Twelve-year old Maggie lay in bed next to her cousin Frances, watching
the lacy bedroom curtains swing in the breeze. After the brutal heat of
the day, the nighttime cool was delicious. Aunt Fay had offered to move
Frances to the front room couch while Maggie and her family were visiting,
but neither girl would hear of it. Only a year apart and great friends,
Maggie and Frances had looked forward to a week of slumber parties, whispering
together in the dark.
Stars seemed to hang low in the sky, like bright beads a girl could reach
up and pick. "I don't see how anybody could sleep right now. This is the
best part of the day," Maggie whispered.
Frances sat up, her white nightgown luminous in the dark. "Want to go
out to the vineyard?" she asked.
"My mom would never let me," Maggie said, a little in awe of her older
cousin's courage.
"That's why you don't tell, her, silly," Frances answered. Then when
Maggie looked uncertain, she urged, "Come on, don't be such a baby. It's
only across the road. I do it all the time." Frances climbed over the
other girl and hopped onto the windowsill, and after a moment Maggie followed.
The house had only one floor, so it was easy for them to slip down onto
the cool grass of the yard. Maggie had never snuck out of the house in
her life, but she was grinning and had to put her hands over her mouth
to keep from giggling out loud as she ran after Frances across the wide
open expanse of her family's farm. The breeze lifted Maggie's dark hair,
and it almost felt as if she could fly.
They tiptoed across the rocky dirt road that separated Frances' parents'
property from the Wallace Vineyard. Frances held up a rusty stand of wire
from the fence so Maggie could slip under. The air between the rows of
vines was darker and more still. The grape plants twined around stakes
as high as the girls' heads, so it seemed like they were walking down
a cool, leafy corridor.
They ran up and down the rows, playing hide-and-seek, giggling and shrieking.
The wind picked up and billowed their nighties. The grape leaves flapped
like the wings of strange birds. Maggie crouched at the end of a row,
her toes covered in black dirt. Forcing down a fit of the giggles, she
waited, ready to pounce from behind the vines and startle her cousin.
When she heard the telltale footstep, she leapt out and shouted "Boo!"
No one was there.
She turned all the way around in confusion. Frances had just been there.
She had heard her. "Frances?" she asked. She trotted up and down the neighboring
rows, searching. Frances must be hiding, she thought. She would be waiting
to leap out and scare her and call her a baby again. Maggie told herself
she wouldn't be scared. She was twelve years old and way too big to be
afraid of the dark. But still . . . Frances' nightgown glowed so in the
moonlight. How could she be hidden completely by a few skimpy leaves?
"Frances?" she said again, a little timidly. Something behind her rustled.
Flapped, to be exact. She whirled around and saw a patch of leaves bobbing.
An animal? It must be Frances' dog, she thought, following them from the
house. She whistled and called, "Mickey? Here, boy!" No response.
Something rustled on the other side now. She turned, and it was a moment
before she registered what she saw. Something was creeping out of the
leaves. It was black, the size and shape of a small rat, but deformed,
as though its flesh were nothing more than a collection of tumors. It
stretched toward her, the nodule at the end twitching, as if sniffing,
or longing to touch her. She screamed and ran. The vines were alive with
the things. They were writhing, groping; the leaves around them flapped
gently.
A thin, cold thing snaked out and grabbed her ankle. She fell face first
and then tumbled to the side as it jerked her. Her arm hurt. She thought
she must've torn something in her shoulder. When she twisted around, she
saw it was the vines themselves that were grabbing her. The tendrils hauled
her closer to the stretching, sniffing bunches of grapes. She felt revolted
at the thought of them touching her. There was something evil, disgusting,
about their gentle waving. Maggie tore the gripping vine away from her
ankle and rolled to her feet. She bolted for the wire fence, holding her
hands out before her to shred any leaves that got in her way.
She was nearly there when a man stepped out from behind one of the rows,
between Maggie and her cousin's house. She stopped dead. In the moonlight
his features were clearly visible. He was thick and short, still young,
with a face that would have been handsome if not for the leer on his face.
Maggie had heard about the evils of "sensual depravity" while in church.
Her mother wouldn't tell her what that meant, but she understood it now,
looking at this man. His lips were full and soft, his eyes large, his
hair dark and waving. Maggie thought the Devil must look so. He smiled
at her, and moved the fingers of one of his hands in the same gentle,
groping motion the grapes made. "Margaret," he said softly, "my wild,
dark beauty."
Maggie decided she'd take her chances with the vines. When she charged
back between the rows, she heard Frances scream. There was mortal terror
in the sound, and it made Maggie's blood run hot, not cold. "Don't you
hurt my cousin!" she shouted. She tore through the vines to get to the
source of the sound. Cool, rubbery things brushed her skin, nuzzling her
like hellish cats, but she crushed them between her fingers and ran on.
She reached Frances before she knew it, tripping over her prone body
and going sprawling. Maggie scrambled to her cousin's side and gripped
her close. The man was standing over them, holding his palms up toward
the sky. He inhaled deeply through his nose and closed his eyes, as if
enjoying a heady scent. Then he looked at them and smiled. "Ah, fear,"
he said, almost sighing. "What an excellent vintage."
Dana let herself in the front door. She stood in the empty foyer and
called out, "Mom?" After a moment Margaret Scully emerged from the kitchen,
drying her hands on a towel. She put her arms around her daughter and
hugged her tight. "What is it, Mom?" Dana asked, returning Margaret's
embrace. "It's not Bill or Charles, is it?" Dana's mom and her brothers
were precious to her. She'd lost her father and sister within a year of
one another, and she would never take any of her family for granted again.
"No. No, they're fine," Margaret said. She stepped back but kept her
hands on Dana's shoulders.
"Well, what then? Your message said you had to talk to me . . . you're
all right, aren't you?" Dana asked.
"Yes, I'm all right," Margaret paused a moment, as if searching for the
proper words. The longer she waited the more frightened Dana got.
"What is it?" she pressed. Her mother seemed to come to a decision, and
she gripped Dana's hand. "There's something I need to show you," she said,
and drew her into the kitchen. There were several pieces of paper laid
out on the table. Margaret handed her one. Dana saw it was a "Have you
seen me?" flyer. On the left was a photo of a young girl, aged twelve,
named Shawna Patrice Rogan. She'd been missing for three months from Columbus,
Ohio. A note at the bottom stated that she was an epileptic, and that
it was extremely important that she be found and given access to her medication.
On the right was a police sketch of a man, with "Last seen with:" printed
underneath. There was no name. The caption read: "white male, brown/black,
mid twenties to mid thirties, 5' 8", approx. 180 lbs."
"I know that man," Margaret said, with quiet certainty.
"Mom, from where?" Dana asked, alarmed.
Margaret placed another piece of paper in Dana's hand. It was a yellowed
newspaper clipping, faded and brittle. The headline read, "Washington
Child Murderer Gets Death Penalty." Skimming the column of type, Dana
read that the man's name was Hindley Fawkes and that he'd been convicted
of killing three adolescent girls during the summer of 1947. Their names
were Marybeth Rogers, Gina Seibert, and Frances Hall.
"I don't understand," Dana said.
"Frances was my cousin," said Margaret. She took the clipping back and
turned it over. It had been folded in half and the article continued on
the other side, around a photo of Fawkes. Margaret held the newspaper
picture next to the police sketch that Dana still held in her hand.
"My God," Dana said. The resemblance was eerie.
"Frances died in the vineyard next to her house. She was only thirteen,"
Margaret said. "I was with her, and I . . . when our parents found us
all I could do was talk about a man. That man," she said, placing her
finger on the picture of Fawkes. "The police said he must've strangled
her, because they found cord marks on her body. I had them too, and they
asked if I'd been tied up. I said yes . . . I said whatever they wanted
me to say."
"Mom," Dana said, her eyes wide with horror. "Why didn't you tell me?"
This was so far removed from what Dana had known about her mother's life
that she found herself looking at this woman as if she were seeing her
for the first time.
"There was no reason for you to know," Margaret said. "Your father and
I were married three years before I told him. And even then I . . . I
told him what I know now must have been true. What was in the police report."
She looked away from Dana as she spoke.
"What do you mean, what you know now must have been true?" Dana asked.
Margaret shook her head. "It's just . . . not the way I remember it as
a child," she said.
"Sit down, Mom. Tell me," Dana said. She sat in a kitchen chair, holding
Margaret's hand as she did so. Her gentle tugging coaxed Margaret down
into a chair, too.
"It was the vines," Margaret said.
"The what?" said Dana.
"In the vineyard," Margaret said. She looked down at the table, pressing
Dana's hand with her own. "No, it was more than the vines, it was the
grapes. They . . . they frightened me. But of course, it was dark, and
we weren't supposed to be out . . ."
"You were frightened," Dana said. "You couldn't have been more than,
what, twelve years old?"
Margaret nodded. "The way I remember it, Fawkes didn't strangle Frances.
He frightened her to death. He visibly enjoyed our fear. He called it
an "excellent vintage." Old anger glistened in her eyes.
"That son of a bitch," Dana said. Seven years in the F.B.I had killed
any bleeding-heart tendencies she might once have had. "I'm glad they
executed him."
"Not a very Christian sentiment," Margaret said.
"'A life for a life' is a Christian sentiment, too," Dana reminded her.
"And Fawkes took three lives. He might've taken yours." It occurred to
her that on that night in 1947, she herself came very close to never having
existed.
"He may be trying to take more," Margaret said. "A woman from our church
has a niece who was hospitalized recently. From what she says, the girl
was nearly frightened to death. Diane--the niece--reported an intruder,
a man who fit this description." She tapped the caption beneath the police
sketch on the flyer. "Diane said the man told her that her fear was 'delicious.'"
Her distaste was obvious as she said the last word.
"So you think this man is a copycat killer?" Dana asked. Margaret didn't
answer, but she slid a thin sheaf of photocopied pages at her across the
table. "Mom, what is this?" Dana asked, glancing over pages of forms,
a diagram of the layout of a house. It almost looked like . . .
"It's a copy of the police report Diane Warczak made," Margaret said.
"How did you get this?" Dana asked.
Margaret shrugged. "I asked," she said. "You're not the only resourceful
one around here, Miss F.B.I. Agent."
Dana flipped through the report. The intruder had appeared at night in
the victim's home, while her parents were out. That was awfully convenient,
she thought. It was likely he'd been stalking her, memorizing the family's
habits. Dana skimmed the report until she came to the victim's statement.
Then she stopped, and read it over twice. It still made no sense. "This
cop's handwriting is terrible," she said. "It looks like he wrote here,
'lawn ornaments.'"
"He did," Margaret said.
Dana just looked at her a moment. "Diane Warczak was nearly frightened
to death by lawn ornaments?" she asked.
"I would find it ridiculous, too, if the man she described hadn't been
so similar to . . . to Fawkes." Even after fifty years, she still seemed
to find it hard to say his name. "And if I hadn't been so frightened by
the grape vines," Margaret added.
"Mom," Dana said, not certain she wanted to ask the next question. "Are
you handing me an X-File?"
"Would you please talk to your partner Fox about it? He seems to be able
to make sense of strange things," Margaret said.
Margaret looked so worried, and so hopeful, that it nearly broke Dana's
heart. Dana had not forgotten how opposed her parents had been to her
joining the F.B.I. in the first place. The fact that her mother was putting
so much faith in her now meant a lot. "Ok, Mom," she said. "For you, I'll
do it." Killer lawn ornaments, Scully couldn't help thinking. Mulder was
going to love this.
F.B.I. Headquarters,
Later the same day
Mulder didn't love it. He sat on the edge of his desk, cracking sunflower
seeds between his teeth and looking at her severely. "Scully, are you
making fun of me?" he asked.
she
said. p said. he on,? Come ornaments?>"I'm not saying that she really
was attacked by lawn ornaments, I'm just saying that was her perception,"
Scully said.
"Did they do a drug test on this kid? A guy I went to high school with
went through 'It's a Small World' at Disneyland while on acid, and they
had to take him away in an ambulance. True story," he said.
"Yes, they gave her a drug test, and she came up clean," Scully said.
"What about schizophrenia? Any history of mental illness in her family?"
Mulder asked.
"Not that I know of. Look, can you forget about the lawn ornaments thing
for a moment? Diane Warczak's description of the intruder matches the
one of the man Shawna Rogan was last seen with. That sounds to me like
a solid basis for an investigation," Scully said.
"Sure it is. It's decent lead for the Columbus regional office. Did you
call them about it?" Mulder asked.
"Yes, I did," Scully said.
