by Mike Tucker
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, pro
bably 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.
Chapter
Two
Veterinary Surgeon Angela Drabble was just unlocking the door to her practice when she heard her name being called out and the sound of a baby crying.
She turned to see Gabby Nichols hurrying across the village green. She had her son in one arm, and something bundled up in a teacloth in the other. Her daughter was following along behind, dragging her feet and wearing the petulant pout that all 3-year-olds seemed to have when being asked to do something that they’d rather not do.
‘Morning, Gabby.’ Angela looked at the bundled teacloth. ‘Not another injured blackbird, is it?’
‘Not this time, Ang. I didn’t know where else to bring it.’
Angela could see that Gabby was flustered and scared. She frowned. That wasn’t like her. In the short time that Angela had known Gabby, she had struck her as being a very together young woman, one not easily panicked.
‘Well, you’d better come inside and show me what you’ve got.’ Taking the bundle from her, Angela ushered Gabby and Emily into the surgery.
Once inside, she placed the bundle down on one of the examination tables and spent the next few minutes making sure that Emily was suitably entertained with a Shaun the Sheep book and a mug of squash. There were always kids in the surgery insisting that they had to stay near their pets, and Angela always made sure that she had plenty of material to distract them.
Leaving Emily in the waiting room, Angela closed the door to the examination room and started to unwrap the teacloth.
‘Now, let’s see what we have …’
As the last flap of fabric fell away she gave a sharp intake of breath.
‘Oh, my God.’
Doing his best to avoid contact with the sticky web, the Doctor made a quick examination of the body. It was a man, and he’d been dead for some time. The Doctor ran his sonic screwdriver over the two massive puncture wounds in the man’s shoulder. The flesh around the injury was green and diseased-looking, but that wasn’t what had killed him. As far as the Doctor could tell, he’d died of a massive heart attack, and then something had dragged him here and cocooned him.
It was the ‘something’ that really worried the Doctor.
He tapped a finger lightly against one of the strands of web that held the corpse to the ceiling. Even with the lightest of touches it took considerable effort to pull his finger free.
The underpass was full of it. It had been the perfect place to trap prey.
He stepped back out into the daylight, mind racing. Somewhere in this peaceful-looking countryside there was a very, very big spider. Clara stood some distance away, chewing nervously on her fingernails. The Doctor couldn’t blame her. The corpse wasn’t a pretty sight. Visible through the veil of web, the man’s face was contorted in fear and pain, lips drawn back in an awful grimace.
He walked back over to where she was waiting,
‘Is he …?’
‘Yes. Very.’ The Doctor placed a hand on her shoulder and gently led her away from the underpass.
‘Surely we aren’t just going to leave him hanging there?’
‘That web is incredibly strong, and I really don’t fancy being caught up in it when whatever spun it returns.’
Clara looked around nervously. ‘You think it’s still around here somewhere?’
‘It’s possible,’ admitted the Doctor. ‘And on this occasion I’m not going to suggest that we just deal with it ourselves. We need to go into the village and get help.’
Clara nodded. ‘All right.’ She gave the Doctor a weak smile. ‘I’m never going to complain about you taking me somewhere dull again.’
The two of them made their way down the footpath into the village. Ringstone was picture-postcard pretty. Stone cottages, some with deep, thatched roofs, lined both sides of a wide, open village green dotted with trees and benches. In the centre was a tall limestone monument, a war memorial of some kind. A bright red telephone box stood outside a tiny village store, low stone walls bordered gardens brimming with flowers, and in the distance the stocky, stone tower of a Norman church poked up above the rooftops.
The Doctor looked around, quickly taking in his surroundings. ‘Nothing here’, he muttered to himself. ‘There’s nothing here …’
‘That’s a good thing, though. Right?’ Clara was getting worried now. ‘I mean it’s got to be better for a giant spider to be here rather than in the middle of some heaving city centre, hasn’t it?’
‘That rather depends on what we’re going to be able to find here to help us stop it,’ said the Doctor ruefully. ‘I can’t exactly see the village store being equipped to handle a giant spider invasion, can you?’
The sound of a car door being unlocked made the Doctor look around. Not far away a woman had opened up the back of a Range Rover and was loading a large metal tray into the boot.
‘Come on,’ said the Doctor, ‘We’d better break the bad news to the locals.’
Angela’s head was still reeling with the implications of the creature that Gabby had brought into the surgery. She had quite reasonably assumed that she had been brought some bird or rodent that had made its way into the house or been hit by a car; a not uncommon occurrence in these parts. Nothing had prepared her for what had been inside the tea towel.
It was a common-or-garden crane fly – a daddy longlegs – but it was massive, nearly forty centimetres from wingtip to wingtip. Unfortunately, it had been quite badly mangled by Gabby in her panicked efforts to kill it. Even so, there was enough of it left for Angela to conduct a reasonably thorough examination.
Promising Gabby that she would let her know as soon as she had any more information, she had bundled the young woman and her children out of the surgery. Gabby was terrified that there might be more of the things in her house, but Angela had assured her that this had to be a fluke of some kind. There was no chance of there being more of them.
Only partially reassured, Gabby had headed off to wait for the hardware store to open, intending to buy as many cans of insect repellent as she could lay her hands on.
As soon as she had gone, Angela had discarded the tea cloth and laid out the remains of the giant insect on a stainless steel tray on the examination
table. After a good half an hour dissecting and probing she had to admit that she was stumped. As far as she had been able to tell, everything about the insect was normal – everything except for its size.
Realising that there was a limit to how much of an investigation she could make into the creature’s origins on her own, she had decided to take it over to Dr Goodchild at the cottage hospital in Chippenham. With luck he would be able to help her perform some proper tests, possibly even using their ultrasound scanner. She had decided not to phone ahead and tell him she was coming. If she started to talk about giant insects he was liable to think that she was losing her marbles. It was better to just present him with the monstrous thing face to face.
She was loading the tray into the back of her car when she became aware of two figures – a man and a woman – walking towards her.
‘Good morning.’ The man had a Scottish twang to his voice.
Angela carefully pulled a cloth over the insect in the boot.
‘Good morning.’
‘Can you tell me if there’s a police station in the village?’
‘No. The nearest one is in Wyndham. But Charlie Bevan, the local constable, lives just across the green.’ Angela frowned. ‘Is everything all right? Has there been an accident?’
‘Not exactly …’ The man and the woman glanced at each other. ‘You might have a slight insect problem.’
Angela felt the blood train from her face. ‘Oh, no. Please don’t tell me there are more …’
The man’s bushy eyebrows rose quizzically. ‘More?’
‘You’d better have a look at this.’ Angela lifted the cloth from the steel tray. ‘I doubt that you’ll ever see a bigger insect.’
Clara perched on a stool in the corner of the vet’s surgery watching as the Doctor and Angela bent over the examination table, peering at the huge insect lying under the bright lights.
It never ceased to amaze her just how quickly the Doctor managed to completely take control of a situation, whether it be on an alien planet or in an English country village.
