Mulder continued to back away along the wall, away from the thing
that shuffled after him. His fingers traced the openings of a
door and small-paned windows, once, then twice. He'd circled the
entire building, and Scully was not there.
The fear crept upon him that he was in the wrong spirit world --
the one in which Mary Brown wandered the cliffs with her head
held high like a lantern, eternally separated from her daughters.
The wolves' cries had grown increasingly close and then stopped
altogether. Every so often now, he heard a light footfall off in
the trees. The knowledge that wolf packs, even if starving,
almost never attacked adult humans was scant comfort. Mulder
supposed everything was starving during the winter of 1777. Even
if he managed to shoot one of the animals with his eyes shut,
would it fall? He doubted that any amount of firepower would
stop the pale, shambling thing that followed him.
He turned a corner to the shorter side of the rectangular
building, and heard a soft tick along the front as if his pursuer
were brushing frost-hardened fingers against the window panes,
following him by touch even as he backed away by touch.
Mulder heard snow-covered leaves crunch under his feet as he
struggled to keep the house between himself and whatever flaking,
limping nightmare crept after him. "Scully!" he shouted, for the
dozenth time.
This time he got a response -- "Fox?"
It was his mother's voice.
He stopped in his tracks, his mouth suddenly dry. He nearly
called out, "Mom?" But the word died on his lips. He stood
still as the slow footsteps rounded the side of the house. Was
it his imagination, or did they seem steadier, less stiff, then
they had before?
He heard the slow drag of something, fabric, pulling around the
corner. His mother's voice said again, "Fox?" It was a gentle,
welcoming voice.
He had railed at a God he did not believe in for not giving him
more time with her -- time to ask questions, to say goodbye. Was
this the answer to his unacknowledged prayer? He stretched out
his hand, then hesitated. Would his fingers contact the soft
warmth of his mother's body, or flesh as hard and stiff as
cracked leather?
He remained still, listening to the crunch of icy leaves as the
footsteps drew closer. The sounds stopped about an arm's length
away, and he felt something cold in front of him. Waves of chill
came over his outstretched hand as if he held it next to a block
of ice.
He was sure that if he reached out any farther he would touch
fingers, a wrist, an arm. His breaths came in ragged gasps and
cold air burned in his lungs. He wanted the gentle touch he
remembered, wanted to hear his mother say his name.
If this was not what he had prayed for, how badly did he want the
approximation? Something heavy and damp, like waterlogged
fabric, brushed against his ankle.
Not that badly.
He backed away, fumbling in his pocket for his flashlight. If
Scully could see into this world at all, perhaps the beam would
draw her. He kept his arm against the house's wall as he
continued moving away from the stumbling thing with his mother's
voice. Its footsteps continued after him, surer now, as he spoke
out loud to someone -- perhaps Scully, perhaps Susannah, perhaps
himself.
"She can't come to you here. It's no good waiting anymore -- you
have to move on. You have to get up and move."
As before, the only reply was the shuffling footsteps that
followed him.
*****
Scully sat in a sunlit field with Emily, Susannah, and the infant
she'd named Maria. All three little girls were pink and healthy
as they played in the long grass. In daylight, Susannah's hair
was the color of straw, and Emily's eyes had a lively sparkle
that Scully had never before seen in her. Both girls giggled as
Susannah showed Emily how to make play teacups out of scoop-
shaped leaves.
Scully sat in a loose T-shirt and shorts, her confining FBI
clothes shed like a rusty suit of armor. This was what she had
wanted all along. Not recognition, not approval, not even the
"answers" that neither science nor religion had ever wholly
provided. She only wanted to *be,* on her own terms, for herself
and those she loved.
With wide-eyed fascination, baby Maria reached up and grabbed a
strand of Scully's hair in her small, chubby fist.
Then the sweet moment was spoiled by a man's urgent voice: "You
have to get up and move."
For an instant, fear lanced through her. She had forgotten
something important -- something terrible. She struggled to
remember, though she sensed whatever it was would destroy her
happiness.
The truth came slowly, like the door to a crypt swinging open.
Someone was dead. A wave of lightheadedness came over her. Who?
Who was dead?
Memories came crashing down one after another. Her father . . .?
*Yes.* Her sister? *Yes.* Her daughter?
On the verge of an anguished cry, Scully looked down and saw
Emily gazing up at her with puzzled, sea-blue eyes.
The horror began to fade. How could Emily be dead when she was
here, playing in the grass? Susannah tugged at Scully's sleeve,
seeming impatient with her older playmate's foolish imaginings.
Scully turned her attention to the children again, somewhat
disoriented from the shock.
The distress soon passed, and she was engrossed in the children's
game again. Susannah smiled up at her impishly as she poured
dewdrop "tea" into Emily's leaf cup. The baby cooed and batted
at strands of Scully's hair.
Quiet and peace returned, until the same male voice distracted
her. "Follow the light if you can see it, Scully. You can't
stay here." Hearing fear in that voice triggered old reflexes.
She moved to grasp for something at the small of her back -- her
gun.
No. She didn't carry a gun anymore. *She did.* She distinctly
remembered cleaning and re-loading it before she --
Images tumbled through her mind: the inn; the hospital; the
tender sorrow on Mulder's face as he stood by the autopsy table
in Boston.
"Mulder?" she asked. The reality around her blurred and
dissolved like a chalk drawing in the rain.
Numbing cold struck her and she struggled to rise, bewildered by
the sensation of lying face down in a cold, wet pool. "Mulder .
