Scully lay awake for some time after they made love, replaying
the events of the last few days in her mind. Soon she would have
to get up and re-bandage the cuts on her hands, but she didn't
want to wake Mulder, who was profoundly asleep against her
shoulder. With her thumb, she traced the orderly line of bone
in his spine. Other than Emily and maybe her little brother
Charlie, Scully didn't think she'd ever felt so protective of
anyone.
She watched shadows on the ceiling shift with the changing angle
of moonlight that filtered over the top of the curtains. Strange
to think the white-painted ceiling beams had been in place before
her great-grandparents were born, likely before her ancestors had
ever left Ireland. Before that, the beams had been trees. Deep
at the center of those trees were growth rings that formed before
Europeans ever came to America, and the cells inside those growth
rings contained organic molecules that had been part of even more
ancient animals and plants. Perhaps the molecular remains of
Jesus' contemporaries were lying deep in the wood overhead. To
accept the premise that matter was neither created nor destroyed
was to accept that one really owned nothing, not even the atoms
in one's bones. The thought gave her an eerie sensation of time
collapsing in on itself.
Her hands had really begun to throb. She turned and kissed
Mulder's forehead, then carefully extricated herself from his
embrace. He stirred but did not really seem to wake. After
dressing and caring for her injuries, she went downstairs to
retrieve her laptop. Soon she had set up a makeshift desk for
herself on the table near the window in Mulder's room.
If she wasn't going to sleep, she might as well write up
Kristie's autopsy protocol. She plugged the serial jack of her
digital recorder into the back of her laptop and watched as her
dictated notes flowed onto the screen. During the autopsy, she'd
indicated that the through-and-through wound to Kristie's thigh
was "consistent with" a single, forceful knife thrust. Such a
finding would indicate an assailant with a lot of upper body
strength. Of course, the wound was also consistent with a
scenario in which Kristie slipped and fell forward onto a sharp
object being held upward at an angle. This might happen if she
were pursuing a much smaller, weaker person who was backing away
from her. Such apparently minor details would influence the
prosecutor's decision about what, if any, charges would be filed
against John McBer and his theoretical accomplice.
Scully absently rubbed at the line of stitches on her left palm.
The pattern of wounds across Kristie Herron's hands had been
nearly identical. Yet even assuming her own experience was what
it seemed, it was still possible that what happened to Kristie
was unrelated. She decided to ask Detective Davis for copies of
the autopsy photographs in the morning. Maybe the hilt mark on
Kristie's thigh would offer some information.
She organized and reorganized the autopsy data without coming to
any conclusion that would bear up under the requisite burden of
proof. If nothing else, Scully thought, she ought to be used to
*that* after more than seven years. At last she wandered over to
the window and drew the curtain aside. The frozen field sparkled
in the light of a near-full moon, and beyond that the woods stood
like a ragged line of still, gray figures. No, perhaps not
entirely still. Was it her imagination, or did something pale
occasionally flicker around the bases of the trees? The shifting
shadows held her gaze for a long, long time.
*****
Mulder dreamt he was in the kitchen of his boyhood home, cutting
out sugar cookies with Samantha. The girl was the 14-year-old
he'd seen in his starlight vision and he was his adult self, but
somehow this seemed only natural. The only mystery was why
they'd spent so much time apart.
The trick to making sugar cookies was to roll the dough out while
it was still very cold, and Mulder had to stand up and throw his
back into rolling out the near-frozen mound. Samantha was doing
more chatting than cutting, commenting on the more eccentric
cookie cutters as she lifted them one at a time from the large
bowl in front of her. The Mulder siblings had liked to root
through summer-end garage sales for peculiar cookie cutters and
hoard them in anticipation of the holidays. It got so Christmas
wasn't the same without cookies shaped like Friar Tuck or the
head of Mayor McCheese.
Despite her apparent distraction, Samantha had two full cookie
sheets in front of her, one balanced awkwardly on the other. She
struck one with her elbow as she reached across the table for
their dented fleur-de-lis cutter, and only her quick grab saved
it from clattering to the floor.
Mulder set the rolling pin down and held his hands out to her.
"Here -- I'll give those to Mom," he said. Samantha handed him
the sheets, and he turned to set them on the counter.
Mrs. Mulder shut the oven door and stood up. She moved with a
strange, slow stiffness.
"Mom?" Mulder asked.
He realized her hair was dark and wet-looking. When she turned,
her features were a corpse's, bloated and blackened almost beyond
recognition.
*****
Mulder cried out and sat up in bed. For an instant he was
disoriented, unable to recognize the room faintly outlined by the
glow from Scully's laptop.
"Mulder?"
He turned to find Scully at the window, moonlight shining through
the filmy fabric of her nightgown. She seemed to be standing too
close to the glass, as if she were a lover watching in eager
anticipation of her beloved's return. He looked away, unable to
bear the freezing feeling he got when he looked at her.
"What is it? Did you have a bad dream?" He heard her bare feet
padding across the carpet. Her fingers were cold when she put her
hand in his arm; she'd been standing at the window a long time.
Chill radiated from her as from an open grave.
"Mulder?" She asked again.
He reached up and seized her, crushing her against him.
"Whatever's out there doesn't need you. *I* need you."
"Mulder, stop it! You're hurting me." He did not immediately
yield to her struggles. Something dark and desperate in him
refused to let her go.
When he finally released her, he sat forward and rested his
elbows on his knees, ashamed. She was a luminous figure in his
peripheral vision, lifting her hand to her injured side. "What's
the matter with you?" she asked.
Everything. Everything was the matter. "Scully . . . can I ask
you something?" His mouth felt as dry as ash.
Whatever she heard in his voice made her speak more gently.
"Sure . . . what is it?" He felt the bed springs shift as she
sat down.
There was an odd humming feeling in his head. "When we went to
my mother's apartment, did I see the body?"
Silence. //She doesn't know what to say.//
"You don't remember," she said.
Mulder swallowed against the burning at the back of his throat.
"Maybe I do now."
Scully began to talk too quickly in that clinical voice she used
when she wanted to distance herself from something. "Repression
is a normal psychological defense mechanism. I know when I came
home from the hospital after my sister--"
Mulder tuned her out. Disjointed images flashed in his mind.
