Dollhouse
Chapter 1
"Mulder, slow down, I can't catch up here." Scully wrestled with the map, angling her flashlight.
"I'm just trying to get a little breeze going." He rubbed the back of his neck. "It's so damn humid—I feel like I'm in a pickle jar."
He rolled his window further down, and Scully winced as the rush of air flapped the corner of the map almost smacking her on the face. Around them, the night was heavy, the moon blocked by thick clouds groaning to release their weight. The little spray that came down an hour back only served to congeal the trapped moisture in the air, and now wisps of fog rushed at the agents, like white fingers reaching out of the darkness and enveloping the car. It had been a good quarter of an hour since they'd passed a crossroads where a stop sign flashed at them. Now, it was blackness to either side—cornfields undefined in the night, promising nothing, not even the light of a farmhouse window.
"Mulder, just pull over," Scully urged. "I don't think this is the way to the interstate. I have no idea what way this is."
He obliged, perhaps just for the chance to get out of the car which was quickly becoming impossible to breathe in or see out of with the moisture collecting on the inside of the windshield, and the air-conditioning broken, despite what the clerk at the rental place assured them. He edged as far to the left of the road as he could without running into the cornstalks, and turned on the hazard lights for good measure. The cautionary gesture was reflexive—a good driver's habit—but it was doubtful that the agents would startle another vehicle: they hadn't seen another car in over an hour.
Mulder climbed out, stretched, and pulled off his already loosened tie. Scully got out, took off her suit jacket, and tossed it into the backseat alongside Mulder's. She spread the map along the damp hood and studied the dull gray lines in the spot of her flashlight.
"I think we got off-track here," she pointed, "At Beard and Calla. We should have turned left, like I said."
Mulder grunted and rubbed his forehead. His hair was limp, sticking to his skin. "Where are we now, then?"
Scully peered back at the road they had just charged down, and studied the map again. "Middle of nowhere, Ohio, Mulder. If we backtrack up to that last stop sign—"
"What's ahead?" He cut her off.
She bit her lip. "More of the same, Mulder. If we backtrack—"
"I don't feel like chasing more fog in this hell weather. How many cornfields can there be? If we keep going, we're bound to come across a main road."
"Mulder—"
"Scully, it's what—three in the morning? I've been driving all day. I just want to find a cheap motel."
She sighed. "If we backtrack," she said again, pointing to the map which was glued by the moisture to the hood and quickly growing damp enough to tear, "we can get to Struthers county in about an hour."
"An hour? Scully, what's ahead down this road?"
"Nothing!" She waved the flashlight around at the black fields, and brushed her own damp hair off her face. "Mulder, why do you always do this? If you're tired, I'll drive. We'll backtrack to Struthers and find a motel."
He glanced at her sideways and walked over to study the map. "Right there," he pointed when she gave in and shone the flashlight on their location. "Just ahead—Springfield Road. And it leads right to the interstate."
"Mulder," she bent over to double-check, "Mulder, that's at least an hour anyway."
"But an hour forward, not back, right?" He spit out a sunflower seed shell and climbed back behind the wheel.
Scully glanced around the fields again, and carefully preened the moist map off the hood.
"Fine," she said, as she slipped into the oven that the car had become, "if you want to be stubborn—fine." She tried to fold the map and realized immediately what a mistake that was. The cheap wet thing stuck together like paper mache.
"Would you please roll your window down," he groaned as they pulled further down the lifeless road.
The black tops of corn husks rushed past them on either side. The white fingers of the fog grew insistent, solid almost in their illusion of caressing the agents' car. The road had yet to show a light of anything apart from the vague definitions procured by their headlights. After another quarter of an hour, the country music on the radio flickered with static, and in another few minutes, the sound of Toby Keith's new hit album died out altogether.
Scully glanced at Mulder and plucked at the edge of her skirt. Her nylons were causing her near-maddening itchy discomfort in the soupy moisture. Mulder fixed his blood-shot eyes on the road ahead. The static on the radio grew harsher, catching sometimes another station—a late night sermon of some sorts by a bellowing self-proclaimed clergy man—and it was so diffused and prickled that it only created more feeling of frustration in the agents' company. Finally, Mulder reached over and shut the volume off. The silence that swallowed them reflected the black landscape rushing by and reminded that there were no lights still—not even from the stars that had been blocked by the agitated heavy sky.
After another ten miles, the car stalled.
It rumbled at first. Mulder clenched his teeth and leaned on the accelerator. The engine squealed, then it gagged, and then it coughed, jerking, and, like a hysterical employee that couldn't handle the stress any longer, it simply walked away from the situation. The agents rolled to a full stop in the middle of more of the same—nowhere, Ohio.