"What did they say?" he asked.
"They said 'thanks,' and that they'd call the Warczaks' local police
department," Scully told him.
Mulder folded his arms and looked at her. Disapprovingly, she thought.
"But you didn't tell them anything about your mother or Hindley Fawkes,"
he said.
"No," she admitted, "I didn't." She could hear the embarrassment in her
own voice. She had called with every intention of telling them the whole
story, but at the last minute she'd lost her nerve. The problem was due
to more than her own fear of ridicule. The Ohio agent had sounded so crisp
and professional on the phone, and the story was so bizarre. Dana hadn't
wanted him to tell her that her mother was crazy, and that she herself
was crazy for listening to her.
"Scully, why are you coming to me with this?" Mulder asked.
"You don't believe in killer lawn ornaments. You don't even believe Fawkes
has returned from the dead. Why consider risking your professional reputation
over a theory you have no confidence in?"
It was some time before Dana could answer. She stared down at the tips
of her shoes, feeling conflicted. She wanted her mother to be right. Some
part of her needed her to be, despite her own trained objectivity, despite
every logical instinct she had. "I want to believe in her," she said quietly.
"Of course you do," Mulder said, more gently. "Your mother's been the
most stable part of your life through a lot of tough times, maybe the
only stable part of your life. It must be terrifying just to know that
she's scared and she needs you. It can only be worse to hear her saying
things that don't make sense."
"They do make sense, or they should make sense," Scully said. "My mother
doesn't make things up."
"I don't think she's making it up. I'm sure something terrible happened
to her as a child, something that she didn't understand. Hey, of all people,
I ought to be able to relate to that," he said.
Scully folded her arms tightly under her ribcage, still looking down
and away from him. "Mulder," she said, "If this was about your sister
or space aliens you'd be behind it a hundred percent. But because it's
about my mother, you want to palm it off on the Columbus regional office."
She met his eyes then, not bothering to conceal her anger.
"Scully, it's not about your mother. Separate your feelings as a daughter
from your job as an F.B.I. Agent and you'll see that," Mulder said. "Columbus
is handling this case, and they didn't ask for our help. We don't even
have a good reason to think it's an X-File. The only unusual thing about
it is that one of the victims claims to have seen some particularly scary
. . . lawn ornaments," Mulder said. "Your mom wants reassurance and understanding
from you, and you can still give her that."
"No," Scully said, shaking her head. "She wants more than that. She thinks
other little girls may die, and she can't live with herself unless she
stops it."
Mulder sighed and ran his hand back through his hair. "Ok," he said,
"then are you really ready to take this on? You want to get called into
Skinner's office to explain why you submitted a 302 requesting the re-opening
of a case on a guy who was executed fifty years ago, and whose MO is assault
with a deadly lawn ornament?"
Scully didn't answer him. She pressed her lips tight and looked away
again. She was still angry, but she wasn't sure if it was at Mulder or
herself. She couldn't deny that the idea of trying to push something so
preposterous through the F.B.I. beauracracy was frightening to her. One
of a very few female field agents, she'd spent years cultivating her reputation
as someone who was as tough as she needed to be, and who had to be taken
seriously. "I don't know," she said.
"Maybe you're right that if this was about my sister I'd be fighting
to investigate it," Mulder said. "But then, I'm deeply angry and obsessed.
You have to be, to stand in front of a long line of superiors, co-workers,
the occasional Shadowy Syndicate hit man, and insist that you're right
despite anything they can do to you. I have no doubt that you could do
it, if there was a cause you believed in enough. But just the fact that
you're standing here talking instead of going out and kicking ass tells
me you don't believe. If I were you, I wouldn't do this to myself. You
only have one chance to destroy your career. Save it for something you're
sure is important."
Scully pressed her fingertips over her eyes. His words made her feel
ashamed. "Mulder," she said, "if my mother's not important enough, than
what is?" She walked over to the door where she'd hung her coat and pulled
it on.
He stood and asked, "Where are you going?"
"To kick some ass," she said. "I'm going to go talk with Diane Warczak.
Are you coming or not?" He was still for a moment, looking at her, then
he grabbed his own coat and followed.
West Friendship Children's Hospital,
Adolescent Diagnostic and Treatment Unit
Scully and Mulder stood in the lobby of the adolescent psyche ward, waiting
for a nurse to show them back. The place still looked like a hospital,
Scully thought. She could hardly imagine that its white gleaming floors
and painfully bright fluorescent lights would be comforting to a distressed
teenager away from home. A floor nurse showed up, wearing pink scrubs.
She pulled a ring of keys out of her pocket. "We keep the unit locked,"
she said, "but don't worry, the kids aren't dangerous. The violent ones
go to the youth home. We've just got to shut the underage patients in
for insurance reasons. Liability and all." She gave them a smile and unlocked
the door. The agents followed her. Scully noticed Mulder looking around
with wide eyes.
"They wanted to put me in one of these when I was a kid," he said softly.
"The school social worker said I was developing 'antisocial tendencies'
after my parents split up. My mom wouldn't let 'em do it. I think I'll
call her later and thank her."
"It's not that bad," Scully said. The staff had at least made some effort
to cheer the place up. Kids' drawings were taped to the hallway walls,
and the bulletin boards displayed colorful construction paper murals about
St. Valentine's Day and the coming spring. Still, she thought, it was
distressing to see the state of some of the kids. In the unit's common
room a girl who looked like a concentration camp victim -- anorexic, thought
Scully -- sat on a couch next to her IV pole, shivering in nonexistent
cold. Behind one of the closed doors she could hear a boy screaming and
cursing. Mulder, who was not half the hardened investigator he pretended
to be, was looking around as if he'd been dropped into hell.
They were shown into a room at the end of the hall, where a young girl
sat on a bed. "Diane, these are Agents Mulder and Scully," said the nurse.
"They'd like to talk to you for a little while." Diane was fifteen, skinny
and pasty-faced. Her hair was dyed black but showed inch-long brown roots,
and she had a ring through her nose. Her T-shirt read: "The Mind is a
Terrible Thing to Taste." Scully and Mulder exchanged glances. She knew
what he was thinking without him having to say a word. The first thing
he'd have done was run a drug test on this kid, too.
Diane smiled a little at them. "Hi, " she said. "It's kind of weird that
the only visitors I've had all week are the F.B.I. The other kids pretty
much think I'm a badass now." Her speech was a little awkward, and Scully
glimpsed a metal knob in the tip of her tongue. Scully wondered if Diane's
churchgoing auntie knew about that.
"Diane," she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, "Do you think
you could tell us a little about the man you saw at your house?"
"I already told it all to the police," she said.
"Sometimes when she speaks about it, she gets a little upset," said the
nurse. "You don't have to answer any questions you don't want to, honey."
She shot a sharp look at the Federal Agents.
"Of course not," Scully agreed. "We're not here as part of an official
investigation. My mother knows your Aunt Jean, and she was hoping I could
help you," she tried to sound reassuring, but Diane looked suspicious.
"I'm not going to ask you all the same questions again," Scully said.
Diane was probably sick to death of having to tell the same story over
and over, Scully thought. "Actually, I'm curious about something you may
not have told the police about." Scully paused a moment, needing to work
up her own nerve in order to ask this question. She felt Mulder's presence
at her back and found it reassuring. "Can you tell me a bit about . .
. about the lawn ornaments?"
"I saw them, ok?" Diane said, suddenly going red in the face. "I'm not
crazy and I'm not on drugs."
"We know you're not," Scully said. "You saw something terrible that frightened
you very much. Agent Mulder and I are willing to believe the truth, even
if it sounds strange."
Diane looked at Scully, and then down at her lap, where she was twisting
her hands together. "My mom's got this rock garden in front of the house,"
she said. Her voice sounded very small and soft. "She had all this crap
in it, baby deer and flamingoes and stuff. I always thought it was dumb
. . ." she shrugged, letting the sentence trail off. "On the night it
happened my parents were out. It wasn't late, about nine o'clock, but
it was dark. I was doing homework in the kitchen. I heard something outside,
it was a tapping sound, like someone's finger on a window. So I went into
the front room," her voice quavered and she stopped a moment.
"It's ok, Diane," Scully said.
"And it was looking at me, you know?" Diane continued. She glanced up
at Scully, her eyes filled with tears. "One of Mom's flamingoes. Its neck
was moving," she mimed a gentle waving motion with her hand, "It was disgusting.
Nothing should move like that . . ." Scully glanced up at Mulder and saw
he looked both disturbed and fascinated.
"Did it try to get in?" he asked.
"It . . . opened its mouth and pressed it against the glass. It snapped
its head back and forth like it was trying to lick the window or something.
I was afraid . . . I was scared it was going to come in and touch me,"
Diane said. "It wanted to -- to touch me with its wavy neck and put its
mouth on me," her words ended in a quiet sob. Scully rested her hand on
the girl's arm, trying to steady her.
"Then a man opened the front door," Diane continued. "I hadn't locked
it. And you know, I wasn't so much scared of the man as the fact that
he left the door opened so . . . so the things could get in. He said --
he said my fear was 'delicious.' And then he let them in. The things came
in, Agent Scully," Diane said, looking up at the agent as if pleading
for comfort or belief. "They touched me with their skins. They weren't
like plastic skins, they were soft," the girl cried out and hid her face
in her hands.
"I think that's enough," the nurse said, looking at Scully with obvious
disapproval.
"Shh, Diane, it's all right," Scully said, reaching up to touch the girl's
hair. Diane sobbed quietly. "I know you're upset, but do you think you
could do one more thing for me?" Scully asked. "Can you look at a picture?
We're trying to find the man who did this to you, and it would help if
you could identify him."
It took a moment for Diane to regain her composure, but finally she answered,
"Ok."
Scully pulled an envelope out of the inside pocket of her coat, and carefully
removed the brittle newspaper clipping. "Is this the man?" she asked gently,
showing her the picture of Fawkes. Diane looked at it a moment, and nodded.
"You're sure?" Scully asked. She found, suddenly, that she didn't want
to believe. Diane nodded again and placed her hand over the photo, so
she wouldn't have to see. "Thank you, Diane. You've been a big help,"
Scully said.
Once they were in the car again, Mulder leaned back in the passenger
seat. "So, what did you think all of that, Scully?" he asked, looking
over at her
She didn't answer him at first. Instead she concentrated on the ritual
of fastening her seat belt and setting her hands on the steering wheel.
She gazed out the windshield a moment, staring across the parking lot
and the snow-dusted hospital lawn. "I think she was scared," she said
at last. "I think she felt ashamed and violated by this man, whoever he
was. Other than that, I don't know." She started up the car and backed
out of their parking space.
"I think you're choosing not to know," he said.
"What is that supposed to mean?" she asked. She glanced over at him and
saw he was wearing that smug little smile that always made her want to
strangle him.
"You're caught between two unacceptable alternatives," he said. "You
can either decide that your mother's losing it and ignore her request
for help, or you can accept that this case may well have a paranormal
element to it. A very disturbing paranormal element," he added. "By choosing
not to know, you feel let off the hook."
"Well, what am I supposed to do?" she asked. "My head tells me one thing
and my heart tells me exactly the opposite."
"I think you should do whatever will make it easiest for you to live
with yourself in twenty years," Mulder said.
Scully thought of her mom, pressing the old news clipping into her hand.
She'd looked at Dana with such faith, as if it were only natural that
her daughter the F.B.I. Agent could resolve this case. When Mulder put
it that way, Scully realized, there was really no question as to what
she had to do. "I really am going to destroy my career," she said.
"Your reputation for scientific orthodoxy, yes. Your career, maybe not.
After all, they haven't fired me." Mulder said. Then he added, "Well,
at least not yet."
"That's not very comforting," she told him.
"You want the advice of a veteran Bureau pariah?" Mulder asked her.
"Sure. What have I got to lose?" she said.
"Nearly everything important to you," he said," but sometimes you find
things that are worth that risk." She didn't reply, and he went on. "First,
find out if the cops got any prints from the man who walked into Diane's
house. If they have any, get copies, so you can check them against Fawkes'
original fingerprint card back in Washington. If they match, or if they're
too similar to be a chance resemblance, go straight to Skinner with it.
Don't even bother with the paperwork first. The last thing you want is
to answer the questions of three or four supervisors while they pass your
302 back and forth. Second, you've got to prepare yourself for total commitment
to this case. You're not going to get a lot of support around the Bureau,
so you've got to supply your own momentum. You've got to just aim between
the white lines and floor it," Mulder said. "Figuratively speaking, of
course," he added, as she came to a proper complete stop at a four-way
intersection.
