"That was nice," John said as he stood.

"I liked it too," Monica added, putting on her coat.

"Oh, uh..." I trailed off, spotting Max off in the distance. He caught my eye, and I realized that his presence had meant that he'd intended to come over to see us, not just to make sure that we had gotten there. "There's something I better tell you. I hope you won't be mad at me," I quickly told John and Monica.

"What?" John asked, a hint of suspicion in his eyes.

"It's nothing terrible, it's just...I found out that a young reporter I know is going to be conducting interviews with guests at the inn this weekend. Tomorrow morning, actually."

"What sort of interviews?" Monica looked interested, not suspicious.

"Well... he's asking people to tell them what they dreamed about."

"Dream analysis?" Monica asked.

"I guess so."

"We did that in my dorm during college," she replied, not surprising me in the least. "We all kept dream journals for an entire semester and looked up the meanings."

"Dreams don't mean anything, they're just your synapses firing at random," John scoffed, and I found it hard to agree with him.

I don't think that dreams have any secret meanings, but they're not completely random. If it were random, we wouldn't dream about things that worried or excited us the way we do.

"Regardless," I said. "I said that we'd tell him our dreams, if we could remember anything, tomorrow morning."

"All right," John said, surprising me with his easy agreement considering he'd just dismissed dreams so harshly.

"Really?" Monica asked. Apparently I wasn't the only one to think his agreement was unexpected.

"I said they didn't mean anything, not that I thought they were dangerous. If people want to waste their time trying to find meaning in them, they can knock themselves out."

"Oh. I don't mind either, Dana."

"Good." No sooner was the word out of my mouth did Max head our way, weaving in and out around people filing out of the theater.

"Hi, I'm Max." The young reporter stuck out his hand and John and Monica each shook it. "I hope that Dana has told you about the article I'm writing."

"Sure did," I replied, trying to sound natural.

"We're both happy to help you with your story. I have always been fascinated by dreams, and what people think they mean." Monica looked very earnest as she spoke, and I wondered what sort of impression she was making on Max.

John, on the other hand, didn't bother to hide his skepticism. "I usually remember my dreams. Hopefully I will tomorrow so you get something useful." From the look that Max gave him, it was clear that the reporter read between the lines and understood that he was being humored.

"Well, thank you both very much. Oh, and you too of course, Dana. Do you have any idea what time you think you'll wake up?"

John spoke up for us all. "Probably around eight."

"That's great. If I come by at 8:30, that should give you enough time to get dressed, yes?"

We all agreed that it would. "I'd like to ask that you either spend time in the morning thinking deeply about your dreams, or use the notepads that I know the inn's proprietor leaves in the desks to take a few notes to remind yourself. That way the dreams will still be fresh in your mind when I talk to you. I know it sounds silly, but dreams have a way of rapidly leaving our brains." Max looked little bit apologetic, and I was certain that he was thinking of something along the lines of his having given us a homework assignment.

Monica seemed to agree with him. "It's true. I don't how many mornings I've woken up, gotten distracted by the alarm or something, and a half hour later have no idea what on earth I dreamed about."

I couldn't disagree. All my life my alarm clock had served to murder my dreams if I slept all the way until it went off. Things had gotten even worse since having children because they had the same ability to immediately steal focus from everything else. Until my reoccurring nightmare, it had been weeks since I had any dreams I could clearly recall.

"Great. I am really glad to meet you both, and eager to talk to you tomorrow morning. I hope you have a wonderful remainder of your evening."

Just then, John yawned. "I don't think there's very much of it left for me, but thank you. It was nice to meet you too."

"Yes, it was nice to meet you. See you tomorrow morning," Monica said brightly.

Max wandered off, leaving us to watch him go. Monica put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed briefly. "When you and Mulder said that you were moving all the way up here, I wasn't sure what to make of it. People say that New Englanders are standoffish, but you seem to have moved to a town with very friendly people. I'm glad for you."

I wondered what my expression was. At times, I wouldn't have minded living amongst stereotypical closed-mouth yankees, but at others I was glad that there were people who were trying to make my family feel welcome. The mix of feelings were at odds with each other, and I am positive it showed on my face. But neither Monica nor John made an issue of it.

