Hope.
Glasgow, Kentucky.
May 18, 2010.
He ended up in another small room.
It was grandmotherly, with pictures of kids all over the walls, old holiday decorations lingering in the corners, plush carpets camouflaging multiple cats, and old straight-backed chairs gathered around a couch that dipped uncomfortably low. His first interview was with the owner of this house, an elderly woman with sad eyes. She seemed defenseless and afraid, but still determined to talk to him. Her jaw was set like stone, even while her idle hands trembled. He felt genuinely bad for bringing her into this.
She had invited them in, brought them to this room, and offered them both drinks, but that seemed to be the limit of her capacity for conversation. She stared at the floor, occasionally glancing up into his eyes, like she was afraid of him. It went on like that for a little while before Gene spoke.
"We just wanted to hear your story about the incident," Gene said, drawing the old woman's eyes as he shifted around in his chair. He motioned to Mulder. "This is my friend, Fox Mulder. I told you about him on the phone, remember?"
"I'm not senile," she snapped. She looked at Mulder, folding her hands together. "He said you work with the FBI. How come you're all the way out here?"
"I used to work with the FBI. I dealt in unusual circumstances."
"So you retired?"
He smiled and cleared his throat. Suddenly he was in the hot seat. "Uh, no, ma'am. Not exactly. I left the bureau to settle down. We didn't see eye-to-eye."
"So you got fired, then?"
"Not exactly."
"I had a friend who worked for the FBI, said they were all a bunch of crooks."
"I can assure you that I'm not a crook."
"Well, you don't look like one."
"I just wanted to ask you-"
"Do you know Randy Murray?"
"No, ma'am, I just-"
"He was my friend. Well, he was my friend's grandson. He died when the towers went down, you know. He was a real hero. He was about your age."
"I'm sorry, I don't know that name."
"Well you would have liked him."
"Ma'am, may I ask you-"
"Look at these hands," she interrupted again, holding up her hands. She ran her fingers over the bumps in her joints. "I have arthritis. Randy always used to help me with my groceries."
Mulder saw Gene smirking in the corner of his eye, and it was all he could do not to smack him. He should have never mentioned the FBI. He nodded to the old woman, but forced a change of subject. "I'm more curious about your experiences in the cave, Ms. Lawson."
"Oh, the caves?"
"Yes. I understand that you and your son were part of a tour group several weeks ago. I'm interested about that trip."
Her demeanor changed very suddenly. She went from the wicked boss of the house to a scared victim again. Her tone got darker and she drew her arms in, as if she had suddenly become cold. "Oh… I suppose you are. That place is awful." She looked away, her aging irises dragging across the carpet. She pointed out a picture on the mantle. "Up there is the last picture I took with Peter. It was right outside the cave. You can see the entrance in the background. It was one of those tourist pictures, you know. We were going to give it to the kids."
Mulder stood, surveying the picture. It was the woman, looking much happier, standing beside her adult son. He was looking up at the mouth of the cave, his arm strewn protectively over his mother's shoulders. Mulder could see a whole tour group funneling in behind them, and he wondered why, out of dozens of people, Peter Lawson had been taken.
He was joined by the old woman, who pulled the picture down. She carefully removed it from its frame and handed it to him. "If this will help you find him, I want you to take it."
"Ms. Lawson, I'm not sure that-"
"I know, I know, but just take it anyway." She went back to her chair, lightning a cigarette, taking one puff, and then grinding it out in her ashtray. "I just want you to have that, in case you find him. He looks just like his father – same name, too. My husband passed a few years ago. Peter came to live with me, with the kids. They were with their mother when… well, you know that part."
Mulder sat beside Gene, snapping to get his attention. With the scientist looking up, he finally asked the question he had been holding back. "Tell me what happened in that cave, Ms. Lawson."
She locked up again, staring thoughtfully away from curious eyes. "Oh. It's not a long story. He was beside me, going on about his catering business, and then he was gone. I thought he had taken another passage so I backtracked, but there was nothing. It was just solid rock up and down the tunnel. No one had seen him go. He was just gone."
"Did you hear anything?" Gene asked.
Her eyes glazed a bit. "Well, yes. I heard him… yelling. He shouted something… and then there was a loud bang, like he had fallen."
"You didn't notice anything else unusual?" Mulder asked. "Did you smell sulfur? Was the cave suddenly colder than before? Did you hear anything out of place, like running water or wind?"
"It was all like that, the whole cave," she answered.
"But was it colder where you were? Was the smell stronger?"
"I don't know what you're trying to ask me."