"Of course," she said. She was too preoccupied to speak much as they
drove back to Washington.
Late that afternoon, Scully gathered together her small arsenal of papers
in the basement office she shared with Mulder. "You sure you don't want
me to come?" he asked. He was sitting at his desk amid his usual heap
of journals, books, scientific instruments, and articles torn from tabloid
newspapers. He was currently scanning an article with the headline: "Trailer
Park Mom Says: 'An Alien Cloned My Husband!'"
"No," Scully said. "I'll do this by myself." She'd spoken with Skinner's
secretary a couple of hours ago and half begged, half bullied an appointment
with the Assistant Director out of her. The woman had icily assigned her
a slot fifteen minutes before Skinner's usual quitting time. Despite her
outward coolness, Dana could feel her heart beating fast as she thought
about the coming meeting with her superior.
Part of the reason she'd turned down Mulder's offer to accompany her
was that she didn't want to seem dependent on him. It was not a sign of
confidence to show up holding a buddy's hand. The only thing that would
make a preposterous- sounding theory like this believable was if she presented
it with absolute confidence, as if any reasonable person in the world
would consider a fifty- years-dead man to be a prime suspect. The other
reason she didn't want Mulder to come was that she didn't want to get
reamed out in front of him. Or laughed at, she thought, that would be
worse. Skinner had a reputation as an open- minded man, but he did not
take kindly to nonsense.
She glanced at her watch. Time to go, she thought, and headed for the
door. "Good luck," Mulder said. She could have done without the look of
sympathy he gave her.
Once she was upstairs, Skinner's secretary gave her a smile of regulation-
quality politeness and then proceeded to ignore her completely. The door
to Skinner's office was closed, and Scully could hear him arguing with
someone on the phone. She stood waiting for some time. When Skinner opened
his office door, she had five minutes left of her supposed appointment
time. He'd loosened his tie and he had a tired look around his eyes. He
looked like a man who very much wanted to go home. When he spoke to her,
however, his tone showed no impatience. "What can I do for you, Agent
Scully?" he asked, holding the door open for her. She entered and stood
quiet until he'd settled himself at his desk.
"Sir, I'd like to talk to you about a possible lead on a kidnapping case
in Columbus, Ohio," she said. Skinner folded his hands on his desk and
looked at her with an unreadable expression. "I believe the kidnapping
suspect may be the same man as an intruder reported by a teenage girl
in Maryland. The victim was able to identify the man as Hindley Fawkes,
a convicted child killer. This is a copy of a partial thumb print lifted
from the doorknob of the Maryland victim's house," Scully said. She placed
a digitally enhanced printout of the thumbprint on Skinner's desk. "As
you can see, there's a certain amount of distortion there, but Agent Bryant
from the Identification Division was able to clean it up quite a bit."
Skinner picked up the printout, glanced at it and then dropped it back
on his desk.
"This is a fingerprint card sent to us by the Ferris County, Washington,
Sheriff's Department," Scully said. "The prints are Fawkes', taken when
he was arrested after the murder of Frances Hall." She set the yellowed
card down next to the picture of the thumbprint. "Now, Agent Bryant identified
no fewer than six points of similarity in the arch of this area here--"
Skinner cut her off. "This is excellent investigative work, Agent Scully,
but why are you bringing this up with me? Why not just relay it to the
agents directly involved in the case?" he asked.
"Sir, if you'll please let me finish," Scully said. Skinner held a hand
out as if inviting her to continue. Scully began again: "Due to the number
of the similarities and the unusual ridge pattern of the print, Agent
Bryant felt comfortable in making a positive identification. He passed
the print along to his supervisor, Agent Wycliffe, and she came to the
same conclusion. Ordinarily, I would simply give this information to the
Columbus office and request a warrant for Fawkes' arrest, but in this
case it's not possible."
"Why not?" Skinner asked her.
"Because Hindley Fawkes was executed in 1948," she said.
Skinner just looked at her. She met his gaze, respectfully waiting for
him to reply. Her expression remained attentive but neutral. Scully knew
that she could not afford to show any of the embarrassment and fear she
felt inside. "Where's Mulder?" Skinner said at last.
"He's in his office, but he didn't send me to see you. Coming to you
was my own idea," Scully said. She thought of her father, a naval captain
and veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion. He'd faced live fire while defending
what he believed to be right. He certainly wouldn't have been backed down
by mere disapproval or disbelief. She told herself to remember that she
was his daughter.
Both disapproval and disbelief were evident in Skinner's voice when he
said, "You're telling me that a kid in Maryland is being stalked by a
guy who's been dead since the Truman administration?" he asked.
"Sir, at this point I am refraining from drawing any conclusions at all,
much less suggesting that Hindley Fawkes has returned from the dead. I
asked Agent Wycliffe whether a close relative of Fawkes could have ridge
patterns very similar to his, and she said that while it was highly unlikely,
it was not beyond possibility. I've been trying to track down information
on Fawkes' family, but so far I've been unsuccessful. As you can imagine,
the trail is pretty cold," Scully said.
"Agent Scully, why did you think to check the prints of this Maryland
intruder against those of a man executed in 1948? Are you going psychic
on me?" Skinner asked. That was exactly the kind of comment Scully had
not wanted Mulder to hear. It was the sort of thing he mentally filed
away and then brought up weeks or months later to tease her with. There
were drawbacks to working with a man who had a photographic memory, she
thought.
"To be honest, sir, Diane Warczak wasn't the only person who made a positive
ID on Fawkes," Scully said. "My mother recognized the Columbus suspect
as the same man who terrorized her and her cousin back in 1947." She laid
the fifty-year- old clipping and the "Have You Seen Me" flyer side by
side on Skinner's desk. He looked from one to the other, and finally pushed
them back across the desk toward her.
"Have you informed the Ohio field office and the Maryland authorities
that the suspect could be a relative of Fawkes'?" he asked.
"Yes, sir, I have," Scully said.
"Then I think you've done your duty in this matter. More than that--you've
gone the extra mile and come up with a decent lead. I've always said you
were a fine investigator," he said. Scully looked down at the carpet,
knowing what was coming next. "But you're in danger of getting too emotionally
involved in this case," Skinner said. He spoke to her in a tone more gentle
than she'd ever heard him use before. It occurred to her that her mother
would consider it un- Christian to want to kick people who were trying
to be nice to her. "We already have agents working on this," Skinner continued.
"You need to back away and let them do their jobs, even though that might
be hard. I think you should take some time off and go see your mom," Skinner
said.
"Sir, my mother's just fine," Scully said. She heard the edge of emotion
in her own voice and ordered herself to calm down.
"But you're not," Skinner said. Scully continued to look away, unable
to contradict him. "Look, I've got a mother, too," Skinner said. "It's
always rough when you find you're looking after your parents rather than
the other way around--"
"She is not getting senile," Scully said, more sharply than she'd meant
to.
"You're worried and you're losing your objectivity," Skinner said, his
tone turning stern. "You can make good use of the next few days and spend
them with your mother, or you can sit around here and stew about it. It's
your choice. Either way, I'm not assigning you to this case. Now if you'll
excuse me, I've got to get going. The traffic on the Beltway will already
be a nightmare." He stood up and removed his coat from the rack in the
corner. He opened the door, pointedly waiting for her to leave. She gathered
her papers up and did so, not turning to look at him.
She found Mulder loitering in the hall to no apparent purpose. "Agent
Mulder," Skinner said, giving him a suspicious look. Apparently he still
wasn't convinced Mulder hadn't put Scully up to this.
"Sir," Mulder answered, giving Skinner a nod. As soon as the Assistant
Director was out of earshot Scully rounded on her partner.
"You were eavesdropping," she accused him.
"I was waiting for you," he corrected. "If I overheard some of your conversation,
I couldn't help it."
"I told you I wanted to do this by myself," she said.
"You did do it yourself," he said, "And you did a pretty good job. It
would have been better if you could've stayed calm instead of taking what
Skinner said about your mom personally, but I doubt it would have changed
the outcome any."
"You violated my privacy and my trust," she snapped.
"Oh, unlike the time you hacked the password on my computer, or any number
of times let yourself into my apartment when I wasn't home so you could
poke through my stuff and check up on me," he said.
"I only did those things because I was worried about you and you wouldn't
talk to me," she said, losing the force of her anger. He shrugged and
held his hands up, as if unable to see the distinction between the situations.
Perhaps there wasn't any, she thought. "Ok, I shouldn't have yelled at
you," Scully said. "I just really don't need you to be my big brother
right now."
"Yes, you do. I can't think of a time when you needed a big brother more,"
he said. "You're feeling vulnerable and you fly off the handle whenever
someone touches you in a sore spot. You can't do that, Dana. Decisions
you make now are going to impact both your family and your career. You've
got to think about what you're doing."
"Look, I'm a big girl, and I don't need scolding and unsolicited advice.
I'd appreciate it if you'd save your profiling talent for the criminal
population," Scully said.
"Why are you so defensive?" Mulder asked. "You act like I'm accusing
you of something."
"I am not defensive," she said, although she didn't sound convincing
even to herself.
"The hell you aren't. You're defensive and you're embarrassed, which
frankly is what really bugs me about all this. Why are weird experiences
good enough for Spooky Mulder's relatives, but as soon as something strange
happens in the Scully family, it's humiliating?" he asked.
"I am not ashamed of my mother," she said. She didn't bother trying to
keep her voice down. Most people had gone home anyway.
"Are you ashamed of yourself, then? For not coming from a perfect family?
For having a secret that people would make fun of you for if they knew?"
Mulder asked. Then, less sharply, he said, "Look, Scully, I understand
why dignity is so important to you. You've had a lot of stuff to overcome.
Your folks haven't always approved of the choices you've made for yourself.
It had to be rough sometimes, being one of the only women in the physics
program at college, and then in med school, and then the F.B.I. I've seen
how much it pisses you off when suspects and even some guys in law enforcement
stare straight over your head looking for the 'real' Feds because you
don't look like their idea of authority. But come on, don't you think
it's a bit much to demand awe and respect out of every person in every
situation? Stop trying to be so special."
"I'm not trying to be special," she said. "You're the one who thinks
the universe revolves around you. Hell, you think every backup on the
freeway is a plot to frustrate you personally. If I'm feeling ashamed
it's because it's so arrogant to expect law enforcement in three different
states to drop what they're doing and cater to me and my ridiculous theory.
Even if I'm right, it's still arrogant to assume they'd accept a conclusion
based on premises that should be impossible just because I tell them to."
She paused a moment, trying to put her finger on what it was that was
damaging her self-confidence so much. "You know what I feel like?" she
said at last, "I feel like a bratty little kid throwing a fit in the grocery
store, demanding that everyone pay attention to me for no good reason."
"Well, yeah, that was a pretty good fit you just threw at me," Mulder
said. His tone was more compassionate than his words. He sat down on the
secretary's vacated desk and kicked the chair out for her. "This thing
really knocked you for a loop, didn't it?" he asked.
Scully sat down and realized she was shaking. "I guess so," she said.
"This is just completely the opposite of how I was raised. We were taught
that ghosts and killer lawn ornaments were silly stuff, and you don't
waste time on anything silly. We grew up as Catholic Navy brats, Mulder.
My parents were organized, they had priorities. They had to, or else they'd
have gone insane, hauling four kids back and forth to ballet lessons and
football practice, and then pulling up stakes and moving every couple
of years . . . . Just about the worst thing us kids could do was waste
people's time, keeping them from getting necessary things done. 'The world's
not going to stop for you,' my dad used to say. I feel like I just asked
the F.B.I. to stop for me. Actually, I kind of just did," she admitted.
Mulder smiled at her. "I'm so excited for you," he said. "Whole new horizons
of irritating behavior are opening up for you. You'll be a world-class
pain in the ass before you know it."
"It's not funny," she said, but she couldn't help smiling, too. "This
is my mother I'm talking about, turning everything she taught me on its
head. I feel like somebody kicked my feet out from under me."
Mulder nodded, serious now. "That's how I felt when I recovered memories
about my mom and something going on with Cancer Man. As a son, I feel
ashamed of myself for even thinking, . . . well, you know what I was thinking.
But as an investigator, I know that there's more going on there than I'm
supposed to see. It's hard, Scully, discovering things about your own
background. It never feels good to find out that your cherished assumptions
about the world are dead wrong. But it may help to remember that you're
more than the sum total of your past. Whatever you find out, even if it
makes you change your beliefs and ideas, it still won't change who you
are."
