Flooded.

Glasgow, Kentucky.

May 23, 2010.

They met Gene in the forest, right where they had left him nearly eight hours earlier. It was now midday and the sun was beating them all to death. It was humid, and every step reminded Scully how sore she was from the caves. Still, there was new hope in this hour, because Gene was not alone. He had the oldest son of the elder with him, standing a daunting six and a half feet tall with both arms folded behind his back. He seemed tranquil. Gene had mentioned him in his messages, claiming the man could take them to the ceremonial tree without issue.

Mulder walked right up to him like he had known him his entire life. "You must be Harris," Mulder said, holding out a hand to the man. The stranger shook it, looking a bit surprised by the greeting. Mulder clasped him on the shoulder. "I met your cousin, John. We went into the caves together a few days ago."

"He mentioned you," Harris responded, blinking like he, too, had seen a ghost. "He was worried for your life. I'll tell him that you are doing well."

"Do you believe in ghosts, Harris?"

Without hesitating, the towering man nodded. "Of course."

Mulder glanced at Scully, grinning, and said, "And what inspires this belief of yours?"

Harris glanced at her, probably sensing that Mulder was trying to make a point. Scully smiled, folding her arms over her chest, and said, "I'm curious, too."

"The dead always walk among us," Harris said simply.

With that, the walk began. Harris led them through the woods, occasionally stopping to make sure he knew where he was. Scully grew accustomed to the endless chatter of Gene, who was, as the days passed, become less and less annoying to her. She focused on Mulder, though, because he was being uncharacteristically silent. He watched the ground as he walked.

She ventured closer to him, nudging his shoulder. When he looked up, his eyes were a million miles away. "Hey," she whispered. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"I'm so tired of you saying that."

He blinked, actually seeing her this time. "I was just thinking about our ghosts. It must be so lonely for them, being stuck here all these years."

She marveled at the depth of his feelings. He was experiencing genuine empathy for them. It bled through his eyes. It swam through his every word. It was one of the things that she truly loved about him, and one of the things that constantly got him into trouble.

"It won't be much longer now," she responded softly.

He looked over, smiling, and held her hand for a moment, running his thumb along her palm.

When their guide stopped suddenly, she drew her hand away. Harris was staring into a patch of trees, turning his compass this way and that. He looked back at them, frowning, and held out his hand. "Does anyone have an extra compass?"

Mulder handed his over. Scully rolled her eyes at his satisfied expression.

"No, this is no good," Harris said. He held it out to them, and Scully watched, fascinated, as the arrow spun randomly. He showed his as well, and it was spinning in the same way. They were mirroring each other.

Mulder seemed grim suddenly. He took his compass back, watched it spin for a moment, and then looked around them. "This must be the place."

She frowned. He started walking around them, watching his compass, and then he walked off. She glanced at Gene and the guide, wondering if they knew what was going on in his head, but they followed him without question. She ended up in the back, scanning the trees for the source of the magnetism that was driving the compasses nuts.

Mulder stopped between two trees, setting his compass on the ground. They all gathered around it, watching it spin like a helicopter blade until the metal finally detached from the center and went still. She could hear a buzzing coming from the other compass, now resting in Harris' pocket.

"This is where it's the strongest," Mulder said. "It must be where the bones are buried."

"Gene tells me you believe these bones are the reason for the disappearances," Harris said, unfolding his shovel and joining Mulder as he started to dig. "It is generally against our beliefs, and against the beliefs of the tribes who lived here before us, to disturb the dead, but it is also abhorrent to force a spirit to remain here. I will help you with this."

Mulder's eyes ticked up for a split second. "Glad to have you."

Shortly after the two of them started digging, Scully's cellphone began to vibrate. She checked the name that popped up, her heart stuttering when she saw 'home.' She stepped away to answer.

"Iden? Is everything okay?"

"Yeah. Katie and her dad got to go back home. Her dad wanted to know if I should go with them."

Scully glanced at the others, noticing a curious glance from Mulder. She turned the other way. "Um, yes. I should be back soon though. I'll pick you up as soon as we're back in Virginia."

"Is Fox okay?"

"He's fine. I'm looking at him right now."

"I told you he was safe."

She smiled, looking back again. "You did. I should have trusted you."

"Just stay away from the river."

Scully almost brushed those words off, but as they settled in her mind, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. "What was that?"

