St. John's Church.
Alexandria, VA.
Easter, 1997
Mulder is about as twitchy as the child attached to his leg. It may have
been a private promise on Scully's part, but as he's realized, when she
makes a promise, she keeps it. "Hold still, ya squirmy varmint," he bends
down and whispers into his son's ear, making him giggle, but stay relatively
still, and for that, his father is grateful.
Sammy, like his older sister Page and baby sister April, is dressed in white
formal clothes. Likewise, Mrs. Scully, and Melissa are all decked
out, and so are the Lone Gunmen, who, although not nominally Catholic, are
the proud godfathers. A passerby might think that the kids are wedding
attendants, but actually, they're the stars of the show.
Having gone through the whole rigamarole of getting ready for the baptism,
Mulder's learned more about the other half, that is, his wife's Catholic
beliefs and her surprising strength in them. He sighs inwardly, if he'd
learned this before, he wouldn't have been surprised at her sudden swings
toward faith whenever it came up in their cases. Better late than never, he
adds, trying to pay attention as the priest asks the kids, "You and your
parents and sponsors have spent a long time preparing for this day. Is it
your desire to be baptized?"
Page murmurs a shy "yes" while April simply smiles, but Sammy shouts, "NO!"
Everyone laughs, while Scully groans and Mulder tries (and fails) to hide
his grin. Father McCue also smiles, then bends down and asks, "Samuel, do
you want to be baptized, too?"
Sammy looks up at his dad, who shrugs. A solemn look comes over the little
redhead's face, and he nods. "Okay," he says.
Mulder breathes an inward sigh of relief, especially since Scully's glare at
him has dimmed from laser-intense to merely first-degree burns. The rest of
the baptism goes without a hitch, just like the rehearsal, and the ritual
goes by painlessly, as Mulder and Scully read their hopes and prayers over
their children and the priest blesses the little ones in words and water.
April cries when the water splashes on her face, but that's understandable.
In a weird way, he could kinda get used to this, rituals being reminders of
love as well as obligation. And considering Scully's promise was made over
concern for his well-being, he can understand the sentiment. Once the
baptism is over, they launch into a familiar scenario common to pretty much
every religion: everybody eats.
"Now this I can get into," Frohike murmurs, digging into the buffet.
Mulder doesn't have a chance to respond sarcastically because Mrs. Scully
comes up and asks, "So, Fox, when will you get baptized?"
While her husband searches for a diplomatic reply, Scully smiles and
squeezes his arm, "He's already a believer, Mom."
"He is?" the older woman blinks. "But I thought…"
"Just a little more Old Testament-fashioned than the rest," Mulder grins,
even as he shoots a silent "thank you" to his wife.
He's saved from any more probing questions from either Mrs. Scully or Father
McCue as he does kid wrangling for the rest of the afternoon. He notices,
though, with some wry amusement, that the Gunmen aren't similarly blessed
with children as a diversionary tactic, and instead stuff their faces
It isn't until everybody leaves the church and he and his family are
seatbelted in that Mulder finally breathes a real prayer of thanks.
"Mulder?" Scully asks, concerned. "Are you okay?" It's been a long day for
everyone, and now that the kids are making tired noises, it seems that
they're ready for a nap. Me, too, she adds mentally.
"Now I am," he grins, starting the car.
July 2nd, 1997
Night
Scully smiles to herself when she sees that Mulder is lying on his stomach, almost nose to nose with April. The baby, also on her belly, is lifting her head to look around. Mulder is speaking to the baby in a voice too low to be heard.
"Mulder, what are you doing?"
"Trying to see what the world looks like from her level."
"What's different?" she asks, humoring him.
"Well, from down here, you're really tall. Mommy's a giant, isn't she April?"
Scully snorts. "I was a giant before she was born, not after. Ask Page."
She expects him to laugh, but he looks up at her with a very solemn expression. "Are you sure you're ready to go back to work?"
Three months of being home with the baby has been both nice and maddening. It makes her feel guilty, but she is ready to do something more intellectually stimulating with her time, and she's confident that Rachel, for all her idiosyncrasies, will be as good with the new baby as the two older children. Of course, she can't tell Mulder this. "I'm okay."
