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It had felt so wrong to be there, and she should've said something, but she hadn't wanted to ruin the fun. Now Molly Hooper was staring at a dark reflection of herself, with eyes black as coal and skin tainted by a poisonous spiderweb. The dead-eyed gaze from her counterpart warned of the consequences of looking away.
It had gone so wrong, so fast, just thinking about it made her head spin.
Four hours ago…
"Vas Kosda! The entire planet is Halloween all the time. Like a huge carnival park year-round."
The Doctor beamed as he closed the doors of the TARDIS behind them, and Molly allowed her eyes to dance across the strings of orange and maroon lighting. Dozens of people from dozens of species streamed up and down the wide street, stopping at various booths and buildings. Cobwebs covered the Victorian style lamp posts that lit the roadway. The sun, which never fully rose, was starting to sink back below the horizon, casting the clouds in brilliants shades of pink and orange.
"And I thought Rebecca did Halloween big," Molly remarked as she slipped her hand into the Doctor's.
There wouldn't be any saving her from getting separated, she was sure, but she was willing to give it a try after their last…escapade. He happily took it and led her up the street. They stopped at various vendors, looking at the treats and trappings they sold. The Doctor found a set of faux fangs and Molly doubled over in laughter when he held them up. Molly found a gorgeous dress that was fit for a vampire queen, and the Doctor did his best to goad her into buying it. They passed one movie theater after another, each with horror flicks from across the galaxy playing inside. They also came across a number of haunted houses, none of which enticed Molly, but many of which she endured for his sake. She did firmly set her foot down at the last one, dubiously eying the skeleton hanging outside the door and attempting to convince herself that it was simply a good facsimile.
"I'll stay out here, thank you."
"I can-" he started, but she shook her head.
"No, no, don't let me ruin your fun! It's just a few minutes. What could happen?"
"A lot," he remarked. She tsked and shooed him inside.
She sat on the bench once she finally convinced him to go, and she looked at her phone. No new messages since they'd landed. It was particularly odd to not hear from Sherlock for so long. She tapped the phone to her chin and sighed. He'd find the whole affair so frivolous. He'd scoff and shake his head, and she would smile and try to convince him to play along. He'd simply start deducing everything, possibly ruining some movies and costumes in the process, and she had no doubt he'd be thrown out of every haunted house on the street. She could imagine the delight in his eyes at the annoyance he brought, the smugness as she gently berated him, the smirk…oh, that smirk.
She shook her head. No Sherlock thoughts. Today was for Halloween.
"Come, pretty lady," a haggled old woman beckoned.
Molly good naturedly waved her off, like she had with so many other acts that had roamed the festival city. Unlike the others, she seemed insistent, never breaking character as she reached out and tried to pull Molly with her.
"It will only be a moment. Just a sweet little parlor trick," the woman said.
"I'm waiting for my friend, I wouldn't want him to worry," Molly politely declined.
"One minute is all I ask. It's a short little show. He won't mind."
The Doctor would very much mind, but he'd also very much understand, once Molly explained it to him. And besides…a minute couldn't hurt.
She smiled acquiescently and followed the woman into a tent. The material of the tent was canvas, like the others, but seemed to fall heavier. The deep royal purple was streaked with stripes of black that seemed to spin and twirl up to the pointed top. The curtains pulled back at their approach, as though their mere presence was enough to push them away. Inside was another divider that separated them from the room beyond.
"Enter and see yourself," the woman ordered simply, sweeping her arm toward the inner chamber.
In the pit of her stomach, Molly's instincts revolted. Her heart rate increased and her skin tingled with a chill that flowed from beyond the veil. There was something beyond she didn't think she wanted to interact with, but to humor the woman, and possibly because of a bit of social pressure – after all, what would the Doctor say? – she drew the curtain back and entered.
On the other side was a simple standing vanity. She saw her movements in perfect copy. Her hand let go of the curtain and she approached the mirror slowly, intrigued by a difference she sensed, more than saw, in her own reflection. Perhaps this mirror, like many at the funhouse or the hall they'd been through, would distort her image as she approached. It didn't seem to, though. Her proportions remained perfectly the same as she drew closer, and she lifted her fingers to tap the mirror. An inch from the surface, they stopped. The alarm bells in her mind rose to a sudden, sharp crescendo. There was something wrong, and she wasn't seeing it.
She shook her head, turned away, and began to leave. A soft ruffle behind her caused her to turn, expecting a jumpscare from behind by a little kid hiding under the vanity, or slipping in from another hidden section to startle her. When she completed the rotation, she saw herself, reaching out of the mirror, and she froze.
It was, for all intents and purposes, her that she saw staring back. The same mousy brown hair, the same striped jumper and soft red sweater. The difference laid in the eyes that were black as obsidian, glittering in the dim light. They started into her, as she stared into them.
The absolute last thing she wanted to do was approach the figure, but the same instincts she'd been ignoring earlier told her to draw close, so she took a single step forward. The creature in the mirror, the Molly That Was Not, took a matching step backwards. She advanced again, and the other retreated. So Molly walked back up to a couple steps away from the mirror and saw that her counterpart was just as close as she was. The eyes watched with curiosity and a frightening intelligence.