"I had a dream about Fox in the river last night. It was weird, 'cause there was no water. I think it was just a normal dream, but… but just stay away from the river, okay?"

She forced herself to stay calm. "O-Okay. Be good, sweetheart."

It only took a little over an hour for them to encounter their first bone. Scully had taken to standing nearby, watching Mulder and thinking about a river without water in it, so when Harris made the announcement, she was ready to started receiving pieces of a skeleton. Mulder declared that it wasn't the ghosts', and Harris agreed. He lit the edge of a strange leaf on fire and ran it over the skull, setting it on top and letting the flame go out.

Scully studied Harris with unveiled interest, curious about his place in the religion of his people. She knew bits and pieces of the local customs from her time in the basement of the library – enough to know that they valued peace over war, understanding over condemnation.

"Can you repeat the name of your tribe to me again?" Scully asked him.

He looked up from his work, repeating the word in an elegant dialect she had never heard. It sounded like some of the other native languages she had encountered, but there was something vastly different about it. She could barely grasp the syllables.

"It means, roughly, People of the Low Forest. We came to this area shortly after the High Forest People were killed."

"What year was that?"

"It was sometime around 1650, but it is impossible to know for sure."

"The High Forest… they were the ones who used these trees in their rituals?"

"That is what my mother says."

"You make that sound like you're unsure."

"These practices were part of an older belief in the greater power of nature," Harris said. He paused in his digging, wiping the sweat from his brow. "I was not raised with that belief." He looked around, his eyes settling on her. "If this young girl had lived with my people, she would not be suffering as she is."

"You said the High Forest people died out. Do you know why?"

"The legend says their crops wilted, their water sources were contaminated with parasites, every seed they planted would not take to the ground, and the prey vanished from the trees." He spoke like he had recited that a thousand times, his voice ominous. "My mother says it is the curse of taking human life."

"Or failing to take it," Mulder said offhandedly.

Harris turned to him, scowling. "What do you mean by that?"

Mulder leaned against the wall, setting his shovel aside. "The young woman died before she could be sacrificed, and then her entire tribe died because of one bad harvest. Perhaps if she had been sacrificed, her people would have lived."

"It is just a legend," Harris said. "We have decided over the years that the tribe died out because of a failed settlement of foreigners. I am not sure if you found it in your research, but there is a ledger documenting what they were doing to the tribe."

"We found it," Scully cut in. "It was French, right? You mean they tried to establish a territory out here? If so, that's the only place it's documented."

"I guess they wanted to forget, so others would not know what they had done." Harris' voice grew darker. He looked at Mulder, his words jagged. "Killing others is never the way to secure your own prosperity."

"I know that," Mulder said, realizing that he might be offending the other man. He held up one hand, his tone evening out. "Believe me, I know that. I'm just saying, maybe their ritual really had a purpose. An entire race of people died when they didn't make that sacrifice." He looked up at her, rolling his hand. "Back me up on this, Scully. You said you thought our ghosts died sometime around 1645. They never completed the ritual for that year, so the harvest failed and the rest of the tribe died out. Rousseau and his team came to the area in 1650 – I remember him mentioning how dry and desolate it seemed outside of the cave, like the land was cured."

"Weather changes," Scully responded simply. "And Harris already said it was the French who killed those people."

"Right, but the weather just happens to become arid and inhospitable in a relatively lush area around the same time that an age-old ritual regarding the weather is foregone?"

She crouched, shaking her head. "Correlation does not equal causation."

"Freak weather or ancient curse, we need those bones," Mulder concluded. He seemed pleased with his own theories, so she left him to them. He kept prodding Harris about the history of his people, seeming genuinely fascinated by it. "When your people settled, did they see any signs of the ghosts? Did anyone go missing in the caves?"

Scully wandered away, giving the pile of bones near the hole a sidelong glance as she went. It was hard to see human remains outside of a lab. She had the urge to date them, to discover all she could about the death of the person they once belonged to, but she knew such disturbances were frowned upon by the natives of this area. She wanted to do all she could to respect that.

She circled the area, bracing her hands on the ancient tree trunks and looking up into their leaves. She wondered about the people who once lived here, who looked up at the same trees hundreds of years ago. She wondered if their fear for this curse, for the changes in the weather, dictated their lives. She thought of the young people who were sacrificed, as depicted in the drawings Mulder had discovered. She wondered how such a practice could come to be – how anyone could think to murder their own children in the hopes of bringing rain.