. ." Saying his name required enormous effort this time. Had she
only thought she called him before?
She forced her eyes open. The sunny field was nowhere to be seen
-- all around was dark. Scully lay in a sleety patch of mud
without her coat on, her left hand soaked in a puddle of spilled
holy water. Her limbs barely obeyed her as she tried to push
herself up onto her knees.
She lifted her head and felt the frozen tips of her hair drag
against her throat and jaw. She squinted through the darkness,
disoriented, and thought she glimpsed a light through the trees
ahead. She began to crawl toward it.
A cold hand caught her arm, bringing her up short. Scully looked
down and saw eyes, round eyes in shining in a small, pale face.
She had no sense of the mouth moving as the soft voice spoke --
in fact, the lower jaw seemed to have fallen away.
"She left us. Don't leave us, too."
Puzzled by the creature's powerful grip, Scully placed her hand
over the tiny forearm, trying to pull it away. There was bone
beneath the tattered fabric. "You're death," she murmured. This
was the part of her dream that she had not wanted to acknowledge.
This was what the secret thing she had longed for -- a guide to
the other world where her own child waited. "You've come for
me."
The sound of Mulder calling her name seemed to grow more distant.
Gazing into the small being's eyes, she saw an invitation to come
away into the unknown. There would be no more pain, no more
fear. She had only everything to lose, and compared to what she
had already lost, what was everything? She reached up, brushed
her fingertips against the twine-like strands of hair.
"Follow the light if you can see it!" Mulder called.
Mulder. She looked up, saw a flash of light among the black
tangle of the trees. He would be all right without her, she told
herself.
*He wouldn't.*
If anything, his losses had been greater than her own. She
remembered his dull, shocked manner at his mother's funeral.
What would happen to him if her lost her as well?
And what would happen to her, without her friend, her gadfly and
protector? What would the afterlife be without Mulder there,
alternately mocking and spinning theories?
"It's not time," Scully said, gently pushing the creature at her
side away. It cried out like a stricken thing, and she felt its
bony hands catch at her arm. "I'm sorry. It's not time."
She dragged herself through the icy mud, though the effort was as
wearying as swimming through tar. Her hand brushed rough stone,
and she heaved herself over the block, rolling down the other
side with the thing still clutching at her. She was so close
now, only a few yards away from the light. She rolled a few more
feet, then lay exhausted.
The dead creature, an Utburd, Mulder had called it, a Navky,
crept up on top of her chest and gazed down at her. The
expression on its ruined face was not one of hate but of terrible
longing. "Mulder . . ." Scully called weakly. "Mulder."
*****
"Mulder."
Mulder hesitated as the dead woman's footsteps continued to draw
closer. Was this another trick? First his mother's voice and
now Scully's . . .
"Mulder," the voice came again, very desperate. He felt he
couldn't take the chance of not responding.
"Scully!" he called.
The response was a rustle of leaves in a direction he hadn't
heard before -- directly to his left, within the confines of the
ghost house. He turned the beam of his flashlight and dared to
open his eyes.
Scully lay on her back at the center of the rectangle of stone.
A long shadow lay across her body. Mulder could make out the
bell-shape of a long skirt, a nipped-in waist, angular
shoulders, and above that, nothing.
He flicked the light toward the figure, and stepped back from the
sight of -- what? The thing was gone -- his flashlight beam
illuminated only trees.
Had he only imagined the elongated, gray object held up in a
withered hand? It had been something too stretched-out to
be a human head, unless death had knocked the jawbone loose from
its moorings and then pulled leather-like skin down with it.
He did not feel it was best to think about that particular
extreme possibility. Instead, he ran to Scully's side, lifting
her from the sleet-covered mud. She twisted the folds of his
coat in her gloved fingers, but did not open her eyes. Mulder
rested his cheek against her forehead and brushed ice crystals
from her hair.
Once Scully was steady enough to stand, he slipped his arm around
her waist and helped her walk. They left behind the house
foundations and standing stones, traveling toward the lights of
the waiting inn.
*****
Later, Mulder sat on a chair next to his bed in Nye House,
watching Scully sleep. Her hair was still dark with dampness,
and he gently brushed it away from her forehead.
Joe's sister Cheryl turned the lamp down to its lowest setting
and began putting her thermometer and blood pressure cuff back
into what she'd referred to as her "bag of tricks." Cheryl had
agreed to stop by on the way home from her second-shift nursing
assignment.
"She should be all right," Cheryl said. "If she seems worse
during the night -- groggy or disoriented, take her over to the
hospital."
"Thank you," Mulder said.
As Cheryl finished packing up her belongings, she asked, "Fox . .
. what did you see out there?"
Mulder looked up at her. She had grown up to be a tallish woman,
a little heavy around the hips, but pleasant-looking with her
short auburn curls and wide-set dark eyes. "Nothing," he said
truthfully.
Cheryl looked up at him. "Nothing?" she echoed. He could
understand the edge of disapproval in her voice. Nobody wanted
to hear their town had been turned upside-down by "nothing."
"Cheryl . . . ." He rubbed at the old bullet wound in his
shoulder, buying time to think as much as massaging away a dull
ache that sometimes set in with the cold. "What if I said that
sometimes the dead have more control over our lives than they
should?"
Her face seemed to close off from him, as if her thoughts were
very private. He supposed the dead father she'd never known had
cast a long shadow over her life. "Ghosts. You think it was
ghosts," she said.
