There were three floors to the house, not counting the widow's watch and we ran up all those stairs expecting to be attacked at any moment. They didn't follow us, though, the first floor had all their attention. At least for a while. Even as we reached the third floor we could still hear them.

Things fell in terrific smashes and crashes. It sounded like a tornado might if trapped on one floor of a building. The crashes were punctuated by a repetitive thudding sound, followed by a tortured shrieking I finally realized was the splintering of the locked door as they were battered open; I'd forgotten that wood can make such a shrill sound when you force it. It was clear that they were looking for something, but what? Could it be...us?

I prayed not as Mulder dragged the door to the widow's watch open, allowing us to spill in after him. It looked like a poor refuge, but at least the door was entirely solid with no glass. Which was more than could be said for any of the five other angled walls. Set up in a hexagon, each wall was taken up by a large window. Which was the point, I supposed, but all that glass was hardly reassuring in a lightening storm.

Since Scully was also looking askance at the windows, through which flashes of sheet lightening could be seen with alarming regularity, I was unsurprised that she was worried about the adequacy of the refuge. "Mulder," She sounded nervous. "You know what lightening can do to the human body."

The way she said it made me sure they'd had a case involving people stuck by lightening. I didn't ask questions because I found that I'd lost my appetite for knowing the details of their other cases.

"If you like, we could go back downstairs and look for another hiding place." Mulder suggested dryly.

I shook my head, there was nothing I wanted less. Scully did some backpedaling herself. "If we sit where two of the walls meet, we'll be sheltered more from any strikes at the windows." It made me think of snakes.

"Don't be such a worrywart." Mulder admonished her. "There are lightening rods on the roof, remember?"

She didn't look convinced that they were all that valuable. We picked the corner to the right of the door, since its opposite would have the least glass near them. Unfortunately, there were piles of junk in every corner, so we'd have to move stuff. I glanced nervously at the floor. We would have to be very quiet.

I don't think until that moment any of us realized that Mulder was still holding Markie. Markie, however, made a squeal of protest, and struggled to get to me, apparently tired of being held by a relative stranger. I took him immediately, worried that the ghosts or whatever they were would hear him. The noise below continued unabated, so it didn't seem as though his one small noise had attracted any unwanted noise.

Mulder and Scully worked quickly and quietly, moving cartons junk out from the corner and into the middle of the room. We whispered briefly about whether or not it would be effective to block the door, but decided that in the end it'd probably hinder our escape from the room rather than dissuade the ghosts.

As if there was anything to be gained by escaping the room. True, we were in the room by our own volition, but it was as effective a trap as it would have been if the ghosts were holding us captive. There was no where to go. Even if they confronted us, and we managed to get past them unharmed, there was no where we could go to be safe. We were miles from the mainland. Not too many miles, certainly, but far too many to make an attempt to swim for it.

The thoughts racing through my head made room for another as I felt a familiar tightness in my chest. I gritted my teeth and willed the pain away, knowing it was all in my head, literally. I'd only had a handful of anxiety attacks, but they made a lasting impression, so I recognized instantly that I was probably going to have another one. Always inconveniently time, it was the first time one had made an appearance when I wasn't driving in bad weather. There's a first for everything, I thought grimly.

Something must have shown on my face, because Scully looked up from placing the last of the boxes on the floor and gave me a frown. "You don't look so good." She told me, taking Markie from me.

"I..I just need to sit down." I muttered. I knew if I concentrated on remaining calm, I might be able to stop the anxiety attack in its tracks. I'd been successful once before.

"Panic attack?" She guessed as she took a seat on the floor as well. I nodded miserably, then stopped paying attention to things while I tried to demand my body behave itself. After a couple of minutes the dizziness went away, and my heart no longer thumped painfully in my chest. It still hurt to breathe, but I knew that once it got that far, it'd hurt for a while.

"I'm ok." I told her, giving her a grateful smile and reaching for the baby.

She smiled back. "You look better." She noted the next time the lightening flashed.

"Not so pale that you look like you'd..." she trailed off.