She realized that she was being followed by Gene at a distance. He kept looking back at the others, and then mimicking her interest in the trees, doing his best to make it appear that he was taking a casual stroll through the woods. She knew better.

"Is there something you wanted?" she asked.

He jumped a bit, nodding. "I wanted to ask you something about Mulder."

Scully looked to the two men digging the hole, amused to find that they were both loafing off. Mulder was in the middle of a tangent and Harris was listening diligently, nodding to every word. She was starting to believe Mulder could make friends anywhere.

"He's not crazy," she said, just to put it out there.

Gene smiled, laughing a little. "I just wanted to see if… do you believe in these ghosts?"

She considered him, reminding herself that he was a scientist, as she had been at one point. "I look at the facts before I decide anything. I think there's a pretty strong case that… ghosts are involved in this."

"I started shifting into cryptozoology when I got my grant for this cave," Gene admitted, coming a little closer. He leaned against the same tree trunk as her, also watching the others. "When I emailed him, I thought I was really stepping over a line, you know? I was finally acknowledging that something… something truly unknown could exist in this world. I was dead wrong about what it was, but… I think the result was the same."

"What result would that be?"

"I believe in ghosts." He gave a little laugh, like he thought he might be going insane, and then he reeled it in and looked at her bashfully. "I believe in ghosts now."

"Congratulations," she responded, keeping her voice monotonous. She didn't want to burst his bubble about the mysteries and conspiracies surrounding the greater unknown world. Believing could be a beautiful thing – it was beautiful in Mulder – but it also hurt him. Every time they ran into a brick wall, another cover-up, or people who misunderstood him, it hurt him a little more.

"Hey, guys! I think we found them!"

Scully and Gene rejoined the others at the site, where the hole had been deepened a little bit. Mulder started handing up bones, and as soon as Scully wrapped her fingers around a femur, she felt a cold jolt in her arm. She dropped it. Mulder caught it, looking at her incredulously. She withdrew from the hole, shaking out her hand. It felt like she had grabbed dry ice.

"You okay?" he asked, holding the bone in both hands.

"You didn't feel that?" Scully demanded.

He shrugged. "It feels sharp on the edges. Did it cut you?"

"No… it just…" she stared down at her hands, not understanding the tingling in her fingers. "Hand them to Gene. I can examine them up here."

His eyes stayed on her, even while he handed the femur to the biologist. She sat away from the hole, looking over each bone as Gene placed it in front of her. She reached out for them, but the memory of the cold in her hand kept her from touching them. He delivered the pieces of the spine last, just a few vertebrae at a time. Scully risked the cold again to rearrange them, finding nothing but the sensation of ordinary bone. It puzzled her.

When most of the pieces were out, Mulder climbed to the surface, followed quickly by Harris. Both men were dusty and sweaty, but it did not dull the serious purpose in their eyes. Mulder sat down beside her, panting a little, and pointed to the spine.

"Did you find a stab wound?"

"I found it. Here." She held up the bone, twisting it so he could see the indent in the back. "This is the third lumbar vertebra, right at the base of the lumbar curve. You can see the hole starting here on the transverse process, going all the way into the vertebral foramen. The weapon would have completely severed the spinal cord. She could have lived with paralysis, but the medicine of the time was not advanced enough to salvage this kind of wound. She would have died within minutes… she would have suffered."

Mulder took a deep breath, taking the bone and turning it around in his hands. He set it carefully on the ground. "When you had your vision… you said it was the second ghost that stabbed the young woman? What did you see in his eyes, Scully?"

She thought back, but the memory was blurry. She had been more focused on the blade twisting in her back than the face of the perpetrator. "I… I don't know. He looked angry, and sad. I think he might have been crying. Do you still think this was a crime of passion, Mulder? Do you think he killed her to prevent her from being sacrificed?"

"Maybe he tried to convince her to stay with him," Mulder said, running his finger over the top of the skull. It was caked with dirt and cracked along the top, but it was still recognizable as that of a young woman. "Maybe she wouldn't listen to him."

Harris joined them, speaking sadly. "If he could not have her, then neither could the harvest."

"So only one of them is a victim?" Gene said. He was standing by the hole, looking down into it. "We should only free the woman. Let the man stay there and suffer for what he did."