She reached for her phone, and the other Molly copied the movement. She dialed the Doctor's number and listened to it ring before realizing that it would filter through the TARDIS. He had no cellphone to speak of. That was an issue that would need to be remedied after this little mishap. She could only hope that it would find her somehow. In the meantime, she continued to stare at her reflection, and watched as the black poison began to overtake it step by step.
"So much for never wandering off," the Doctor murmured, scratching his head.
Molly was not at the bench she'd been sitting on when he'd left her. She wasn't at any of the shops around, nor was she standing under the streetlights she'd been so enchanted with. He was rather at a loss as to where to look. He waited a whole minute and a half, hoping she might round a corner, when the idea struck him. Molly's phone.
The sonic retained the scan signature of her phone from when he reconfigured it for universal roaming. He uploaded it to the scanner and pressed the button. The sonic pinged back at him with its familiar warble, which was already fairly strong. She must've been close by, so at least she didn't wander far.
He followed it to a small, nondescript tent. Its purple and black designs, similar to the rest of the booths at the fair, seemed much more sinister somehow. As her approached, an old woman stepped out. She eyed him with a shrewd expression, seeming to weigh if he would be a good candidate for the trick she had inside. Whatever she saw in him distinctly put her off that idea. She sized him up, then stood to a full, authoritative height. It was a good three inches taller than her previous slouched appearance would suggest she had.
"I'm afraid another is using this tent right know. Perhaps you can come back later," she said in a crackly voice.
"I think that's my friend in there," the Doctor replied. "We're about to leave, so I'd like to gather her and go now."
There was the slightest flash of alarm in the woman's eyes, which set off all kinds of alarms in the Doctor's own mind. "The show can't be interrupted. You'll have to go."
He clicked his teeth. "You know, I didn't think I will."
Fast as a flash, he darted by her, and while she sputtered and shouted denials, he pushed through the first veil and the second, coming face to face with a Molly taken over by corruption. The Molly-in-the-mirror had eyes that were dark as the vast vacuum of space. Her veins ran black on the surface with some kind of poison, and she sported an absolutely sinister smile. Standing further back in the mirror than then real Molly was, she didn't seem to take notice of the Doctor, fixated only on the woman she was copying.
But Molly did. She reached her hand out, not looking away from the copy, and the Doctor took it. She squeezed his hand in pure relief.
"I knew you'd come looking for me," she greeted. "That woman coerced me into coming in here."
"Lovely old lady just dying for you to see her show?" he guessed.
"I'm just too nice," she lamented.
"No, you're not too nice. You're exactly the right amount of nice, Dr. Molly Hooper," he soothed.
Not letting go of her hand, he stepped forward and scanned the mirror. The sonic responded with pure confusion. It could not track the origin of the mirror. The creature inside was a carbon-based organic lifeform, but with a vastly different mix of amino acids and other base building blocks. It offered him no solution as to stopping the creature so clearly eager to be unleashed upon the world. He frowned.
"Perhaps I should've asked that woman where she got this mirror," he mused.
"Sonic not helpful?"
"Mmm, no."
"So what's the plan?"
"Well…" He leaned in. "I'd like to talk with it, see if I can maybe gather what it is and where it's coming from, but I'm guessing by the look on its face that it's not very interested in talking to us."
"Which is fine, because I'm not interested in talking to it," Molly grumped. "My eyes are burning."
He looked back at her, then stopped. She winced at his sudden change of expression, but he really couldn't help it. Her pupils were shrunken to an abnormally small size, especially given the lack of bright light in the small room. Her irises, too, were shrinking, replaced by blank white. Whatever it was staring at Molly, it was clearly causing some sort of change in her. The Doctor scanned her with the sonic to see what kind of change, and was surprised – and not a little worried – to see that her DNA was slowly being written out. Like a child lightly erasing the same penciled in word over and over, until it finally vanished. On that analogy, they were probably on the second erasing. Another go around and Molly would start becoming unresponsive.
"What's it doing?" she asked, a tremor of fear in her voice.
"Nothing we can't fix," he deflected.
He scanned the mirror again. The reflection was now looking at him with the same smile. It was sizing him up, like the woman outside had. It apparently liked what it saw, because it shifted to face him fully and its features began to morph. The black faded away and the reflection blurred as the mirror – or the creature in it, really, he didn't know – transformed into its new host.
"Doctor-" Molly started.
"I see it," he replied. He looked at the vanity and grinned. "Ever had a streak of bad luck, Molly?"
"Um, why?" she asked.
The only answer she received was him reaching out to the mirror and throwing it to the ground. She shrieked as it shattered, a sound far deeper than it should've been. A deep hiss filled the room, like a compressor letting off steam. The Doctor whirled around and grabbed Molly's hand, and she took his without thinking. He pulled her back out toward the entrance, and she gasped as he did so. It took her a moment to find her footing, and by the time she did, they were already outside, a good distance away from the tent. The tent's overseer was nowhere to be found.
They stood there, panting, for a grand total of three minutes before they concluded that whatever it was had been stopped – killed, perhaps, but trapped in an indefinite form at the very least – and they could breathe. They looked at each other and stifled smiles.
"We're not laughing over that," she said, attempting to maintain her composure.
"We'll try not to," he corrected.
They didn't do a very good job of it.