He almost gave her a foolishly equivocal answer about how there
were many kinds of ghosts, not all of them paranormal. Instead,
he told her the unvarnished truth. "Yes."
She zipped her bag and slung it over her shoulder, not meeting
his eyes. "What should I tell Mark and Patty?'
It was a good question. Mulder seldom had to live with the
fallout of the paranormal bombshells he dropped into people's
lives. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "I
don't know. Tell them that it doesn't matter what I think. Tell
them I'm nuts. Just --" Mrs. Langmann's words came back to him.
"Just don't leave them alone."
Her face retained its shielded expression, but she nodded.
He continued quickly before he lost the will to say what he
needed to say next. "Listen -- Cheryl, I never did sell that
place of my dad's."
She gave him a curious look. "I always assumed that meant you
planned on moving back with us someday."
He shook his head. His official excuse for not selling the
house, other than procrastination, was that there might be
secrets hidden among his father's things. But Bill Mulder's
former associates had had seven years to comb the place for
anything they didn't want his son to find. The reality was that
despite the terrible memories he had of that house, he had not
been ready to let go. "What if I sold the house and gave the
proceeds to your mom?"
Cheryl's eyes went wide. "You can't do that," she said.
"Why not?"
She seemed appalled, but unable to come up with a good reason.
"Because you can't. He left that house to you."
"I'll never live in it. I don't have any family who need it.
Would it help you and Joe to enjoy the time you have with your
mother, instead of scrambling to make ends meet?"
She appeared torn. He sensed that once her confusion wore off
she would find his offer difficult to refuse. "Fox, why don't we
talk about it tomorrow when you're -- when you're feeling
better." He had thought she was going to say, "When you're
sane."
She rested her hand on his arm, and for a moment he thought she
was going to kiss him on the cheek. Instead she looked
embarrassed, and then hurried from the room.
To Mulder's surprise, cutting the last tie with his childhood
home was more of a relief than a loss. Whatever griefs and
struggles he would face in the future, they would at least be
*different* ones.
Aching with weariness, Mulder got up to turn off the lamp. He
crept into bed and coaxed Scully into pillowing her head on his
shoulder. She curled against him like a cat; like a liquid
filling all the hollows of his body.
"Mulder?" she asked.
"Hmmm," he answered.
"Did you really not see anything out there? Nothing at all?" she
asked. Mulder had thought she'd been asleep. When he didn't
answer at once, she disengaged herself and raised up on one
elbow, as if searching his face for signs of validation, evidence
that she wasn't crazy.
Mulder didn't have the emotional energy to give her evidence just
then. He shut his eyes against the image of that long, gray
shadow, and found it waiting for him behind his eyelids as well.
"I don't want to talk about it," he said.
She seemed to accept that and settled down against him again.
"Do you think it was evil? The thing that you saw?"
//Damn.// There was no lying to her. "I don't know. Maybe."
"I don't think Susannah was evil. Just angry and lonely. She
was willing to do whatever it took to fill that emptiness inside
her." Scully sighed, and he felt her draw in on herself
slightly, as if curling around some too-vulnerable place. "I
guess I understood what that felt like."
Mulder thought of the nights he'd spent staring at flickering
images on the TV, waiting for dawn to come so he could go to work
and feel like a real person again. "Me too." She wrapped her
arm around his chest and hugged him tight.
"Remember when you were talking before -- about children who came
back to haunt people because no one gave them names?"
It took a moment for his exhausted brain to make the connection.
All his folklore studies seemed so dim and far away. "Yeah, I
guess so."
"What happened after someone named them?"
His mind groped through the confused jumble of half-sleep,
remembering an Oxford don who'd droned on and on about liminal
rituals and compound beings. "Mostly they disappeared. Never
heard from again."
She was silent, and at first he thought she had fallen asleep
again. "I gave them names. Or I gave the baby a name, anyway.
I gave Susannah her own name again, in case someone hadn't -- I
mean not officially. Not in a church."
It occurred to him she was speaking of baptism of the dead -- an
ancient pagan practice long condemned by the Catholic Church.
He'd been accused of New-Age, anti-Christian sentiment before,
not least by Scully herself, but he remained carefully neutral
toward her lapse of orthodoxy. "So what happened?" he asked.
She was quiet a long time, and then said softly, "Nothing.
Nothing that I could tell."
"Ah." He ran his hand up and down her back, feeling the smooth
rippling of her spine under his fingers. "Even if you weren't
able to see a change, it may have meant something to her that you
tried. Sometimes even the attempt to help means a lot."
She curled tighter against him, as if to seal off the memory of
her helplessness in the face of the ghost-child's pain. "You did
all you could -- for Emily. For Susannah." He might easily have
added, "For Samantha." Letting go and moving on were not lessons
he was very well qualified to teach.
Scully's silent tears were hot against his chest. Mulder blinked
back the water in his own eyes, clearing his throat repeatedly.
One of them had to be the strong one.
"So," he said, his voice not nearly as steady as he would have
liked it, "When we elope, how about the Grand Canyon for the
honeymoon?" he said.
"*What?*"
He was pleased at having momentarily startled her out of her
sorrow. "We could, you know, ride burros and buy carved cedar
knick-knacks."
"*Mulder,*" she said. The exasperation in her voice was a hint
of the old Scully, an edge he could work with.
"I'm tired of the past, Scully. It's like a trap that sucks you
in until you just . . . drown in it. I want to talk about my
future. With you."
She didn't reply, but she lifted his hand and twined their
fingers together. He considered her silence as good as
encouragement. "No burros, huh?" he asked.
