Chapter 10.

December 27, 2010.

San Diego, California.

For thousands of years humankind has shared stories about monsters in the trees. Gene was a fan of the tales of birds who could mimic the human voice, luring hikers away from their groups and into hidden ravines. When they were injured or knocked unconscious, the birds would descend upon their prey, leaving nothing but inexplicable bones hours later. Mulder had been exchanging emails with him about the treehouse all night and though he had nothing to offer on the paranormal, he was full of speculation about the local animals.

It was dawn, and those mimicking birds were on his mind while the search teams assembled. It was less about the birds and more about the possibility of finding the little girl dead. Some ideas he had to keep from his partner, so he only wondered to himself.

Overnight he had convinced himself they would find some sign of the girl with the dogs. Search teams had been out for countless hours and came back with nothing. It was like the kid had walked out of her house, stepped into the woods, and flew off the face of the Earth. At this point the volunteer search was useless, because the dogs had scoured these woods and human eyes were nothing compared to the nose of a hound, but it was a necessary ritual. Charlie needed it. Right now the police were widening their search area, blasting the local airwaves with alerts, and monitoring phone lines and the house for any signs of her return. Having a hundred or so people walk through the woods was a lesson in futility.

Mulder kept that to himself, too, and yawned in greeting when Scully came back to his side. She was sleepy, but her eyes were bright. She looped her arms into one of his and rested her face against his shoulder, staring at the forest.

As much of a prick as Bill could be, he had a lot of friends in this city. Half the neighborhood had showed up to volunteer and it took nearly twenty minutes to get all their names written down.

Mulder and Scully were put between two strangers, a man in his thirties and an older woman in a big fluffy fur coat, and they walked a straight line into the woods. Mulder scanned the ground, back and forth, each time he made it more than ten feet, looking for tiny disturbances in the snow and underbrush that might indicate a child had been there.

He walked for hours, scanning the ground, to the edge of another neighborhood on the far side of the woods. He saw no signs of Sarah, and no sign of the treehouse or its clearing. Midday brought more fear, because they were approaching the twenty-four hour mark.

"It must have been some kind of illusion," Mulder said to Scully, when five had come and gone. He was sitting on a wet log deep along their search route, where another neighborhood could be seen through the trees and many volunteers stood waiting for the shuttle to put them back where they started. His partner paced in front of him, but paused to listen when he spoke. It was the first time he had dared theorize today. "The treehouse, I mean. You know, like an oasis in the desert."

Scully heaved a big sigh, sitting down beside him and rubbing her face with her hands. "It was there, Mulder. All the kids said they saw it."

"I know it was there. What bugs me is how it disappeared."

Scully peeked one pretty blue eye at him, and smiled, "When you get to the mirage, it disappears."

"Maybe an animal projects it, to draw the kids in," Mulder found himself siding with Gene, who made everything about cryptozoology. "It worked really well from what I saw."

Bill had great timing. He was coming up his line and overheard what Mulder said. He crossed over to them in a huff. "Can you just focus on finding Sarah, instead of wondering if aliens abducted her? Can you do that?"

If there was one person in the whole world who was the total opposite of Mulder, it was this man. Bill was big and aggressive, but only when Mulder was around. He hated him to an irrational extreme, like he had actually lost Scully all those years ago and Mulder was the one who killed her. He was convinced that Mulder was the worst thing that ever happened to his sister and that conviction had stayed with him over the years. He could hold a grudge like no one else.

But when he spoke, and gave Mulder that frustrated, exasperated tone like he was scolding a ten-year-old instead of talking to a grown man, Mulder only looked at Scully. He had to wonder how these two very different people could be related – his gentle, intelligent lover, and her close-minded grizzly of a brother.

Scully rolled her eyes at the intrusion, putting a hand on Mulder's shoulder like she was afraid he was going to hop up and deck her brother. She said, "Can you give it a rest, Bill? We were just talking."

Bill might have said something else, but a whistle blew off to the east.

"Sarah," Scully said under her breath, rushing off toward the sound. Bill followed quickly behind her, and Mulder went after them more slowly. He was cautious. His fear of finding a body instead of a living girl grew to an obnoxious peak.

They found a police officer standing in a small clearing, with people rapidly rather around him. He was holding a doll out in one hand, away from his body, and grimacing. It was the doll Sarah had found in the treehouse, the one she had taken back to the hotel with her – the one the police had collected the day before when she first went missing.