"So, maybe a nightcap and then we try to get some sleep?" I asked, thinking about how glasses of wine had been on the room service list. It still struck me as funny that such a tiny inn offered room service at all, but I supposed they had to in order to compete.

"Or maybe just getting some sleep," John suggested instead.

"Okay. Alcohol's overrated anyway." I fished in my pockets and came up with my car keys. The play had been more popular than I would have credited it to him with, so I was glad that I drove and we hadn't had to find a second parking space.


We talked about the play the entire way back to Memory House. As long as we could sneak in without running in to any other guests, Max was golden. His plan seemed to be working out far better than I would have guessed.

All three of us were yawning by the time we reached the hallway with our rooms.

"Hey, I'm going to take a shower," John said, kissing Monica on the cheek. "See you soon."

Monica and I stood there for a moment, neither of us saying anything. All of the sudden, I wanted to be at home, Max's story be damned.

"Are you okay?" Monica asked, giving me a concerned look.

I gave her a small smile. "I'm okay."

"It must be hard being away from the baby," she offered.

It wasn't just Autumn. I missed Mulder, and I missed Joey and William too. One of the luxuries of no longer being an FBI agent was that there were very few nights these past several years when I had not been able to tuck in first William, and then Joey, and now Autumn. There had of course been a few nights at the hospital when cases had gotten so critical that I had to pull late nights, but those nights had been few and far between.

Being away from the kids now reminded me of what it had been like when the boys had been infants, and I had had to leave one or the other with my mom. And she had been good about being willing to take care of Joey during cases those three months before I had given him up too; it hadn't really bothered her that he wasn't - or so we then believed - her grandson like nearly everyone else thought. Sometimes, caught in a flight of fancy, I thought of that and wondered if perhaps she had been so good with him because she had the sort of premonitions that Missy always insisted ran in our family. If she did, and it was unlikely, it would make sense that she'd been so willing to help even if she didn't know why.

"Yes. I miss her. I miss them all," I admitted at last. I did not say that I was suddenly missing my sister as well, because I figured it would be too much of a non sequitur for that hour of the night.

Monica drew me into a hug, which made me miss Missy all the more. "If you decide that you need to go home tonight, to just check in or whatever, I won't tell John."

"Thank you. I won't lie and say that the thought didn't cross my mind, but I think I'll be okay. I'm just going to call home and say goodnight."

She let me go. "You know, sometimes I envy you," Monica startled me by saying.

"Why?" I asked blankly.

Her shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. "You're a good mom. I am not sure that I will ever be a mother of any sort, never mind a good one."

My first inappropriate thought was a burning desire to ask what sort of woman had raised her. I knew very little about Monica's adoptive parents, and had never quite gotten a sense of how she felt about them. I did know that she had only gone to Mexico to see them a handful of times since I met her, which suggested to me that she wasn't especially close to them. That was sad, but I realized from Joey's fond memories of his other mom and dad during the first few years of his life, that it wasn't necessarily par for the course. He had been quite happy until his parents had panicked when his IQ test results came back, and decided to send him to boarding school to get a good education. I'd grown to realize that they had just been trying to do their best by him, so I no longer was mad that they sent a five-year-old away, though it was obvious at times that he still was.

"Why not?" I asked instead. "Unless you don't want to talk about it..."

"Fear, mostly," she admitted, and I wondered if she meant her own, or John's. "I've just never been sure that I'd make a very good role model for a child."

I gave her a look of disbelief. "Really?"

"What do you mean, 'really'?" she asked suspiciously.

"Do you actually think I'd let you be around my kids if I thought you were poor role model?"

She gave me a crooked smile. "Considering how much time William spent around the gunmen as a baby, I sort of doubt your judgment there."

I knew she had been kidding, but I still found myself rising to defend them. "They had been admittedly odd, but they were good men. If they were still with us, I'd be as happy to have Joey and William look up to them, the way they do you and John now."

"Thank you." Monica sighed. "I'll try to keep that in mind the next time John drops hints about looking into adoption."

