Visions.
Glasgow, Kentucky.
"Can you please keep an eye on him? He might try to make a run for it."
Mulder looked between Scully and the nurse, maintaining an innocent smile. When his lover left the room, he set his eyes on the nurse completely, trying to remember how he had gotten away with this the first time. "Uh, can you help me to the bathroom?"
She cocked an eyebrow. "Nice try."
"Oh, come on, I'm not trying to get away. I can barely stand. Look at me. I just have to pee, and I really don't want to do it in a bedpan. Can you help me out?"
She bit her lip, glancing into the hall, and then she approached his bedside. She pulled the covers back and helped him sit up, supporting him across the room. He leaned in the doorframe, sizing up the nearby chair. She reached in to turn on the light for him.
He grabbed her, trying to shove her in like he had the first time, but she steeled her legs and veered away from him, stumbling outside and shouting something in Spanish. He recoiled, not expecting the resistance, and his legs suddenly stopped working. He fell back against the bed, jarring his stab wound on the mattress as he went down. Black dots erupted in his eyes as the pain rolled through him. He immediately regretted every life choice that had brought him here.
Doctors swarmed the room again, hauling him up. Someone had brought the restraints. His nurse was repeating what had happened to someone in the doorway.
"Come on!" he shouted, struggling against them. "It's a dream anyway! Just let me start over! Or can we just skip to me finding out where the damn cabin is?" He threw a punch, catching someone in the nose. "Where is the cabin? Send me a vision or something! You're bad at being a ghost!"
He woke up in the hospital bed again.
He groaned, yanking at the restraints. Gene looked up from the window, appearing unsettled, and murmured, "Would you stop doing that?"
Mulder glared at him. "Would you stop saying that?"
Gene frowned. "Scully will be here soon."
"I know. We've been over this." Mulder turned his head angrily – it was just about all he could manage at the moment – and scowled at the wall. He decided not to break out of the bracers this time. When Scully inevitably rushed in, she would be horrified by how they had treated him, and he would have her attention. He could try to explain what was happening, so maybe she wouldn't ask the nurse to watch him. Or he could act perfectly sane. That was probably his best bet.
She came in moments after Gene left, having received that urgent message on his phone. She gasped as she paused in the doorway, and then she started undoing his restraints. "Who did this to you?" she demanded. "How did this happen?"
"It was nothing," Mulder said, going with nonchalance. "I had a bad reaction to the drugs. I'm fine now. Gene was just trying to keep me from hurting myself."
Just then, Gene appeared in the doorway. He looked confused.
"Isn't that right, Gene?"
"Right," the scientist responded.
Scully looked between them, appearing suspicious, but she dropped it pretty quickly. She pressed her lips to his forehead. "I thought the worst when they called me."
"You can breathe easy now. I'm fine. Everything is fine."
"He said you were seeing things."
"I was. It was just a concussion. They patched me up and got some fluids in me." He grabbed her hand, faking his best smile. "Look at me. I'm fine. I just feel a little woozy, that's all."
She touched his bandages, cringing. "I should have come with you."
"Nah. Gene had my back."
She smiled, content for the time being, and then she slid sideways to join him in the bed. "Well you look exhausted. You should take it easy."
He was content for a moment, and then he remembered what happened next. He pulled himself up, rudely letting her drop to the mattress. "Uh, no, actually I'm pretty hungry. Could you ask the doctors if I can eat something? I feel like it's been days."
She was frowning as she stood up. "O-Okay. What do you want?"
"Surprise me."
She left the room, followed quickly by Gene, and Mulder felt a little twinge in his back. He was being stabbed again. He crawled out of bed and went into the bathroom, pulling his robe up to check the wound. He was gushing blood all over again. He ripped the sheet from the bed, tied it around his waist, and threw his coat on over it, hastily pulling his pants on. He did his best to walk casually out of the room, going in the opposite direction that Scully had, but he groaned when he found himself at the stairs. It was going to be a painful walk down.
He dripped blood all the way to the bottom, and by the time he got to the front doors, he was leaving a steady line of it behind him. He heard people calling after him, probably a bit concerned about his breadcrumbs, but he ignored them.
He pushed his way out into the rain and went left instead of right, taking the first side road on the right side of the main road and shuffling away as fast as he could. He kept going, getting the sense that he was headed the right way, until he saw patches of trees starting up in the distance. He was coming upon a park. He smiled, continuing until he almost crashed into a little wooden sign on the sidewalk. It announced the park as a historical sight for a now-extinct tribe.
He was in the right place.
He walked into the trees, shivering, his teeth trembling. He was soaking wet and the wind kept trying to knock him off of his feet. It was nothing like the vision he had had of the girl in the meadow – instead of the beautiful colors, he saw only shades of gray, occasionally streaked white by the lightning. His heart rumbled along with the thunder.
"Why can't you just… tell me what you want…?" he panted, clawing his way through the underbrush. He came out into a clearing and stood straight, staring around at the apocalyptic scene. Trees were swaying violently. Lightning arched overhead. The grass barely looked real, just a blur of gray and green on the ground. He stepped out of the trees, spinning around with his arms out. "Just tell me what you want! What do you want me to do?"
He became aware of her before he saw her. He turned around, taking in the sight of his ghost. She was still glowing like the moon, still young and beautiful, and she still looked sad. He was again overwhelmed by the emotions she had shared with him.
"What can I do?" he asked.
She just stared at him.
"Can you talk? Can you communicate in any other way?"
He got a flash of the cabin, and a piercing pain in his head.
"I know about the cabin. I know about the meadow. I know about the forest. Is there anything else? I don't understand what you want from me. I can't help you if I can't understand this. What's with the hospital room?" He waited, watching her face. "Is that my mind fighting your mind? Give me something here. Help me understand what you need."
Her eyes flickered to the ground, and suddenly she was gone. It was sunny again, but he was still soaking wet. He looked around rapidly, catching a glimpse of movement on the other side of the meadow. He ran toward it, shouting, and then stopped in his tracks. She was showing him another scene from her life. She was showing him exactly what he had asked for.
She was lying in a man's arms. He was sobbing over her corpse. Her back was gashed open, like Scully's had been in his dream. He could see pieces of bone sticking out of it. He could feel the chilly wind coming from the east. He could see the anger in the young man's eyes.
He gathered up the corpse and started walking with it. Mulder followed. Within moments the trees opened up to the dry riverbed and the cabin. Mulder watched him drop the body on the floor. He watched the blood roll out of it, just like in the dream, and then the young man let out a mournful scream. He grabbed a knife – eerily similar to the one in the woman's back – from a rack on the wall and walked back past Mulder, marching into the meadow. He vanished suddenly.
Mulder was back in the storm with the young girl. He started putting the pieces together. "You were murdered," he said, glancing around. "With a bone knife. He stabbed you. And that man… your brother, or your husband… he brought you to the cabin."
She was staring wistfully behind Mulder.
He turned, seeing something that had not been there before. It was the same place he and the other explorers had entered the cave. "Your killer was in the cave… your brother went after him."
He felt the cold blade twisting in his back again. He fell to one knee, gasping. The young woman walked past him, staring longingly at the cave entrance. Mulder tried to keep his eyes on it, but the pain was becoming too much.
"Either your brother killed him… or he killed your brother."
She looked down at him, pitiless, ageless, and blinked.
She started to disappear, melting into the raindrops like she had never been there. Mulder sank into the grass, spitting stalks out as he tried to regain his breath. He pressed his hand to his back, desperately trying to stop the bleeding. It felt like dying. It felt like he was disappearing, too.
And then the thought struck him.
"There are two ghosts. You, and one of them. You didn't take those people… he did."