Chapter 7.

Scully had been here recently, but it had looked a lot different. She noticed the change as she stepped out of the car. Something was different about the air. It felt thick, like they were standing in an invisible mist, and it made the hairs on her arms stand up. The sky was covered by a solid layer of thin clouds, darkening the massive, empty field that had hosted a festival only hours ago. Now the grass was charred, the ground upturned and gashed by fire in some places. But there was no smoky smell – only a sharp, repulsive odor like burning plastic.

"Looks like they finally put it out," Hector commented, pointing to the far side of the field where a dozen or more firetrucks surrounded a smoking heap. "Or contained it, at least."

She watched them swarm like so many ants in the distance, wondering if they would let her take a closer look at that pile. "It must have been some fire."

"We get them sometimes, mostly in the mountains."

"No, I mean, look at this." Scully stopped, running her shoe over one of the scars in the ground. "It almost looks like the fire was directed downward here."

"Directed?"

Scully shook that thought off. "We were meeting someone, right?"

The local police had congregated on the eastern side of the field, near the woods, not far from the playground that Iden had been on the night before – it was untouched by the fire. She was introduced to a few officers, and then the sheriff, Arthur Michaels. He was the lumberjack type, wearing an old, wooly plaid shirt and stained jeans.

"Thanks for coming out, Hector," Michaels said, giving Hector another firm handshake. "I know your county is more used to this sort of… thing."

Scully and Hector exchanged a glance. "What sort of thing?" she asked.

"Well, this." Michaels led them to the edge of the woods and motioned to an area cordoned off by dinky orange traffic cones. "We were hoping you had seen something like this before."

In the grass, there was a perfect human outline. Her arms were splayed out, each finger protecting the underlying grass from the fire. It was perfect enough to seem unreal.

Scully stepped forward, to the edge of the cones, and crouched down to get a better look.

"No burns on her," Michaels supplied.

Scully reached out, touching the unburned grass delicately with her fingertips. "No burns?"

"No. One of the staffers found her out here this morning, badly beaten and confused, just wandering around. We found this later."

"Maybe she just laid here and left this shape when the soot was falling," Hector suggested.

"No." Scully ran her fingers over it again, convincing herself. "No, the grass around the outline is burnt. The fire was definitely here at the same time as she was. But an entire half of her body should be burned – no burns at all?"

"No, ma'am." Michaels came to crouch with her. "You seen something like this before?"

"I'm sorry. No."

He frowned down at the outline, scratching his head. "Victim is Mora Greenwich, a local."

Scully felt a jolt. She had heard that name just last night, when Iden was telling her story about the strange woman she met in the woods. She said Mora had been arguing with someone, and that the woman had led her safely back to the festival.

"In that case, I think I have a witness for you."

She explained the story from the night before and piqued the interest of her companions.

"What are the odds, huh?" Michaels blew out a heavy breath, rising to his full height. "Your girl running into her a few hours before she gets her lights knocked out?"

Scully knew the odds were astronomical, but she also knew that Iden was not a normal girl. She was something else, something magical, and she had a tendency to gravitate toward the unusual. It was a trait that fascinated Mulder, but that terrified Scully. She had been in the woods with someone who had beaten another person nearly to death.

"What do you think of this?" Hector asked her.

Scully was baffled. "It looks impossible." She circled the outline again, to commit it to memory, and then said, "But forgetting that, a crime was committed here."

"I guess we need to talk to Iden then."