"Are you sure? Because if you're not, we can talk to Skinner about exten-"
"Really, Mulder, I'll be okay."
"Okay." He gives her a winsome look. "I've missed having you around the office."
"It's good to be missed," she tells him, getting down on the floor to play with April too.
July 5th, 1997
6:30 a.m.
When Mulder enters the nursery to dress his two youngest children, he's surprised to see Sammy sitting up in his crib. His eyes have dark shadows under them, and his face looks exhausted. He reaches his arms up and whines plaintively, "Baby loud!"
The loud baby is sleeping soundly, so Mulder carries his son into the master bedroom where Scully is still putting on her makeup. He puts Sammy on the bed and points at him. "Look at him, he's not getting any sleep. When he was small Page slept through his night noise, but he's not sleeping through April's."
As if to emphasize his father's point, Sammy slumps over, sprawling on the bed.
Scully picks the toddler up and cuddles him. "Oh, Sammy. I think it's time we put him in his own room, Mulder."
Mulder starts to nod, but Sammy shrieks "No!" and begins to cry.
All they can do is exchange bewildered looks. Mulder takes him and tries to calm him down. "You don't want your own room, huh, Buddy. How come?"
After hiccupping a couple of times, Sammy wipes tears off his face with a fist. "'lone scary. Too dark." They'd tried putting him in that room one night earlier in the week after setting up a toddler bed, and ended up with him in their bed. Now they knew why.
"We can put a night light in your room," Mulder suggests.
Sammy cries harder.
"Page's room," Scully blurts out. Sammy stops crying and looks at her. "Do you want to sleep in Page's room for a little while?"
"Car bed?"
Scully grins. "I think that can be arranged. Go wait in your old room for Daddy to come change you."
"'K, Mommy!" He dashes out of the room.
"You're good," Mulder tells her.
"I know."
"Do you think Page will mind?"
"Nah. But if she does, we can tell her it was your idea."
"Oh, that's nice."
His wife smiles brightly at his scowl.
Angie's Midnight Bowl
Noon
Scully walks down the lane toward Mulder and Angie, who are lying in the lane, looking up at the pin setter. Shrugging to herself, she doesn't even wonder why.
Catching sight of her, Mulder beckons with a hand. "Hey, Scully, take a look at this."
She joins them underneath the pin setter and squints at the floor. "What am I looking at?"
"The pin setter. You see the way it's wedged and broken?" Scully tells him she does. "Mr. Pintero said the only way that would happen would be if considerable weight or pressure was placed on it from above."
"This is where you saw the body?" Scully asks Angie.
"Yes ma'am, she was caught up in the machinery. Her neck was cut."
"And the blood from the victim was pooling where?"
Angie points to a spot on the slick floor. "Right there."
"But both the body and the blood were gone when you returned?"
Angie looks anxious, obviously sensing her disbelief." Yeah, but like, like I said, the woman in the parking lot..."
"Was the same woman that you saw caught up here in the machinery?"
"That's right."
All three of them walk out from under the pin setter, and Scully and Angie discuss whether or not he's lying. Before things get heated, Mulder interrupts." Can I ask you a favor? Can I get a soda, a cola, something like that?"
While Angie gets the soda, Mulder speaks to his wife in a low voice.
"What is that look, Scully?"
"I would have thought that after all these years you'd know exactly what that look was."
"I know you believe in ghosts, Scully."
"I believe in our ghosts. IF that's what they even are," she grumbles. "But you think what this man saw was the victim's ghost?"
"Sounds more like a disembodied soul."
"Which is just another name for a ghost."
"Except according to Mr. Pintero, this one was trying to communicate. It was speaking to him as if she was trying to tell him something. It sounds more like a death omen."
"A death omen? Like a banshee or big black dog?"
"Something like that. It's a spirit being that arrives as a harbinger of death. It looks just like the person who is dying."
"So if I see you when you're not supposed to be around I should worry about being widowed?"
