CHAPTER 9

Not Quite Butterflies

‘What are they, Doctor?’ hissed Amy.

‘Vispic leeches.’ The Doctor smacked the heel of one palm against his tall forehead. ‘Of course! Vispics fit our suspect profile perfectly.’ He stared at the row upon row of dangling sacs. ‘But I’ve never seen a brood so large –’

At that moment a pinpoint of orange light appeared in the darkness ahead of them.

‘And it looks like they’re still arriving,’ murmured the Doctor.

The dot of light flared and widened, quickly becoming a perfect circle nearly a metre across. Amy had the distinct impression that the light was shining through the circle as though it was a hole in the air, admitting the orange glow from somewhere behind it.

She watched in horror as something pale and wet began to wriggle out of the hole in the air. A bulbous, maggoty body slowly squirmed its way through. It was off-white, with blotches of grey. Its flattened head – if that was what the first end to appear was – was dotted with dark, fibrous patches. It reminded Amy of the exposed surface of a verruca.

Dragging its tail end free, the wriggling thing flopped on to the concrete floor with an unpleasant squelch. The luminous hole it had come through immediately shrank back to the size of a pinpoint, then vanished.

Amy watched, transfixed, as the creature slowly squirmed itself across the floor to one of the vertical steel columns. It began to wriggle its way up towards a horizontal beam from which several of the pale grey sacs already dangled.

‘Is that what’s inside each of those pouchy things?’ Amy asked the Doctor.

‘The cocoons? Yes.’

‘Yuck.’ Amy watched the creature squirm slowly up the column. ‘It doesn’t look particularly deadly, though,’ she observed. ‘Gross, yeah. But not dangerous.’

The Doctor gave her a dark look. ‘Tell that to our friend from the changing room.’

‘But how did one of those things even get near him?’ asked Amy. ‘They look way too … sluggy to corner anyone.’

‘They didn’t need to corner him,’ said the Doctor. ‘Vispics can drain neural energy from a host without any physical contact. As long as they can get within a reasonable range, they can feed at will. From under here, they’d have been able to latch on to that poor chap we found without any difficulty. Once they’d begun feeding, he would have felt a growing sense of inexplicable unhappiness, fear and ultimately utter terror. It would have driven him to lock himself away, in a desperate attempt to hide – though he would have had no idea what from.’

‘Sounds horrible,’ said Amy.

‘Indeed. And, as the Vispics drained away the last of his neural energy, he would simply have lost the will to live.’ The Doctor shook his head sadly. ‘Dreadful.’

He was silent for a moment or two.

‘Don’t be fooled into thinking that Vispics are always sluggish, Pond. You’re looking at their young, their larval form. They’re a species that metamorphose as they mature – they change form entirely. In time, given the right conditions, an adult leech will emerge from each of those cocoons.’ The Doctor peered across at the nearest row of dangling sacs. ‘In fact, judging by those burst ones, I’d say some already have.’

Amy was still watching the larva in horrified fascination. It had now squirmed its way out along the horizontal girder, and was busy securing its tail end to it with a blob of sticky goo it had just secreted.

‘So – they’re sort of like caterpillars turning into butterflies?’

‘A little bit, yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘If you can imagine a caterpillar that feeds on neural energy rather than cabbage. And, instead of a butterfly, a large, ultra-intelligent, ruthless predator. With pincers. And no pretty wings.’

‘The grown-ups are that bad, huh?’

‘If you’re after classic chase-you-and-eat-you scary, Pond, an adult Vispic is about as good as it gets.’

Amy gave him a hard look. ‘You say that like you’re impressed. Got a real thing for monsters, haven’t you? It’s like being out and about with one of those loony wildlife presenters who only seek out the deadliest animals. The ones who like prodding snakes or winding up crocodiles …’

‘The biology of the Vispics certainly fascinates me,’ admitted the Doctor. ‘Their adult form is really quite something.’ His voice suddenly dropped to the quietest of whispers. ‘But don’t take my word for it. See for yourself!’

Three large, unearthly creatures had just become visible in the gloom up ahead. They each had a long, flattened body shape, which broadened suddenly at both head- and tail-end. Their hammer-headed, hammer-tailed bodies moved on six multi-jointed legs. Their fourth and foremost two limbs were hideously outsized and ended in cruel crescent-shaped claws.

The creatures’ midsections still retained something of the bulbous, maggoty shape of their larval form but, instead of blotched white, their bodies were now darker and covered all over in a strange, shifting multicoloured sheen like a film of oil on water.

One of the creatures was significantly larger than the other two. Older, perhaps, thought Amy. They were moving about under the dangling cocoons, as though patrolling.

‘Keep very still!’ the Doctor mouthed at her. ‘They don’t know we’re here – yet.’

‘Great, I really am in a wildlife documentary,’ Amy hissed back. ‘How can you tell?’

‘Because as soon as they do sense us, they’ll attack. And there’s a very obvious sign when that’s about to happen.’

‘Which is?’

To Amy’s astonishment, the largest of the three adult Vispics suddenly disappeared. Completely.

‘That!’ cried the Doctor. ‘Run!’