Summary: A prominent Silicon Valley scientist, his wife, and their babysitter are brutally murdered in their home, with no sign of the killer despite the fact that the house was locked from within. Meanwhile, their three children vanish from out of an upstairs room that was also barred from the inside.

A joint investigation between the San Francisco Police Department and the FBI fails to explain these events, and so a member of the FBI team appeals to the agents of the X-Files. Mulder and Scully agree to take the case, while also adjusting to a new intimate relationship in their personal lives.

Initially, the case seems familiar and personal for Mulder, but as the shocking events unwind and decades-old secrets are revealed, it comes to have serious emotional repercussions on Scully. Then, just when they believe they have finally resolved the case and put its traumas behind them, an unexpected threat emerges that could prove the most devastating of all, and separate the partners forever.

Episode References: Fight Club (this is set directly following that episode), Closure, Per Manum, and Theef.

Author's Note: This fic was originally inspired by a certain 'fairy-tale,' but once this story took on its own shape, it came to only very loosely resemble the original tale. But maybe you can still guess which one it is...

TEASER

Winnie Love was frustrated. Winnie Love was indignant. Winnie Love was a 12-year old whose parents didn't give her any respect! She was thisclose to being a teenager but she might as well be a 2-year-old like her little brother, the way they acted.

"Now, I've double checked that all the doors and windows are locked, so you don't have to remember to do any of them except the front door," her mother Marie was telling her as she fastened a back to her expensive diamond earrings. "And I'll tell Sarah the same thing. . .who, by the way, will not be getting any grief from you tonight." She caught her daughter's eye sternly in the mirror's reflection as Winnie watched.

'Oh come on, Mom," Winnie moaned, rolling her eyes and flopping backwards onto her parents' bed. "I'm too old for a babysitter, this is ridiculous! I should be the one watching Jonathan and Mikey."

"I know that's how you feel, sweetie," her mother nodded, coloring her lips with sheer berry lipstick and then smacking them. "And yes, you're growing up. Soon I know you'll be ready for that responsibility, but in the meantime, Sarah is on her way, and I don't want you challenging her authority. . ."

"She's only two years older than me!"

Winnie's father Geoff entered the room wearing his tuxedo and Winnie tried for a last-ditch entreaty as her mother turned and straightened his bow tie. "Dad—Daddy, can't you let me prove to you that I'm trustworthy? I'll clear out the dishwasher for a week, I'll walk Poppy everyday, I'll, I'll—" she suddenly broke off as she saw something darting about quickly, out of the corner of her eye, but when she did a double-take it was gone. It had probably been her younger brother Jonathan, he was always skulking around being a weirdo.

They weren't listening anyway, they were too busy getting all dressed up for their stupid formal dinner to honor her dad's stupid tech research company. He was fastening her mom's fancy necklace around her throat when the doorbell rang downstairs.

"Win, could you grab that, sweetheart?" her dad asked, and she sighed deeply in a put-upon manner and flounced out.

"And be nice!" she heard her mom add.

"But aren't I always," she murmured under her breath with sugary sweetness, and forced a huge sarcastic grin on her face as she took the stairs down two at a time. It flickered out quickly when she saw the darting shape at the edge of her vision, but when she whirled around, there was nothing there. Still she had the prickly feeling that she was being watched. "Jon, quit it, you freak!" she shouted, but the only response she got was the bell ringing again.

"Winnie. . ." she heard her mom call.

"I'm getting it!" she answered, exasperated.

She wrenched the door open to Sarah Grant's cheesy smiling face, and stood aside as the slightly (only slightly!) older girl stepped in.

Gosh, what a suck-up, Winnie thought with disgust, as she watched Sarah carefully loop an old brass chain lock in place on the heavy front door. They never even used that relic, and her parents were leaving in a second, anyway! Ooh, she just hated Sarah Grant.

"Thank you for being so conscientious!" she heard her mother comment warmly, and she turned back towards the stairs to see her parents coming down and pulling on their coats.