"No burros."
"What about Yellowstone?" he asked.
"Paris," she said dreamily.
"But at Yellowstone we could watch the Old Faithful geyser. It
would be educational," he said.
"I could stuff you *in* the Old Faithful geyser. Think how
educational that would be."
"You wouldn't really do it," he said.
"Try me."
They spun fantasies for a little while longer, and then fell into
companionable silence. Mulder found himself lulled by the sound
of her breathing, and even the fitful gusts of wind outside could
not dispel the sweet sleepiness coming over him.
Just as he was about to slip into unconsciousness, she asked
again, "Mulder?"
"What?" he murmured.
"Thank you."
He caressed the small of her back with his thumb. They didn't
often say they loved one another, just as they rarely displayed
affection in public. They had other ways to say exactly what
they meant.
"Anytime," he said.
********
EPILOGUE
Superior Court Building
Cape Cod, MA
Justice Francis Steeh was not happy about the criminal complaint
that had landed on his desk that morning. "Why are there two
autopsy protocols in here?" he asked, rifling through the thick
stack of forms, diagrams, and reports.
The lead detective on the case, Ron Davis, cleared his throat and
said, "We were concerned that the initial autopsy, done by an
acquaintance of the family, might not be as unbiased..."
Steeh glanced at the protocol's header and interrupted him.
"This wasn't done by some county coroner, detective, this woman
is an FBI pathologist. If you didn't like her, the time to
object was before, not after. Why should the taxpayers have to
pay twice because of some jurisdictional dispute?"
Davis opened his mouth, but the defense lawyer, a chubby media-
hound named Hubb, cut him off. "Your Honor, we intend to request
suppression of the second autopsy for precisely that reason -- "
"You can make all the motions to quash you like if this thing
goes to trial," Steeh interrupted. "Right now I'm not seeing
any probable cause at all."
The Commonwealth Attorney, a thin, pale man, who looked as if he
might be suffering from ulcers, spoke up and said, "The defendant
did score "deceptive" on polygraph questions related to his
presence on Martha's Vineyard, Your Honor."
"Evidence which you can't bring before a jury, anyway," Steeh
pointed out. Peering down through his bifocals, he ran his index
fingers over passages in the two nearly-identical autopsy
protocols. "Detective Davis, I may be missing something, but the
only difference I see here is that Dr. Scully says a particular
wound was 'consistent with a fall on to a sharp object' and Dr.
Kreger says it's 'consistent with' a stabbing. You had the whole
autopsy redone for *that?*"
Hubb broke in again. "And that is exactly why the second report
should be dismissed. My client--"
Davis didn't let him finish. "Your Honor, we have reason to
believe that John McBer is a danger to the community," he said.
Steeh glanced up at Hubb, who was clearly fuming at not being
able to run his famous mouth. "Mr. Hubb, where is your client
right now?" Steeh asked.
"Concord Correctional Institution, Your Honor," he said, looking
unhappy. From a man like Hubb, brevity spoke volumes.
"For what?" Steeh pressed.
"Alleged murder, but the case has no merit . . ."
Steeh turned to Davis and the Commonwealth Attorney. "I don't
think you need to worry about John McBer getting out anytime
soon." The detective's head only got redder. "If you collect
more evidence on him, bring this back to me, but not until then."
"Thank you Your Honor. You've made the right decision . . ."
Hubb began.
As the defense counsel continued to babble, a yellow Post-It note
fell out of the file. "What is this?" Steeh asked. When he
held the paper close enough to read, the scribble across it
resolved itself into writing. It said: "Fetch -- 300.19 (?)
Returns from dead to take living away. Be careful if you call
for dead friend/loved ones. Don't know who might answer."
"Detective, what is *that?*" Steeh asked, holding the note out
stuck to one finger. Davis glanced at it and winced.
"Ah -- that's a note from the profiler in the case, Agent Mulder.
He's a little bit..."
Steeh finished for him. "Preposterous. This entire case file is
preposterous." He stuck the note back in the file and closed it,
then pushed away.
"Next case!"
But as the day wore on, Steeh found his thoughts returning to the
words on the Post-It note. A devout Catholic, he had attended
Masses for the Dead all his life. Yet it had never occurred to
him that fervent prayers to raise Mother or Aunt Mildred from
Purgatory might raise something different, and less human, in
their place.
After the last defendant of the day shuffled off in chains, Steeh
descended to the tunnel that connected the court and the county
lock-up, where active files were stored in a hot little room not
much bigger than a walk-in closet.
The McBer case lay in the middle of a tall stack marked, "To be
filed." Feeling slightly foolish, Steeh flipped it open and
examined the note again: "Be careful if you call for dead
friends/loved ones. Don't know who might answer."
The longer he thought about such things, the more conscious he
was of the building emptying out, and of the young woman lying
dead on Martha's Vineyard, victim of an unknown assailant.
//Old fool. Senile old goat.//
He was a justice of the peace, for heaven's sake, not a credulous
child. He slapped the McBer file shut and worked it into its
place between other folders in a tightly-packed metal cabinet.
The cabinet door banged shut. Steeh shut off the lights and
locked the file room, then strode away down the hall, his
footsteps ringing in the empty corridor.
Within a few weeks the unsolved case would be nearly forgotten,
moved first to the State Police station in Yarmouth, then to a
central depository in Boston. It would remain there, unsolved,
unclosed, one yellowing folder among thousands, a nightmare lying
far back in institutional memory. Gathering dust.
