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During his early morning
run Mulder enjoyed autumn. The dawn mist
clung more tenaciously under motley colored trees. The sun poured
a whiter gold over the landscape. He smelled the loamy smell
of
the world replenishing itself. Where the earth tipped away from
the sun, death transformed living plants into more earth. Fall
sent out an annual reminder that everything is on loan from the
cosmos.
The story of summer
rustled across the drying grass, recorded and
lost in thousands of crunchy, curled leaves.
It wasn't a summer
he wanted to remember anyway. Some of it he
couldn't. What remained he could have spared---the sensation
of
his skull exploding with random electrons, a throat raw from
screaming, a body bruised from flailing in seizure or too many
intramuscular injections of antipsychotics. Then there was the
long, slow climb back to a precarious stability.
Today was Friday. Scully
would be in the office. If he focused on
the little things, the minute by minute small pleasures, he found
himself at the end of the day before he knew it.
After the run his muscles
relaxed into an agreeable, slightly
sore lassitude. His shower was hot and skin-tingling. There would
be aromatic coffee to drink in the car. At work he could watch
Scully prepare the final report on the Exsanguinated Cows of
Mahem County. The PC screen gave a bluish cast to her face. She
was so pretty, so serious.
He'd ask her matter-of-factly
today, prepared with a witty retort
if she refused. Then it would be over with, one way or the other.
Nothing to dread and something nice or nicer to look forward
to.
At noon he left the
office to pick up lunch. The hot peppers and
pungent garlic of his Szechuan Eggplant routed the tart, delicate
scent of Scully's kiwi and chicken. He wasn't too proud to
influence her decision in his favor with offers of hot food.
He
had too much integrity to pretend he didn't want his usual, even
if she did dislike the strong, lingering food smells.
When the cartons had
been cleared away he linked his hands behind
his head and gazed up at the ceiling. He was working for an air
of relaxed contemplation. Scully looked up when he leaned back,
aware that he was about to say something. Her face was unworried,
free of that concerned, pitying look he hated so much. This might
go very well.
"Sunday night
is Samhain, Scully. I'm sure you're well acquainted
with its legends."
"Hmm. Well, there's
one that warns there'll be consequences if
you don't have enough chocolate on hand. Toilet paper streamers
will manifest themselves in your trees"
"That's been proven
so many times it's considered a scientific
fact. There's another one that hasn't been sufficiently tested.
Everyone agrees that the dead walk the earth that night. What
most people don't know is that they can also see the ghosts of
people who will die during the next twelve months. For a little
while the past, present and future share the same world."
"So, you might
see yourself," she instantly rejoined. Trust
Scully to go straight to the heart of the matter with a sharp
instrument.
"I prefer to think
I won't. I propose it in the spirit of
scientific inquiry. The legend says that the shades of
parishioners who will die during the next year walk through their
church at midnight. Do you want to come with me to test the
theory?"
Scully tipped her head
a little to the side, and looked
thoughtful. "I promised to help Mom give out the Beggar's
Night
treats. She doesn't like opening the door to strangers when she's
alone at home. That's on Sunday night in her neighborhood. But
it's over long before midnight."
"Well, I don't
want to interfere with your family's plans . . . ."
He'd learned not to
joke about other kinds of social
engagements.
Scully smiled tightly.
"Mom won't mind if I leave when the kids
have stopped coming."
His grin reached out
from deep inside and took control of his
face. "Maybe your Mom can pick you up and bring you to her
house.
I'll come by and get you there. Do you still go to St. John's?
I
can get the keys. I'll tell them we got word of a plan by a local
coven to break in and say a Black Mass."
Scully's smile disappeared.
"I belong to St. Dymphna's now. Go
ahead and try. Father Giles is in his own little world. I don't
know if there are witches in it."
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After he met the priest
Mulder understood what she meant. He left
his number on Father Giles' answering machine many times on
Saturday and received no return call. On Sunday morning he drove
to the rectory. Confused but amiable, the aged pastor gave him
the electronic code to the new security system within fifteen
minutes of his arrival. Before he left, Mulder took the
precaution of testing it.
The gray, granite-faced
church was at least a hundred years old.
Its twin towers reared up in the approved gothic manner. In spite
of its pastor's retreat into senility, or maybe because of it,
St. Dymphna's had a timeless quality that transcended the
mundane. The nondescript auditoriums that now passed for churches
embraced the ordinary with calculated enthusiasm. This church
made no concessions to relevance. It stood in proud refusal to
change with the times. Mulder imagined white-robed Druids
standing in their ancient groves with much the same pride, until
they were murdered or driven away by members of an upstart new
cult called Christianity.