"He was a kid," Mulder said, surprising Scully with his defensive tone. "It was hundreds of years ago. He was a kid who was about to lose his sister, and he made a mistake. I think his time in the caves has been his atonement. Both of them should be able to move on from this."

"You're defending the killer?" Scully asked. She agreed with him on some level, but after seeing him jam a blade into her back, she was leaning toward Gene's assessment.

Mulder swallowed, going back to the hole. "His bones are someplace else. We have to find them."

"The caves," Gene responded softly. "That's what he's haunting, after all."

Harris seemed deep in thought. He only chimed in after Gene commented on the caves. He spoke directly to Mulder, his eyes showing his age. "I will get the bones from the cave. I know where they are. I have special access. The bones are located along a tourist path, just under a clay walkway."

Scully turned on him. "You knew about the bones the whole time? You knew the young man was the killer?"

"My mother told me the story before I came here today. It happened as you described it. He did not want to lose her, so he killed her. But you do not know how it ended. He did not go back into the caves for vengeance – he went there asking for forgiveness for what he had done. When no forgiveness came, he cut his own throat and laid in the stream – the stream that is now a clay path. She begged me to keep this from you."

"You were the one who talked about putting them to rest," Mulder said.

"I only knew a few pieces of the story, but now I see it in its entirety. You were right about his atonement. He has suffered enough, perhaps too much, for what he did."

"I can get those bones, and bring them here," Gene said, glancing at the skeleton of the young woman. "We can end this today. Right here in this clearing."

"I will show you to them," Harris murmured. He clasped Mulder on the back. "I am sorry if it seemed that I was untruthful with you, but I wanted to respect my mother's wishes."

XxX

When they were gone, Scully remained by the bones, setting them out in a neat line and placing the skull, sitting up, at the end. Mulder paced around for a little while, and then he took the first set of bones back down into the hole, covering it with dirt. His task consumed almost an hour. Scully thought about the narrative they had pieced together, fascinated with the crime, and appalled by it. She had forgotten that murder was always part of human history.

Mulder sat beside her, dusting his hands off. He was sweating and his palms were red from overusing the shovel, but he seemed mostly unburdened. He had that twinge of sadness – the same one she felt – resting on his brow, but it would soon be lifted.

"When the ghost was in my head," Mulder murmured, "I think she had a hard time understanding what killed her. It's why she made us feel it, too. She wanted to quantify it."

"Or she had no idea what she was doing," Scully added.

"Yeah. I think it was mostly my head making up the stories I saw. Maybe that's why she saved me. She thought I could help, because of the way I think."

"That doesn't explain what happened to the others."

Mulder picked at his shoe, his frown deepening. His voice was low and sad. "I think they might be dead, Scully. It sucks to think about it, but I think all of those people were killed. I'm not sure that the ghosts – either of them – knew that they were hurting people. By clinging to the good, to the holy, to the kind, they extinguished it. By longing for the light, they made it disappear. By wanting more, by taking more, they stopped people from coming altogether."

"Except those idiots who snuck in once the caves were closed," Scully pointed out.

His cheek pulled with a slight smile. "Yeah. Whatever happened to those cheeky spelunkers?"

"I think one of them smashed his nose in."

He was laughing, and then suddenly he wasn't. He looked to his left, seeing something that she didn't see, and his eyes grew serious. He scrambled to his feet, tugging her up with him. He pointed into the trees. "Scully, the cabin."

Just then, her phone rang. She answered it, squinting to try and see what Mulder was looking at. "There's nothing there, Mulder." She turned into the phone. "Hello?"

"It's Gene. We have the bones. We're bringing them back to you guys now."

"That's great." Scully turned, surprised to find Mulder running off into the woods. "Mulder! Where are you going? Mulder!" She sprinted after him, speaking breathless into the phone. "I think he's having a hallucination. Just get here."

She hung up, storing it in her pocket and trying to put on more speed. Mulder was bounding like a deer, intently focused on an empty patch of woods. She could hear him saying something, yelling something, but it was overwhelmed by the sound of them both tearing through the forest. He only stopped when they came upon a tangled mess of old boards, reminiscent of a structure.

As he came upon the other side of it, he disappeared into a holly bush.