Mulder hardly believed his eyes. He stepped up behind Scully and looked at the nasty thing as it dangled and leaked water into the snow.

Charlie arrived before anyone could say anything. He snatched the doll from the officer and gaped at it, holding it to his chest, "We found this yesterday, in the woods."

Mulder looked at Scully, but couldn't catch her eyes. How had this ugly little doll found its way back into the woods already? He looked around as if Sarah would be nearby, just waiting to be found under a bush or something. The clearing was empty. The gathered volunteers shared glances filled with confusion and fear.

Charlie cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Sarah! Sarah!"

The police officer set the doll down and took out his phone. Mulder lingered closer, listening to the short, confusing conversation. The officer glanced around himself and said, "The evidence box wasn't tampered with, but the doll was missing. This doll."

Mulder approached the doll, crouching nearby to examine its sunken eyes, its ugly, chipped plastic arms. He was shaking his head when he murmured, "A mirage."

His partner tapped his back, and beckoned him off into the woods, away from curious ears. She looked more frustrated than afraid. "Give me your theories on this."

"We all climbed on the treehouse, and you were right. Mirages disappear when you get near them. So maybe it was some kind of… shapeshifting… building?"

Scully gave him a blank look.

"Ghost?" he offered.

She rubbed her forehead, like the very suggestion that this could be the workings of a ghost gave her a headache. "We have to find her, Mulder. We have to."

"I know. We will."

Scully left him there, going up to Charlie and hugging him. Mulder watched them and felt a deep sense of duty toward the missing girl, because whatever had taken her – he was sure now – was supernatural in nature. He was responsible now, because the people who had volunteered, her family, her friends, were ill equipped to find answers.

Mulder walked off on his own, still within sight of the bordering neighborhood but away from the volunteers, and put his hand on the first tree trunk he encountered. Something in him wanted to feel things like Iden did, to get a sense of the future when he closed his eyes, when he touched this tree. But the wood was cold and quiet and the forest held onto its secrets.

A wind swept through the trees and chilled him. He thought he heard a gentle sound, like laughter, but it was so soft it barely registered. It was calling to him. His skin tingled. Whatever was out there was like a spider on its web, touching the tendrils delicately, waiting for one to shake.

A voice came behind him.

"No."

Mulder jumped, slipping to the other side of the tree to use it for protection if he was under attack. One of his ghosts, Frohike, was standing beside him, looking deep into the woods. For once he was alone, a solitary figure, appearing very much alive.

He spoke again, softer, "You have this bad feeling inside. You should probably listen to it."

Mulder joined him in looking into the trees, finding the forest suddenly menacing and dark. He knew the other volunteers were not far away, that he could turn around and go back to the safety of the group, but he felt that gentle tug inside of him again. Come, it said.

"What's out there?" he asked dreamily.

Frohike took a few steps, leaving no prints in the snow, running his hand along a tree but not seeming to touch it at all. "Being dead doesn't make me omniscient. But you and I are connected. I'm getting bad vibes. Whatever you were thinking of doing, don't do it."

"Sarah is out there."

"You just met Sarah, and the world has a million girls just like her." Frohike crossed his arms like he was cold, talking more to the woods than to Mulder. "We have a theory about our connection to you. If you die, we die – for good this time. So when stuff like this happens we've started drawing straws to decide who gets to come and tell you not to be an idiot."

Mulder shook that comment off and started walking, his ghost staying dutifully by his side. "Come on, don't tell me you're not curious."

"I lost a lot of curiosity when I died." Frohike did look curious though, and strangely reserved for someone who was already dead. He walked with a caution he had never bothered with in life. "You and your ghosts… You are thinking ghosts, right?"

"Unless you have other ideas, that's the working theory."

"Doesn't feel like ghosts." Mulder paused to look at him, and Frohike explained, "I mean, it seems too big for ghosts. We can touch things, yeah, if we try really hard, but making a whole building that kids can climb in? No. It's not some kind of supernatural sixth sense I have. Just logic."

"Could you sense it, if it were another ghost?"

"Dunno. Maybe. Maybe not. You would probably be better at it."

Mulder had no explanation for his ability to see the Gunmen, or the old woman in the library, or the spirit of the departed alien Deloris. He kept it to himself for the most part, fearing he was losing his mind at first, and sure they would stop haunting him before long. But the Gunmen remained, and his haunting was prolonged into plain old harassment.