"Just seen a ghost?" I supplied, to which she gave a sheepish look. It was funny, we just were feeling a little humor impaired at the time.

Agent Mulder didn't seem to be paying attention to either of us, since he was kneeling by one of the boxes they'd put on the floor. Once he stood up, he was holding a leather bound book in one hand. "I think it's a journal." He said. " It fell out of the last box I moved."

If I'd been feeling better I probably would have made a flip remark about it being the perfect time to find out who the diary owner had a crush on, but I wasn't up to it, so I just rolled my eyes. He noticed. "This could be very valuable." He insisted, taking out his flashlight.

"Do you plan to sell it on E-bay?" Scully asked archly.

"No..." He said, flipping through the pages. "I have a feeling that if we read the last entry, it will help us. Call it a gut feeling."

After he read it, Scully gave him an expectant look. "Well, what does it say?"

He looked chagrined. "It just says 'We're leaving tomorrow.'"

"So much for gut feelings." She scoffed.

"There's got to be something in here." He insisted, finally coming to sit between us. "I just have to look earlier in the book. "Mulder insisted stubbornly, as he continued to hold the flashlight in one hand and flip the pages of the book on his lap with the other.

I leaned back against the nearest of the two adjoining walls and didn't fuss when Markie decided to wrap one small fist around a lock of my hair. I usually kept it back when he was awake, but I hadn't thought to do anything with it when Scully woke me up. I realized that it couldn't have even been an hour since then. Which was remarkable for two reasons: it felt like it had been hours and I was able to breathe again without any vise-like feeling when I inhaled. It was a small miracle in hell. Feeling momentarily better, I gently pried the small fingers out of my hair and kissed the little hand they were attached to.

"I've got it!" Mulder exclaimed loudly enough to make Scully and I start. He gave us a sheepish look. Sorry. But I think I found something that will help us."

"In the journal?" Scully gave him a skeptical look. I didn't blame her. That we just happened to find a book with the answers, after it fell out of a box of junk... it was more than a little far-fetched.

"Listen to this." He commanded. " I haven't finished reading the entry, but I've read enough to convince me, anyway. This diary belonged to a child who lived in the house. She was thirteen when she wrote this."

"Read it already." Scully said wearily.

Mulder began to read. "October 14th, 1933. I'm not looking forward to tomorrow, because it's the full moon. Terrible things happen in this house during the full moon, but only once every ten years. The last time it happened I was three, but I remember it still. Momma says I was too young to really remember, but I swear I do.

"It's all my great-grandfather Davis' fault. If you grow up out here, on the islands, you hear the stories. Black beard's wife haunts one, still lonely and lost. And there's the ghost that goes from isle to isle looking for the treasure captain Kid buried here. Little does the ghost know that the treasure no longer exists for him to find.

Grandpa Davis was only a little older than me when he found the treasure. He told my grandfather that he'd been on a camping trip all by himself on this island when he tripped over the treasure. Really. There'd been a bad storm a few days before and it must have washed a lot of sand away, because he was walking on the island when his foot caught on something, and he fell face first on top of it. A little digging revealed a chest, just like in all the pirate songs.

Knowing that it'd be big news if he brought his treasure home, he did the most logical thing and disappeared without telling anyone. He didn't even tell his parents, so they were crazy with grief. He went up to Canada and found someone to give him real money in return for the pirate's gold. The gold was good to find, he said, but a hard thing to spend. He stayed away for six months, then returned wealthy, telling everyone that he'd been coerst into helping a trapper, who'd finally felt badly about taking him away from home so he let him go after paying him his wages. No one ever did find any sign of this man who'd supposedly stolen my 15-year-old grandfather away from home. Of course.

Once he grew up, my great-grandfather returned to the island where he found his treasure, and built a house. This house. He was twenty-five when it was finally finished and he could move in. He figured that since the majority of the legends cited Smutynose island as the place captain Kid visited, there wouldn't be any treasure hunters bothering his family on a tiny no-name island. He was wrong."

"That's spooky." Scully remarked.

"No, I am." Mulder grinned at her, and she smiled back. I have no idea what that was all about.

"That does sound ominous." I agreed.