"Mulder!" She pushed through it, recoiling from the sharp leaves. On the other side, Mulder was sitting up in a depression in the ground. When he saw her he started scrambling backward, and when she stopped, he stopped. He searched for something in his pockets. "Mulder? What are you doing? Hey, look at me. Mulder?"

She found herself in an awful scene. It was a river without water. A riverbed that had long dried up. She could hear Iden warning her about this over and over again.

Mulder had a knife in his hand. He was holding it in one shaking palm, sitting up on his knees, lurching backwards if she came close to him. He was sobbing, seemingly with no provocation. Every alarm went off in her mind.

"Mulder," she whispered, holding both hands up to him. "Talk to me. What's happening?"

"I can't stop," he responded, his voice contorted by his crying. He turned the knife around. She took a step closer, and he scrambled back again. "I can't stop. Stop me!"

She lunged for him, but as soon as she was close enough, he slashed at her. The knife tore a clean path through her forearm. She backed off, pressing her hand over the wound, shock rolling through her. She could not read his wild eyes. "Drop the knife, Mulder. Put it down! Put the knife down!"

He finally hit a wall of dirt, and he pressed the knife to his throat. He shut his eyes, tears rolling down his face. He held it there for several seconds.

"What else do you want?" Scully demanded, desperate to find any solution to this, even a paranormal one. "Let him go!"

His choked sobbing was quieted for a moment, and he stared at her. She knew shew as not looking at Mulder, but at someone else entirely. He struggled with his words. "She was… everything. How did this happen? How could this happen?"

Scully took the opportunity to creep closer. She dropped her voice down to a whisper. "Please, please don't hurt him. Please just let him go."

He stared at her with a sadness she could not understand. It was four centuries old. It was absolutely devastating. It was the mournful look of a man who had lost everything at his own hand. It was the crushing loneliness of someone who was barely an adult facing the ultimate punishment for his crimes. It was a flooded expression. He was drowning in it.

"How could this happen?" he whispered again.

Scully pulled out her phone, dialing without looking away from Mulder. She put it to her ear, listening for Gene's answer, and then speaking quietly and quickly to him. "Burn the bones now."

"What? We were-"

"Stop whatever you're doing and burn them now."

She hung up, dropping the phone back into her pocket. Mulder was still gazing at her, his mind a million miles away. She came a little closer to him, crouching down, still holding onto her arm. Blood dripped onto the dirt. Her head throbbed from her anxiety.

"You made a mistake," she murmured, holding out her hand, palm up, to him. Her entire arm was shaking. Seeing a blade so close to her lover's neck destroyed her nerves. "Hey, you made a mistake, but you can move on now. You've suffered long enough."

His eyes flashed into hers, and his voice boomed. "I should suffer for eternity!"

Scully flinched. The blade was back against his skin. It drew a thin line of blood that ran down into his collar. One more twist and it was all over. Her eyes were watering, and her voice came out as shaky as her insides felt. "Didn't you love her?"

He tilted his head, curious. "I… I loved her."

"Did she love you?"

"She loved me."

"She doesn't want you to suffer," Scully reasoned. "She was… she was so kind. She would forgive you for anything. She loved you."

He took trembling breaths, gasping, tears rolling down his face. He pressed the knife harder, producing a more serious spout of blood, and then the knife fell from his hands. He let out a wail, a terrible, terrible sound that rang through her soul. He bent over, slamming both hands into the ground. His tears covered the ground. His blood dropped down with them.

"I'm sorry," he gasped, sinking down and sobbing. His whole body shook. He started screaming, howling like a wounded animal. "I'm sorry! Forgive me!"

And then, just as his crying grew to a level that seemed impossible, the sound stopped. Mulder rolled over on his side, still captured by another soft cry. Scully rushed to his side, cupping her hand over the wound in his neck and pulling him protectively into her arms. She rested her face on his shoulder, gasping and trying to control her own emotions.

"Scully," he murmured.

"I'm right here," she responded, half-laughing, half-sobbing as he sat up in her arms. She stroked his hair back, knocking a leaf off of his collar. She hastily wiped tears from her cheeks, ignoring the blood smeared on her hand. "I'm right here, Mulder."

He smiled a gentle smile and sunk back into her hold. "Gene burned the bones. I can feel it… he's gone now."

"He's at peace," Scully agreed.

"Can we go home now?"

She laughed, leaning over him again, pressing a rough kiss to the side of his head. "Yes. Yes, we can go home. We can go home."