When Scully walked in the office, she saw Mulder's legs sticking out from behind his desk. It looked like he was lying facedown on the floor. She hurried over to him.
"Oh my God. Mulder?"
"Yeah," he said. His head was turned to the side, his cheek against the floor. He was peering under the file cabinet set against the back wall.
"What are you doing? For a moment, I thought something had happened to you."
"Something did happen to me, Scully."
"What?"
He got to his knees, stood up, and smoothed the front of his oxford shirt and tie with the palm of his hand.
"I can't find the poster."
"What poster?"
"The poster," he said, thumbing toward the blank space on the wall behind him. "The one hanging behind my desk. The one that says, 'I want to believe.'"
He stood there with arms akimbo and sighed.
"Did you check the trash? Maybe it fell off the wall and the cleaning crew threw it away."
He sat on the edge of his desk and put his face in his hands.
"This is bad luck, Scully. And it's terrible for my mojo. I had everything perfect. The office feels empty now. It feels wrong."
"A place for everything and everything in its place. Are we working on anything new today, or are you planning to take bereavement leave over this?"
He got off the desk, walked across the room, and pulled down the projector screen. He switched on the slide projector and then went to turn off the overhead lights.
"Don't you think it's time you graduate to PowerPoint or something?" she asked.
"Don't rush me, Scully. Anyway, we're not gonna be able to enjoy many technological amenities where we're going."
"And where's that."
He clicked the hand-held remote to begin the slideshow. Upon the white screen appeared a serene photo of a beach and some cabins set against a forest backdrop. The photo had been taken from the water.
"Crystal Lake, New Jersey."
"It's lovely," she said.
"Isn't it? Look at all that natural beauty. You can practically smell the scented pine trees and feel the cool air coming off the water. The lake is well stocked with bass and has twenty miles of hiking trails. But here's something they don't tell you in the travel brochure."
The next slide showed a newspaper clipping with the headline, "Long Night at Camp Blood: Six Murdered, Killer Decapitated by Survivor."
"Over the past sixty years, this idyllic lakeside community has been the setting for—are you ready for this, Scully?—over two hundred serial murders."
She straightened up.
"Two hundred?"
She looked astonished. Mulder was pleased.
"Two hundred," he repeated.
"It all starts in 1957, when a young boy named Jason Voorhees allegedly drowns in Crystal Lake while attending summer camp. A year later, two camp counselors are found murdered, and the place is shut down indefinitely. Things are quiet until 1979, when the camp reopens for business. This time, seven counselors bite the dust before one of them manages to turn the tables on the killer. The killer turns out to be..."
The wheel of slides turned with a whir and a click. A middle-aged woman smiled sweetly at them from a photo beneath the headline, "Seven Camp Counselors Killed by Local Woman in Brutal Mass Murder."
"Kindly Mrs. Voorhees, the mother of the drowning victim I mentioned earlier. She was assumed to be responsible for the murders in 1957 as well."
He continued:
"Five years go by without incident. And just when the grief-stricken community is starting to move on, another murder spree occurs. This time, eight counselors at a different campsite on the other side of the lake. It's at this point that the local government decides to start sweeping things under the proverbial bear-skin rug in front of the fireplace."
He turned to look at Scully. She thought for moment.
"If kindly Mrs. Voorhees was killed in self-defense by a would-be victim, then who perpetrated these murders?"
Whirrrr. Click. The newspaper clipping appeared to be older than the others. "Local Boy Vanishes from Camp, Presumed Drowned."
"If the vengeful cycle is to continue," he said, "it would have to be Mrs. Voorhees's son, Jason Voorhees."
"I thought you said Jason Voorhees drowned."
"Allegedly drowned. A search of the lake never turned up his body."
"So this little boy hides out in the woods for twenty years until his mother dies at the hands of a counselor, at which point he then decides to take revenge on the archetype by murdering camp counselors ad infinitum."
"I couldn't have said it better myself."
"OK," she said with measured skepticism. "Keep going."
Whirrrr. Click. "Jason Voorhees Slain."
"And just like his mother before him, he's killed by a would-be victim."
"I'm beginning to see a pattern here."
"The pattern continues. In 1990, a paramedic named Roy Burns goes on a rampage using the same modus operandi. Again, the assailant is killed by a potential victim trying to defend herself. Investigators conclude that Burns was avenging the death of his son, who was murdered by a fellow resident of a halfway house for young people recovering from emotional issues. It's the same story, Scully. Just like those horror films with endless sequels. The plot's nearly identical in every movie. The only thing that changes is the cast of characters."
"Were camp counselors involved in that incident too?"
"No, but it remained faithful to the archetype motif. Burns focused his revenge on the halfway house residents after one of them killed his son. Something is making these people prone to retaliatory behavior that follows the same grisly formula. It's as if they're acting out a script to settle their personal grievances."
"If that were true, you would expect to see a trigger event for every crime spree. A boy presumedly drowns, which sets off his mother; the mother is murdered, which sets off her son; the resident in the halfway house is murdered, which sets off his father. But what about the rest of the cases?"
"The trail stops with Roy Burns. The subsequent murder sprees have vanished from public record. Ever since the first massacre—the one in '79—local law enforcement started adopting the bad habit of 'misplacing' their investigation files. Then a fire conveniently destroyed the building serving as the county courthouse, public library, and sheriff's office. All the files, public records, and newspaper archives were toast."
She pointed at the screen.
"Then where did you get these?"
"Someone mailed them to me anonymously. Whoever it was obviously wants us to check it out. Scully, I think this goes beyond the local government level. It strains credibility that small-town cops would be able to conceal this much data. We're talking about over two hundred murders from seven or more different crime sprees, most of which occurring in just the last forty years. And they may never have stopped. I've even found information that suggests the Bureau itself was involved in this at some point, though there's no official record of that either."
She crossed her arms and sighed.
"What do you propose to do, Mulder?"
"I want to see what we can dig up at ground zero. There's gotta be people in the Crystal Lake community who will talk to us. Small towns are cauldrons of gossip and local legend. Maybe we can find the person who sent me the newspaper clippings."
"OK," she said. "When do you want to leave?"
"Tomorrow morning. I'm gonna go shopping for a new tent this afternoon. You like s'mores, don't you, Scully? Care to join me?"
"Thanks, but I'm booking a hotel."