She sat quiet for some time, taking a surprising amount of comfort in
her friend's words. Dana realized she had been afraid that somehow this
bizarre situation would reveal her as a fraud, as having based her life
on the shifting sand of lies. Mulder was right, she thought, this wasn't
all that big a deal. So maybe her mother believed in ghosts, or whatever
Hindley Fawkes was supposed to be. Her mom was still her mom, and she
herself was still Dana. "Thank you," she said, looking up at Mulder and
slipping her hand into his.
"No problem," he said, pressing her fingers. "Next time you want me to
yell at you and tell you how to live your life, just let me know."
She smiled and stood up. "Next time you try I'm going to stuff a sock
in your mouth," she said.
"See? I told you this wouldn't change you," Mulder said.
"I probably will go see my mom tomorrow," she said. "I won't be able
to do her any good here, Skinner made that pretty clear. I don't know
how long I'll be gone. Two days, maybe three."
"Sounds like a good idea. I can catch up on paperwork while you're gone,
which will confuse the hell out of Skinner." He grinned evilly. "With
you off chasing resurrected child killers and me turning in reports, it
shouldn't take much to convince him that we're heading into the Last Days.
Maybe I'll stick notes with passages from Revelations on them around his
office."
"It's never a good idea to antagonize the boss," Scully told him.
"But it's so much fun," he said. "Everybody needs a hobby."
Mrs. Scully's house,
Later that evening
Margaret took off her reading glasses and rubbed her tired eyes. She
set the book she'd been reading down on the end table by the couch. It
was Carl Sagan's Dragons in the Garden of Eden. Demanding reading, but
she preferred that these days. It kept her mind occupied during the slow
hours between sundown and bed. Ever since her husband died, evenings had
been hard for her. Even after four years of widowhood, it still felt strange
to cook for just one. It still felt strange to sleep alone.
She was glad that Dana was coming to see her tomorrow. It would be good
to hear another voice in the house. With all her heart, she wished Dana's
older sister, Melissa, could be there as well. Melissa had been the child
most like Margaret herself, gentle, warm-hearted, intuitive rather than
logical. She would never have questioned the reality of Margaret's experience
with Fawkes, no matter how strange it sounded. Actually, she thought with
a sad smile, Melissa would likely have jumped in and started spinning
theories about reincarnation and karma, a concept that she'd never quite
succeeded in explaining to her mother. Dana had summed karma up in characteristic,
incisive fashion: "What goes around comes around," she'd said.
Margaret was startled out of her reverie by the sound of a man's footsteps
coming up the walk. Her first, half-unconscious thought was that it was
Bill, and she had to remind herself that that was not possible. Her next
thought was that it might be Bill Jr. or Charles, but then she dismissed
that as well. Both boys had grown up tall like their dad, and this man's
stride was short. Margaret threw off the crocheted afghan she'd had across
her lap and stood, heading for the door.
When she got to the foyer she stopped dead. Someone outside was slowly
twisting the doorknob back and forth. "Who's there?" she demanded.
There was no answer.
She backed out of the foyer and ran to the bedroom, where she kept Bill's
old revolver in a drawer by the bed. With the gun gripped firmly in her
hand, she went to the closet and groped around on its top shelf for the
box of ammunition. Dana had warned her never to keep a loaded weapon where
the grandbabies could find it. Finally, she located the bullets between
the stacks of her summer clothes, and offered up a mental prayer of thanks.
With shaking fingers Margaret popped the revolver's cylinder out and pushed
six bullets into the chambers. Both Dana and Bill Jr. had insisted that
she practice shooting the gun at a firing range if she intended to keep
it in the house. She'd just humored them at the time, but now she was
grateful. Margaret snapped the cylinder closed and headed back toward
the foyer.
She knew something was wrong when she felt cold air on her face. As she
reached the front hall, her fears were confirmed. The door was open. Somehow,
the man had undone the lock and walked in. Margaret backed toward the
open doorway. In her mind, she could hear Dana telling her how foolish
it would be to let an intruder come between her and the only exit.
She heard footsteps in the living room. A man stepped out into the hall
and looked at her. He had full, soft lips, dark eyes, and dark, waving
hair. He didn't look a day older than he had in the summer of 1947.
"How dare you come here?" Margaret demanded. She was surprised at the
angry strength in her own voice. It was a woman's voice, not that of the
twelve-year- old girl she had been.
"How could I have come anywhere else?" Fawkes said. "I've missed you,
Maggie," he said, and took a step toward her. Margaret cocked the gun.
"Don't come any closer," she said. "I *will* shoot you." Dana had warned
her never to point a gun at anyone unless she was fully prepared to kill.
In this situation, however, Margaret found she was amply prepared.
Fawkes didn't seem the slightest bit frightened. He held a silver picture
frame against his chest, then he turned it around to face her. It was
an 8" x 10" of Melissa's high school graduation, with sixteen-year-old
Dana putting an arm around her sister's shoulders.
"Your girls?" Fawkes asked. He ran the tip of one finger over the image
of Melissa's face. Somehow, that touch seemed wicked, obscene, and Margaret
found herself shaking with anger.
"You can't hurt her," she said, "she's dead." Her voice broke over the
last word.
"How sad," Fawkes said, gazing down at the photo. "So young, so lovely.
And this?" He brushed his fingers over the picture of Dana.
"You leave her alone," Margaret snapped. She had a brief mental image
of Dana at three or four, standing on the sidewalk while a man leaned
out of a car to talk to her. He'd offered her a lollipop. The little girl
had looked so uncertain, but so desirous to trust, that it had brought
out every protective instinct her mother had. Margaret had rushed at the
man, shouting, ordering him to get away from her child. She did that to
Fawkes, now. It was a mistake.
As soon as she was within arm's reach, Fawkes grabbed the wrist of her
gun hand. He let her momentum carry her a step beyond him, and then his
grip brought her up short. He stepped behind her and put his hand on her
left shoulder. He pulled her right arm up over her head and then down
at an angle, knocking her backward and tripping her over his outstretched
foot. She tumbled onto the floor. He dropped to the ground with her, still
gripping her wrist. He twisted it behind her back, forcing her onto her
stomach, and then pried the gun out of her grip. "Now, now, none of that,"
he said. Then he leaned very close and whispered in her ear. "Do you want
to know a little bit about me, Margaret? They bred me as the ultimate
soldier. No one can hide from me for long, and no one can fight me. You're
very lucky I'm so fond of you," he said, and then he bent down to kiss
the back of her neck.
The touch was filthy, horrible. "You don't know anything about love!"
she shouted. "Let me up and get out of my house!"
He laughed softly. "So brave," he said. "There's nothing like frightening
the brave ones. Oh, my Margaret, my sweet little Maggie . . ." There was
something about the dreaminess in his voice that was very close to sexual.
Margaret found she couldn't stand it and twisted around as far as she
could. Nearly dislocating her own shoulder, she was able to turn enough
to scratch his cheek with her free hand. Beads of blood pricked up in
the score marks. He yelped and jumped up to a crouch, still keeping her
arm wrenched behind her back. The pain was excruciating.
"You'll regret that, dear," he whispered. Something pale flashed in the
corner of her vision.
"Leave me alone," she said. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something
creeping toward her over the floor. "Stop it," she said.
"Hush, Margaret, lovely Margaret . . . " Fawkes murmured. The pale thing
came into view. It was the afghan, slithering across the floor toward
her.
Margaret squeezed her eyes shut. "You can't scare me," she said. Melissa
had crocheted that afghan back in the '70's, when she was a Girl Scout.
It hadn't been an especially good job--there were lots of missed stitches
that had gotten snagged over the years, leaving great loops of yarn. Margaret
loved it for its imperfections, though, just as she loved her children.
She wouldn't let Fawkes frighten her with it, she told herself. She wouldn't.
She began to recite a passage from the twenty-third Psalm: "'Yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil:
for thou art with me," Fawkes twisted her arm hard and she gasped, opening
her eyes.
She saw that the crumpled-up afghan had made itself a face. The snags
and wrinkles had folded themselves up into misshapen eyeholes and a gaping
mouth. The thing's lips flapped jawlessly, like the mouth of a drowned
man stretching and closing with the shifting current. Then it heaved itself
up, jellyfish- like, and darted forward so that its face pressed close
to hers. It stretched itself out, seeming to become all neck, in an effort
to get as near to her as possible. Margaret could swear that she felt
a hot breath coming from it. She knew that it wanted to touch her, and
the horror she felt at that possibility was overwhelming. Her heart slammed
against her ribs. She struggled against Fawkes' grip, but it was iron
hard, and the inching forward of the thing was inexorable.
She cried out, averting her face, and then she felt a dull pain in her
left arm. It radiated up into her chest and blossomed into burning agony.
She felt as if a massive weight was pressing on her ribcage, squeezing
off her breathing and her sight.
Baltimore V.A. Hospital,
Next Afternoon
Dana sat in the visitor's waiting area, not drinking the cup of coffee
she'd supposedly stepped out for and staring absently into the middle
distance. She'd gotten a look at her mother's medical file through a combination
of nagging, pleading and outright bullying of the nursing staff. Anywhere
else, she thought, her M.D. and the fact that Margaret was her mother
would have gotten her instant compliance, but not in a military hospital.
Being a civilian and ineligible for VA benefits herself, to the staff
here Dana was Not Anybody.
The diagnosis of the ER doctor was an angina attack, apparently brought
on by stress and anxiety. The subsequent EKG had come back normal, although
Margaret's blood pressure was a little high. They'd given her a sedative
and kept her overnight for observation. At least there was one positive
aspect to military medicine, Dana thought, there were no Managed Care
insurance adjusters clamoring for the hospital to discharge her as soon
as she could stand up.
The waiting room door opened up and Mulder walked in. "How's she doing?"
he asked.
She stood and walked over to him. "Better," she said. "She's got some
bruises and a torn muscle in her shoulder from the attack, but it seems
the worst of it was just a bad scare."
"How are you?" he asked. Concealer and foundation covered up the discoloration
of fatigue around her eyes, but she suspected that her partner sensed
the worry in her anyway.
She shrugged. "I'll live," she said.
"That's good to hear," he said. "Did you know that there's a blood-borne
virus that can psychically cause mental illness and death in the relatives
of trauma victims?"
"I really don't want to hear about it," she said. "My brother's in with
her now, but she's been asking to speak with you. You may as well come
on back. In a few minutes she's going to be getting ready for discharge."
Scully led Mulder through the halls of a ward even more dismal than the
psyche unit where they'd met Diane Warczak. The walls were painted a 50's
vomit-green up until shoulder-height and the nurses' station sported a
typewriter and battered filing cabinets instead of a computer. "Welcome
to the world of the lowest bidder," Scully said with a sigh.
"Remind me to never join the military," Mulder said.
"You can join the military," she said, "just don't get sick." When they
entered Mrs. Scully's room they found her sitting up in bed and already
dressed. Dana couldn't blame her for wanting to get out as soon as possible.
Bill Jr. sat in the one available visitor's chair, wearing his military
dress whites and with his cap on his knee. Like Dana herself, he'd been
called in on a moment's notice. He stood when his sister came in the room
and smiled at her, seeming about to say something, but when he saw Mulder
the friendly expression died.
"Mr. Mulder, this is a family matter. I'm sure you understand," he said,
giving the agent a warning look.
"Your mother asked to speak to me," Mulder said.
"It's true, Bill, I did," Margaret said.
"Mom," Bill said, in a please-be-reasonable tone.
"It's all right, Bill," she said, "there are just some things I'd like
to talk with Fox about." Her voice was even but firm, and Dana knew that
there was no point in Bill arguing with her.
He seemed to know it too, and he gave Dana a sharp look, as if she'd
somehow put their mother up to this. "Can I see you outside for a minute?"
he asked.
"Sure," Dana answered, and followed him into the hall. Mulder went into
Mrs. Scully's room and discreetly closed the door.
"Can't you go anywhere without that guy?" Bill asked softly, jerking
his thumb over his shoulder toward the door.
"Mom wanted to talk to him," Dana answered.
"Yeah, well, in case you hadn't noticed, Mom's not exactly herself right
now," Bill said. "She's been talking about being scared half to death
by Missy's afghan."
"Are you implying that she's getting senile?" Dana asked, in a voice
much crisper than she usually used with her big brother.
"She's not senile, it's just getting to be a bit much for her, living
alone in that house since Dad died," Bill said. "And now there's this
attacker . . . I just don't like the idea of her staying by herself. I've
been thinking about asking her to move in with Tara and I."