In the dark.
*****
THE END
that shuffled after him. His fingers traced the openings of a
door and small-paned windows, once, then twice. He'd circled the
entire building, and Scully was not there.
The fear crept upon him that he was in the wrong spirit world --
the one in which Mary Brown wandered the cliffs with her head
held high like a lantern, eternally separated from her daughters.
The wolves' cries had grown increasingly close and then stopped
altogether. Every so often now, he heard a light footfall off in
the trees. The knowledge that wolf packs, even if starving,
almost never attacked adult humans was scant comfort. Mulder
supposed everything was starving during the winter of 1777. Even
if he managed to shoot one of the animals with his eyes shut,
would it fall? He doubted that any amount of firepower would
stop the pale, shambling thing that followed him.
He turned a corner to the shorter side of the rectangular
building, and heard a soft tick along the front as if his pursuer
were brushing frost-hardened fingers against the window panes,
following him by touch even as he backed away by touch.
Mulder heard snow-covered leaves crunch under his feet as he
struggled to keep the house between himself and whatever flaking,
limping nightmare crept after him. "Scully!" he shouted, for the
dozenth time.
This time he got a response -- "Fox?"
It was his mother's voice.
He stopped in his tracks, his mouth suddenly dry. He nearly
called out, "Mom?" But the word died on his lips. He stood
still as the slow footsteps rounded the side of the house. Was
it his imagination, or did they seem steadier, less stiff, then
they had before?
He heard the slow drag of something, fabric, pulling around the
corner. His mother's voice said again, "Fox?" It was a gentle,
welcoming voice.
He had railed at a God he did not believe in for not giving him
more time with her -- time to ask questions, to say goodbye. Was
this the answer to his unacknowledged prayer? He stretched out
his hand, then hesitated. Would his fingers contact the soft
warmth of his mother's body, or flesh as hard and stiff as
cracked leather?
He remained still, listening to the crunch of icy leaves as the
footsteps drew closer. The sounds stopped about an arm's length
away, and he felt something cold in front of him. Waves of chill
came over his outstretched hand as if he held it next to a block
of ice.
He was sure that if he reached out any farther he would touch
fingers, a wrist, an arm. His breaths came in ragged gasps and
cold air burned in his lungs. He wanted the gentle touch he
remembered, wanted to hear his mother say his name.
If this was not what he had prayed for, how badly did he want the
approximation? Something heavy and damp, like waterlogged
fabric, brushed against his ankle.
Not that badly.
He backed away, fumbling in his pocket for his flashlight. If
Scully could see into this world at all, perhaps the beam would
draw her. He kept his arm against the house's wall as he
continued moving away from the stumbling thing with his mother's
voice. Its footsteps continued after him, surer now, as he spoke
out loud to someone -- perhaps Scully, perhaps Susannah, perhaps
himself.
"She can't come to you here. It's no good waiting anymore -- you
have to move on. You have to get up and move."
As before, the only reply was the shuffling footsteps that
followed him.
*****
Scully sat in a sunlit field with Emily, Susannah, and the infant
she'd named Maria. All three little girls were pink and healthy
as they played in the long grass. In daylight, Susannah's hair
was the color of straw, and Emily's eyes had a lively sparkle
that Scully had never before seen in her. Both girls giggled as
Susannah showed Emily how to make play teacups out of scoop-
shaped leaves.
Scully sat in a loose T-shirt and shorts, her confining FBI
clothes shed like a rusty suit of armor. This was what she had
wanted all along. Not recognition, not approval, not even the
"answers" that neither science nor religion had ever wholly
provided. She only wanted to *be,* on her own terms, for herself
and those she loved.
With wide-eyed fascination, baby Maria reached up and grabbed a
strand of Scully's hair in her small, chubby fist.
Then the sweet moment was spoiled by a man's urgent voice: "You
have to get up and move."
For an instant, fear lanced through her. She had forgotten
something important -- something terrible. She struggled to
remember, though she sensed whatever it was would destroy her
happiness.
The truth came slowly, like the door to a crypt swinging open.
Someone was dead. A wave of lightheadedness came over her. Who?
Who was dead?
Memories came crashing down one after another. Her father . . .?
*Yes.* Her sister? *Yes.* Her daughter?
On the verge of an anguished cry, Scully looked down and saw
Emily gazing up at her with puzzled, sea-blue eyes.
The horror began to fade. How could Emily be dead when she was
here, playing in the grass? Susannah tugged at Scully's sleeve,
seeming impatient with her older playmate's foolish imaginings.
Scully turned her attention to the children again, somewhat
disoriented from the shock.
The distress soon passed, and she was engrossed in the children's
game again. Susannah smiled up at her impishly as she poured
dewdrop "tea" into Emily's leaf cup. The baby cooed and batted
at strands of Scully's hair.
Quiet and peace returned, until the same male voice distracted
her. "Follow the light if you can see it, Scully. You can't
stay here." Hearing fear in that voice triggered old reflexes.
She moved to grasp for something at the small of her back -- her
gun.
No. She didn't carry a gun anymore. *She did.* She distinctly
remembered cleaning and re-loading it before she --
Images tumbled through her mind: the inn; the hospital; the
tender sorrow on Mulder's face as he stood by the autopsy table
in Boston.
"Mulder?" she asked. The reality around her blurred and
dissolved like a chalk drawing in the rain.
Numbing cold struck her and she struggled to rise, bewildered by
the sensation of lying face down in a cold, wet pool. "Mulder .
