As Scully strode out of Mulder's room, Charlie, who'd been standing out in the corridor just waiting for his opportunity, quickly followed behind her.

All of a sudden, Scully halted her pace and turned around. Their eyes met and Scully's widened, almost bursting at their seams. Her lips parted, a faint gasp made its way through them.

Charlie had to react immediately for Scully's sake. "Don't say a word!" he shot out at her.

Scully in return offered him a face filled with a mixture of confusion and irritability.

"Do as I say; take out your phone and pretend as if you are having a conversation." If only somebody had told him to do this back in the day. It would have saved him so much grief.

Scully still seemed unsure and Charlie was losing his patience. "Just do it!" he ordered and then he added "Please."

Finally Scully swung into action. She opened her purse and after a quick rummage, she retrieved a smartphone out of it.

Happy about the progress of things, he prodded Scully with a gesture to put the phone against her ear.

Her face was very clearly filled with disapproval, but grudgingly, she complied.

"Thank you," Charlie said, unable to hide his caustic tone.

"What the hell is going on here?!" Scully finally spoke.

"I'm sorry about this entire charade, but unless you want to end up in a mental hospital, this is the only way you can talk to me out in public." Charlie explained.

Scully snorted. "Is this some kind of a joke?"

"Oh, I wish it were," Charlie muttered.

"Look, I do have a soft spot for you and all, but please don't push it. My patience these days is just about non-existent, so why don't you just cut to the chase."

As she finished, her blue eyes seemed to blaze, which made Charlie flinch somewhat. He drew in a deep breath. "Ok, this is not going to go down easy, so just let me say my thing, before you go berserk."

Scully just kept her steady gaze on him and Charlie swallowed hard. "So, the reason I needed you to pretend that you are talking on the phone is that I am actually a ghost. In fact, it would help if you'd not stare at me like this because nobody else can see me and you are looking rather weird to the people who are passing you by."

"You mean, passing us, by, right?" Scully tried to correct him, still obviously not grasping the bizarre reality.

"No. I meant you. All they can see is you. As far as the rest of the people here are concerned, I do not exist."

The redheaded woman let out a snort. "You're kidding me, right?"

Charlie didn't know how to respond. When this had happened to him, he went through a number of phases until he accepted his ability to talk to ghosts. He mostly believed he was crazy. He didn't question the ghosts being ghosts because he'd assumed this was a problem in his head. Contrary to his experience, Scully assumed the problem didn't lie within her. Her logic told her that since she'd never before spoken to ghosts this meant that Charlie was essentially a crazy person telling her a cockamamie story.

The bottom line of all of this was that he was always the crazy one. He laughed inwardly. It was kind of ironic when presented like this.

His first priority was to convince her he was a ghost.

With that in mind, Charlie began to walk towards the nearest wall. He didn't stop as Scully called out to him.

"Hey!" Scully cried out.

A nurse that passed by stopped at her tracks and asked Scully what her problem was. Scully in return told her it was just somebody on the phone she was talking to.

Meanwhile, Charlie kept on walking until he passed through the nearby wall. Then he turned around and popped right back into the corridor through the very same wall. By then, the nurse who'd stopped by Scully had moved on, and Scully was left with a slack jaw.

"Proof enough?" He asked, feeling quite content. He knew he shouldn't brag, but somehow he couldn't help it. It felt good.

Scully's jaw loosened. "This only proves one thing to me. It proves that I should probably take a break. It proves that I've lost it. In fact, I don't know why I'm still talking to you, since you are just a figment of my imagination."

Charlie shook his head. He should have expected just as much from this woman. If only he had something more to offer her as proof. "I know it seems far out. I've been there. I've had my head checked several times. I even had a brain tumor removed. Please believe: you are not crazy. I am really a ghost and I have been sent here to help you save your partner."

Scully gave him an incredulous glare. "Seriously? And to think Mulder and I broke off after I couldn't find a way to stop him from making decisions based on what his imaginary friends told him to do. Way to go Dana Scully. You are now a fully-fledged member of the cuckoo's nest. Look at me, having an entire conversation with myself and with an imaginary person."