"Funny." He smirks. "This is the third reported sighting in as many weeks...and as many murders. Each time the victim appearing near the crime scene trying to communicate, trying to say something."
"Communicate what?"
"I don't know yet but, uh...If you hold on a second I may have an answer for you." He thanks Angie for the soda then begins pouring it on the floor. Angie is really unhappy with his behavior, but Mulder ignores him and points to the spot Angie showed them before.
"She is me."
Both Scully and Angie are confused. "What?"
"Written onto the wax - she is me - look at this!"
They look where he's pointing and see the phrase etched in wax and filled with soda.
After Detective Hudak tips them off about call coming from a mental hospital, the agents go to visit Harold Spuller and speak to him and the nurse who cares for him
"I don't know anything. I didn't do anything. Leave me alone." Harold is sullen.
"You made that phone call, didn't you Harold?"
"No!"
"Did you say the words 'she is me'?"
"No!"
"Have you ever heard those words?"
"No!"
Mulder doesn't bother to point out the fact that at the very least Harold just heard him say the phrase. "Have you ever seen a ghost, Harold?"
"No! No!" Hatold rocks back and forth, getting even more agitated. "Please leave me alone."
The nurse makes a move to try to comfort the stricken man, but he just continues to shout no at the top of his lungs. They stand to leave, and Scully leans in to Mulder. "Well...when you're right, you're right."
"17...30...37...45...53." Tears stream down Harold's face, and neither Scully nor Mulder notice that he looks as them as they leave. "You're a ghost, you're a ghost, you're…"
An office in the psychiatric center
A doctor has let them borrow an office while Scully looks over Harold's medical records. To the surprise of both, the center seems eager to cooperate.
Scully looks up from a file." Harold Spuller suffers from pervasive developmental disorder, which is sometimes called atypical autism. He's spent his entire life in and out of facilities just like this one. He has been medicated, he has received shock therapy and, aside from his other disabilites, he has been diagnosed with severe ego dystonic obsessive-compulsive disorder...which would explain the switching of the victims rings."
"So why all of a sudden?" Mulder asks her.
"You mean what made him snap? Why, I think his outburst clearly showed a frustrated impulse towards violence when he was put in a challenging situation."
"That outburst didn't come until after I'd asked him if he'd ever seen a ghost."
"Mulder, the man is disturbed. You could see the pressure building in him from the moment the interview began."
"Yeah."
"Why are you now so unconvinced that Harold Spuller is the man we came here looking for?"
"I'm sure Harold Spuller is the man that made that phone call. On the other hand I don't think he's any more capable of murder than our kids are. What led us to him still remains unexplained."
"She is me."
"Uh huh, and the other apparitions, like the one Mr. Pintero saw at the bowling alley."
"Well, I think I have an idea about that if not an explanation. Howard Spuller is at this facility voluntarily, which means he can come and go as he pleases, to kill those women or to hold down a job or both."
Scully points to a page from Harold's records, which shows Angie's Midnight Bowl as his place of employment . "This isn't a coincidence."
"Maybe not," she agrees, standing abruptly.
"Hey were are you going?"
"No where really, I just need to find a washroom."
"You're not pregnant, right?" Mulder teases. But the glee flees his face suddenly when he recalls that they didn't wait a second longer than six weeks to get back on familiar terms…
"Jesus, Mulder, I just have to pee!"
She walks out in a huff leaving Mulder with a smug look on his face.
Her irritation at her husband is wearing off by the time she leaves the stall and goes to the sink to wash her hands. She turns off the water and looks up at the mirror. The words "She is me" are written on the mirror in blood. As she stares at the mirror, a low moaning sound is heard. She turns around and sees a pale, ghost-like figure of a young woman standing by the window. The sweatshirt clad woman's mouth moves, as if she's speaking, but as with her father's shade, Scully can't hear anything she's saying. As Scully watches, a line across the young woman's throat opens up like a seam and blood runs down her neck.
A frightened sound escapes her throat and she backs up so suddenly that she hits a stall with a resounding thud. On the other side of the door she can hear Mulder calling for her. "You okay in there?"