"She'll never agree to that," Dana said. "She values her independence,
Bill. If she lived with you, she'd feel like a third wheel."
"It's not good for her to spend so much time alone. What if she'd blacked
out for longer than she did? Who would have called the hospital, Dana?
At least one of us has got to be looking out for her," Dana didn't miss
the accusing look he gave her, but she didn't let him provoke a reaction.
"And another thing," Bill continued, almost in a whisper, "I'm surprised
at you for bringing Mulder here. The last thing Mom needs is that fruitcake
partner of yours putting weird ideas in her head," Bill said.
"No one is capable of 'putting' ideas into Mom's head, weird or otherwise,"
Dana said. Just then the door opened and Margaret leaned out.
"Dana? Bill?" she said. Brother and sister shot angry looks at each other,
but were quiet. "Would you mind getting me some iced tea from the cafeteria,
Bill?" Margaret asked. She smiled gently, but there was no question that
she was shooing him off.
He looked at Dana resentfully, but said, "Yeah, ok. Decaf, though, the
last thing you need is something to make you jittery."
"Of course," Margaret said meekly, and opened the door for Dana to enter.
Mulder was sitting in the chair that Bill had vacated. "I'm sorry, I
don't mean to cause trouble," he said.
"There's no trouble," Margaret said. "You're Dana's good friend, and
you're always welcome." He smiled, looking both a little abashed and rather
touched, Dana thought. It wasn't lost on her that besides his own mother,
Margaret was the only person Mulder allowed to use his first name.
"Fox was just explaining to me about how you'd been unable to turn up
any information on Hindley Fawkes' family," Margaret said.
Dana nodded. "Last night I tried pulling information from anywhere I
could think of, and all I got were dead ends. There's no record of any
family named Fawkes in the census data for Ferris County, Washington,
or even in that whole part of Washington State. Hindley Fawkes never applied
for a Social Security number, he never registered with the Selective Service,
he doesn't even seem to have been born, at least not under that name."
"Last night, he said something to me," Margaret said.
"You're sure it was him?" Dana asked.
Margaret nodded. "I'll never forget that face, that voice," she said
softly. "And he touched that picture taken of you and Missy at her graduation.
I told the police about it--they'll get his fingerprints, won't they?"
"Probably," Dana conceded. "Unless he wiped the glass down or the prints
are smeared too badly to identify."
Margaret sighed. "I suppose it doesn't matter," she said. "No one who
doesn't believe already will ever believe, no matter how many prints they
find."
"I'm afraid you're right, Mrs. Scully," Mulder said.
"Fawkes told me that he'd been 'bred,' in order to be the ultimate soldier.
Does that mean anything to either of you?" Margaret asked, looking back
and forth between Mulder and her daughter.
Scully saw that Mulder looked disturbed, but not surprised. "Frankly,
Mrs. Scully, I suspect that elements in our government have been performing
genetic experiments on humans for at least fifty years now, maybe longer,"
he said. "It's common knowledge that the military tested drugs like LSD
on soldiers, trying to make them fiercer and less susceptible to pain
while in battle. I'm certain that if it were possible to breed a man who
could conquer an enemy without firing a shot, just by inducing paralyzing
fear in him, the government would find a way to do it."
"But why women and little girls?" Margaret asked, her eyes full of pain.
"My little cousin Frances never hurt anyone."
Mulder sighed. "I've been with the Bureau almost nine years, Mrs. Scully,"
he said, "I've come into contact with a lot of killers in that time, a
lot of genuine evil. And in my experience, this kind of murder never makes
sense, no matter how much you analyze it. The best I can do is to give
you my gut feeling that Fawkes gets an emotional high from his kills.
He likes it, pure and simple. It turns him on."
Margaret looked horrified. After a moment she crossed herself, and Dana
had to fight hard not to do the same. "Do you think whoever . . . made
him, will come looking for him? To make him stop?" Margaret asked.
"They didn't last time," Mulder said. "My guess is that they value their
plausible deniability over the lives of a few kids."
"It's getting to be more than just a few, Mulder," Scully put in. "A
body found in Allegheny National Forest was ID'ed a few days ago as belonging
to Shawna Rogan. The coroner had to use dental records. Shawna probably
died within days of being abducted." She saw Mulder close his eyes briefly,
as if at a defeat. No one liked to hear about little girls being kidnapped
and murdered, but because of Mulder's own abducted younger sister, every
such story seemed to hit him like a personal loss.
Margaret looked at least as distressed as he did. "You have to stop him,
Dana," she said. "Even if the police don't believe you. There are so many
children in danger."
Bill Jr. came in at that moment with Margaret's tea. "In danger of what?"
he asked.
"An evil man," Mulder answered him.
Margaret took the styrofoam cup of tea and gave Bill a flicker of a smile.
"Thank you, dear," she said. Dana stepped around to the other side of
the bed in order to give Bill room.
"What evil man?" Bill pressed, sounding impatient with Mulder's vagueness.
Dana sat on a corner of her mother's bed, and discovered a hard lump
under the wadded blanket. She shifted over quickly in surprise. The movement
knocked loose a fist-sized rubber ball, which had been caught in a fold
in the sheets. It dropped off the bed and hit the floor. A red strobe
light went off inside it, flashing madly as it bounced around. Dana found
herself laughing out loud as she chased the toy down into a corner.
"I'm sorry, Charlie brought the boys over for a while this morning,"
Margaret said. "It's a good thing you found that, Dana. They'd be heartbroken
if they lost their Blinkie-Ball."
"Let me see," Mulder said, holding out his hand. She bounced it to him
and he examined it with obvious delight. "Man, why didn't they have stuff
like this when I was a kid?" he asked, giving it another couple of bounces
on the floor.
"Because when you were a kid, the science of electrical engineering was
in its infancy, and nobody could make a battery smaller than a good-sized
German Shepherd," she told him.
He gave her a "We-are-not-amused" look. "She's calling us old, Bill,"
Mulder said. He and Bill were the same age, and Dana noticed how effortlessly
he'd come up with a way to try and make an alliance out of that. Although
Bill smiled a little, he seemed disinclined to make friends so easily
with a guy he considered a "fruitcake."
"How can anybody be old who's so obviously in touch with his inner child?"
he asked.
"God, Mulder, you're going to give yourself seizures looking at--" Dana
stopped suddenly.
"What?" Mulder asked.
"I was just thinking," she said. "Brain lesions."
"You think that's what's wrong with him?" Bill asked, gesturing at Mulder.
"No, Fawkes," Dana said. "Shawna Rogan was an epileptic. I spoke to the
Columbus regional office about her, and they told me that since her medication
had vanished along with her, Fawkes might be intending to keep her alive.
Fawkes likes to stalk his victims, getting to know their families' habits
so he can strike when they're the most vulnerable. He would have known
about Shawna's condition and planned for it. But if she died almost as
soon as she was abducted, then he wasn't giving her the medication. He
might have been taking it himself."
Mulder let out a low whistle. "You go, Scully," he said.
"Mom, Diane Warczak never had seizures, did she?" Dana asked.
"I don't think so," Margaret said. "I could call her Aunt Jean, about
it, if you like." Dana handed over her cell phone. Within five minutes
she'd learned that while Diane herself didn't suffer from epilepsy, her
stepfather did. The medicine cabinets had been ransacked the night Diane
had seen the intruder.
"Hence the drug test on the kid," Mulder said.
"He must've been refining his technique," Scully said, pacing as much
as was possible in the tiny room. "He wanted the medication of someone
closer to his own size and weight, to get the dosage right. If he's that
dependent on anti- convulsants, it means that he likely doesn't drive.
Mom, he'll be staying within walking distance of your house. He may have
been in a pharmacy or doctor's office in the last few days, scoping out
people he could steal the right kind of medicine from."
"I'll call the local police," Mulder said. He pulled out his cell phone
and stepped out of the room.
"Dana, be careful," Margaret said. "Fawkes was asking about you. He may
try to find you."
"Look, Mom, whoever this guy is, he knows where you live," Bill said.
"I don't think you should go back to your house. You want to come stay
with me for a while?"
"I think that would be a good idea," Dana said, and was rewarded with
a grateful look from her brother.
"All right," Margaret agreed. "I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable at home
with Fawkes on the loose, anyway." Dana walked up to her and kissed her
on the cheek.
"It'll be ok, Mom," she said. "Mulder and I will take care of it."
When she walked out into the hall, Scully found Mulder snapping his cell
phone shut against his hip. With his free hand he was contact-juggling
the light-up bouncy-ball.
"You're having way too much fun with that toy," she told him.
"You don't want me to torment A.D. Skinner, you don't want me to play
with the Blinkie-Ball, what am I supposed to do for fun? Masturbation
and crop-circle spotting will only get you so far," he said.
"I really didn't want to hear that, Mulder," Scully said.
"Oh, now you don't even want me to talk about the things you don't want
me to do," he said.
"Too bad it's after Christmas," Scully said. "You could've written Santa
and asked for a Blinkie-Ball of your very own."
"Only if I was a good little Federal Agent, which I believe is a point
of contention," he said.
"What do they do to you if you're a bad little Federal Agent?" she asked.
"They stick you in a basement office and send shadowy government operatives
to assassinate you," he said.
"Well, I guess neither of us is getting a Blinkie-Ball anytime soon,"
Scully said.
Mulder sighed. "Yet another lifelong dream shattered," he said. Then,
turning serious, he said, "The cops around your mother's house will be
passing Fawkes' picture around the drug stores and doctor's offices."
Scully nodded her approval. "Mom's going to stay at Bill's house until
she feels safe going home," she said.
"Good," said Mulder. He walked with her through the puke-green halls
to the door of the ward, bouncing the ball the whole way. "You know, I
was thinking," he said. "You said that Fawkes was 'refining his technique'
of stealing medication. That would imply that this wasn't something he
had to do before, in his previous incarnation, if you want to call it
that."
"We've never ascertained that this is the same Hindley Fawkes," Scully
told him.
"Have you ever known fingerprints to lie?" he asked. "If they do, we
can throw a lot of twentieth-century law enforcement out the window."
"Fingerprints don't lie, but even experts can be mistaken," she said.
"Uh-huh. Did you know that SSA Wycliffe once lifted a fingerprint off
the belly of an iguana? There's a drug kingpin doing life now because
of her. Personally, I'd trust one of her positive IDs," Mulder said.
"All right, Wycliffe's good, I admit it. It's just resurrection I have
trouble with," she said.
"Could be cloning," Mulder suggested.
"What are you getting at, Mulder?" Scully asked.
"Since Fawkes version one was so uncontrollable, maybe whoever created
Fawkes version two decided to put a kill switch in the mechanism. You
yourself mentioned the possibility of a brain lesion. A couple of good
jabs in the motor cortex and then he's dependent on medication, which
he can only get easily through whatever government doctor they assign
to him. If, as you implied, he has reflex seizures due to flashing lights,
he won't be able to drive. In theory, that would keep him local and manageable,"
Mulder said.
"Except that it doesn't seem to work," Scully said.
"Of course not," said Mulder. "You can't keep acid in a plastic bottle,
and you can't keep someone with powers like Fawkes has conveniently tucked
away in some research facility. The epilepsy may just slow him down a
little."
"So what do you suggest we do?" Scully asked.
"Be very careful. I want you to keep away from him," Mulder said. "Call
for backup if you think he's anywhere close to you. He'll be waiting for
you, Scully."
Scully's apartment,
Early evening
Dana shucked off her coat and dropped it over one of her kitchen chairs.
She went to the fridge and poured herself a glass of diet soda. She needed
a caffeine buzz after a day like this. She took a deep drink and wandered
over to her answering machine, then hit the 'Play' button.
"You may already have won a trip to Utah's historic Salt Lake," a computerized
voice announced. Scully immediately hit the 'fast forward' button. The
next message was Mulder's, from that afternoon. "Hi Scully--just got your
message, I'm going over to the hospital now," he said, and hung up. Then
came a rambling message from her bother Charles about their mother, and
incidentally the lost Blinkie-Ball. Dana went back into the kitchen as
she listened, hoping that something appetizing had materialized in the
refrigerator. For a few moments she stood looking at the fridge's contents
in dismay.
Then she heard a door close--somewhere in her apartment. The bedroom,
she thought. She slipped immediately into what she considered her "crash-room
mode," the ice-cold practicality that a doctor, or an F.B.I. Agent, needed
in an emergency. She soundlessly closed the refrigerator door and walked
over to the chair where she'd dumped her coat and her weapon. She fished
the 9 mm from out of the folds of her coat and held it up in a ready position.
