctor pointed to where a stumpy bollard plugged a gap in the circle.
There was a small plaque bolted to the concrete with a short history of the site. Clara wandered over to it and started to read: ‘The King’s Guards is a Bronze Age monument located within the boundary of Ringstone Village in Wiltshire. Whilst its exact purpose remains unknown, the most likely explanation is that the stones form some kind of astrological calendar. The circle was damaged during a German bombing raid during the Second World War.’
Clara frowned. ‘What on earth would the Germans be doing bombing a sleepy Wiltshire village?’
The Doctor’s expression darkened. ‘When did the armed forces ever need a good reason to bomb anything?’
Clara mentally kicked herself. Since his regeneration, the Doctor had become decidedly prickly in his dealings with anything remotely military. That in itself might not have been a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that her new boyfriend – her potential new boyfriend – was an ex-soldier.
She changed the subject. ‘So, are we going to wander into the village? See if we can find somewhere to get some breakfast?’
‘You go ahead; I’d like to see if I can work out what the real purpose of this circle was. If I can just recreate whatever pictogram was on this missing stone …’
The Doctor rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a stub of chalk. With quick, deliberate strokes he started drawing swirling Celtic patterns onto the concrete bollard.
‘That’s vandalism,’ said Clara sternly.
The Doctor just glared at her.
‘Suit yourself.’ Clara shrugged. ‘But don’t blame me if you get locked up by the local police.’
‘Then I shall rely on you to give me an exemplary character reference.’ The Doctor started to dart from stone to stone, peering at the different symbols for a moment, then returning to his bollard, scrubbing out some chalk lines with his sleeve and adding new ones in their place.
Clara opened her mouth to retort that providing a character reference for a man who had recently changed his entire character might prove to be a little tricky, but then thought better of it. She was still getting used to this version of the Doctor. She had always known where she stood with her Doctor, always knew the boundaries of their relationship. This new one, however …
It was just going to take a bit of time, that was all.
Leaving the Doctor to his scribbling, Clara set off along the path towards the village.
Kevin checked his watch anxiously. He had now been waiting at the village bus stop for nearly twenty minutes. He was going to be late for school. Again.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t as though it was his fault this time. He had arrived at the bus stop with plenty of time to spare; the bus just hadn’t turned up. Not that his teachers or his parents would be interested in hearing any excuses. It had been made quite plain that they wouldn’t tolerate him being late again, no matter what the reason was.
The school was a good fifteen-minute walk away. If he set off now, he might just make it in time and save himself yet another evening of detention.
Kevin took one final look down the road to ensure that the bus wasn’t coming. It would be just his luck for it to arrive just as he had decided to walk.
It suddenly struck Kevin that he hadn’t seen any traffic on the road whatsoever. You couldn’t exactly describe Ringstone as having a rush hour as such, but there was usually some traffic.
Kevin shrugged. Perhaps there had been an accident. There were always lambs in the road at this time of year. The young ones didn’t seem to have any road sense, and it was common for cars swerving to avoid them to end up in a ditch somewhere.
Consoling himself with the thought that if the road through the village was blocked then some of the other kids might be late as well, Kevin set off at a brisk pace. As he walked, he found himself thinking back to the remains of the fox that he had found in the garden. It was horrible. It had to have something to do with the black shape that he had seen in the burrow. He was certain that it had been an insect of some kind, but it was huge. Kevin was certain that there were no insects that big native to Britain.
A low, droning noise made him look up in alarm. Surely that wasn’t the bus? As he did, something large buzzed past his head, making him duck. Kevin spun around to see what it was that had almost collided with him.
His eyes opened wide in astonishment. Sitting on a fencepost was a mosquito. But it was vast! It was easily as big as his hand. The creature tipped its head on one side, compound eyes regarding Kevin coldly, wings twitching. Fascinated and repulsed in equal measure, Kevin edged forward to get a closer look. As he did so, the huge insect launched itself into the air, its wings thrumming noisily.
Kevin stumbled backwards, swiping out in panic as the creature flew straight at him. He felt his hand connect with the spindly body and it crashed down onto the tarmac in an untidy tangle of legs.
Heart hammering in his chest, Kevin started to back away. The insect writhed on the roadway, trying to right itself. He looked around frantically for something to defend himself with. A flash of colour in the hedgerow caught his eye. It was a garish floral umbrella, probably discarded during the recent storm. Kevin grabbed the handle, struggling to pull it free. The metal ribs were bent and twisted, catching in the tightly-packed branches.
From behind him he could hear the deep bass humming of the mosquito’s wings as it took flight once more. Not daring to look around Kevin pulled at the umbrella with all his might until, with a rip of fabric, it tore free.
Screaming with fear, Kevin spun around, lashing out with the improvised weapon. The mosquito was right behind him. Insect and umbrella collided with a sickening crunch. Caught up in the flapping fabric, the struggling insect wrenched the umbrella from Kevin’s hand, and the entire tangled mess crashed to the ground.
Kevin didn’t hesitate. Running forward, he stamped on the heaving, fluttering lump that thrashed under the fabric until the terrifying buzzing finally stopped.
Breathless and shaking, he stood back as thick yellow liquid started to ooze from under the brightly patterned umbrella. Then, from the fields around him, came more of the terrible noise, and half a dozen spindly shapes started to rise from the long grass.
Kevin turned and fled.
*
Clara followed the path from the stone circle along the side of a railway embankment. A wooden footpath sign indicated ‘Ringstone Village Centre’ in one direction, and ‘Wyndham 3 miles’ in the other. She was about to make her way down into the village when she caught sight of an underpass along the path in the other direction. There seemed to be something hanging just inside the entranceway. It looked like something wrapped in a sheet.
Puzzled, Clara started towards it. As she got closer she realised with a sudden chill that she had been horribly mistaken. It wasn’t a sheet that billowed around the entrance of the tunnel. It was a web.
And there was a body in it.