Socks. White socks beneath the cuffs of loose teal slacks,
resting at one end of the couch. Scully arguing with one of the
cops: //"Leave him alone. He's upset."//
//"What the hell is he doing here?"//
Another officer spoke: //"He flashed a badge at the door. How
was I supposed to know he was her son?"//
The smell of death was already strong, overpowering the chemical
smell from the leaky gas line in the oven. A smell like things
left on the beach after storm breakers receded; like oysters with
gaping shells.
Her hands lay folded on her stomach, relaxed as if in sleep. The
only clue to what had occurred was the faint greenish tinge to
the skin on top and the deep red color just visible on the
underside of her fingers. The tissues had begun to swell just
slightly, causing her thin gold watchband to impress a groove
around her wrist. The hands of the watch still twitched forward,
impervious.
//"Mulder, come on. Let's go. Let's let them finish up in
here."// Scully had tugged at his arm, urging him toward the
door. He remained, immovable.
His mother had not been dead long, 36 hours, 48 at most. Yet her
head, encased in a plastic bag secured with a rubber band, seemed
to belong to a corpse dead far longer. Her expiring breath had
filled the plastic with moisture and microbes soon went to work.
Beneath her mercifully closed eyes her eyeballs had gone flat,
forming deep hollows in a face otherwise swollen like a drowning
victim's. The deterioration was such that Mulder had at first
allowed himself to hope it wasn't his mother after all. Surely
this was not the woman who had left a message on his answering
machine only days before.
But her identification had been laid out neatly on the arm of the
couch, and a scar she'd gotten while washing out a glass that
broke made a familiar checkmark-shape across her knuckle.
Other memories intruded on his recollection of the scene: the
smell of gun powder; the hot, sticky feeling of his father's
blood seeping through his clothes, the pool of it spreading and
spreading.
Mulder felt his bowels turn to liquid, and he quickly got up out
of bed.
When he returned, he felt shaky and sweaty, as if he had been ill
for days. As an afterthought, he drew over the wastepaper basket
just in case he threw up.
Scully was buzzing around him, turning on lights, fetching him
water. She located a thermometer in some inner pocket of her bag
and coaxed him into putting it under his tongue.
He obliged her, though he doubted he was feverish. He shut his
eyes against the glare of the lamp and simply felt himself
breathe. There was something satisfying about hearing the air
rush in and out of his nostrils -- proof he still belonged to the
land of the living.
Mulder felt no emotion he could identify, which was fine with
him. It was as if his heart had broken, and then the sharp
slivers had been wrapped in thick cotton batting to prevent them
from doing any more damage. For the second time that night, the
world disintegrated into a collection of disjointed sensations --
the pressure of his body against the cotton sheets, Scully's feet
patting on the carpet, the almost-inaudible hum coming from her
laptop.
Before long she disturbed him to take thermometer out of his
mouth. "97.8," she said.
Ah. So this was just shock. Nothing remarkable about that. He
heard her pick up the glass of water from the bedside table. "I
want you to drink as much of this is you can," she said.
He was tempted to ignore her, but he made himself drink the
thing. He didn't enjoy it. He hurt when he moved, though not
physically. The pain went deeper than that.
Scully made him drink another glass of water before she shut out
the light and got back into bed with him. She wadded the
blankets around him and coaxed him into sitting curled against
her with his head on her shoulder.
To his dismay, she started to pray over him: "Hail, Holy Queen,
Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope, to thee do
we cry, poor, banished children of Eve . . ."
"Please don't do that," Mulder said. As far as he was concerned,
prayers were for funerals, and he wasn't dead just yet.
She fell silent and rested her cheek against his forehead, as if
very weary. He could tell from the way she was holding him that
she was afraid for him. She pressed the coverlet against his
shoulder as if she were stanching the blood from a wound. Some
sick, childish part of him was glad. He tried telling himself he
did not need attention that badly, but it didn't work. He was
well beyond the point of reasoning with himself. //This would be
a really good time for Scully's God to exist.// "Tell me a
Sister Spooky story," he said.
"Mulder . . . that's not what you need to hear right now," she
said. Sister Spooky, known to the rest of the world as Sister
Mary Carnahan, IHM, had been a veritable encyclopedia of bizarre
Church trivia. Most of her stories involved things like
miraculously preserved tongues and statues that bled. At times,
Mulder knew his interest made Scully uncomfortable. He'd had to
assure her he wasn't simply picking her brain for a Catholic
version of "Ripley's Believe It or Not." Sister Spooky's world
was filled with mystery, and in mystery there was hope.
"It is. It is what I need to hear," Mulder said.
She sighed and was silent for a few moments. "The only one I can
think of is completely inappropriate," she said.
"I don't care. It'll do fine," Mulder said.
"It's got death in it," she warned him.
"Even better."
She took a deep breath and said, "Well, according to Sister Mary,
Death takes the form of a man in a broad-brimmed hat. Underneath
the hat is a skull, and the eye sockets are dark. He's blind, so
when he wanders the streets at night, he goes sniffing at the air
to find his way. You can hear him coming because he pushes a
heavy cart full of the bodies of people he's come to take away.
Mulder curled more closely against Scully, like a child moving
closer to the camp fire during a ghost story.
"Once, a long time ago, Death could see. He was walking through
the Irish farm country one evening when St. Peter came down to
earth and started walking beside him. All the sensible farmers
were already in their houses, but one farmer and his servant were
still mowing hay.
"At the sound of Death's cart, the farmer dropped to the ground
and whispered for his servant to do the same. But the servant
was a simple man, and he kept mowing and singing.
"Death was angry that the man was not afraid. He pointed his
bony finger at him and said, 'You. In eight days that fine voice
of yours will be stilled. I advise you to get shriven now,
because once your eight days are up I will come for you.'"
"But the servant only sang louder, and that made
Death even more angry. 'Very well, you had your chance,' he
said. 'You should have seen the priest when I bade you. Instead
you will come with me now, with all of your sins on your head.'
"Then St. Peter stepped in and said, 'How dare you wish such a
death on an honest man doing honest work? Remember, you were
made to chasten man, not to rule him.' And he struck the glowing
fires out of the creature's eyes."
Scully lapsed into silence, and for time the only sound was the
hum of her laptop. "That's a great story," Mulder said.