As silently as possible, she walked from the kitchen to the wall of the
entranceway, which would conceal her from anyone in the hall leading to
her bedroom.
Scully stood absolutely still. The only sound she heard was her own breathing.
She was beginning to think that she'd imagined the noise of the door closing
when a man called out, "Dana?"
She whipped around the corner with the gun leveled at chest height. "Freeze,
F.B.I.," she snapped.
A man stood in the hallway. He was short, dark haired, with dark eyes
and full lips. He held an old-fashioned revolver to the temple of a young
girl, who was on her knees in front of him. "Put the gun on the floor,
Dana," he said, with surprising gentleness.
"Who are you?" Dana demanded, although in her heart, she already knew.
"Put the gun on the floor, unless you want blood on your nice clean walls,"
the man said. The girl let out a quiet sob.
Scully put her gun on the floor and backed away, holding her hands up.
"Why are you here?" she asked.
The man smiled. "So lovely," he said dreamily. "So much like your mother.
Although I like the red hair--that's an improvement."
"Let the girl go," Scully said.
"Release my chauffeur?" the man asked. "That wouldn't be smart of me.
Besides, Jessica likes to drive. Don't you, Jessie?"
The girl kept crying. "Please, mister, just let me go home," she said.
"Let her go," Scully repeated.
The man chuckled softly. "But how could I control you, then, Dana? Over
the past couple of lifetimes, I've learned a thing or two about control,"
he said.
"What do you want?" Scully asked.
"So many things. World peace, for one. But I doubt even Jessie's life
would buy me that," he said, reaching out with his free hand to stroke
Jessica's hair. "I'll settle for you, though."
"I'll do what you want. Just let Jessica go," Scully said.
The man smiled again. "I know you will," he said. "Keep your hands where
they are, please, and walk down to the parking lot."
Dana had no choice but to obey.
Mulder's apartment,
Later that night
The phone at Scully's place rang and rang. Mulder didn't like it. He
glanced at the clock; it was nearly eleven on a Thursday night. It was
possible that Scully had a hot date, he thought, although it would have
to be damn hot for her not to cancel it while her mom wasn't well. She
was a good little Catholic girl, after all.
Her answering machine picked up. "Hey, uh, Scully," he said, "Been trying
to reach you for a couple of hours, now. Give me a call."
He hung up and drummed his fingers on the armrest of his couch, looking
at the phone. Originally he'd wanted to tell her that the police had found
Fawkes' prints in her mother's house, but that a search of the area had
turned up nothing. Now he'd be satisfied just to hear her voice. He picked
up the phone again and hit the speed dial button for Scully's cell phone.
He got the same thing he'd been getting all evening, a cheerful recorded
voice informing him that the mobile unit he had called was turned off
or not in the service area. Mulder hung up on it. "Yeah, I'm getting pretty
turned off, myself," he grumbled. He stood up and grabbed his coat, intending
to drive over to her apartment.
She was probably in the shower with Harrison Ford or something, he thought,
and she'd call him paranoid and nosy for showing up at her place uninvited.
At the moment, though, he didn't care. As long as he knew she was all
right and that Hindley Fawkes wasn't messing with her, she could yell
at him as much as she wanted.
73867 Rosalind Street,
Baltimore, MD
Dana knelt in the basement of an older, two-story house located in one
of the city's most run-down areas. Fawkes had bound her hands behind her
with twine, which was biting into her wrists. Jessica was locked in a
room upstairs, and at least as Fawkes claimed, unharmed. That was part
of the "deal" he had made with her. Anything Dana refused to submit to
would be inflicted on Jessica. If Dana were compliant, the girl would
be left alone, at least in the short term.
The fact that Fawkes had made no effort to conceal the location of his
hideout from them made Scully uneasy. It meant that either A, this place
was as abandoned as it looked and he had no tie to it, or B, he intended
to kill them both, and whatever they knew didn't matter. She shifted on
her knees a bit. He'd at least spread a ratty blanket on the floor, so
she wouldn't have to kneel on the bare concrete. The place was still cold,
though, and she suspected it had no heat or electricity. A fluorescent
camping lantern provided the only light, and that was sick and greenish.
She was uncertain as to how long she'd been down there, but she suspected
that it wasn't as long as it felt. At least she still had sensation in
her fingertips, she thought.
The door at the top of the stairs opened and she heard Fawkes' footsteps
coming down. "You don't have to keep me tied. As long as you've got Jessica
I'm not going anywhere," Scully said. She was surprised at how steady
her voice sounded.
Fawkes stood and looked at her from the foot of the stairs. He smiled
at her-- no, not a smile, she thought, more of a pleased little leer.
He was carrying a ripped-up couch cushion, which he dropped a few feet
in front of her and then sat on. "The point is not whether you are or
aren't going to go anywhere," he told her. "The point is to heighten your
sense of fear and helplessness. You see, I can move, Dana, and you can't."
He rocked up suddenly onto his knees and leaned forward, his face nearly
touching hers. He stared at her, lover- intently, with large, liquid dark
eyes. On anyone else they would've been Bambi eyes, she thought. But on
him, they created an impression of disgusting sensuality. His full lips
parted slightly and he blew a stream of air across her cheek and neck,
stirring her hair.
"You're going to so much effort," Scully said. "It would be a shame to
let the pain in my wrists distract me from your performance."
Fawkes laughed out loud and sat back. "Wonderful," he said, "simply wonderful.
Such a brave girl, and bravery ought to be rewarded. I'll tell you what,
little Dana. I'll cut the twine off your wrists, if you'll tell me about
the most frightening thing that ever happened to you."
Dana sat silent for a moment, struggling with feelings of anger as well
as fear. How dare he play games with her, she thought. How dare he put
her in this position and then demand to know intimate details about her
life? She mastered herself, however, both out of a concern for Jessica
and the desire to be untied. "I suppose it was when I was in the hospital
with cancer," she said.
"No, no, you can't tell it like that. Use the present tense. Relive it,"
Fawkes said.
She almost told him to go to hell. "All right," she said at last, her
voice tight. "I'm in the hospital with a metastasized tumor in my head.
It's supposed to be terminal and inoperable."
"Close your eyes," Fawkes said, "You're in your hospital room. Look around
and tell me what you see."
"It's a hospital room," she said. "White, boring . . . there's an ugly
pastel abstract print on the wall."
"You have on one of those flimsy, tie-on smocks?" Fawkes asked.
Scully sighed and said, "Yes," wondering if this was just going to be
the equivalent of face-to-face phone sex, after all.
"The smock provides no protection, does it?" Fawkes continued. "You're
half dressed, you don't feel well, you're full of tubes and wires."
"I told them to stop the tubes and wires," she told him.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because they weren't helping. Because I was getting worse anyway," she
said.
"Weren't you afraid you'd die more quickly?" Fawkes asked her.
"When there's no hope left, that can sometimes be a blessing," she said.
"Ah," said Fawkes. "Death doesn't scare you, does it, little Dana?" She
felt him brush the gold cross at her throat with one of his fingers. At
the touch her eyes snapped open, and she found herself wishing she could
slap him.
"Everyone is scared of death. Without a strong survival instinct the
human race would never have lasted as long as it has," she said.
Fawkes shook his head. "No," he said. "It's the dying that scares you.
Being helpless, in pain, unable to control your own body. You got in fights
when you were little, didn't you? You're a fighter by nature. But 'Strength
stoops unto the grave,' as the poet says. I died myself once, you know."
He scooted up next to her and spoke the next words very softly, in her
ear. "There's nothing like the sensation of feeling your own heart falter
to a stop. There's a certainty, a knowing, as all the lights go out. You
know that nothing you can do will ever make them come on again."
"But for you, they did," Scully said.
He laughed. "That's the darndest thing, isn't it? I'm just like a bad
penny." He moved back a bit and lifted his hand to caress her cheek. He
sighed and said, "I'm so sorry I was dead when you were a child. The times
we could have had."
Scully's apartment
Mulder knocked on the door. He'd been relieved to see that her car was
in the parking lot and the lights in her window were on, and he'd almost
just gone home. He'd decided to come up anyway, mostly because he didn't
want to have spent an hour round-trip in the car for no reason. His knocking
brought no response. When he tried again and still got nothing, he pulled
out the spare key to her door. "If she really is in the shower with Harrison
Ford, she's going to kill me," he thought. When his key met with no resistance
in the lock, he realized that it was open. He didn't like that at all.
Scully was fairly obsessive about locking her door whether she was home
or not.
He pulled his gun from the holster clipped to his jeans pocket and then
pushed the door open. He went in fast, gun in the ready position, and
looked around. The place seemed empty. "Scully?" he called out. "Anybody
home?" After waiting a moment and hearing nothing, he headed toward the
hall that lead to her bedroom. There he stopped.
Her weapon was lying holsterless on the floor. He picked it up and popped
the clip out--she hadn't fired it. That in itself was a bad sign. Scully
would never, ever have left her gun out in the middle of the hall while
she was gone and the apartment was unlocked. Someone or something had
forced her to do so, and she'd been unable to fire to protect herself.
A quick check of the rest of the apartment turned up no trace of Scully
or any clues to where she might have gone. Cursing to himself, he went
to canvass her neighbors. He had a bad feeling they would tell him that
they hadn't seen anything.
73867 Rosalind
Scully had succeeded in negotiating to get her hands untied, and she
sat trying to rub circulation back into her wrists. Fawkes had continued
his interrogation all the while. She'd done her best to answer calmly,
and now he seemed at ease enough that she tried to worm some information
out of him. "Where did you come from, Mr. Fawkes?" she asked. "How did
you get to Baltimore, Maryland from a graveyard in Washington State?"
"Hitchhiking, mostly," he said.
"Where did you find someone who was driving here from the Other Side?"
she asked.
He chuckled softly. "You're familiar with Shakespeare?" he asked.
"You hitched a ride with him? I thought he didn't have a license either,"
Scully said. Fawkes seemed to enjoy her wisecracks, so she kept making
them. Attempting to bond with a captor was often a useful strategy in
avoiding getting hurt or killed, but Scully was uncertain as to how much
emotional leverage she could get with a man like Fawkes.
"'What's in a name?' Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet," Fawkes said.
"It turned out rather a lot, as those few characters who weren't dead
by the end of the play found out. Your name is beautiful, by the way.
Dana was a Celtic goddess, mother of all the other gods. Not especially
Catholic, perhaps, but it suits you. Katherine is from the Greek--it means
'pure.' My last name and your partner's first name are homonyms, isn't
that interesting?" Fawkes said.
"Very," Scully said, "but what does that have to do with my question?"
He leaned close and repeated, "'What's in a name?'"
Annapolis Police Department
"Mr. Mulder?" said Police Chief Sachs, walking over to where Mulder sat
fidgeting in the officers' break room.
Mulder stood and asked, "Did you get anything?"
"Well, we do have a report of a missing teenage girl, Jessica Kingerly,
from the area you were asking about. Apparently she never came home from
school this afternoon," Sachs said. Sachs was fiftyish, shorter than Mulder
but broader through the shoulders, with a steel-gray brush cut and mustache.
He struck Mulder as a serious guy, and he was grateful to him for lighting
a fire under his officers so quickly. Technically, Sachs should have waited
24 hours before treating this as a missing person case, but when Mulder
explained the situation to him he'd agreed to start the hunt at once.
It didn't hurt that Dana was a hometown girl and in law enforcement herself,
Mulder had thought.
"Does anyone in Kingerly's family have a history of seizure disorders?"
Mulder asked.
Sachs looked a little surprised at the question, but he answered, "I
could have somebody check."
"Thank you. The man we're looking for goes after a particular type of
kid-- white girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen, small build,
with straight, shoulder-length hair. Does that sound like Jessica Kingerly?"
Mulder asked.
"Sounds about right," Sachs said.
"Is she old enough to drive?" Mulder asked.
"Yeah. Last seen in a tan '82 Toyota Tercel, lots of bumper stickers
and a dented front fender," Sachs said.
"You already have cops watching the roads, right?" Mulder said.
"Since about 9 p.m. Nobody's spotted them. That car sounds pretty hard
to miss," Sachs said.
"Ok, all right," Mulder said, rubbing his jaw and pacing. "Let's say
he's with Kingerly and they've been out of the city since before nine.