Hints? Then it hit me: John's fuss over Autumn that afternoon had been a performance of his own. I almost asked her why adoption, but before I opened my mouth and made a fool of myself I considered her age, which I hadn't before because she's a little younger than I am. There were very few pluses to having been abducted, tortured and experimented upon when I was young, but the beneficiary of them was at home in her crib.

The door to their room creaked open. "Monica?" Doggett, hair still soaked, looked out at us.

"Coming, hon," she said before glancing at me. "Sweet dreams, Dana."


I went into my room shaking my head. She had no idea that we were the only three people in the entire inn who weren't desperately hoping for just that.

Before I did anything else, I called home. The kids would no doubt be asleep, but at least I could check in with Mulder to see how the day went.

When I dialed the phone, Mulder wasn't the one to pick up. "Mom!"

"Hey, sweetie, what are you still doing up?" It was already after ten-thirty.

"Dad said that you were gonna call, so me and Joey could stay up until you did. Or until eleven-thirty."

"Eleven-thirty?" I asked, wondering about the sanity of that. I could only trust that Mulder knew what he was doing, and hope that the boys would never tell my mother or I'd never hear the end of it. She'd assigned us ten p.m. weekend bedtimes until we were in high school.

"Mom," William said, sounding exasperated. "It's Saturday."

"I guess the occasional late Saturday is okay."

"Awesome."

"So, how was your day?"

"Wicked good. Dad took us to the Lowes in Greenland so we could buy stuff to make shelves in the basement for our Lego stuff. And he's even going to let us help him make 'em," William concluded proudly.

I stared at the phone, wondering what had come over him. Until this month he'd shown no interest in constructing anything, but this was the second time he'd been excited about carpentry projects. "You like building stuff, huh?" I asked, remembering him being two years old and carefully building towers with blocks. When he was four he ruined the set by finding a bottle of glue and gluing the pieces together. Maybe I just hadn't been paying enough attention.

"Yup. We both do."

That mention seemed like a good segue. "Hey, is your brother around? I want to talk to him too."

"I'll get him."

"Wait, a second. Good night and I love you, Will."

"You too, Mom."

Sounds became muffled, so I knew he'd lain the phone aside. It was picked up a minute later. "Hi, Mom."

"Joey, did you have a good day too?" I asked, picturing him on the other end. William had probably been bouncing from foot to foot as he spoke to me, but Joey was always calmer. Even after more than two and a half years, it still surprised me that he was so much more serious than his brother.

"Yup. We're going to make these neat shelves to display our Lego stuff. I feel kind of bad for Dad, though."

"How come?"

"First Autumn had a diaper that got..." he paused, trying to think of a good word, "...gross. Like runny. So Dad had to change her before we went out. Then we went out, and came home. And after she ate, she threw up all over him, and her, so he had to her and his shirt."

"That doesn't sound like any fun."

"Yeah, but he acted like it was no big deal," Joey told me, sounding impressed. I wondered why until he added, "Right after we got Ava and I was home for Christmas break, my other dad had take care of her, and he was real nervous. And Ava wasn't even a brand new baby like Autumn. And he didn't have to change her over and over either."

A warm feeling began to spread through my chest. Somehow, I thought that Joey's worries about the baby were beginning to taper off now that he realized that not all fathers were like Jonathan. When the first person you called 'Dad' landed in jail for criminal neglect, it had to be hard not to generalize. "I don't know what to tell you, kiddo. Your father has always been a competent guy."

"With babies and monsters both," Joey exclaimed.

"They call that 'versatility'."

"Like Batman?"

"I don't know, did Batman ever look after a baby?" I asked, beginning to laugh.

"Well, Robin could be a big baby sometimes."

"I love you, but I think I'd better let you go and talk to Dad, okay?"

"Okay. Love you too."

Mulder's voice reached me a minute later. "How's the secret mission going?"

"So far so good. They're in bed and no one managed to corner us and tell us about the inn's reputation. Before we got here I was worried that there'd be a plaque or something, but it's not that corny."

"Good to hear," I could sense amusement in his voice, and I guessed that he was picturing guests being greeted with a plaque or a heart-felt and absurd story about the wonders of the place too. Of course, they knew about Max's article and they had to hope it would be good for business, so maybe our check in hadn't been typical.