He shrugged at the comment, unwilling to go into that right now.

"Maybe your theory about it being an animal was right. Just a big old shapeshifting treehouse."

Mulder smiled at that, and so did Frohike. They were already out of view of the nearby neighborhood and the forest seemed to open its maw and swallow them both up. Trees got closer together, underbrush more challenging. Frohike strolled through it and Mulder struggled.

While his ghost waited for him to navigate a patch of thorns, he asked, "Where do you and the other Gunmen go when you're not with me?"

Frohike shrugged. "Nowhere, and somewhere."

"You always know what I was doing while you were gone."

"I told you we're connected."

Mulder shuddered at the thought of his three former friends crawling around inside his head. "You have to be somewhere."

Their walk stopped abruptly in a clearing, and the treehouse was sitting in its tree again.

Mulder stopped dead the moment he saw it, his heart racing, with both glee and terror. It was a horrible and fascinating thing, this treehouse. "I'll be damned."

Frohike only sighed, looking up at it. "You never listen."

His ghost vanished, just like that.

Mulder watched the empty air where he had been standing, convinced he would poof back. But he was gone, and now Mulder was alone with this curious structure.

He ventured closer, hearing the memory of that laughter in the back of his mind.

"Hello?" Mulder called out softly.

Silence dominated the forest. It was like someone had put cotton in his ears. Even his footsteps seemed muted, the crunch of snow, the beating of his heart in his throat. He touched the trunk of the tree that held it, feeling nothing but coldness, and looked up the ladder into the darkness of the house itself. It seemed empty, but Mulder got the sense that something was looking back at him.

Mulder put his hand on the ladder, "Sarah? Is anybody up there?"

Silence.

He hung there, debating with himself. Of all the horror stories he had heard about monsters in the forest, none struck him so much as the one he was in now. The longer he stayed, the more he felt the treehouse looming over him, like it was waiting for him. The silence reminded him of something Gene Foster said about the caves, when they had suspected a monster lurked within.

I walked, and I listened to the water running, and recorded the sounds of frogs and insects echoing from all over, and then everything went silent.

Silence was a bad sign after so long hearing winter birds chirp. He could scarcely hear his own heart beating now. Maybe he was right about the spider sitting in its web. Only predators could make the woods go quiet like this, as the prey huddled down and hoped it wasn't noticed. The air itself went still and the breeze died away.

He climbed up another rung and poked his head in.

It was dark inside, but the light from the balcony showed him just enough.

Sarah sat in the corner, her arms wrapped around her knees. She was pale and trembling. When she saw him she gave a pitiful whimper. She whispered, "Help me."

Mulder climbed up another rung, holding his hand out. "Come here. Take me hand."

Sarah scooted forward eagerly, taking his hand. She climbed down the ladder with him and almost fell when her feet hit the ground. Mulder held her steady.

"I wanna go home," she whimpered.

Mulder held her hand, maybe a little too hard, and headed for the edge of the clearing.

Laughter pierced the air.

It was so loud he had to let go of the girl and cover his ears. The sound rumbled his chest, made his heart stutter. It morphed into sobbing, and the wind kicked up all at once. Snow puffed into the air in a flurry. Branches rolled toward them, end over end, and leaves were ripped from the nearby trees. Mulder wrapped his arms around Sarah to shield her from a flying branch. It struck him in the center of the back and then flew toward the treehouse, circling it like the house itself was the center of a mighty tornado.

"I wanna go home!" Sarah screamed.

Mulder tried to move, to get further out of the clearing, but the wind was too strong. It encircled them. Sarah was still screaming, holding onto him, but the wind was too fierce.

And then he saw it, a vision coming to life for the first time.

A red kite was flung from the branches of a nearby tree, and it swooped down toward them in a rush. At the same moment the wind tossed him to his knees, and Sarah stumbled out of his reach.

If she touches it… she'll never get away.

Mulder reached out, his voice torn away, as he cried, "Sarah, get down!"

But the kite hit her, and that scarlet scarf of hers unwound, and she spun into the snow like a ragdoll. He reached out again, determined to get a hand on the girl.

If she touches it… she'll never get away.

Something hard struck him in the head. Mulder hit the ground, dazed, and watched as the world calmed around him, like the sudden storm had departed. Sarah was gone, but she left an imprint in the snow. He looked up and found the tree and the treehouse missing from the clearing, like they had never been there. He felt the loss like a punch in the gut, and then slipped into blackness.