Mulder leaned in a little closer, lowering his voice. "Ms. Lawson, I think your son may have been taken by a poltergeist. I've read accounts of spirits in that cave dating back hundreds of years. It would explain how he went missing from a closed tunnel."
She frowned. He could tell she was not buying into his story, but there was a painful hope in the back of her eyes. She would believe anything, acknowledge anything, and say anything, if it meant her son could come back to her. She spoke in a soft sort of whisper, as if she was afraid the spirits would hear her and finish the job. "Do you think he might be alive then, Mr. Mulder?"
"I'm not sure yet. I've heard stories of poltergeists corralling their victims for some time after capture. He's only been gone for a month, so it might be possible."
She smiled cautiously. "I hope you're right. He was a good boy. We just want him back. This is awful, losing him so soon after his father. He was broken up about that, you know. His father was his best friend. Oh, my boys."
"If I can bring him back to you, I will," Mulder said, empathizing with the pain she was feeling. It was the awful sense of not knowing – not knowing if someone close to them was dead, suffering, or living on someplace else. It was something he had experienced, and something he hated to see in others.
It went on like that for a good portion of the day. Gene was skeptical of his approach, a little weary to give people hope that their loved ones were alive, but he admitted his enchantment with the strength it gave them. Some reacted badly to his theory – one grieving husband took a swing at him, missed, and then collapsed into a sobbing heap at his feet – but most erred on the side of cautious optimism. Even if they thought he was a total loon, hearing someone say they were going to look for these missing people was uplifting.
Mulder was surprised by the willingness of the locals to believe his stories. He had never met so much acceptance, not during his entire career in the FBI, not even from his own allies in the supernatural business. It was psychologically fascinating to him. He gave them something to think about, something to hold on to when the rest of the 'facts' were so intangible.
"You have a way with people."
It was finally six in Glasgow. He was sitting across from Gene in the back booth of a local restaurant, picking at a plate of fried shrimp. It was a hazy place, made up of every shade of dark brown, and covered in faded posters from six decades ago. It was humming with soft country music that served to drown out the conversations of other patrons. He liked it here. The hypnotic smell of apple pie at the front bar, the curious glances from locals, the deep baritone of uncensored tourists – it was the setting of an old mob movie starring some Hollywood heartthrob.
He regarded Gene with the same patient amusement he had the entire day. Going on very little sleep, the scientist had progressed further and further into goofiness, from taking the time to straighten lawn gnomes to confessing his love for a certain teenage country music star. Right now he was staring at Mulder, a pale pink wooden umbrella between his index finger and his thumb, pointing at him with a serious look on his face.
"I mean that. Really. Every time you opened your mouth today, everybody just let it all out. When I spoke to these people on the phone I got veiled irritation, at best. You have ten new best friends. It's just spooky. How on Earth did you manage that?"
Mulder took his own umbrella out, gnawing on the end while he spoke. "That was my job. I'm a trained investigator." He smiled. "And I understand what they're going through."
"Someone you know went missing?"
He accidentally snapped the umbrella in half. Glancing up, sure that the scientist had noted the reaction, he set it down on the table, halfheartedly uniting the two pieces. "Yeah. Something like that. You said something earlier about false hope… it's not false. It's just hope. Giving people something to hold onto can mean the world to them. It can mean the difference between suicidal depression and being able to live on. Holding back from them – it doesn't help them, it just hurts."
Gene took a sip of his drink. "Did you ever find this person that you knew?"
Mulder sighed. "I did and I didn't. But that's not the point."
"It made you better, then? Having something to hold onto?"
"It made me… who I am." He slid his shrimp away, suddenly not in the mood to pick at them. "Whether it made me better is a conversation you need to have with Scully." He brushed the broken pieces of his umbrella toward the napkin holder, grimacing. "Did you talk to that ranger friend of yours? Is he going to escort us?"
"Oh, yeah, of course. Sal was his friend, too. He'll meet us at dawn tomorrow."
"That easy, huh?"
"Well, we're not exactly taking the main gate. He knows a quiet way in."
"I can't believe they're still letting tourists into the caves."
"They're not."
Mulder frowned. "They shut the caves down?"
"I thought you knew that. What we're doing is completely illegal. Is that a problem?"
He smirked. He had a little angelic version of Scully on his shoulder begging him to walk the straight and narrow, but the little demon on his other shoulder was his younger self, and the prospect of breaking the law to investigate the paranormal didn't even phase him. He pulled his plate back and dug in. "Not a problem. Just don't tell Scully."