"It's not great. It's kind of twisted. I think some of the
parents went to the priest after Sister told us that one," she
said. He wondered if her own parents had complained. The story
must have made quite an impression on her; Mulder suspected she
was quoting parts of it verbatim.
"I liked it. Thank you," he said. Somehow the idea that Death
had limitations was very comforting.
She patted his thigh through the thick blankets. "Think you can
sleep?"
Unconsciousness sounded like a very nice idea -- if only he could
keep from dreaming. "I think so. Can you?"
She hesitated a moment and he knew she'd heard his unspoken
reproach. No more lurking at the window and frightening him.
"Yes, I think so," she said.
They settled back down into bed, and this time Mulder's sleep was
untroubled by dreams.
*****
Full sunlight was shining over the top of the curtains when
Scully woke up. She felt better rested than she had since
leaving work on Friday. Slowly it dawned heard this was wrong.
It was Monday morning, and agents who expected to miss work were
supposed to call in by 8 AM. She sat up on the edge of the bed
and phoned Skinner's office, leaving a message with Kim. If the
AD was as "enthusiastic" about keeping her and Mulder out of
Washington and out of trouble as he claimed, then he would
understand. She let Mulder sleep as she dressed. The events of
the past few days had likely been even more harrowing for him
than they had been for her.
She took the room key from the nightstand and slipped out of the
room, hoping there was still something left of the continental
breakfast buffet downstairs. Scully hesitated briefly on the
landing, listening to the sound of law officers' voices. She
could feel the bracing fresh air even where she stood on the
stairway -- men must have been going in and out the front door
for some time. The investigators were packing up and going home:
scene processed, suspect in custody, case closed.
The thought made Scully uneasy. She didn't doubt that John McBer
had meant little good to Kristie Herron. Perhaps he even planned
to kill her. But had he actually committed the murder?
For that matter, to what extent had Scully's own inexplicable
experience colored her view of the facts and Kristie's murder
case? The whole situation made her position extremely difficult.
The young woman's family certainly deserved some satisfaction
from the justice system. But then, if he was innocent, so did
John McBer.
She continued down the stairs and found officers in civilian garb
chatting next to their packed bags, and brushing crumbs from
cheese danishes off their shirt fronts and mustaches. Two
teenagers, a boy and a girl, wearing crisp white aprons, cleared
mostly-empty trays of fruit, pastries and muffins from a long
table.
Detective Davis, wearing khaki slacks and a tweed blazer, stood
right by the remaining tray of little muffins. Scully braved the
possibility of his curious blue gaze as she grabbed a paper plate
and began loading a basic breakfast for herself and Mulder on it.
She couldn't help glancing up at the boy server as he reached
for, then drew back from, the tray she was picking at. The kid
was skinny and pimply-faced, probably about 17 years old. His
name tag said "Josh." Scully glanced up at Josh and couldn't
help imagining a young Mulder, awkward and silent and sad,
working in his former neighbors' inn because they were the only
people who would tolerate him.
Josh looked up at her and she saw his eyes were dark rather than
green-gold-brown.
"Hi," Scully said, smiling.
"Hi," the boy said, and immediately found something else to do on
the other end of the table. His co-worker, a girl whose nametag
said "Nicole," rolled her eyes and started brushing crumbs off
the tablecloth.
Scully forced herself to seem as disinterested as possible as
detective Davis stepped up beside her.
"Agent Scully, it's good to see you up and around again."
She managed a tight smile and consciously refrained from fussing
with the bandages on her hands. "Thank you," she replied. "I
wanted to ask you whether I could examine the photos of Kristie
Herron's autopsy."
Davis looked mildly surprised. "Sure. I have no problem with
that. But may I ask why?"
Scully swallowed, debated whether to demur or to be upfront about
her questions concerning John McBer's guilt. McBer might indeed
be a poor excuse for a human being, even a murderer, but he was
not necessarily Kristie's killer. "I want to study the wound
pattern again, specifically the sharp-force wound to the thigh.
I want to be sure about the angle of attack before I write up the
protocol."
"The angle of attack?" Davis asked, frowning. "I thought we
were pretty clear that the attack was a thrust from someone
sitting or kneeling low to the ground, perhaps in a chair. What
happened to make you change your mind?"
"I haven't changed my mind. Not exactly," Scully said. "It's
just that I want to explore all possibilities."
"Possibilities?" Davis echoed. Suddenly he held his hand out as
if he wanted to usher her away from the crowd. "Can I talk with
you? Privately?" he asked.
She blinked at him, trying not to show that she was at all
concerned. "Yes, I suppose so," she said. She walked with him a
short distance to the lace-covered window near the corner with
the pot-bellied stove.
"Listen, I'm not good at politics, and I can't think of a politic
way to say this. Dr. Scully, I don't want this to be repeat of
the LaPierre case," Davis said quietly.
The statement stunned Scully into silence. Amber Lynn LaPierre
was the little girl Mulder believed had "vanished into
starlight." The case was still wending its way through the court
system, but the defense was making a big deal of "an FBI
profiler's" dismissal of the LaPierres as suspects.
"Excuse me?" Scully asked. "I don't think I understand."
Davis looked pained and glanced away toward the window, is if
Scully were forcing him into territory where he didn't want to
go. "Look, we all have tough breaks in our lives. I've had
mine, you've had yours, and Agent Mulder has had his. But as
professionals, we have to make sure those breaks don't cloud our
judgment about a case. I know you lost her daughter two years
ago--"
"You what?" Scully asked, louder than she'd meant to. Heads in
the room turned. She felt heat spreading across her face.
Davis looked apologetic. "Patty Herron mentioned you stopped by
the other night; she said you'd lost a child. I'm sorry to hear
that. I really am. But reading supernatural elements into this
case is not going to bring that child back."
There was a dim singing in Scully's ears and she felt a powerful
urge to slap him. Her voice shook slightly when she spoke: "You
don't know what you're talking about. Agent Mulder and I have
always conducted our cases with the utmost professionalism . . ."
Davis held up his hands, a disarming gesture. "I'm not trying to
be offensive. I'm just trying to make sure this case gets the
best investigation possible. The Herron family deserves that
much. You agree with me, right?"
Despite his assertion that he was no good at politics, Davis had
backed her into a corner. "Of course," Scully said.