. ." Saying his name required enormous effort this time. Had she
only thought she called him before?
She forced her eyes open. The sunny field was nowhere to be seen
-- all around was dark. Scully lay in a sleety patch of mud
without her coat on, her left hand soaked in a puddle of spilled
holy water. Her limbs barely obeyed her as she tried to push
herself up onto her knees.
She lifted her head and felt the frozen tips of her hair drag
against her throat and jaw. She squinted through the darkness,
disoriented, and thought she glimpsed a light through the trees
ahead. She began to crawl toward it.
A cold hand caught her arm, bringing her up short. Scully looked
down and saw eyes, round eyes in shining in a small, pale face.
She had no sense of the mouth moving as the soft voice spoke --
in fact, the lower jaw seemed to have fallen away.
"She left us. Don't leave us, too."
Puzzled by the creature's powerful grip, Scully placed her hand
over the tiny forearm, trying to pull it away. There was bone
beneath the tattered fabric. "You're death," she murmured. This
was the part of her dream that she had not wanted to acknowledge.
This was what the secret thing she had longed for -- a guide to
the other world where her own child waited. "You've come for
me."
The sound of Mulder calling her name seemed to grow more distant.
Gazing into the small being's eyes, she saw an invitation to come
away into the unknown. There would be no more pain, no more
fear. She had only everything to lose, and compared to what she
had already lost, what was everything? She reached up, brushed
her fingertips against the twine-like strands of hair.
"Follow the light if you can see it!" Mulder called.
Mulder. She looked up, saw a flash of light among the black
tangle of the trees. He would be all right without her, she told
herself.
*He wouldn't.*
If anything, his losses had been greater than her own. She
remembered his dull, shocked manner at his mother's funeral.
What would happen to him if her lost her as well?
And what would happen to her, without her friend, her gadfly and
protector? What would the afterlife be without Mulder there,
alternately mocking and spinning theories?
"It's not time," Scully said, gently pushing the creature at her
side away. It cried out like a stricken thing, and she felt its
bony hands catch at her arm. "I'm sorry. It's not time."
She dragged herself through the icy mud, though the effort was as
wearying as swimming through tar. Her hand brushed rough stone,
and she heaved herself over the block, rolling down the other
side with the thing still clutching at her. She was so close
now, only a few yards away from the light. She rolled a few more
feet, then lay exhausted.
The dead creature, an Utburd, Mulder had called it, a Navky,
crept up on top of her chest and gazed down at her. The
expression on its ruined face was not one of hate but of terrible
longing. "Mulder . . ." Scully called weakly. "Mulder."
*****
"Mulder."
Mulder hesitated as the dead woman's footsteps continued to draw
closer. Was this another trick? First his mother's voice and
now Scully's . . .
"Mulder," the voice came again, very desperate. He felt he
couldn't take the chance of not responding.
"Scully!" he called.
The response was a rustle of leaves in a direction he hadn't
heard before -- directly to his left, within the confines of the
ghost house. He turned the beam of his flashlight and dared to
open his eyes.
Scully lay on her back at the center of the rectangle of stone.
A long shadow lay across her body. Mulder could make out the
bell-shape of a long skirt, a nipped-in waist, angular
shoulders, and above that, nothing.
He flicked the light toward the figure, and stepped back from the
sight of -- what? The thing was gone -- his flashlight beam
illuminated only trees.
Had he only imagined the elongated, gray object held up in a
withered hand? It had been something too stretched-out to
be a human head, unless death had knocked the jawbone loose from
its moorings and then pulled leather-like skin down with it.
He did not feel it was best to think about that particular
extreme possibility. Instead, he ran to Scully's side, lifting
her from the sleet-covered mud. She twisted the folds of his
coat in her gloved fingers, but did not open her eyes. Mulder
rested his cheek against her forehead and brushed ice crystals
from her hair.
Once Scully was steady enough to stand, he slipped his arm around
her waist and helped her walk. They left behind the house
foundations and standing stones, traveling toward the lights of
the waiting inn.
*****
Later, Mulder sat on a chair next to his bed in Nye House,
watching Scully sleep. Her hair was still dark with dampness,
and he gently brushed it away from her forehead.
Joe's sister Cheryl turned the lamp down to its lowest setting
and began putting her thermometer and blood pressure cuff back
into what she'd referred to as her "bag of tricks." Cheryl had
agreed to stop by on the way home from her second-shift nursing
assignment.
"She should be all right," Cheryl said. "If she seems worse
during the night -- groggy or disoriented, take her over to the
hospital."
"Thank you," Mulder said.
As Cheryl finished packing up her belongings, she asked, "Fox . .
. what did you see out there?"
Mulder looked up at her. She had grown up to be a tallish woman,
a little heavy around the hips, but pleasant-looking with her
short auburn curls and wide-set dark eyes. "Nothing," he said
truthfully.
Cheryl looked up at him. "Nothing?" she echoed. He could
understand the edge of disapproval in her voice. Nobody wanted
to hear their town had been turned upside-down by "nothing."
"Cheryl . . . ." He rubbed at the old bullet wound in his
shoulder, buying time to think as much as massaging away a dull
ache that sometimes set in with the cold. "What if I said that
sometimes the dead have more control over our lives than they
should?"
Her face seemed to close off from him, as if her thoughts were
very private. He supposed the dead father she'd never known had
cast a long shadow over her life. "Ghosts. You think it was
ghosts," she said.
He almost gave her a foolishly equivocal answer about how there
were many kinds of ghosts, not all of them paranormal. Instead,
he told her the unvarnished truth. "Yes."