Charlie gazed upwards. "William… I could sure use some help right now…" he pleaded with his sender. He had no idea why the boy had sent him if he couldn't actually get these two people to believe he could help, not to mention getting this woman to believe in his existence.

"What did you just say?" Scully barged in in the middle of his thoughts.

Charlie sighed. "He told me you were going to be a problem."

"Who told you?"

"William," Charlie said softly.

"Who?"

"Your son."

He watched as a rainbow of emotions erupted on the older woman's face; a mixture of weariness and excitement; hope and despair; awe and worry.

"No!" she finally blurted out. "I'm imagining this. It's my desperation getting the better of me. Taking over my mind. This is just not happening. I refuse to accept this."

"Why?" Charlie asked her, his voice a plea, willing her to trust him.

"It's just too much. Every time I dare hope, I am thrown back into this pit of despair. I just… I can't… You are not real. This is not real."

As the last words left her mouth, Scully began walking away towards the hospital's exit. Charlie pursued her. "I know your gut is telling you this is true."

Scully hurried her pace in response. Charlie let her leave. It wasn't a great success but he believed he'd managed to plant that tiny seed into the woman's heart. Now he needed some fertilizer to make sure it flourished.

He looked up again as he spoke. "William, it would be mighty nice of you to throw me some sort of bone for your parents to chew. I'm kind of tired of them chewing me—"

Before he could continue, Charlie felt himself being pulled away and a millisecond later he was back on the beautiful sandy beach.

"So does this mean I'm done with messenger duties?" he wondered aloud.

"Quite the contrary."

Charlie turned around abruptly at the sound of the familiar voice. William stood there, his hands deep in his pants' pockets. He appeared like a regular teenager. It was only the expression on his face that gave him away. This was one of the most serious boys he'd ever met. In fact, he seemed far more serious than most of the adults he knew. One could tell he was a true born leader and that he had this huge weight resting upon his shoulders.

"So if I'm not done, why did you bring me back? You couldn't just send me a message via pigeon or some form of telepathy? Even more so, couldn't you just pass it on yourself?"

The boy gave him a 'what do you think' look and Charlie answered his own question. "It's too dangerous yadda, yadda, yadda…"

"Yes—" William tried to answer.

"How exactly did you get yourself to this place?" Charlie cut through the boy's attempted explanation.

"You are now an energy form, Charlie. The essence of your mind exists on this plane and I can project the essence of my mind wherever I want."

Charlie was intrigued. "So basically ghosts are an energy form of our consciousness?"

"It's a little bit more complicated than this—" William began elaborating.

"Spare me the whole gory truth. I'll settle for the 'Understanding Ghosts for Dummies' version, thank you."

"No problem," William agreed, sounding just for a wee moment like the teenager he was.

"So now you're going to give me those super powers? Am I finally going to be able to fly like a speeding bullet?"

William smiled, which seemed very out of place to Charlie. He'd gotten used to seeing only the boy's somber expression until then.

"What?" Charlie asked.

"You're a ghost. You can essentially do whatever you desire." The boy told him.

Charlie gave him a sideways look. "Err… my previous ghostly experience begs to differ."

"That doesn't count."

"How come?"

"Back then you weren't dead. You were bound by your physical presence to a single location."

Charlie wasn't satisfied with the boy's explanation. "I met ghosts who went beyond that."

"A few extremely powerful consciousnesses are able to go beyond those boundaries; usually personas with a lot of anger. They have more energy and thus can surpass the usual barriers."

Charlie contemplated William's words and wondered how he felt about it. On the one hand realizing he was a rather ordinary consciousness felt kind of like a letdown, but on the other hand, realizing that usually problematic souls were those with the extreme abilities made him feel somewhat better.

"You are no ordinary soul, Charlie," William told him.

"Whatever," Charlie told the boy. "Why don't you just tell me what you want me to do."

"Ok then." The boy said. "You have to tell my mother she has to get her hands on a drug created by the consortium with the assistance of the aliens. It is the means to save my father."

"That's it?"

"Yes."

"Fine. Whatever floats your boat, I guess."

"Remember," the boy said, as he stared deep into Charlie's eyes, "A drug from the consortium."

And the beach was gone.