"Okay. I can have the photos sent up to you in a few hours.
That all right?" Davis asked.
"Yes," Scully said, not liking how quickly he was giving in. She
sensed he was throwing her a bone.
"Good," Davis said, giving her a conciliatory smile.
Scully moved away from him quickly, heading upstairs with her
paper plate laden with fruit and muffins. Maybe it was her
imagination, but she felt every eye in the room on her as she
exited.
She found Mulder awake, sitting naked with his legs folded up
under him among the tangled sheets on the bed. He still looked
sleepy and a little dazed.
He blinked at her as she came in. "What's wrong?"
Scully set the plate down on the nightstand and sat on the edge
of the bed. "I was talking to Davis. He said Patty told him
about Emily, and that I shouldn't let what happened affect my
'professionalism.'"
Mulder held his arm out to her and she allowed herself to be
coaxed into lying down with him, the warmth of his body pressed
against her back. She felt his lips brushing the back of her
neck as he said, "Davis is an ass."
She exhaled deeply, feeling some of the tension leave her body.
She realized that she was still very tired. "He's not. He's not
an ass. He's just an ordinary detective trying to do his job,
and he doesn't want 'Mrs. Spooky' messing things up for him."
"Is that how you think of yourself now?" His tone was regretful.
"I don't know," Scully said softly. She hardly knew what to
think of herself anymore. Seven years ago she had been very like
detective Davis -- skeptical, conventional, good at her job, up
to a point. Since then everything had changed.
"You are Dana Scully. You're a good investigator, a good
doctor. And you're a good friend," he said.
She couldn't quite help fishing for more. "A friend? That's all
I am?"
"What, you want the part about being the bright light around
which my otherwise dim and twisted universe revolves, too?"
She lifted his hand to her lips, suddenly very grateful for him.
"I'm glad you're doing better this morning," she said. His
request for a story about death last night had frightened her
little. Maybe if they played their cards right, only one of them
would be crazy at a time.
"I'll make it through, one way or another. And so will you," he
said.
At that moment she believed him. "Mulder, can I ask you
something?"
He must have heard the faint tremor in her voice because he
pulled her closer. "Sure."
"Did I make a mistake with Emily? I mean by stepping into the
role of her mother so quickly, pursuing such aggressive treatment
. . ." she could feel Mulder shaking his head.
"You loved her. Every choice you made was based on that. That's
not wrong," Mulder said.
It took a few seconds before she could get the words out: "She
didn't love me back." Tears she'd been stifling for too long
flooded her eyes and ran down either side of her nose.
"Hey," Mulder said, then tugged at her shoulder until she rolled
over and curled against his chest. "You don't know that."
"She didn't love me the way I loved her," Scully said. No one
could deny that. Emily had at best tolerated her. The little
girl had allowed herself to be held, but would neither snuggle
close nor push Scully away. It was as if her biological mother
were an inconsequential environmental variable, like the weather.
It was this horrible truth that whispered to Scully in her
nightmares and which Irv Stuckey had played upon so successfully.
Mulder sighed, and Scully felt him try to mold his body to hers,
as if trying to absorb the shock from some impact. "Everyone and
everything she'd ever loved had been taken away from her. She
was probably afraid to love anybody after that. She needed more
time. It's just that time's the one thing she didn't have."
Scully cried for several minutes, exploring the sharp edges of
the broken place inside her. She thought she had done a fairly
good job of healing after two years. Would that broken place
ever go away?
Once she was done crying, she lay with her head in the hollow of
Mulder shoulder. "Irv Stuckey said something yesterday," she
said. She felt his muscles tense.
"What?" he asked.
Scully had already told Mulder all the shameful things Irv had
said about him, but not the final part about Emily. That had
been too horrible to speak of.
"He said . . . he said he knew an old down-island woman who told
him a story about someone who was killed by the South Road Ghost.
A deaf woman. And he wanted to know if I heard Emily calling
me."
"He said that to you? I'll kill him."
Scully didn't like the tension she could feel building in him.
Mulder was impulsive enough at times to make her worry he might
really do something foolish.
"I need you to do something else for me," she said, hoping to
harness that emotion to some constructive goal. "Can you find
out who this deaf woman might have been -- if anyone's still
alive who might have known her? It's just . . . it's something I
need to know."
"This whole South Road Ghost thing has gone way too far. The
story about Mary Brown is a story to scare kids, Scully.
Whatever's out there in those woods does not represent payback
time for mothers who make bad choices. It has its own reasons
for doing what it does. People have taken it and twisted it to
prop up whatever social moral they happen to be selling. That's
what really bothers me about situations like this. Some real
tragedy happens, and suddenly fifty armchair moralists have to
leap up and co-opt the facts to fit their own prejudices."
The passion in his voice was such that Scully suspected he wasn't
speaking only of the South Road Ghost and Kristie Herron. She
remembered what Irv had said, //"Ask him what his mama heard out
in those trees."//
"Mulder, I would feel better if you asked," she said.
The momentum of his rant could not be stopped so easily. "We all
live our lives in a complex, bewildering gray area, but as soon
as we're dead, everything's supposed to become a 'Friday the
13th' allegory for moral transgression."
She tried another tack. "Aren't you at least a little curious to
find out what this thing is, if it's not what it seems to be?"
Curiosity was his Achilles heel, and they both knew it. She felt
him exhale, as if releasing some of his outrage. "I can ask," he
said. "But I'm not curious enough to lose you over it. I don't
think we should spend another night out here."
"No," she assured him. "I just have a few things to tie up. I
need access to the photos from Kristie's autopsy to finish the
protocol, for one thing."
Mulder raised up on his elbow to look at the clock. It was a
little after 11. "Probably the place for me to start is the
Dukes County Historical Society in Edgartown. They're a lot more
reliable than Irv Stuckey is."
"Would it be possible for you to run me up to the store before
you go?" she asked. "I need some things to help check out a
theory."
In fact, she wanted a long, sharp, serrated knife, some
children's modeling dough, preferably Play-Doh brand, and if
possible, cut-proof Kevlar gloves. Whether or not the autopsy
photos showed anything conclusive, the knife and the Play-Doh
would help her replicate the wound pattern.
The store clerk and everyone else in town would probably think
she was a nut, but then, as Mrs. Spooky, she wouldn't want to
disappoint them.
