Chapter 12.

December 28, 2010.

San Diego, California.

"I came over as soon as I heard you two were involved."

Scully looked tired. She was still wearing pajama pants, her hair was scraggly, and she had purple circles under her eyes. She had spent yet another night consoling her brother and carrying his pain around on her shoulders. Mulder had only seen her this tired a few times in their long partnership. She still managed to smile at their old friend as she delivered a hot cup of hotel room coffee to his hands. She sat in one of the little wooden chairs, holding her coffee like a lifeline.

She was slow to speak, still waking up, "I'm glad you came."

"I heard they arrested Mulder yesterday." Skinner looked very much the same as he always had, only a decade or so older. He had less hair, more wrinkles on his face, but he still wore that same stern look he had given them so many times when they were his subordinates. He looked amused by his own words. "We should make a flipbook of your mugshots over the years."

Mulder smiled, and yawned, "Did they find any more bodies in that pit?"

"No. Ground penetrating radar came up with nothing. Four bodies total, with a confirmed fifteen-year gap between each death. We matched dental and medical records and three have already been identified." Skinner handed a thin folder to Scully. "I was hoping you two had more than this."

Mulder slid closer to his partner and looked over her shoulder, staring down at a school picture of a little boy. It was the last time he was photographed alive.

"No luck with the search so far." Scully handed the folder to Mulder, and sipped her coffee.

Skinner focused on Mulder, narrowing his eyes, "I heard some interesting things from the police at the debriefing this morning."

"I saw her," Mulder admitted, still bitter about the whole thing. "But I lost her."

"What about this treehouse?"

"What did the police tell you?"

Skinner shook his head, running one big hand over his bald head. "You know I… prescribed to this whole supernatural thing a long time ago. I know not everything can be explained. You taught me that. But based on what they told me…"

"You think I'm crazy?"

"I spent a good portion of my career thinking you were crazy." Skinner glanced around, as if to make sure no one would hear him admitting defeat, "But I trust you. I do. So talk to me."

Mulder did as he wanted, only leaving out a few bits that involved his irritating ghost companions. Some things were easier to believe and understand than others. Psychotic treehouse wandering the woods and sucking up small children? Reasonable. Former federal agent seeing the ghosts of his long-dead friends? Less reasonable. At least that was how Mulder saw it.

When he was done, his former boss sighed and touched his head again, almost nervously, "Well, the FBI has officially taken over. A pattern like this can't be ignored. But we're searching for one human killer, or an elderly killer and his protégé."

Skinner stayed for a while, discussing, offering his help and his condolences to Scully for the disappearance of her niece. He vowed to go through the rest of the X-files in case there was anything related to what Mulder had seen, but he doubted there was. Mulder remembered no such case. Scully took him over to meet her brother, and to go pick up Iden from the Scully household, where she had left her early that morning.

Mulder was left alone at last, just him and the balcony, and the bright new dawn.

But he never got to be alone for very long anymore.

"So your crazy treehouse idea turned up nothing."

Mulder groaned and sunk into his chair, pulling the hood of his jacket down over his forehead. His ghosts were here again. Langley was sitting in the chair beside him, Byers was leaning over the railing, and Frohike was sitting on the ground, toying with something in his lap.

"What a greeting," Frohike commented. "Every time we show up, we get groaned at."

"Maybe you should take a hint," Mulder suggested.

"We looked all over – well, as far as our leashes will reach without snapping us back to you," Langley said, tousling that long blonde hair of his. "Nothing about crazy treehouses."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Well, nothing about crazy treehouses abducting children every fifteen years," he amended.

Mulder crossed his arms, feeling the grouchiness set in. "Then what good are you?"

"Maybe our lack of discovery means this has nothing to do with ghosts. Good news, right?" Byers was trying to look hopeful, but he failed. "Why are you so bummed?"

Mulder tipped his hood back and got a good look at the three of them. "Ghosts."

"Not this again." Frohike waved his hands around. "Hey, over here. See me? Obviously not a delusion. Come on, you spent your career chasing aliens and getting haunted, but the thought of you being able to see ghosts is just too much for you?"

Mulder shook those words off. "I never asked for this."

"Well, you got it. Tough turnips."

"But why?"

"Why did you meet us in the first place? Why did the gods shine down and make Scully your partner? Why did you survive all those near-misses when you worked for the FBI? No reason. No reason at all." Frohike went back to his task.

Skinner came back after talking to everyone he could find, knocking on the hotel room door with a little bag of convenient store donuts. Scully had gone to see the bones again, to offer what insight she could and see if there was anything strange about the way they died.

Mulder sat with his former boss, trying to ignore the three ghosts that had followed him into the room.

"I got a little more on the victims," Skinner said, flipping through his growing folder. "Uh, one of the kids was in foster care at the time of his disappearance, and another one had recently lost a sister to homicide. For a while the parents were suspected and the kid was placed with immediate relatives. I got nothing on the other two."

"Grief."

"Hmm?"

"It sounds like those kids were experiencing grief, in some form." Mulder popped a donut in his mouth, and took a sip of coffee to melt it down. "Sara recently had a friend die. She was grieving."

"So you think… your magic treehouse is preying on grieving children?"

"I think it draws people in with their grief, like moths to a flame. You feel this… overwhelming need to be in the woods, to go and find it. Iden and I have both experienced it. I have no doubt Sara was drawn in by the same feeling."

"Why were you and Iden affected?"

"Iden lost her mom when she was little… and then her… her sister, sort of."

"What about you?"

"You know what I lost." Mulder sat a little straighter, "But we have something now, a connection. Instead of kids randomly disappearing, we have a clear predatory pattern."

"But we still don't know why it happens every fifteen years, or how-"

"One step at a time." Mulder got up and took the folder, laying it out on the bed to look through the files. He pointed to an old black and white picture of a smiling boy. "Here, this one. Brian Winter. He was the first one to go missing. He might have been the catalyst."

"He disappeared after a soccer match in Greenfield, a few hours from here."

"I'll start there."

"What do you expect to find, after all these years?"

"Maybe nothing." Mulder closed the folder, and handed it to Skinner. "But you and Scully both have lots to do, and I want to find Sara, so I have to do something."