For a short second, neither made a sound.
Then—"Fuck!" Mulder flew out of the car.
Scully arched her neck back against the passenger's seat, letting the moisture and sweat rub off on the smooth, rental-car, supposedly-in-perfect-condition felt.
"That goddamn kid," Mulder cried outside. "I knew he was lying—I knew this piece of junk would fail out."
She rubbed her head and stepped out into the stretch of road that looked hauntingly no less different from the place they pulled over before.
"He thought you were taking it straight to Youngstown," she muttered.
"He figured that the government sends their checks a month after they're due."
"I doubt, Mulder, that he—"
"Where the hell are we?" he cried.
She flinched. The map was plastered to itself on the dashboard inside. "Every time, Mulder—why do you get like this when you drive?"
He winced and ran his palms down his face. "I'm exhausted, Scully. It's wet. All I wanted was to get out of here."
She ran her fingertip along the lifeless hood. "Mulder, I'm sorry the 'beast of Akron' didn't turn out to be an X-file, but you're acting crazy right now. Can't you see that?"
"No—no, I can't. All I see is this damn road—that's all I've seen for the past sixteen hours. All I see is this," he threw his arm at the darkness. "I'm so tired, Scully."
"Mulder, let's just camp it out in the car and—"
Her voice fell away in her throat. She was facing Mulder—facing his sweating, defeated expression—and then behind him, Scully saw a girl. It was a girl that had no business being out in the middle of countryside Ohio—less business than even the agents had. Their car had died, but the headlights had remain on.
The little girl walked toward them, down the opposite side of the road, and she looked like she walking home from school—a walk that was light and belonging to the day. She looked untouched by the heavy moisture and the darkness of the moonless night. She was wearing a pink dress, silk and edged with tiny ribbon bows, and her hair was dark and languid in its curls—completely untouched by the static of the moisture. She seemed so out of place, that for a moment Scully thought she was hallucinating. Until, the girl spoke.
"Did your car break?"
Mulder jumped and whipped about. He stared at the little girl, probably thinking he was hallucinating himself, and then Scully's logic kicked in.
"Yes, honey," she rushed. "We're trying to get to the main road. Do you live around here? Do your parents have a house out here?"
The girl smiled. She stepped up closer and studied the agents. Her little blue eyes dilated, growing darker.
"Oh, lovely!" She cried and clapped her hands.
The headlights went out and then darkness swallowed everything.
Scully woke to the taste of a dusty blanket against her lips. The ridges of embroidery scratched at her cheek. Piercing sunlight slashed underneath her eyelids like a razor blade. Somewhere, in the trained part of her mind, she realized that her gun was missing, but she couldn't put together the rest of her situation. She meant to stay still until she could gage her situation, but her throat was so dry and scratchy, she burst out coughing.
The next thing she saw in the gold wash over a purple and green blanket was a pair of big blue eyes. Then, a little dark-haired head shot up over the bed's edge.
"Morning, pretty,"
The little girl stood and flicked off a lock of Scully's hair.
"Mulder?" Scully coughed out.
"What?" The girl frowned. "Water? I have some right here." She stretched a glass dripping on the sides with beads of condensation—ice cold water.
Scully grabbed it and swallowed it in grateful gulps. "My partn—the man I was with—where is he?"
"The Gentleman?" The little girl beamed. "I put him in another room. He's still sleeping, I think. Do you want to have morning tea and sweets?"
Scully arched up and studied the room. It was not what she would have expected of a farmhouse bedroom. It was lavish: a poster bed and crown moldings. She was swallowed on either side by embroidered pillows, and there was an ornate oak dresser across from the bed. She winced against the light pouring into the window, and tried to find her voice with the water that had moistened her tongue.
"Sweetheart, are your parents around?"
The little girl brushed down her pink skirt. "No. They're out. You should have some breakfast, though. There are blueberry pancakes ready in the kitchen."
Scully swung her legs over the edge of the bed and noticed that, like her gun and holster, her pump heels were missing as well.
"Are they out to—church?" She asked, squinting in the gold light.
"Who?"
"Your parents."
"Sure."
"What room is my partner in?"
The girl shifted and fluttered her thick dark hair. "Just down the hall. He'll be right over. Won't you have tea and sweets with me first?"
The girl turned without another word, and disappeared behind the bedroom door that was too large and too ornate for a farm house.
Scully hesitated, rubbed her temples, glanced at the empty water glass and followed.