*****
the events of the last few days in her mind. Soon she would have
to get up and re-bandage the cuts on her hands, but she didn't
want to wake Mulder, who was profoundly asleep against her
shoulder. With her thumb, she traced the orderly line of bone
in his spine. Other than Emily and maybe her little brother
Charlie, Scully didn't think she'd ever felt so protective of
anyone.
She watched shadows on the ceiling shift with the changing angle
of moonlight that filtered over the top of the curtains. Strange
to think the white-painted ceiling beams had been in place before
her great-grandparents were born, likely before her ancestors had
ever left Ireland. Before that, the beams had been trees. Deep
at the center of those trees were growth rings that formed before
Europeans ever came to America, and the cells inside those growth
rings contained organic molecules that had been part of even more
ancient animals and plants. Perhaps the molecular remains of
Jesus' contemporaries were lying deep in the wood overhead. To
accept the premise that matter was neither created nor destroyed
was to accept that one really owned nothing, not even the atoms
in one's bones. The thought gave her an eerie sensation of time
collapsing in on itself.
Her hands had really begun to throb. She turned and kissed
Mulder's forehead, then carefully extricated herself from his
embrace. He stirred but did not really seem to wake. After
dressing and caring for her injuries, she went downstairs to
retrieve her laptop. Soon she had set up a makeshift desk for
herself on the table near the window in Mulder's room.
If she wasn't going to sleep, she might as well write up
Kristie's autopsy protocol. She plugged the serial jack of her
digital recorder into the back of her laptop and watched as her
dictated notes flowed onto the screen. During the autopsy, she'd
indicated that the through-and-through wound to Kristie's thigh
was "consistent with" a single, forceful knife thrust. Such a
finding would indicate an assailant with a lot of upper body
strength. Of course, the wound was also consistent with a
scenario in which Kristie slipped and fell forward onto a sharp
object being held upward at an angle. This might happen if she
were pursuing a much smaller, weaker person who was backing away
from her. Such apparently minor details would influence the
prosecutor's decision about what, if any, charges would be filed
against John McBer and his theoretical accomplice.
Scully absently rubbed at the line of stitches on her left palm.
The pattern of wounds across Kristie Herron's hands had been
nearly identical. Yet even assuming her own experience was what
it seemed, it was still possible that what happened to Kristie
was unrelated. She decided to ask Detective Davis for copies of
the autopsy photographs in the morning. Maybe the hilt mark on
Kristie's thigh would offer some information.
She organized and reorganized the autopsy data without coming to
any conclusion that would bear up under the requisite burden of
proof. If nothing else, Scully thought, she ought to be used to
*that* after more than seven years. At last she wandered over to
the window and drew the curtain aside. The frozen field sparkled
in the light of a near-full moon, and beyond that the woods stood
like a ragged line of still, gray figures. No, perhaps not
entirely still. Was it her imagination, or did something pale
occasionally flicker around the bases of the trees? The shifting
shadows held her gaze for a long, long time.
*****
Mulder dreamt he was in the kitchen of his boyhood home, cutting
out sugar cookies with Samantha. The girl was the 14-year-old
he'd seen in his starlight vision and he was his adult self, but
somehow this seemed only natural. The only mystery was why
they'd spent so much time apart.
The trick to making sugar cookies was to roll the dough out while
it was still very cold, and Mulder had to stand up and throw his
back into rolling out the near-frozen mound. Samantha was doing
more chatting than cutting, commenting on the more eccentric
cookie cutters as she lifted them one at a time from the large
bowl in front of her. The Mulder siblings had liked to root
through summer-end garage sales for peculiar cookie cutters and
hoard them in anticipation of the holidays. It got so Christmas
wasn't the same without cookies shaped like Friar Tuck or the
head of Mayor McCheese.
Despite her apparent distraction, Samantha had two full cookie
sheets in front of her, one balanced awkwardly on the other. She
struck one with her elbow as she reached across the table for
their dented fleur-de-lis cutter, and only her quick grab saved
it from clattering to the floor.
Mulder set the rolling pin down and held his hands out to her.
"Here -- I'll give those to Mom," he said. Samantha handed him
the sheets, and he turned to set them on the counter.
Mrs. Mulder shut the oven door and stood up. She moved with a
strange, slow stiffness.
"Mom?" Mulder asked.
He realized her hair was dark and wet-looking. When she turned,
her features were a corpse's, bloated and blackened almost beyond
recognition.
*****
Mulder cried out and sat up in bed. For an instant he was
disoriented, unable to recognize the room faintly outlined by the
glow from Scully's laptop.
"Mulder?"
He turned to find Scully at the window, moonlight shining through
the filmy fabric of her nightgown. She seemed to be standing too
close to the glass, as if she were a lover watching in eager
anticipation of her beloved's return. He looked away, unable to
bear the freezing feeling he got when he looked at her.
"What is it? Did you have a bad dream?" He heard her bare feet
padding across the carpet. Her fingers were cold when she put her
hand in his arm; she'd been standing at the window a long time.
Chill radiated from her as from an open grave.
"Mulder?" She asked again.
He reached up and seized her, crushing her against him.
"Whatever's out there doesn't need you. *I* need you."
"Mulder, stop it! You're hurting me." He did not immediately
yield to her struggles. Something dark and desperate in him
refused to let her go.
When he finally released her, he sat forward and rested his
elbows on his knees, ashamed. She was a luminous figure in his
peripheral vision, lifting her hand to her injured side. "What's
the matter with you?" she asked.
Everything. Everything was the matter. "Scully . . . can I ask
you something?" His mouth felt as dry as ash.
Whatever she heard in his voice made her speak more gently.
"Sure . . . what is it?" He felt the bed springs shift as she
sat down.
There was an odd humming feeling in his head. "When we went to
my mother's apartment, did I see the body?"
Silence. //She doesn't know what to say.//
"You don't remember," she said.
Mulder swallowed against the burning at the back of his throat.
"Maybe I do now."
Scully began to talk too quickly in that clinical voice she used
when she wanted to distance herself from something. "Repression
is a normal psychological defense mechanism. I know when I came
home from the hospital after my sister--"
Mulder tuned her out. Disjointed images flashed in his mind.