She zipped her bag and slung it over her shoulder, not meeting
his eyes. "What should I tell Mark and Patty?'
It was a good question. Mulder seldom had to live with the
fallout of the paranormal bombshells he dropped into people's
lives. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "I
don't know. Tell them that it doesn't matter what I think. Tell
them I'm nuts. Just --" Mrs. Langmann's words came back to him.
"Just don't leave them alone."
Her face retained its shielded expression, but she nodded.
He continued quickly before he lost the will to say what he
needed to say next. "Listen -- Cheryl, I never did sell that
place of my dad's."
She gave him a curious look. "I always assumed that meant you
planned on moving back with us someday."
He shook his head. His official excuse for not selling the
house, other than procrastination, was that there might be
secrets hidden among his father's things. But Bill Mulder's
former associates had had seven years to comb the place for
anything they didn't want his son to find. The reality was that
despite the terrible memories he had of that house, he had not
been ready to let go. "What if I sold the house and gave the
proceeds to your mom?"
Cheryl's eyes went wide. "You can't do that," she said.
"Why not?"
She seemed appalled, but unable to come up with a good reason.
"Because you can't. He left that house to you."
"I'll never live in it. I don't have any family who need it.
Would it help you and Joe to enjoy the time you have with your
mother, instead of scrambling to make ends meet?"
She appeared torn. He sensed that once her confusion wore off
she would find his offer difficult to refuse. "Fox, why don't we
talk about it tomorrow when you're -- when you're feeling
better." He had thought she was going to say, "When you're
sane."
She rested her hand on his arm, and for a moment he thought she
was going to kiss him on the cheek. Instead she looked
embarrassed, and then hurried from the room.
To Mulder's surprise, cutting the last tie with his childhood
home was more of a relief than a loss. Whatever griefs and
struggles he would face in the future, they would at least be
*different* ones.
Aching with weariness, Mulder got up to turn off the lamp. He
crept into bed and coaxed Scully into pillowing her head on his
shoulder. She curled against him like a cat; like a liquid
filling all the hollows of his body.
"Mulder?" she asked.
"Hmmm," he answered.
"Did you really not see anything out there? Nothing at all?" she
asked. Mulder had thought she'd been asleep. When he didn't
answer at once, she disengaged herself and raised up on one
elbow, as if searching his face for signs of validation, evidence
that she wasn't crazy.
Mulder didn't have the emotional energy to give her evidence just
then. He shut his eyes against the image of that long, gray
shadow, and found it waiting for him behind his eyelids as well.
"I don't want to talk about it," he said.
She seemed to accept that and settled down against him again.
"Do you think it was evil? The thing that you saw?"
//Damn.// There was no lying to her. "I don't know. Maybe."
"I don't think Susannah was evil. Just angry and lonely. She
was willing to do whatever it took to fill that emptiness inside
her." Scully sighed, and he felt her draw in on herself
slightly, as if curling around some too-vulnerable place. "I
guess I understood what that felt like."
Mulder thought of the nights he'd spent staring at flickering
images on the TV, waiting for dawn to come so he could go to work
and feel like a real person again. "Me too." She wrapped her
arm around his chest and hugged him tight.
"Remember when you were talking before -- about children who came
back to haunt people because no one gave them names?"
It took a moment for his exhausted brain to make the connection.
All his folklore studies seemed so dim and far away. "Yeah, I
guess so."
"What happened after someone named them?"
His mind groped through the confused jumble of half-sleep,
remembering an Oxford don who'd droned on and on about liminal
rituals and compound beings. "Mostly they disappeared. Never
heard from again."
She was silent, and at first he thought she had fallen asleep
again. "I gave them names. Or I gave the baby a name, anyway.
I gave Susannah her own name again, in case someone hadn't -- I
mean not officially. Not in a church."
It occurred to him she was speaking of baptism of the dead -- an
ancient pagan practice long condemned by the Catholic Church.
He'd been accused of New-Age, anti-Christian sentiment before,
not least by Scully herself, but he remained carefully neutral
toward her lapse of orthodoxy. "So what happened?" he asked.
She was quiet a long time, and then said softly, "Nothing.
Nothing that I could tell."
"Ah." He ran his hand up and down her back, feeling the smooth
rippling of her spine under his fingers. "Even if you weren't
able to see a change, it may have meant something to her that you
tried. Sometimes even the attempt to help means a lot."
She curled tighter against him, as if to seal off the memory of
her helplessness in the face of the ghost-child's pain. "You did
all you could -- for Emily. For Susannah." He might easily have
added, "For Samantha." Letting go and moving on were not lessons
he was very well qualified to teach.
Scully's silent tears were hot against his chest. Mulder blinked
back the water in his own eyes, clearing his throat repeatedly.
One of them had to be the strong one.
"So," he said, his voice not nearly as steady as he would have
liked it, "When we elope, how about the Grand Canyon for the
honeymoon?" he said.
"*What?*"
He was pleased at having momentarily startled her out of her
sorrow. "We could, you know, ride burros and buy carved cedar
knick-knacks."
"*Mulder,*" she said. The exasperation in her voice was a hint
of the old Scully, an edge he could work with.
"I'm tired of the past, Scully. It's like a trap that sucks you
in until you just . . . drown in it. I want to talk about my
future. With you."
She didn't reply, but she lifted his hand and twined their
fingers together. He considered her silence as good as
encouragement. "No burros, huh?" he asked.