"So I hear you're going to be doing a lot of laundry," I said.

He groaned. "Which one of them told you about the blow out diaper and our daughter's attempt to reenact that scene from The Exorcist?"

"Joey. You impressed him, Mulder."

"Did I?"

"He compared you to Batman."

"That's...random."

"I think it's a high compliment from an eight-year-old. Things going otherwise, bodily fluids not withstanding?"

"Pretty good. How about you? Suffering from baby withdrawal yet?"

"Definitely. I'm coping, though. I'll be glad to be home tomorrow."

"I'll be glad to have you back, too. Which isn't at all a hint that I can't handle things, but everything is better with you."

"Mulder..." How could he still say such sweet things that made my heart ache so pleasantly after so very long? "Love you."

"Love you too. Try to get some sleep, huh?"

"I will." I paused. "Did you check the baby monitor batteries?"

"Sure did. Good night, my love."

"Good night."

After I hung up the phone and spent some time feeling like I was a denizen of a dairy farm, I slipped under the covers and hoped that sleep would take me soon. I allowed myself a moment to think about the inn's reputation before pushing the thought away as wishful thinking. Before I quite knew it, I found myself drifting off.


The sinister laughter drew me like a beacon, and I knew that I had to capture it before he killed again. Children, like Christian, like my boys, like the little girl upstairs trying to cope with her father's death, were its staple victims. Its. The thing looked like a ten-year-old boy, but the eyes were dark, soulless. It was the abyss that looked back.

"Scully, down here!" Mulder yelled, and I wanted to call back that he was going in the wrong direction. But if I did, the thing would hear me and change its course, so I let him blunder down the wrong corridor while I forged ahead.

Suddenly a man stepped out of a room, and I nearly squeezed past him before it even registered that someone else was there. It was my neighbor. "Daniel?"

"It's not a person," he told me grimly.

"I know," I acknowledged, and he let me by. Daniel didn't move, but when I turned back several seconds later, he was gone.

After a few minutes more, I felt like I'd gone deaf. I could no longer hear Mulder, or the chilling laughter that I'd been following. If my flashlight had chosen that moment to go out, I would have been plunged into complete sensory deprivation.

I was still straining to hear something, anything, when I felt the familiar burn of small scaly fingers clamping down on my wrist. Without a sound it had managed to get behind me. The fingers crushed, making my drop the flashlight.

We plunged into darkness, but there was finally a sound as I screamed -

When I woke up, I was filled with a sense of despair, and not because I'd just woken from my reoccurring nightmare. The dream made me suspect that I was having a harder time letting go of the X-Files than I thought I would upon agreeing with Mulder that we were through with them back after helping the FBI nearly two years earlier. Somehow, Mulder seemed more content with closing the book on it, at least if my dream was any indication.

But it wasn't the nightmare that had me the most upset when I sat up in bed and looked around the room that morning. I hadn't truly expected there to be anything to the legend of Memory House, but a tiny part of me had hoped, more than I realized, that I'd dream about Emily.

It would have been nice to see her once more, even if only in a dream.

Was it normal to still miss someone I'd known for a short time? I didn't know, but I couldn't deny that I did. Whenever I saw a blonde girl who was the age she would have been if she lived, I felt a tightness in my chest for just a second, just when I had to tell myself that it couldn't be her.

I was still wallowing in self-pity when there was a knock on the door. Fortunately, I'd managed to get dressed before it came.

"Hey, Max," I said, probably sounding as listless as I felt.

"Good morning. Did you dream about your daughter?" Max asked, getting down to business right away. I had the feeling that he'd already been awake for hours.

"No, I did not."

Max nodded. "Do you remember what you dreamed about?"

"Not Emily," I said sharply. He just looked at me. "You really care what I dreamed about?"

"I'm all in," he said, sounding only slightly less sharp than I had. "If I'm going to sell this dream analysis story, I need to have the proper props."

Waving a hand I asked, "Couldn't you just make something up?"

"What if your friend asks you what you told me?"