Socks. White socks beneath the cuffs of loose teal slacks,
resting at one end of the couch. Scully arguing with one of the
cops: //"Leave him alone. He's upset."//
//"What the hell is he doing here?"//
Another officer spoke: //"He flashed a badge at the door. How
was I supposed to know he was her son?"//
The smell of death was already strong, overpowering the chemical
smell from the leaky gas line in the oven. A smell like things
left on the beach after storm breakers receded; like oysters with
gaping shells.
Her hands lay folded on her stomach, relaxed as if in sleep. The
only clue to what had occurred was the faint greenish tinge to
the skin on top and the deep red color just visible on the
underside of her fingers. The tissues had begun to swell just
slightly, causing her thin gold watchband to impress a groove
around her wrist. The hands of the watch still twitched forward,
impervious.
//"Mulder, come on. Let's go. Let's let them finish up in
here."// Scully had tugged at his arm, urging him toward the
door. He remained, immovable.
His mother had not been dead long, 36 hours, 48 at most. Yet her
head, encased in a plastic bag secured with a rubber band, seemed
to belong to a corpse dead far longer. Her expiring breath had
filled the plastic with moisture and microbes soon went to work.
Beneath her mercifully closed eyes her eyeballs had gone flat,
forming deep hollows in a face otherwise swollen like a drowning
victim's. The deterioration was such that Mulder had at first
allowed himself to hope it wasn't his mother after all. Surely
this was not the woman who had left a message on his answering
machine only days before.
But her identification had been laid out neatly on the arm of the
couch, and a scar she'd gotten while washing out a glass that
broke made a familiar checkmark-shape across her knuckle.
Other memories intruded on his recollection of the scene: the
smell of gun powder; the hot, sticky feeling of his father's
blood seeping through his clothes, the pool of it spreading and
spreading.
Mulder felt his bowels turn to liquid, and he quickly got up out
of bed.
When he returned, he felt shaky and sweaty, as if he had been ill
for days. As an afterthought, he drew over the wastepaper basket
just in case he threw up.
Scully was buzzing around him, turning on lights, fetching him
water. She located a thermometer in some inner pocket of her bag
and coaxed him into putting it under his tongue.
He obliged her, though he doubted he was feverish. He shut his
eyes against the glare of the lamp and simply felt himself
breathe. There was something satisfying about hearing the air
rush in and out of his nostrils -- proof he still belonged to the
land of the living.
Mulder felt no emotion he could identify, which was fine with
him. It was as if his heart had broken, and then the sharp
slivers had been wrapped in thick cotton batting to prevent them
from doing any more damage. For the second time that night, the
world disintegrated into a collection of disjointed sensations --
the pressure of his body against the cotton sheets, Scully's feet
patting on the carpet, the almost-inaudible hum coming from her
laptop.
Before long she disturbed him to take thermometer out of his
mouth. "97.8," she said.
Ah. So this was just shock. Nothing remarkable about that. He
heard her pick up the glass of water from the bedside table. "I
want you to drink as much of this is you can," she said.
He was tempted to ignore her, but he made himself drink the
thing. He didn't enjoy it. He hurt when he moved, though not
physically. The pain went deeper than that.
Scully made him drink another glass of water before she shut out
the light and got back into bed with him. She wadded the
blankets around him and coaxed him into sitting curled against
her with his head on her shoulder.
To his dismay, she started to pray over him: "Hail, Holy Queen,
Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope, to thee do
we cry, poor, banished children of Eve . . ."
"Please don't do that," Mulder said. As far as he was concerned,
prayers were for funerals, and he wasn't dead just yet.
She fell silent and rested her cheek against his forehead, as if
very weary. He could tell from the way she was holding him that
she was afraid for him. She pressed the coverlet against his
shoulder as if she were stanching the blood from a wound. Some
sick, childish part of him was glad. He tried telling himself he
did not need attention that badly, but it didn't work. He was
well beyond the point of reasoning with himself. //This would be
a really good time for Scully's God to exist.// "Tell me a
Sister Spooky story," he said.
"Mulder . . . that's not what you need to hear right now," she
said. Sister Spooky, known to the rest of the world as Sister
Mary Carnahan, IHM, had been a veritable encyclopedia of bizarre
Church trivia. Most of her stories involved things like
miraculously preserved tongues and statues that bled. At times,
Mulder knew his interest made Scully uncomfortable. He'd had to
assure her he wasn't simply picking her brain for a Catholic
version of "Ripley's Believe It or Not." Sister Spooky's world
was filled with mystery, and in mystery there was hope.
"It is. It is what I need to hear," Mulder said.
She sighed and was silent for a few moments. "The only one I can
think of is completely inappropriate," she said.
"I don't care. It'll do fine," Mulder said.
"It's got death in it," she warned him.
"Even better."
She took a deep breath and said, "Well, according to Sister Mary,
Death takes the form of a man in a broad-brimmed hat. Underneath
the hat is a skull, and the eye sockets are dark. He's blind, so
when he wanders the streets at night, he goes sniffing at the air
to find his way. You can hear him coming because he pushes a
heavy cart full of the bodies of people he's come to take away.
Mulder curled more closely against Scully, like a child moving
closer to the camp fire during a ghost story.
"Once, a long time ago, Death could see. He was walking through
the Irish farm country one evening when St. Peter came down to
earth and started walking beside him. All the sensible farmers
were already in their houses, but one farmer and his servant were
still mowing hay.
"At the sound of Death's cart, the farmer dropped to the ground
and whispered for his servant to do the same. But the servant
was a simple man, and he kept mowing and singing.
"Death was angry that the man was not afraid. He pointed his
bony finger at him and said, 'You. In eight days that fine voice
of yours will be stilled. I advise you to get shriven now,
because once your eight days are up I will come for you.'"
"But the servant only sang louder, and that made
Death even more angry. 'Very well, you had your chance,' he
said. 'You should have seen the priest when I bade you. Instead
you will come with me now, with all of your sins on your head.'
"Then St. Peter stepped in and said, 'How dare you wish such a
death on an honest man doing honest work? Remember, you were
made to chasten man, not to rule him.' And he struck the glowing
fires out of the creature's eyes."
Scully lapsed into silence, and for time the only sound was the
hum of her laptop. "That's a great story," Mulder said.
