Chapter 1 -
Christmas Time 2009
"Daddy, what are we doing here with all these crazy people?" Maggie asked.
She raised an eyebrow as her confused gaze calmly searched the hoards of frantic adults rushing by, practically trampling over each other as they hurried all over the place, pushing each other down, knocking things over.… Maggie stared wide-eyed, and confused as a woman started beating a man over the head with her umbrella, and then climbed over him, wrestling a case of bottled water out of his desperate grasp. The little girl covered her eyes quickly, then moved a finger away so she could peak to see what was happening anyway.
"Oh!" Maggie cried when the woman stomped on him hard, then rushed away with a satisfied smirk.
Maggie Mulder was a skeptic, and while daddy was the stay at home parent, and did the shopping, she knew mommy would never ever approve of their being in this kind of a place.
"Ha!" The child gasped in sudden, but slightly frightened surprise as her father picked her up by her overall straps and deposited her in the shopping cart.
"Well." Mulder teased. "I guess this is one thing I know I'll escape here with."
Maggie giggled, sighing almost in relief when she realized she was in the confines of the cart. The Mulder's both looked up suddenly when they heard a crash. In that moment, two women's carts ran into each other, and within seconds they started to argue, loudly, one taking a large package of toilet paper from the other.
Maggie hugged herself tight. Safe in the cart?…. Perhaps she'd spoken too soon.
The little girl took a breath but didn't sit, instead turning to face the seat where her redheaded baby sister sat, chewing on her fingers nervously. Maggie sighed, running her fingers through the baby's hair soothingly, noting, as their father had not, that the little one's blue eyes were filled with panic.
"Daddy?" Maggie questioned as he pushed the cart into the chaos. "Did they get bit by something?"
"Sure did. The panic bug."
"It's a bug!" Her eyes widened in alarm.
"No." Mulder considered, laughing to himself as he watched the manic crowd, now hurriedly shoving random contents of already disheveled shelves into their overflowing carts. "Daddy was silly and, like daddy these nice people left the kitchen cabinets bear when the snow was coming."
As if on cue, a man purposefully tripped another man, taking the bundle of firewood he had, and running away just as Mulder said the words 'nice people.'
"Okay." Maggie considered slowly, acknowledging her understanding with a simple nod.
Tiny Molly shivered, nervously wondering now if there really was a bear in the kitchen cabinet, and if that was why there was that weird new lock on it to where she couldn't get it open anymore.
"But unlike daddy…" Mulder continued nervously. "Eh… sometimes grownups overreact over important things like snowstorms."
"It's the storm of the century." Maggie corrected, taking care to pronounce the word century perfectly.
"Well maybe. The government and the media, they just like to say that. There'll be another storm of the century in… Oh. A couple of years."
"Why?"
"To scare people so they'll run around acting crazy." He paused with a smile, a realization coming to him.
"They want people to act crazy!?" Maggie tilted her head, the idea overwhelming to her.
Mulder laughed, feeling oddly proud that Maggie was learning this so young. "If it means they'll buy more stuff…. Or believe whatever they say. Then, yes. Absolutely."
Mulder put his thoughts away, the profoundness that his daughter's realization said everything about the X-Files, hitting him hard.
"Gaaa." Molly cried desperately.
"Hey Molly. What is it?" Mulder soothed, finally noticing her discomfort.
Inside Molly was panicked now and just wanted to go home.
"Daddy is the snowman going to eat us?" Maggie asked, half jokingly.
"What snowman?" He laughed, hoping there really were reports of a snowman rabidly consuming kids: he needed something to investigate.
"The one I saw over there…" Maggie pointed, confused now when she realized it was gone.
Mulder turned around but saw nothing behind him other than random shoppers.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!"
Mulder and his daughters looked up, panicked when they heard a woman scream bloody murder on the other side of the store. Other shopper's cries started to echo all around like a shockwave, and they soon felt the onslaught as people ran toward them, abandoning their looted items right and left and heading for the exit. Mulder paused a beat before charging into the fray with full force, rushing toward the scene as if still a powerful FBI agent armed with a gun and a badge instead of a shopping list and a diaper bag.
"Help, stop it, you gotta do something!" A woman grabbed his arm, stopping him dead in his tracks, just before as he reached the scene.
A man moaned, laying on the ground, his chest impaled with the sharp handle of a shopping cart as dozens of onlookers stood around him, gasping and screaming.
"Ma'am, calm down, what happened here?" Mulder asked, quickly reaching over to cover Maggie's eyes before she really saw anything.
"I-I can't believe it…" The woman said, her face ashen. "I saw it with my own eyes it was … It couldn't be real!"
