From A Cage
Mulder first saw the old man from the window of the subway train while heading in to the section office at Metro Center one morning. Somewhere between Smithsonian and the Center, the train carriage came to a temporary halt. Mulder looked, as he occasionally did, out of the window at the walls of the tunnel. Vaguely, thru a crack between the concrete slices which lined the tunnel, he saw a figure of a man, alive but fixed in place staring at the back walls. The train moved off, but Mulder determined to find out what was happening.
While he delved into a mess of old paper and card files in the basement archive, an unwitting intern found some technical background for him. When the Metro was being built in the 1970s, building supplies had been stored at intervals between the planned stations. When the line was finished, these invisible stations were boarded up and smoothly erased with the same panels that lined the tunnel. A few spots were left open following late maintenance. One such supply station was between Smithsonian and Metro Center. So, using an old fire plan from the library, Mulder wound up outside a derelict theater on 12th just around from the Smithsonian. Mulder never went to the theater and had only ever known the name of Ford's on 10th where Lincoln was shot. This building was new to him. The name dimly remembered by a painted sign in the lane was "Pioneer", but there was no other evidence of recent occupation.
Mulder found all the doors firmly sealed, but some of the upper windows at the rear were broken. He found a large enough, dank gap and entered the building. After a long and frustrating thirty minutes, he had descended thru the auditorium and the booking hall down to the administrative offices in the basement, beside the boiler room. Huddling in the alcove overlooking the track was the old man with a terrible tale. He had worked on the rail lines in the last days of track construction. During the quiet period when they had been boarding up the supply areas, he had stumbled upon a creature disturbed by the digging. An evil little creature, part rat, part alligator, burrowing endlessly in the muds. It attempted to run away into the tunnel where the trains would run, up to where the people live. But he scared it back to its hole with the light of the lamp, and shouting.
From then, until now, he had stayed in the secret station, letting his colleagues clock off for the last time some twenty years before, and remaining as guardian around the escape-hole, the shield between the creature below and the city above.
Later in the week, Mulder was on the train again, and passed the spot in the tunnel. But, even at speed, he could see no-one was there. After a tedious day in the sump, Mulder took the short walk back to the theater and pried open the side door. In the basement he found a note saying goodbye, a big patch of streaked blood, and a state of complete disarray. Some personal, disastrous struggle had occurred.
The job was over by Friday; a mindless waste of time that had only satisfied Mulder's like of the quirky and the unusual. No mystery was solved from the file, but one had been created, almost casually, almost accidentally, in the passing.
On the way home, Mulder paced around on the platform with a busy crowd of commuters. From the tunnel he heard the next train approaching, howling and screeching. But then, the howls and screeches became the howls of the entity described by the old man. No-one else noticed; they kept on milling about, business as usual.
Mulder looked down the tunnel to see the light of the approaching train. Laid over the distant spot was a red haze, the sharp glare of a trapped creature. It seemed to have decided to ride the train out of its prison.
Fear grabbed him and he turned to flee. He ascended the escalators in a hurry. Sounds of shrieking pursued him from the platforms and a rushing, thrashing sound like tentacles or waves. The sound of the creature pursued him up the escalator to street level where he emerged into the relative sparkle of the municipal buildings.
Mulder felt his movements overtaken by a wave of self-protective panic. He was conveyed across the sidewalk without the apparent effort of arms and legs. But speed was clear to him. And escape. This was fear without thinking. Pursuit fuelled by terror.
His only recourse was to return to the shabby office block where he had been cursing his luck for a week. The lobby of the federal building was dim and unpopulated; security absent on meaningless rounds. Mulder transcended the ethereal stairs, the crackling, slapping monstrous sound shadowing his fleet movements.
The room darkened and tilted. Or maybe his view changed as he fell forward. His cheek lay against the floor, his head attached oddly to it, the rest of his body askance. The floor shook and the windows rattled. Old construction gave way onto new as dirty bricks tumbled onto toughened glass below.
Mulder found a cellphone in the drawer of one of the desks. He called all the numbers he could think of, Dana, the building reception, the Assistant Director. No reply. From anyone. He called 911 and a very efficient call handler listened patiently. "The Federal Building? On 11th. You say it's collapsing. It's fallen down? Where are you sir? In the building."
It was then that he remembered the words of the old man. Fear was a most dangerous thing, and Mulder was more willing to believe in monsters most.
The fear was real enough to keep the old man in the tunnel for twenty years, and real enough to spin Mulder's head until the room turned with it. But now, the fear in the tunnel, the idea in the heads of stupid men, had broken free and was walking the streets.