Her attention diverted by the question, she looks away from the ghost and to the door, as if she could see him through it. When she hesitantly looks back to the window, she sees that's she's alone.
"Scully, you in there?"
The words are no longer on the mirror, either.
"Yeah, I'm okay," she says shakily. "I thought I saw something. A rat."
"A rat? I thought this place was supposed to be upscale." He opens the door a crack to speak to her, but doesn't enter the room. "They found another victim. A college student with her throat cut. Just about a half block from here."
He lets the door close again, leaving a stunned Scully alone in the bathroom.
A City Street Near The Center Of Town
Scully barely suppresses a shudder when she looks at the body. The young woman is the same one she saw in the bathroom, wearing the same sweatshirt.
Mulder notices, but doesn't make an issue of it. "Her name was Loren Heller, age 21. She's single, apparently she was on her way home from a bar that she part-timed at after school. She had a ring on her left hand, switched to her right hand, pinky finger. She was dead less than an hour when she was found."
"That would rule out Harold Spuller as the killer, huh?" Scully asks, stepping back from the unpleasant sight.
"No, actually it doesn't. Harold's not at the home. He's nowhere to be found. His nurse locked him in his room after we left, but he managed to escape unnoticed."
"I don't imagine he'd be too hard to find. He's a creature of habit, after all."
"Yeah, but I think we should be the ones to find him, if only to find out what 'she is me' means." He glances at her and notices her distracted expression. "Missing the baby, huh?"
"What?" She blinks, confused.
"You look a thousand miles away. I thought that was it."
"Oh yeah, I was wondering how April is."
"Why don't you go home? I can get Harold myself."
"Are you sure?" She doesn't realize that she looks grateful.
"Positive. I'll give you a call if anything exciting happens."
Washington DC
Scully, with hands clasped in front of her chin, is somberly staring into space. There's a hesitant knock on the bedroom door. She gets up and opens it.
"I was afraid you were sleeping."
"Not yet. Has something 'exciting' come up?"
"I needed your help on something. I needed your medical expertise."
"On what?"
"Harold Spuller. You know Angie Pintero, the bowling alley guy? He's dead."
"How?"
"Natural causes. Congestive heart failure. Just keeled over right in the bowling alley."
"That's what you need my medical opinion on?"
"No. Howard Spuller had a premonitory vision of his boss's death."
"I don't understand." Scully lies, thinking involuntarily of her father for the second time.
"Harold saw an apparition - what may have been Angie Pintero's disembodied soul at the moment of or just prior to his death."
"How do you know?"
"Because I was standing right there when he saw it."
"But you didn't see it yourself?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I don't have that facility, that kind of connection to the victims that would have made such a vision possible."
"What's Harold Spuller's connection?"
"I don't know its exact nature but I think it has something to do with his autism...that Harold experienced a profound attachment to these victims but because of his disability was unable to express the depth and power of those relationships, so somehow a psychic or preconscious bond was formed that went beyond the temporal."
"Oh, wait a minute, so Harold knew the people that were killed?"
"Yeah, from the bowling alley, going back seven years."
"Even if what you're saying is true, Harold wasn't the only one who claims to have seen these apparitions."
"No, but he does have something in common with those who've had the visions that is quite powerful in its own right."
"Which is what?"
"Well, they were all dying...one of emphysema, one of cancer and now Angie Pintero."
"Harold Spuller is dying too?"
"Well that's what I need your medical opinion on."
"Well, what if he isn't?" Scully asks, suddenly worried about herself. She tries to dismiss her fear, since she'd seen her first ghost years before and was still hale, but it's hard.
"I would be very surprised. What is a death omen if not a vision of our own mortality? And who among us would most likely be able to see the dead but those who have been near its icy chill themselves? Harold's at the resident home right now."
"Let's get this over with then." Scully picks up her coat. "It's a good thing Rachel is still her."
"Thank god for night owls," Mulder agrees.
Chuck Forsch's room
After Harold goes ballistic, Scully goes to visit his roommate, telling Mulder that if anyone knows something, it'd be the man who rooms with him.