"It's not great. It's kind of twisted. I think some of the
parents went to the priest after Sister told us that one," she
said. He wondered if her own parents had complained. The story
must have made quite an impression on her; Mulder suspected she
was quoting parts of it verbatim.
"I liked it. Thank you," he said. Somehow the idea that Death
had limitations was very comforting.
She patted his thigh through the thick blankets. "Think you can
sleep?"
Unconsciousness sounded like a very nice idea -- if only he could
keep from dreaming. "I think so. Can you?"
She hesitated a moment and he knew she'd heard his unspoken
reproach. No more lurking at the window and frightening him.
"Yes, I think so," she said.
They settled back down into bed, and this time Mulder's sleep was
untroubled by dreams.
*****
Full sunlight was shining over the top of the curtains when
Scully woke up. She felt better rested than she had since
leaving work on Friday. Slowly it dawned heard this was wrong.
It was Monday morning, and agents who expected to miss work were
supposed to call in by 8 AM. She sat up on the edge of the bed
and phoned Skinner's office, leaving a message with Kim. If the
AD was as "enthusiastic" about keeping her and Mulder out of
Washington and out of trouble as he claimed, then he would
understand. She let Mulder sleep as she dressed. The events of
the past few days had likely been even more harrowing for him
than they had been for her.
She took the room key from the nightstand and slipped out of the
room, hoping there was still something left of the continental
breakfast buffet downstairs. Scully hesitated briefly on the
landing, listening to the sound of law officers' voices. She
could feel the bracing fresh air even where she stood on the
stairway -- men must have been going in and out the front door
for some time. The investigators were packing up and going home:
scene processed, suspect in custody, case closed.
The thought made Scully uneasy. She didn't doubt that John McBer
had meant little good to Kristie Herron. Perhaps he even planned
to kill her. But had he actually committed the murder?
For that matter, to what extent had Scully's own inexplicable
experience colored her view of the facts and Kristie's murder
case? The whole situation made her position extremely difficult.
The young woman's family certainly deserved some satisfaction
from the justice system. But then, if he was innocent, so did
John McBer.
She continued down the stairs and found officers in civilian garb
chatting next to their packed bags, and brushing crumbs from
cheese danishes off their shirt fronts and mustaches. Two
teenagers, a boy and a girl, wearing crisp white aprons, cleared
mostly-empty trays of fruit, pastries and muffins from a long
table.
Detective Davis, wearing khaki slacks and a tweed blazer, stood
right by the remaining tray of little muffins. Scully braved the
possibility of his curious blue gaze as she grabbed a paper plate
and began loading a basic breakfast for herself and Mulder on it.
She couldn't help glancing up at the boy server as he reached
for, then drew back from, the tray she was picking at. The kid
was skinny and pimply-faced, probably about 17 years old. His
name tag said "Josh." Scully glanced up at Josh and couldn't
help imagining a young Mulder, awkward and silent and sad,
working in his former neighbors' inn because they were the only
people who would tolerate him.
Josh looked up at her and she saw his eyes were dark rather than
green-gold-brown.
"Hi," Scully said, smiling.
"Hi," the boy said, and immediately found something else to do on
the other end of the table. His co-worker, a girl whose nametag
said "Nicole," rolled her eyes and started brushing crumbs off
the tablecloth.
Scully forced herself to seem as disinterested as possible as
detective Davis stepped up beside her.
"Agent Scully, it's good to see you up and around again."
She managed a tight smile and consciously refrained from fussing
with the bandages on her hands. "Thank you," she replied. "I
wanted to ask you whether I could examine the photos of Kristie
Herron's autopsy."
Davis looked mildly surprised. "Sure. I have no problem with
that. But may I ask why?"
Scully swallowed, debated whether to demur or to be upfront about
her questions concerning John McBer's guilt. McBer might indeed
be a poor excuse for a human being, even a murderer, but he was
not necessarily Kristie's killer. "I want to study the wound
pattern again, specifically the sharp-force wound to the thigh.
I want to be sure about the angle of attack before I write up the
protocol."
"The angle of attack?" Davis asked, frowning. "I thought we
were pretty clear that the attack was a thrust from someone
sitting or kneeling low to the ground, perhaps in a chair. What
happened to make you change your mind?"
"I haven't changed my mind. Not exactly," Scully said. "It's
just that I want to explore all possibilities."
"Possibilities?" Davis echoed. Suddenly he held his hand out as
if he wanted to usher her away from the crowd. "Can I talk with
you? Privately?" he asked.
She blinked at him, trying not to show that she was at all
concerned. "Yes, I suppose so," she said. She walked with him a
short distance to the lace-covered window near the corner with
the pot-bellied stove.
"Listen, I'm not good at politics, and I can't think of a politic
way to say this. Dr. Scully, I don't want this to be repeat of
the LaPierre case," Davis said quietly.
The statement stunned Scully into silence. Amber Lynn LaPierre
was the little girl Mulder believed had "vanished into
starlight." The case was still wending its way through the court
system, but the defense was making a big deal of "an FBI
profiler's" dismissal of the LaPierres as suspects.
"Excuse me?" Scully asked. "I don't think I understand."
Davis looked pained and glanced away toward the window, is if
Scully were forcing him into territory where he didn't want to
go. "Look, we all have tough breaks in our lives. I've had
mine, you've had yours, and Agent Mulder has had his. But as
professionals, we have to make sure those breaks don't cloud our
judgment about a case. I know you lost her daughter two years
ago--"
"You what?" Scully asked, louder than she'd meant to. Heads in
the room turned. She felt heat spreading across her face.
Davis looked apologetic. "Patty Herron mentioned you stopped by
the other night; she said you'd lost a child. I'm sorry to hear
that. I really am. But reading supernatural elements into this
case is not going to bring that child back."
There was a dim singing in Scully's ears and she felt a powerful
urge to slap him. Her voice shook slightly when she spoke: "You
don't know what you're talking about. Agent Mulder and I have
always conducted our cases with the utmost professionalism . . ."
Davis held up his hands, a disarming gesture. "I'm not trying to
be offensive. I'm just trying to make sure this case gets the
best investigation possible. The Herron family deserves that
much. You agree with me, right?"
Despite his assertion that he was no good at politics, Davis had
backed her into a corner. "Of course," Scully said.
"Okay. I can have the photos sent up to you in a few hours.