"No burros."
"What about Yellowstone?" he asked.
"Paris," she said dreamily.
"But at Yellowstone we could watch the Old Faithful geyser. It
would be educational," he said.
"I could stuff you *in* the Old Faithful geyser. Think how
educational that would be."
"You wouldn't really do it," he said.
"Try me."
They spun fantasies for a little while longer, and then fell into
companionable silence. Mulder found himself lulled by the sound
of her breathing, and even the fitful gusts of wind outside could
not dispel the sweet sleepiness coming over him.
Just as he was about to slip into unconsciousness, she asked
again, "Mulder?"
"What?" he murmured.
"Thank you."
He caressed the small of her back with his thumb. They didn't
often say they loved one another, just as they rarely displayed
affection in public. They had other ways to say exactly what
they meant.
"Anytime," he said.
********
EPILOGUE
Superior Court Building
Cape Cod, MA
Justice Francis Steeh was not happy about the criminal complaint
that had landed on his desk that morning. "Why are there two
autopsy protocols in here?" he asked, rifling through the thick
stack of forms, diagrams, and reports.
The lead detective on the case, Ron Davis, cleared his throat and
said, "We were concerned that the initial autopsy, done by an
acquaintance of the family, might not be as unbiased..."
Steeh glanced at the protocol's header and interrupted him.
"This wasn't done by some county coroner, detective, this woman
is an FBI pathologist. If you didn't like her, the time to
object was before, not after. Why should the taxpayers have to
pay twice because of some jurisdictional dispute?"
Davis opened his mouth, but the defense lawyer, a chubby media-
hound named Hubb, cut him off. "Your Honor, we intend to request
suppression of the second autopsy for precisely that reason -- "
"You can make all the motions to quash you like if this thing
goes to trial," Steeh interrupted. "Right now I'm not seeing
any probable cause at all."
The Commonwealth Attorney, a thin, pale man, who looked as if he
might be suffering from ulcers, spoke up and said, "The defendant
did score "deceptive" on polygraph questions related to his
presence on Martha's Vineyard, Your Honor."
"Evidence which you can't bring before a jury, anyway," Steeh
pointed out. Peering down through his bifocals, he ran his index
fingers over passages in the two nearly-identical autopsy
protocols. "Detective Davis, I may be missing something, but the
only difference I see here is that Dr. Scully says a particular
wound was 'consistent with a fall on to a sharp object' and Dr.
Kreger says it's 'consistent with' a stabbing. You had the whole
autopsy redone for *that?*"
Hubb broke in again. "And that is exactly why the second report
should be dismissed. My client--"
Davis didn't let him finish. "Your Honor, we have reason to
believe that John McBer is a danger to the community," he said.
Steeh glanced up at Hubb, who was clearly fuming at not being
able to run his famous mouth. "Mr. Hubb, where is your client
right now?" Steeh asked.
"Concord Correctional Institution, Your Honor," he said, looking
unhappy. From a man like Hubb, brevity spoke volumes.
"For what?" Steeh pressed.
"Alleged murder, but the case has no merit . . ."
Steeh turned to Davis and the Commonwealth Attorney. "I don't
think you need to worry about John McBer getting out anytime
soon." The detective's head only got redder. "If you collect
more evidence on him, bring this back to me, but not until then."
"Thank you Your Honor. You've made the right decision . . ."
Hubb began.
As the defense counsel continued to babble, a yellow Post-It note
fell out of the file. "What is this?" Steeh asked. When he
held the paper close enough to read, the scribble across it
resolved itself into writing. It said: "Fetch -- 300.19 (?)
Returns from dead to take living away. Be careful if you call
for dead friend/loved ones. Don't know who might answer."
"Detective, what is *that?*" Steeh asked, holding the note out
stuck to one finger. Davis glanced at it and winced.
"Ah -- that's a note from the profiler in the case, Agent Mulder.
He's a little bit..."
Steeh finished for him. "Preposterous. This entire case file is
preposterous." He stuck the note back in the file and closed it,
then pushed away.
"Next case!"
But as the day wore on, Steeh found his thoughts returning to the
words on the Post-It note. A devout Catholic, he had attended
Masses for the Dead all his life. Yet it had never occurred to
him that fervent prayers to raise Mother or Aunt Mildred from
Purgatory might raise something different, and less human, in
their place.
After the last defendant of the day shuffled off in chains, Steeh
descended to the tunnel that connected the court and the county
lock-up, where active files were stored in a hot little room not
much bigger than a walk-in closet.
The McBer case lay in the middle of a tall stack marked, "To be
filed." Feeling slightly foolish, Steeh flipped it open and
examined the note again: "Be careful if you call for dead
friends/loved ones. Don't know who might answer."
The longer he thought about such things, the more conscious he
was of the building emptying out, and of the young woman lying
dead on Martha's Vineyard, victim of an unknown assailant.
//Old fool. Senile old goat.//
He was a justice of the peace, for heaven's sake, not a credulous
child. He slapped the McBer file shut and worked it into its
place between other folders in a tightly-packed metal cabinet.
The cabinet door banged shut. Steeh shut off the lights and
locked the file room, then strode away down the hall, his
footsteps ringing in the empty corridor.
Within a few weeks the unsolved case would be nearly forgotten,
moved first to the State Police station in Yarmouth, then to a
central depository in Boston. It would remain there, unsolved,
unclosed, one yellowing folder among thousands, a nightmare lying
far back in institutional memory. Gathering dust.
In the dark.
*****
THE END