"It was what?" Mulder pressed urgently.
"The abominable snow man." She looked up at him, her gaze full of a mix of sheer terror and complete bewilderment.
"Uh-uh!" Maggie said quickly. "That's not real!"
"Nooooo." Even Molly considered.
'Yeeesssss!' Mulder thought, peering over the woman's shoulder to eye the victim. 'Finally, a bonafide X-File.'
….
Maggie sat on the living room floor, carefully coloring in a picture of a monstrous snowman her father had helped her draw hours earlier. The little girl was invested in her task, but threw her crayons down and ran into the hall the minute she head the front door's lock turn.
"Mommy!" Maggie screeched, rushing to her mother with a squeal.
"Hi Mags!" Scully got on her knees and kissed her daughter's cheek. The little girl wrapped her arms around her mother's neck, hugging her tight.
"Mommy I'm excited about being snowed in with you!"
"You are?" She asked, pressing her nose against her daughter's and blowing a kiss "Oh mommy's always excited about you too, my sweetheart."
"Mommy guess what?!"
"What?" Scully asked, picking her up and kissing her cheek as she kicked off her heals and made her way into the house.
Maggie hadn't believed it at first, but after hours of her father's careful explaining, she'd come to believe too.
"A-at the store everyone was crazy and taking things and hitting each other!"
"Ugh." Scully sighed, disliking the idea that they'd gone to the grocery store while it was being looted.
Maggie grabbed her mother's cheeks as she started looking at the mail, forcing the former agent's gaze in her direction. "And guess what else?!"
"What baby?" Scully was tired and figured she'd just go with it.
"The abominable snowman was there, he was real mommy just like Santa! Only he attacks people!" She cried excitedly.
Scully paused a moment, blinking before yelling: "Mulder!"
…..
"What Scully are you kidding? There's a ton of evidence the Yeti exists." Mulder shrugged.
Scully sighed. She'd had a long day and had gotten home just as the storm started to hit hard, feeling lucky to have a few days off ahead of her and not have to spend it at the hospital away from Mulder and the girls. If it weren't for this Yeti thing, the mood would be perfect: a romantic snowstorm outside, Mulder cooking them dinner, something succulent simmering on the stove, their baby snacking in her highchair…
Instead, the mention of what she understood to be a bonafide X-File shook her to the core, bringing back a feeling of darkness she felt she couldn't outrun, but which he loved to toy with.
"Maybe so Mulder, but in the Himalayas maybe even in the Rockies… But not in a Piggly Wiggly!" She was angry, but still felt she had to truly play the skeptic.
"Well if you want to get into killer pigs I…"
"Mulder enough! You promised me you wouldn't do this." She said sharply.
"Do what… We saw an actual murder today Scully."
"That's just it Mulder. A murder. You said it yourself the store was being looted, people were panicked I'm sure it was just a crime of passion."
"I've been passionate about my shopping before Scully, but murder over two-ply seems just ridiculous."
She sighed. "Mulder you know what I mean."
"Sure Scully, and what mere man could rip the handle clean off a shopping cart and shove it into another man's chest within the space of thirty seconds? No human could do that. And besides there are eyewitnesses who say they saw something befitting the likes of a Yeti or Sasquatch or…"
"Mommy I saw it: the abominable snowman!" Maggie said, coming into the kitchen.
Scully looked back at Mulder, horrified, brutal anger playing in her eyes.
"N-no Scully not the incident…. The perpetrator."
"Uh-huh." Maggie agreed.
Scully sighed with slight relief. "Go get your pajamas on."
"But."
"Go." She said sternly.
Maggie sighed, muttering to herself as she left. "I never get to hear the good part."
"You promised me you wouldn't do this." Scully said again as Molly started to fuss.
Molly cried, her fear spiking when her dad went to open one of the lower cabinets, where she thought the bear was living. Molly watched in terror as he stuck his head inside, searching for a pan and, unbeknownst to him, looking directly across the bear cookie jar that was the subconscious source of all of little Molly's fears.
"Shuuuu sweetie, it's okay mommy's got you." Scully comforted, patting Molly's back as the phone started to ring.
"Ow!" Mulder cried. "Do what?" He asked.
Molly gasped in fear, thinking the bear had bit her dad, when in reality, he'd just hit his head.
"Get the girls involved in an X-File." She said coldly.
Mulder squinted, rubbing the top of his head. "I'll be right back." He said. "That oughta be Skinner."
"Skinner?!" Scully yelled as he left the room. "Mulder it's the snowstorm of the century can't we just …. Playhouse or something…." She trailed off, looking down at the baby.