"Run and get Mikey and Jon, will you sweetie?" her mother asked before turning to the babysitter. "Sarah, why don't you come on into the kitchen and I'll show you what you can fix yourself and the kids for dinner."

Ugh "the kids". . .including her as just a 'kid.' Winnie didn't just roll her eyes, she rolled her entire head, but she did as she was asked, and jogged up the stairs. She heard the noise of Sarah Grant kissing up to her parents by effusively complimenting their kitchen, but then she also heard a weird scrape-rattle sound. It was a creepy, irritating sound, but not as irritating as Sarah blabbering on.

"Win, did you forget to close the door after letting Poppy back in from the yard?" her dad called up, and she could hear the floorboards creak below as her dad moved towards where the weird sound came from

"No!" she huffed. Jeez, didn't they think she could do anything at all? It was probably the washing machine in the basement; it was always making funky noises.

But when she heard the sound again as she walked down the upper hall, it filled her with a certain sense of unease. That didn't actually sound like the washer. But she did close the door behind Poppy, she did! She'd even locked it this time, and her mom said she'd double-checked.

She shrugged and dismissed the weird noise, and the anxiety it had momentarily caused, and turned into their play room where she found Jonathan engrossed on the computer with headphones on, and Mikey intently piling blocks. But just before she could move into the room, her heart dropped from her chest as an icy sweat instantly drenched her body.

She had heard the scrape-rattle noise again coming from just below Jon's bedroom downstairs, this time louder, and it filled her with immediate, total, and indescribable dread. It was almost like she expected it, then, when her father's ragged shout burst up the stairs into the upper hall. It raised in pitch and hoarseness, but then got cut off with a wet spluttery sound as quickly as it started, just as he had seemed to cry out, "Run-!"

Winnie groped air for several seconds before her claw-like hand found the doorway, and she flattened herself against it, frozen, her heart roaring impossibly, painfully loud in her ears. But she could still hear the sudden, nightmarish events unfolding downstairs. She wished she couldn't hear, but she could.

Sarah Grant and her mother were screaming, and their piercing cries were increasing in terrified ebbs and flows, but the scrape-rattle, rattle-scrape moved rapidly across the floorboards towards them and one set of shrieks got cut off with a loud anguished grunt. The other screams—her mother's!—faded into low animal whimpering, and Winnie heard her try to dash to the stairs, trying to get to them, her children, but then she too gave a guttural shriek. She wasn't coming any closer! Why wasn't she coming?

"Winnie, get out, get all of you out! Get out—!"

Winnie didn't recognize the voice. She knew it was her mother's, but she didn't know that voice. It wasn't her mom's teasing voice, or scolding voice, or loving voice. That voice, more than anything, punctured a hole in her sanity, and she distantly felt something wet seep down her leg. She didn't know when Poppy had started barking and snarling wildly, but she was, and that was the sound that apparently broke though Jon's headphones. That, and Mikey's increasingly hysterical wails. Jon ripped the headphones off and whirled around in his chair to face her, staring at her with huge, quivering eyes. He opened and closed his mouth but only a high-pitched keening noise came out.

Then Poppy's barks were cut off in a whimpery yelp. So not even their big, overprotective dog could protect them from what was downstairs. . .

"Jon! Jon!" She whispered in a strangled rasp, the breath in her lungs refusing to cooperate, the colors in room flashing and swirling nauseatingly as tears gushed from her eyes. "I think—s-someone—is. . .downstairs." She was going to hyperventilate, or choke, or both. "I th-think. . .someone just, just, ki-k-killed Dad. And Poppy. And Sarah. I—I think they're going to ki-kill M-mom."

He stood quickly, knocking over his chair, and just stood there, gaping. Oh he looked so young, he looked so, so young and terrified. And then her mother's cries for them to run abruptly ended, and Jon's knees slumped and he violently heaved up on the floor. "No, no. . ." he whimpered in between gagging. "W-w-we need to save her."