Dana would've gotten home around seven, seven-thirty . . . that gives
him about a five-hour lead. Shit, he could be in about seven different
states by now." He ordered himself to calm down. There were a huge number
of places Fawkes could be, but only one place he actually was. Any Behavioral
Science guy with half a brain ought to be able to narrow down the possibilities
pretty quick. "You don't want to stay on the road long when you're only
one guy and you've got two hostages, especially when one of them's a Federal
Agent who can be pretty damn dangerous even without a gun," Mulder said,
thinking aloud. He had to smile, remembering how Scully had taken out
Leonard Betts with an ambulance defibrillator. "He'll want to go to ground
somewhere fairly close. Someplace like a house or a cabin standing on
its own, where he can keep two women against their will without people
seeing. Hard thing for a drifter to come up with," Mulder said.
"Not if he knows the area," Sachs said. "You said the guy likes to plan
things out. He may have found an abandoned place or a summer home to hole
up in."
Mulder nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Fawkes spent enough time around the
area of Mrs. Scully's house to be able to track her down and then vanish.
Man, I already had the cops go over that place."
"Sounds like you'd better ask them to do it again," said Sachs.
73867 Rosalind
Scully had coaxed Fawkes into letting her see Jessica, who he'd locked
in an upstairs room. She'd found the girl sitting on a rusty bedstead,
the room's only furniture. Jessica looked teary and deeply frightened,
but otherwise unharmed. Fawkes had brought up the camping lantern since
the room had no light.
Scully sat down next to the girl, who promptly flung her arms around
her. "Tell him I wanna go home," Jessica said.
Scully hugged her back. "He knows," she said, shooting a sharp look at
Fawkes. He was leaning in the doorway with his arms folded, seeming to
be enjoying this scene. "Are you all right, Jessie? Are you hurt anywhere?
I'm a doctor," Scully said, and the girl shook her head.
"I'm just scared," she said. "And I'm hungry, and I wanna go home." Jessica
started sniffling a bit.
"Do you have anything to eat around here?" Scully asked Fawkes.
"Little Dana, we don't even have electricity," he said. Dana didn't like
the sound of that. If he hadn't stocked any food, it likely meant he wasn't
planning on keeping them around long.
"Could we order a pizza or something?" Jessica asked, brushing tears
from her cheeks.
"A pizza?" Scully asked, amused. Trust a teenager, she thought, and then
she had an idea. "Could we order a pizza?" she asked Fawkes. "I've got
money and my cell phone."
His eyebrows lifted. "My, my, that's quite a request. What do you have
to offer in return for that?" he asked.
Scully sighed. "What do you want?" she asked.
"Well now, let me give that some thought," Fawkes said, smiling and tapping
his lips with one finger. "You say you're a doctor?"
"I have a medical license, yes, but I never went into practice," Scully
said.
"Can you write a prescription for me?" he asked.
"Have you got a pen?" Scully asked. It turned out he didn't, but she
was able to fish a ballpoint and a scrap of paper from the pockets of
her coat. The paper turned out to be a coupon for yogurt, and she doubted
that any pharmacy in the world would take it seriously, but at least it
had a blank back. "What medications are you on?" she asked.
"Diphenylan, 100 mg. capsules, three times a day, Myidone, 250 mg. tablets,
four times a day," he said.
"An informed patient," Scully said, writing the names and dosages down.
"I take it that generics are acceptable?" she asked.
"Perfectly," said Fawkes.
"Mr. Fawkes, you've been seizure-free all evening. How often do you have
problems?" Scully asked.
"I have my good days and my bad days," was all he said.
"Do your seizures have a known cause?" she asked.
He laughed softly. "Yes, you could say that I know the cause, or the
causers. When they brought me back, they could have make me better than
I was. They had the technology. But they didn't bother--instead they made
me worse."
Scully glanced at Jessica, who seemed to be completely oblivious to the
"Six Million Dollar Man" reference. Too young, she thought. For that matter,
Fawkes himself was supposed to have been dead while that show was on the
air. Then again, she realized, he was supposed to be dead now.
Scully pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her coat. "May I?" she
asked.
Fawkes stood and looked at her for some time. She saw him moving his
tongue around in his mouth as if lost in thought. "Do you have nightmares?"
he asked.
"Sometimes," Scully said, wondering how long he was going to toy with
her.
"Tell me one. Pick the worst one," Fawkes said.
"All right," she said, and thought for a moment. A brief image flashed
in her mind--a drill. She realized that she did have nightmares about
looking up at a drill, but that she could hardly remember them when she
woke up. She'd never spoken to anyone about them, not even Mulder.
Fawkes seemed to be picking something up from her--his eyes brightened
and his breathing rate increased. "What?" he asked.
"It's just--I have a dream about a bright, white place, and there's people's
faces bending over me. There's things like surgical equipment, and a shining
drill," she said.
"What do the people do to you, Dana?" Fawkes asked. He'd begun to move
his hands in a strange, groping motion, as if longing to touch her. For
some reason, she found that thought horrifying. "Do they hurt you with
the drill?"
"Yes--no, it doesn't hurt much, not as much as you'd expect. I think
they used drugs to dull the pain, and to make it so I couldn't move. But
I could tell that whatever they were doing to me was bad, it was dangerous
. . . I think, I think maybe those people gave me the cancer," she said
quietly.
Fawkes sighed and closed his eyes, as at some great pleasure. "You can
make your phone call, Dana," he said.
She called information and asked for the number of a local pizza place,
but that was not the number she wrote down. On the back of a gas station
receipt she wrote Mulder's cell phone number, minus the telltale Washington
area code, just in case Fawkes looked over her shoulder as she dialed.
She punched in the numbers and waited while it rang, her heart hammering.
"Please, God, let him answer," she thought.
"Mulder," came the sound of her partner's voice. Scully thought she'd
never heard anything sweeter in her life.
"Hi, I'd like to order a medium pepperoni pizza," she said.
"Scully? What the hell? Are you pranking me? I've got half the police
in the state out looking for you," Mulder said.
"I'm at 73867 Rosalind street, in Baltimore, off of M-140. The name is
Fawkes, F-A-W-K-E-S," Scully said.
"You're serious, aren't you?" he said, "Scully, are you all right?"
"Yes," she told him, "If you're coming north we'll be on your left, a
two-story house with a pale blue door. You can't miss it."
"You want Crazy Bread with your rescue?" he asked.
"You want Crazy Bread, Jessica?" Scully asked.
"Yes," the girl said.
"How soon can you be here?" Scully asked Mulder.
"Thirty minutes or less or your rescue is free," he said.
Annapolis Police Department
Mulder snapped his phone shut and grabbed the directions he'd scribbled
down. "Officer Sachs," he called out. The police chief turned around.
"That was Scully. She and Jessica are with Fawkes, but so far they seem
ok. She was kind enough to give us directions to the house," he said,
holding up his scratch paper.
73867 Rosalind
Mulder pulled up in front of the house in an unmarked car, and he really
did have a pizza. The reason was that it would get Fawkes to open the
door. F.B.I. agents and Baltimore police officers were quietly taking
up positions around the house. Mulder climbed the rickety front steps.
Although the house was exactly where Scully had said it would be, he thought
briefly of how bad it would be if he were at the wrong place. That would
make a hell of a World Weekly News headline: "Harmless Old Lady Says,
'My Pizza Delivery Boy Tried To Kill Me!'"
He knocked on the door. After a few moments he heard footsteps and the
sound of locks being undone. The door opened a crack, and the face behind
it was no harmless old lady's. He recognized Fawkes instantly from the
fifty-year-old news clipping Scully had shown him. "Pizza," Mulder said.
Fawkes opened the door wider and then Mulder kicked it in. He threw the
pizza box at him and pulled out his gun. "F.B.I.! Get down! Get down!
On the floor!" he shouted.
Fawkes looked surprised but moved to obey.
"Put your hands over your head," Mulder ordered him. Fawkes did so, and
Mulder grabbed his wrists and handcuffed them behind his back. "Got him!"
he shouted to the officers outside. "Scully?" he called out. "Don't let
him have hurt her," he thought.
"We're up here," Scully called back. He ran up the stairs and found Scully
and a young girl sitting in an old bedroom. The kid looked terrified and
Scully had her arms around her. "We're all right," she told him.
"Are you the police?" Jessica asked.
"I guess I must be," Mulder said. "Either that or I'm the world's worst
pizza delivery boy."
"Where's Fawkes?" Scully asked.
"He's downstairs. The whole thing went surprisingly clean," he said.
"Be careful of him," Scully said. "He's more dangerous than he looks."
Mulder led the two women downstairs, where one of the Baltimore officers
was reciting Fawkes' Miranda rights to him. As they entered the room Fawkes
rolled to his knees and gave Mulder a truly poisonous glare. "Could you
at least help me get to my feet?" he asked softly. Fawkes looked harmless
enough at the moment, Mulder thought. The man was handcuffed and squinting
in the glare of three officers' flashlights. Keeping his right hand near
his weapon, Mulder extended his left and gripped Fawkes' shoulder to steady
him as he stood up.
There was a blinding flash and the sound of shattering glass as the bulbs
in the officers' flashlights exploded. The next thing Mulder knew metal
bands were being snapped around his wrists and cinched tight. Someone
grabbed his gun and levered it up out of his grip. Mulder swung his cuffed
wrists in the direction he'd last seen Fawkes, but connected with nothing.
He heard officers shouting and colliding with each other in the dark.
"Officer Matthews, I need a handcuff key," he called out over their voices,
trying to sound calm and in control. After all, he was supposed to be
the weirdness expert.
Matthews found him and was fumbling with the cuff lock when Fawkes' voice
came from the stairs. "Tell them what's going on, little Dana," he said.
"Mr. Fawkes is holding a gun beneath my right arm, pointing up into my
ribcage," Scully said. Mulder swore softly as Matthews popped the lock.
Her voice sounded crisp and professional, but Mulder sensed the undercurrent
of her fear. The position Fawkes held her in was meant to maximize both
the captor's control of the victim and the fatalness of the potential
shot. Fawkes had not let Scully's size and sex mislead him as to her dangerousness.
"Ok, Mr. Fawkes, we're backing off," Mulder said. "Come on guys, let's
move away." Protocol stated that the first thing Mulder do was try to
stabilize the situation, to keep Fawkes from panicking and shooting his
hostage. He had a bad feeling, though, that in this case it was the officers
who might be more likely to panic. Mulder felt his way along the wall
toward the door and heard the other men doing the same. "Stay calm," he
thought to himself. There was no way Fawkes was going to win this standoff;
he was surrounded, outnumbered by about twenty to one, and law enforcement
was between him and the door. The question was only how many people were
going to leave this room in body bags. Time was on Mulder's side, if he
could just keep the situation under control. "Mr. Fawkes, I'd like to
get Jessica out of the room," Mulder said.
Fawkes laughed softly and said, "I don't think she's going anywhere without
me." From someplace overhead, there came a strange sliding noise. Something
was slithering around near the ceiling.
"What the fuck?" whispered one of the officers.
"He's trying to frighten you--to make you panic," Scully said. "Don't
let him-- " Then Fawkes did something that made her gasp and cut off her
speech. It took Mulder a moment to firmly repress the urge to go over
and strangle Fawkes on the spot. Threatening an F.B.I. Agent's life was
a Federal offense and therefore Mulder was technically in charge here.
The officers were already getting spooked, the last thing any of them
needed was for their supposedly fearless leader to flip out and attack
an armed suspect with a hostage. Mulder felt a brief flash of sympathy
for Skinner--sometimes it was very hard to have to be the voice of reason.
"Fawkes, think about it," Mulder said. "You've got no choice but to let
Jessica go. If you shoot her, then you'll have to take the gun off Scully,
and she might just break your neck for you. If you shoot Scully, then
you've lost your shield against three officers pointing weapons at you."
"Maybe not," Fawkes said. The faint light from the room's window caught
on something metallic in the corner of Mulder's vision. He turned to look
at it but it snapped by lightning-fast. There was a whistling sound, like
a whipcord flying through the air.
Something hit him. Too startled to cry out, he felt the burning bite
of a lash and then something thin and hard winding itself around his neck.
He grabbed it with one hand and jerked on it, gauging the direction it
had come from by the way it pulled. He backed up toward the thing's source,
taking advantage of the slack to untwist it from around his neck. From
the sound of things, one of the officers hadn't been so quick.
"Matthews!" Mulder called out. A shadowy form on the floor bucked and
struggled, being slowly dragged back toward the wall. The downed officer
was making hideous choking noises. Mulder pulled out the pocketknife he
kept attached to his keys, for all that it was small and rather dull.
He generally only used it for opening letters and lifting the latch on
an occasional door. He hacked at the wire that wound itself around Matthews'
neck, but the blade chewed through only slowly.