She knocks gently on the door before entering.
Harold's roommate looks up from reading a book. "Oh hi."
"Is your name Chuck?"
"Yes. Yes it is. Uh, Chuck Forsch. F-O-R-S-C-H. Chuck Forsch."
"Do you, uh, do you share this room with Harold?"
Chuck nods enthusiastically. "Yes, he's my friend."
"Do you know where he is? We're worried about him, so we'd like to find him."
"He's dying, isn't he? Harold is dying." The man's face clouds.
"Why do you say that?"
"Nurse Innes, she's, she's trying to poison him."
"Who told you that?"
"Harold. He said she told him she was putting poison in his meds."
"Harold hasn't been taking his medication?"
"I don't know. I don't know everything, I'm only a human being. But I do know that Harold's my friend. He wouldn't hurt anybody. You know, he really loved them."
"Who?"
Chuck crosses the room and removes another book from a drawer. "Harold. He gave them to me. He was afraid." Chuck takes several photographs from the book and hands them to Scully. Smiling faces that look up at them are the murdered women.
"Does anybody else know about these pictures, Chuck?"
"Nurse Innes." Just as she's about to thank him for his help, he gives her a curious look. "You don't look like a ghost."
"Why would I look like a ghost?"
"Harold. He said you were a ghost. And he knows about ghosts," Chuck says with a sage nod.
"Well, he's wrong, I'm not a ghost."
Chuck shrugs. "What do I know? I'm just a simple man."
As she leaves the room he begins to hum the Lynard Skynard song of the same title. Something about the end of the conversation really bothers her, and even though she tells herself that she shouldn't put too much stalk into what Chuck said, she can't shake the shiver that goes through her as she pushes open the door to the bathroom.
Standing hunched over the sink, Nurse Innes starts as Scully enters the room.
"How are you feeling?"
"I'm, you know, shaky."
"Understandable."
"Working with these people starts driving you crazy too. I'm just looking forward to going home."
"Will your family be a comfort?" Scully notices that Nurse Innes is holding something in her left hand and reminds herself to be wary in light of Chuck's more believable accusations.
"I live alone."
"No children?"
Innes smirks. "Just the one my husband ran off with. You?
"Three, two girls and a boy-" Scully's voice falters when nurse Innes accidentally drops pills onto the floor.
"Nurse Innes, I'm afraid I'm gonna to have to ask you to step out into the hallway."
Innes removes the scalpel she's been holding from her pocket and slashes at Scully, backing her up against the wall. Scully grabs Innes' arm as they struggle. She eventually forces Innes to drop the scalpel by slamming her hand against the wall. After Innes propels her across the room, still on the floor Scully draws her gun on the wild nurse.
"Stay where you are! Drop it! Let it go!"
Innes hesitates for just a fraction of a second before raising the scalpel and lunging forward. Scully aims from her position on the floor and fires. Innes drops like a stone.
Mulder and Alpert burst into the room a moment later, and look at the fallen woman.
Scully's face is blank as she gets to her feet. "She's alive. Let's get a paramedic in here."
After nodding in agreement, Alpert scurries out and summons help.
Mulder, on the other hand, is more concerned about his wife than the nurse lying on the floor. "You're cut." He takes her hand gently into his own and examines it.
"Yeah, she attacked me." She points to the scalpel. Which Mulder starts to pick up. "You might want to bag that. I'm pretty sure it's the murder weapon."
They squeeze against the hall wall to let paramedics roll Innes through.
"She had been taking Harold's meds...clonazepam and clozapine...the unregulated effects of which are violence and unpredictable behavior," Scully explains calmly.
"Yeah, but why did you even suspect her?"
"Well, I went in to talk to Harold's roommate and he said that Harold thought that she'd been poisoning him. So I went in to confront her and she just went off."
"Why do you think she killed those women?"
"I don't know. I mean, maybe in some drug-addled way, she was trying to kill happiness, Harold's happiness, his love for those women, maybe trying to destroy something she thought she'd never have again."