But the shuddery-scraping noise was now on the stairs. It made the wood strain and screech, so it was heavier than anyone else she knew. John scrambled backwards, slipping in his vomit, looking crazy from fear; in one instant he had been stalking monsters in his video game—the next, he was being stalked in this waking nightmare. Mikey's face looked ready to burst like a giant tomato with the strain of his shrieking, and seeing that suddenly ignited Winnie's flight instinct. She scrabbled off the side of the door and slammed it closed, then somehow found a burst of strength to push a heavy wooden chest of drawers across the entrance. A wayward nail sticking out of its side gouged a bloody gash into her palm, but in her rush of adrenaline, she didn't even feel it. She scooped Mikey off the floor and up in her arms, and held on fiercely despite his flailing legs and fists that beat down hard all around her.

"We can't now," Winnie hyperventilated, realizing that she was sobbing as hard as Mikey. "Mom's dead. And dad. It's coming—we need to save ourselves. Open the windows!"

Jon's shook his head stupidly, in shock, and so Winnie shoved the hysterical toddler in his arms and ran to his windows, snapping the locks out of place and then yanking upwards. Oh God, they wouldn't budge past a few inches. They wouldn't move more AT ALL. But why?! She had unlocked them!

"Come on, come on!" she screamed, pulling with all her might, her muscles bunching up under her skin and tying themselves in knots and blood smearing under her hands, but despite her burst of strength, the window still refused to slide upwards. Then she remembered. At the front of their Victorian house—and the play room was at the front—there were intricate panels of glass along the tops of the windows, whose wooden frames prevented a person from opening them all the way. They could be lifted about half a foot inches to let air in, but that was it. Winnie looked down frantically through a haze of tears and panic. They were open that far, but would go no further. There was no way anyone could fit through there, not even Mikey. She would have to break the window, that was the only way.

Suddenly Jon's bedroom door rattled, and they all heard the shuddery-scrape sound clearly. But up close it was more than just a shuddery scrape. Underneath, there came a sound like a dozen people greedily sucking through straws that varied in size from very narrow to thick.

The rattling faded, then suddenly there came a deafening thud that reverberated against the door, and sent shockwaves up through their feet. With abject horror, Winnie saw that the chest of drawers had been shoved forward a couple of inches.

"No no NO," Jon screamed, transported with fear and helplessness, and Winnie desperately grasped his desk chair and heaved it over her head. The first time, it didn't break the window, it only left a small hairline crack. The chair bounced backwards, and Winnie let out a howl of frustration.

Then, just as she was about to lift the chair above her head again, she felt her senses fade out, and time seemed to slow. The only thing that was heightened was her eyesight, and she noticed the darting shape flickering at the corner of her vision again. This time when she whirled around, the chair still above her head, it didn't vanish.

It was a bright ever-shifting pure white light, like a starburst-shaped flame. With every flicker of shifting brightness within its core, it gave a soft tinkling sound that seemed to somehow drown out the terrifying noises outside the door, despite seeming ever so quiet and soft. Winnie glanced towards Jon and Mikey and saw that she wasn't the only one seeing it. They also both stared, transfixed, equally awe-struck and temporarily forgetful of the evil thing in the hall. Instead, a wave of peace flooded into Winnie's horror-ravaged soul, and she suddenly found herself remembering a happy day when she and her family had been all together and content. As the gently ringing grew louder, the happy memory grew stronger, and a diaphanous black hole suddenly opened in the air in front of the window. At first it looked like a tiny snag had opened up into deep night, and was no bigger than a dime, but as it widened it looked more like a richly colored oil spot, iridescent with rainbow colors, yet clearly a portal.

Then, when it became an oval about three feet tall and two feet wide, it stopped growing, and sat there in space, shimmering and waiting.

From out of the hole extended a lithe arm, and an open hand. It might have been attached to a body on the other side, but all she could see what that disembodied hand, reaching out to her. The soothing light passed through to the other side; Winnie could hear it echoing back faintly.

She didn't think, she didn't analyze. She reached through the gaping black hole and took the hand, then turned around and grasped Jon around the forearm, who in turn held Mikey tightly. Together, they all pitched headfirst into the darkness and the unknown, and the unseen murderous thing in the hall gave a shriek of frustrated rage.