I guess he had a point. "All right. Last night I dreamed the same thing I have twice before in the past few weeks: my husband an I are running down the corridors of a deserted hospital, chasing after a-" I hesitated, not wanting to use the "d" word with someone unfamiliar with the sorts of cases Mulder and I had really been on. "-after a child who had committed murder. Before I wake up, I feel the boy's fingers on my wrist, and I know it's too late. I'm going to be victim 13."

Max's eyes were wide, and he gulped audibly. "You really were an FBI agent once, weren't you?"

It took a lot not to groan. I was quickly realizing that anything said to Judith would become common news. "We were, yes."

"Is...is this dream about one of your real cases? A killer kid?"

"Fortunately it's not."

"Still, it sounds like a pretty awful dream," Max remarked.

"That's a pretty accurate guess." I shook my head. "I just wish I could shake it."

Max gave me a sympathetic look. "You're in medicine now, so at least you know it's not a premonition of some sort."

"Oh no, not you," I groaned. "You're going to be so happy when you get to asking Monica about her dream."

"I'm on my way now." Max walked back to the door. "I hope this is the last time you have that dream."

"Me too."

"Thanks again for your help. I'll give you a call the day before the article runs."

"Okay. And you're welcome."


An hour or so later, we made our way down to the inn's small dining room, and had the place practically to ourselves. Vickie must have noticed our surprise because as she brought a pot of coffee to our table she said, "Everyone else got an early start. They're hitting the ski slopes over at Gunstock, and it's a hour's drive from here."

"Skiing?" Monica asked. "But there's hardly any snow."

Vickie rapped her knuckles against our table. "They make a lot of the snow, hon. Since they never can tell how much snow there's going to be in a given season, or when it'll fall. Sometimes we'll get four feet in December, sometimes nothing until MLK Day. Things have been a lot more predictable for them since they invented those snow making machines."

"Ah."

"So, can I bring you waffles or pancakes?"

We all ordered the waffles. While we waited for them, I turned to John and Monica. "I trust that Max was nice to you this morning?"

"Sure, he's a nice kid," John told me.

Kid. He sounded like Mulder. "What did you dream about?"

To my shock, they both shook their heads. "Sorry, we promised not to tell you or each even other."

"Oh." What was Max's motivation, I wondered. "That's okay."

"He said it wouldn't be so long before the story came out anyway," John added.

"True enough." After that, I changed the subject, unwilling to let Max waste any more of my time. I wished him well with impressing his chief enough to get the story published, but if he swore them to secrecy for some bizarre reason, I wasn't going to obsess about the contents of the article. As far as I was concerned, I was through with it.


Later That Day

Monica gave me a hug, which I returned happily. "It was so nice of you to invite us up here."

"I'm glad you had a good time." I really was. Since they seemed to have had a good time, I no longer felt guilty for having brought them up under semi-false pretenses. Only semi-false because I really had wanted them to come up and meet the baby and see the house too.

She turned to where Mulder was holding the baby. "Bye bye, sweetie."

"See ya, dollface," Mulder deadpanned.

Monica smirked at him, and John looked over to me for rescue: Joey and William were being very demanding of his attention now that they knew he was leaving. "Hey guys? Dad and I want to say goodbye to John too."

They looked crestfallen for a second, but quickly recovered. "You're gonna come back, right?" William demanded to know.

"If your parents can stand having us around," John said solemnly, and they looked horrified until they realized that he was joking.

There was another round of goodbyes, and I walked them out to their car. After Monica promised to drive carefully, they backed out of the driveway and hit the road. I was still standing there watching them wave when Mulder came up behind me. I leaned back against him as he smoothed my hair back. "Goodbyes never get easier, do they?"

"I don't know," I said, "This is easier than when we broke you out of jail. Then we didn't know if we'd ever see them again."

"That's true. Come on, it's starting to snow again."

As we walked back to the house the door opened and both boys ran out with their sleds. "Okay, right?" Joey asked, looking excited about the falling snow.

Mulder tapped his watch. "Thirty minutes then you come in for us to see if you're warm enough to safely go back out."

"Deal!" they both cried, racing each other to the backyard.

Being apart from friends was hard, but there were definite advantages to living up here, too.


a/n one more part to post!