That all right?" Davis asked.
"Yes," Scully said, not liking how quickly he was giving in. She
sensed he was throwing her a bone.
"Good," Davis said, giving her a conciliatory smile.
Scully moved away from him quickly, heading upstairs with her
paper plate laden with fruit and muffins. Maybe it was her
imagination, but she felt every eye in the room on her as she
exited.
She found Mulder awake, sitting naked with his legs folded up
under him among the tangled sheets on the bed. He still looked
sleepy and a little dazed.
He blinked at her as she came in. "What's wrong?"
Scully set the plate down on the nightstand and sat on the edge
of the bed. "I was talking to Davis. He said Patty told him
about Emily, and that I shouldn't let what happened affect my
'professionalism.'"
Mulder held his arm out to her and she allowed herself to be
coaxed into lying down with him, the warmth of his body pressed
against her back. She felt his lips brushing the back of her
neck as he said, "Davis is an ass."
She exhaled deeply, feeling some of the tension leave her body.
She realized that she was still very tired. "He's not. He's not
an ass. He's just an ordinary detective trying to do his job,
and he doesn't want 'Mrs. Spooky' messing things up for him."
"Is that how you think of yourself now?" His tone was regretful.
"I don't know," Scully said softly. She hardly knew what to
think of herself anymore. Seven years ago she had been very like
detective Davis -- skeptical, conventional, good at her job, up
to a point. Since then everything had changed.
"You are Dana Scully. You're a good investigator, a good
doctor. And you're a good friend," he said.
She couldn't quite help fishing for more. "A friend? That's all
I am?"
"What, you want the part about being the bright light around
which my otherwise dim and twisted universe revolves, too?"
She lifted his hand to her lips, suddenly very grateful for him.
"I'm glad you're doing better this morning," she said. His
request for a story about death last night had frightened her
little. Maybe if they played their cards right, only one of them
would be crazy at a time.
"I'll make it through, one way or another. And so will you," he
said.
At that moment she believed him. "Mulder, can I ask you
something?"
He must have heard the faint tremor in her voice because he
pulled her closer. "Sure."
"Did I make a mistake with Emily? I mean by stepping into the
role of her mother so quickly, pursuing such aggressive treatment
. . ." she could feel Mulder shaking his head.
"You loved her. Every choice you made was based on that. That's
not wrong," Mulder said.
It took a few seconds before she could get the words out: "She
didn't love me back." Tears she'd been stifling for too long
flooded her eyes and ran down either side of her nose.
"Hey," Mulder said, then tugged at her shoulder until she rolled
over and curled against his chest. "You don't know that."
"She didn't love me the way I loved her," Scully said. No one
could deny that. Emily had at best tolerated her. The little
girl had allowed herself to be held, but would neither snuggle
close nor push Scully away. It was as if her biological mother
were an inconsequential environmental variable, like the weather.
It was this horrible truth that whispered to Scully in her
nightmares and which Irv Stuckey had played upon so successfully.
Mulder sighed, and Scully felt him try to mold his body to hers,
as if trying to absorb the shock from some impact. "Everyone and
everything she'd ever loved had been taken away from her. She
was probably afraid to love anybody after that. She needed more
time. It's just that time's the one thing she didn't have."
Scully cried for several minutes, exploring the sharp edges of
the broken place inside her. She thought she had done a fairly
good job of healing after two years. Would that broken place
ever go away?
Once she was done crying, she lay with her head in the hollow of
Mulder shoulder. "Irv Stuckey said something yesterday," she
said. She felt his muscles tense.
"What?" he asked.
Scully had already told Mulder all the shameful things Irv had
said about him, but not the final part about Emily. That had
been too horrible to speak of.
"He said . . . he said he knew an old down-island woman who told
him a story about someone who was killed by the South Road Ghost.
A deaf woman. And he wanted to know if I heard Emily calling
me."
"He said that to you? I'll kill him."
Scully didn't like the tension she could feel building in him.
Mulder was impulsive enough at times to make her worry he might
really do something foolish.
"I need you to do something else for me," she said, hoping to
harness that emotion to some constructive goal. "Can you find
out who this deaf woman might have been -- if anyone's still
alive who might have known her? It's just . . . it's something I
need to know."
"This whole South Road Ghost thing has gone way too far. The
story about Mary Brown is a story to scare kids, Scully.
Whatever's out there in those woods does not represent payback
time for mothers who make bad choices. It has its own reasons
for doing what it does. People have taken it and twisted it to
prop up whatever social moral they happen to be selling. That's
what really bothers me about situations like this. Some real
tragedy happens, and suddenly fifty armchair moralists have to
leap up and co-opt the facts to fit their own prejudices."
The passion in his voice was such that Scully suspected he wasn't
speaking only of the South Road Ghost and Kristie Herron. She
remembered what Irv had said, //"Ask him what his mama heard out
in those trees."//
"Mulder, I would feel better if you asked," she said.
The momentum of his rant could not be stopped so easily. "We all
live our lives in a complex, bewildering gray area, but as soon
as we're dead, everything's supposed to become a 'Friday the
13th' allegory for moral transgression."
She tried another tack. "Aren't you at least a little curious to
find out what this thing is, if it's not what it seems to be?"
Curiosity was his Achilles heel, and they both knew it. She felt
him exhale, as if releasing some of his outrage. "I can ask," he
said. "But I'm not curious enough to lose you over it. I don't
think we should spend another night out here."
"No," she assured him. "I just have a few things to tie up. I
need access to the photos from Kristie's autopsy to finish the
protocol, for one thing."
Mulder raised up on his elbow to look at the clock. It was a
little after 11. "Probably the place for me to start is the
Dukes County Historical Society in Edgartown. They're a lot more
reliable than Irv Stuckey is."
"Would it be possible for you to run me up to the store before
you go?" she asked. "I need some things to help check out a
theory."
In fact, she wanted a long, sharp, serrated knife, some
children's modeling dough, preferably Play-Doh brand, and if
possible, cut-proof Kevlar gloves. Whether or not the autopsy
photos showed anything conclusive, the knife and the Play-Doh
would help her replicate the wound pattern.
The store clerk and everyone else in town would probably think
she was a nut, but then, as Mrs. Spooky, she wouldn't want to
disappoint them.
*****