"She is me."
"Maybe. She mentioned that her husband had run off with a young girl. Maybe she was trying to extract some sort of revenge on them too." Scully shakes her head. "Have they found Harold?"
"Yeah. They found in an alley a few blocks from here, face down on the pavement. They worked on him for twenty minutes but he couldn't be revived."
"What happened?"
"The preliminary diagnosis is apnea - respiratory failure."
"As a result of what?"
"Well, the paramedics are at a loss to explain that, but if what you're saying is true, that Harold stopped taking his medications, then that could have been a factor in his death - at least in the visions that he was seeing."
"Well, Harold Spuller wasn't dying, Mulder. He, he was killed as a result of what that woman took away from him."
"Is that your medical opinion?"
Scully pauses and Mulder stops as well. "I saw something Mulder."
"What?"
She sighs. "The fourth victim. I saw her in the bathroom before you came to tell me."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Annoyance fills his voice. ::You're not dying this time, how could you see her?? You can't be sick, you can't, you can't.::
"Because I didn't want to believe it. Because I don't want to believe that there's a connection between the victims and who sees them. I'm fine, so your theory must be wrong."
"It must be."
"Let's go home," Scully whispers tiredly.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out his keys and tosses them to her. "I'll be right with you. I need to use the bathroom before we head out."
She's unable to resist returning his earlier volley. "Sure you're not pregnant?" His laughter echoes as he shakes his head and rushes back to the center.
As she walks out to the car, she catches sight of flashing lights down the street. Police cars and an ambulance are barely visible. She's teary for reasons she can't explain, but she rubs her eyes hard as she slides on to the passenger seat. Glancing out the window, she sees the ambulance driving away, and as she follows it with her eyes, in her rear-view mirror she sees a pale image of Harold in the back seat. Wide-eyed, she turns around to look but there is nothing there. She turns back, shocked.
She's white as a ghost herself when Mulder lets himself into the car, but he doesn't seem to notice.
Washington DC
10 p.m.
"Okay, how do I die?" She remembers that Buckman stared at her, looking perplexed. "You already did," The snippet of conversation comes back to her with a start, and makes her shiver. Buckman had seemed puzzled that she couldn't remember having died. What if it hadn't just been the confused words of a man soon to take his own life, but truly part of her past?
Before she quite realizes it, she's dialing the phone. "Hi mom, I'm sorry that it's so late...This will sound like a strange question, but...did I ever come close to dying as a kid?" She holds the phone to ear and listens for quite a while. "Okay thanks. Have a good night, Mom. Love you."
"It's late for a phone call," Mulder says quietly, making her realize he's in the room.
"I died." ::Oh shit. But how could Maggie possibly know? If any of the Scully women were going to claim ESP I'd of bet it would be Missy, not Maggie. Well, maybe Missy-:: Before Mulder has a heart attack, she goes on. "I was two. There was a car accident and the car rolled...My face got jammed against the seat and, and I stopped breathing. Then my heart stopped...My mom said they thought they lost me."
When she looks up there are tears in her eyes. He immediately gathers her in his arms. "Shhh, you're okay now."
"She said that they didn't want to tell me unless I remembered, since it had been so traumatic. I can't believe I didn't know I died." Scully's voice is still wobbly.
"I can understand her desire to protect you from that. If it had been me and Page, instead of you and Maggie, I can't say for sure that I'd do anything differently."
Scully doesn't say anything. To his surprise, he looks down sees that she's smiling. "What?"
"At least now we know that your stupid theory-"
"My stupid theory?" Pouting, he attempts to make her feel bad, and fails miserably.
"- was just a little off the mark. You don't have to be dying at the moment to see…something. God, Mulder, I was beginning to wonder if I was sick and didn't know it." Her laugh sounds a little shaky.
So does his.
"How come you didn't see them?"
"What?"
"You didn't see the ghosts. Surely you've had a few heart-stopping moments yourself."
"I think it might have stopped while I waited for you to say you'd marry me, but other than that..."
Lacking a witty comeback, Scully settles for kissing him instead.