Then another, thicker cable lashed Mulder's arm, hard enough to make
his eyes water. After striking him it slithered with disgusting, deliberate
gentleness around his arm and torso, effectively binding his arm to his
body. He swore at it and tried to slip out of its groping coils. He found
he hated the touch of the thing.
Finally he just wrapped the ends of the frayed cord that was strangling
Matthews around his own hands and pulled, snapping the remaining wires.
They sliced through his skin, but he heard Matthews take a ragged breath.
He was unable to help the other man much after that, since cord after
cord of the house's gutted electrical system slashed and bound him up
like a fly in a metallic spider web.
Once her eyes were accustomed to the gloom, Scully could see the figures
of the men struggling. All around them were what looked like thin snakes,
or tentacles wriggling their way through holes in the walls. From the
sound, she guessed one of the men was being garroted. "Stop it, Fawkes,"
she ordered, which earned her a jab in her armpit with the gun. At least
she could still hear Mulder talking, saying some creative things about
Fawkes' ancestry, so she knew he wasn't being choked to death. At least
not yet. His quiet cursing was sounding a lot more desperate than it had
a minute ago.
"We're going," Fawkes said finally. "Come along, Jessie." He nudged Dana
forward and she walked down the last few steps, with Jessica trailing
behind. Scully walked as slowly as he'd let her, trying to think. She
felt infuriatingly helpless. With Fawkes' gun pressed into the cavity
between her arm and ribcage, she could not dislodge it easily by moving
in any direction. He would have more than enough time to pull the trigger,
and at the very least puncture one of her lungs.
Fawkes opened the front door and stepped onto the porch. There was a
police car parked in the middle of the road, and someone shone a floodlight
in their faces. "Put your hands up!" barked one of the officers.
Fawkes just kept walking down the steps, bringing Dana with him. "He's
got a gun on me," she called out. "There are men inside the house who
need your help- -but be careful!"
"That's about enough out of you, Miss Dana," Fawkes said, giving her
a little shove. She stumbled a bit over a frozen lump in the ground. She
lurched forward and to her left, across Fawkes' body. She caught herself,
or rather, he caught her, hauling her in against his chest. As he did
so Dana felt the gun's muzzle slip just a bit from its position beneath
her arm. She could almost hear Mulder saying, "So, how lucky do you feel
today, Scully?"
Fawkes lead them around the side of the house where he'd had Jessica
park the car. There was no way even an F.B.I. sniper would take a shot
at him like this; a moving target in the dark, with one hostage held next
to him and another right behind. Dana knew that if she tried running from
him now, she would probably get shot and killed. But if she let him get
her into the car, he'd take her somewhere of his own choosing--isolated,
no cops, and he'd never let her use her cell phone again. She knew that
her chances then, and Jessie's, would be about those of little white snowflakes
in Hell.
Jessica was fumbling for the keys to the car, her hands red and stiff
from cold. Cops were shouting, barking orders, but Scully didn't hear
the words. Inside her, things were very quiet. She looked up at the sky
for a moment, disappointed that it was cloudy and dark. "Thank you for
my life," she thought, which might have been directed at her mother, or
God, or even Mulder, who'd rescued her more times than she could count.
Jessica got the door open and slid into the driver's seat. Fawkes nudged
Dana to open the back door. Instead, she turned toward him, keeping her
body pressed close to his. When he'd kept her from falling she'd noticed
his wrist did not bend toward her easily in that position. Also, if he
fired, he would be shooting through her at his own heart. The muzzle of
the gun slipped, pointing through the space between her arm and chest,
now.
Scully clamped her arm against his wrist and let her knees buckle, dragging
him to the ground with her. This was one of very few times that she wished
she weighed more, but she knew that even a hundred and ten pounds of deadweight
was difficult for a man to throw around. "Turn on the squad car lights!"
she shouted. "Jessica, put on your hazard blinkers!" The girl did so,
and a moment later the police cars' lights went on.
An insane flashing of dark and light turned the house's yard into something
resembling a disco floor. Fawkes cried out, his body jackknifing backward.
Scully knew she had to get the gun out of his grip before he had a massive
seizure. She levered the weapon's barrel up and against the movement range
of Fawkes' thumb. He didn't quite let go, so she rammed her elbow into
his chest a few times, just below the diaphragm. That ought to knock the
breath out of anybody, she thought.
Then the cops were around her. One of them wrenched the weapon from Fawkes'
grip. Slowly, Scully stood, watching as Fawkes' body became a mass of
uncontrolled muscle spasms.
"Get an ambulance," she said.
"Already been called, Ma'am," said one of the officers.
Those words worried her. "Is Agent Mulder all right?" she asked.
Mulder himself answered her. "Never been better," he said, walking toward
her. She saw blood from electric cord lashes running down his face.
"Liar," Scully said.
He lifted his arms slightly in a wordless offer of comfort, and half
to her own surprise, she covered the last couple yards of ground herself
and accepted it.
"How do you know?" he asked, hugging her close. "Maybe I just have a
really miserable life."
"Oh, come on, it can't be that miserable. I'm in it." She'd meant the
words to be teasing, but she heard the shaky quality of her own voice.
"Yeah, all right," he said gently. "I'll give you that." He reached up
to stroke her hair.
F.B.I. Headquarters,
Washington, D.C.,
Two weeks later
Mulder walked into their office first thing in the morning waving a stack
of papers and grinning. This was usually not a good sign. "Hey, Scully,
guess who's buried in Fawkes' tomb?" he asked.
"General Grant?" she guessed.
"Nope, Hindley Fawkes. They ID'ed him from his prison dental records
taken back in the 40's."
"So the man we arrested in Baltimore wasn't the real Fawkes," she said.
Strangely, she felt both disappointed and relieved.
"I wouldn't say that," Mulder said. "The police lifted a beautiful set
of prints from the picture frame he touched at your mom's house. It was
him, no question. Even identical twins don't have completely identical
fingerprints, you know."
"But how can that be?" she asked.
"You told me that Fawkes kept saying, 'what's in a name,'" Mulder said.
"So I ran his name through a couple of search engines, and came up with
this." He handed her the stack of papers. The one on top had a picture
of two lab-coated men, both sporting brush cuts and clunky, black-framed
glasses that had been out of fashion since the 50's.
Scully walked over to the filing cabinet drawer where she kept her purse,
and pulled out the case containing her reading glasses. Settling them
on her nose, she accepted the papers and read the caption beneath the
picture: 'Drs. Edward Hindley and James Fawkes, circa 1951, inside the
Schelling Memorial Research Facility, Columbus, Ohio.' Scanning the length
of the downloaded article, Scully saw more and more of what she didn't
want to see. Accusations of experiments on human subjects. Possible connections
with Mengele and the Nazi scientists. "There's no byline on this article,"
she said, "the author doesn't cite any sources. These allegations are
disturbing, but how can we support them if we can't check the facts?"
"I don't expect to be able to use any of that as evidence in court. I
was hoping more to give an explanation and a sense of closure to you personally,"
he said.
"But this doesn't explain anything," Scully protested.
"I called up the Baltimore Police Department and they told me that as
soon as Fawkes was out of the hospital he was extradited to Ohio. That
struck me as odd, because the most serious crime he's been charged with,
the murder of Shawna Rogan, occurred in Pennsylvania," Mulder said.
"Maybe the Pennsylvania State Attorney General's office was lazy in filing
the paperwork?" Scully suggested, but she had to admit it didn't sound
likely.
"They were very upset when I implied that," Mulder said. "Furthermore,
the Ohio State Attorney General doesn't recall signing an extradition
order. He assumed Pennsylvania would take care of it."
"That is weird," Scully conceded.
"Any guesses as to what I turned up on the Schelling Memorial Research
Facility?" Mulder asked.
"Did it mysteriously burn down fifty years ago today, on a night *just
like this?*" she asked.
"No, but that would have been pretty cool," Mulder said. "Actually I
turned up almost nothing. Just the article you're holding and a rant by
some animal rights activists complaining that Schelling Memorial performs
unnecessarily cruel experiments on monkeys and lab rats. No byline on
that either, which is suggestive in itself."
"So you're telling me that since no responsible person admits to the
existence of this facility, then therefore it must exist," she said.
"You're catching on," he said.
Scully sighed and said, "All right, even if we assume that this person
calling himself Hindley Fawkes was spirited away to some classified research
facility in Ohio, that still doesn't explain how he returned from the
dead."
"I'm not sure he ever really was dead, at least not all of him. Haven't
they kept the cells of some lady's liver tumor alive in a petri dish for
thirty years or something?" he asked.
"Well, yeah, but cancer cells are different. They don't die," Scully
said.
"According to the print evidence, neither did Fawkes," Mulder countered.
"Maybe the good doctors at Schelling Memorial keep a cellular backup copy
of Fawkes around. An instant killer, just add growth hormones. That kind
of capability would be worth the risk to so many government agencies.
Can you imagine what the CIA would do with a guy who can effectively walk
fully armed through any airport in the world?"
Scully found she could, and that she didn't like the idea. "But he claimed
to have the original Fawkes' memories," she said.
"Memories are stored as brain chemicals and synaptic connections, and
it's Fawkes' brain they'd be interested in reproducing. I mean, sure,
you could clone his body, but why bother? You'd just have another short,
sort of Italian- looking guy. If you wanted one of those, you could just
sponsor an Al Pachino look-alike contest," Mulder said.
"Fawkes didn't look like Al Pachino," Scully said.
"Well, it doesn't matter. That's what I suspect happened, and I thought
you might want to know," he said.
"Thank you for doing the research," Scully said, suddenly realizing she
was acting ungrateful. "I think my mom would like a sense of closure,
even if the explanation is weird."
"How is she doing?" Mulder asked.
"She's fine. She's back in her house, although my brother wanted her
to stay with him. Bill's really all right, you know," she added. "I mean,
sure, he's kind of bossy, but to him, I'll always be his kid sister. He
feels a strong sense of responsibility for his family, especially since
my dad died."
"I don't have a problem with your brother," Mulder said. "When you're
worried about someone important to you it can make you a little . . .
squirrely. I pulled a gun on Cancer Man outside my mom's hospital room,
once. Hell, I wanted to strangle Fawkes for threatening you."
Scully smiled a little. "Thank you," she said again. "By the way, I got
you something." She walked over to where she'd hung her coat and pulled
a rubber ball out of the pocket. She tossed it to him, and when it hit
his hands it lit up.
"All right!" he said. "Does this mean I've been a good little Federal
Agent after all?"
"Only in comparison to your performance as a pizza delivery boy," she
said.
"You mean you're not supposed to throw the pizza box at the customer
and then handcuff them? That's what always happens when I order pizza,"
he said.
"That sounds like an entirely different kind of service to me, Mulder,"
Scully said.
"So that's why they charge so much," Mulder said. He flicked off the
lights and bounced the ball on the floor a few times. In the pitch dark,
the red strobe had an eerie, otherworldly quality. "I knew there was a
reason they gave me an office without windows," he said.
Skinner picked that moment to walk into their office. "What the hell?"
he asked.
Mulder made use of his eminent powers of distraction by tossing the ball
at Skinner and saying, "Think fast."
Skinner did, and caught it. "You know, the twisted thing is that this
is closer to what I expect when I come down here, rather than seeing Mulder
filing reports and Scully going on about undead child killers." He reached
over and turned on the light again. "Somebody," he said, looking pointedly
at Mulder, "has been leaving strange notes in my mailbox about signs of
the coming 'End Times.' I believe they're supposed to include dryers regurgitating
lost socks and attractive young women coming forward to confess that they
have not slept with any prominent members of the Democratic Party."
"Imagine that," Mulder said, the very picture of wide-eyed innocence.
"Anyway, I thought I'd let you two know that you did a good job. I don't
know why or how you knew to pick Fawkes as a suspect, Agent Scully, and
to be honest, I don't think I want to know. But you probably saved the
lives of a lot of kids. No one else would have thought to check the print
card of a guy who'd apparently been dead for fifty years," Skinner said.
"'Apparently?'" Mulder asked. "Don't tell me you think that this was
the original Hindley Fawkes. He'd be 86 years old by now."
Skinner gave him a sharp look. "Don't push it, Agent Mulder," he said.
"I have no opinion on who or what Fawkes actually was. I'm just glad you
stopped him. This is not an official commendation, by the way. It's all
very . . . off the record."
"We understand, sir. And thank you," Scully said.
Once the Assistant Director was gone, Mulder stood looking at the door
for a moment. "We blew him off and did exactly what he told us not to
do, and he told us we did a good job," he said. "Scully, it is
the end of the world."
THE END