Brilliant blue day
receded into the clarity and chill of a
perfect autumn night. The crescent moon looked as dry and worn
as
a fossil embedded in the hard black sky. Mulder took a jug of
cider and a bag of doughnuts from the car before he approached
the Scully home. He noticed that the glowing jack-o-lantern on
the porch had a strange shape. It was elongated instead of round,
with a slight twist in the middle. Its grin had a touch of the
lugubrious, wide under a long, broad-tipped nose. The eyes tilted
a little at the corners.
Mulder started as he
stepped onto the porch and a chorus of tiny,
electronic voices twittered in his ears. Someone had hung a
multitude of sound-sensitive, talking decorations around the
doorway. The small, senseless din recalled the weight of
thousands of mental matrices pressing against his own, conducting
shrill sorties into his brain. He rang the doorbell and tried
not
to make a sound. That would set them off again. The decorations,
not the voices in his head. They were gone for good, he reminded
himself firmly.
Maggie Scully answered
the door dressed like a gypsy. Her
ordinarily pale skin had a ruddy, dusky tone suited to her
fortune teller's garb.
"Hello Fox. I
see you're going around as James Dean this year,"
she greeted him.
She jokingly offered
him a goodie bag, and accepted the cider and
doughnuts he held out in turn. The lamps were turned off and
only
a few candles lit the front room. Apparently the Scullys worked
as hard at Halloween as they did at other holidays. Maggie
directed him toward the hallway.
"Dana's in the
kitchen. She has to take off her makeup. I know
it's silly, but when the children were little we got into a
tradition of dressing up on Halloween to hand out the treats."
She smiled self-consciously. "As you get older you start
to value
family and tradition more. On holidays like this I really wish
I
lived closer to my grandchildren . . . . Is it still nice and
clear out there?" she asked quickly.
"Very clear and
cold," he answered, moving toward the candlelight
coming from the kitchen.
Scully sat with her
back to the door. A black cape lay across the
chair next to her. She adjusted a makeup mirror with her left
hand, while she dipped a tissue into a jar of cream with her
right.
Mulder thought she
must have heard him come in. He didn't want to
scare her badly. He just wanted to see his self-possessed partner
jump a tiny little bit when his face loomed over her shoulder
in
the mirror.
At the sudden apparition
her elbow sent a plate of apple slices
crashing to the floor.
Mulder was the more
startled of the two, and cruelly punished for
his childish prank. The face he saw in the mirror was white as
hospital linen, with shadows like bruises around the eyes,
darkness like hollows in the cheeks. It was the face Scully had
worn while she lay dying of cancer, taken to its logical
conclusion.
His heart seemed to
stop with the effort of pumping slush instead
of hot blood through his veins. He stepped backward so fast he
stumbled into the kitchen wall, bringing down a plaque that
proclaimed "A messy kitchen is a happy kitchen."
Scully jumped up and
dropped the tissue. She advanced on him, a
death's head drawn into the familiar look of pity and concern.
His fumbling fingers found the light switch before she reached
him. The artifice of makeup was revealed.
"Are you feeling
all right, Mulder?" she asked anxiously.
"Better than you
look," he returned shakily.
She put her hand up
to her cheek and a pink grin split the
whiteness. "It serves you right for trying to scare me,"
she
said. "It's lucky I didn't knock one of the candles over.
Anyway,
I thought you liked ghosts."
"Some ghosts haunt
better than others."
"Did something
break?" Maggie called from the front room.
"I broke a plate,
Mom. I'll have it cleaned up in a minute,"
Scully called back.
Maggie walked in briskly.
"Never mind. I'll clean it up. You and
Fox go wait in the front room in case there are more trick-or-
treaters." She took a paper plate out of the cupboard and
shook
onto it a few of the doughnuts Mulder had brought. "Here.
Have
some of these."
They sat on the sofa
and Mulder ate two doughnuts while Scully
wiped off her ghastly makeup. The doorbell rang three times.
Two
Queen Amidalas, a Jedi master, a Darth Maul, a ghost and a
skeleton received handfuls of goodie bags from a generous-minded
Mulder. As he turned from the door the third time he recognized
something.
"This is normal,
isn't it?" Mulder asked. "Sitting here on
Halloween and eating doughnuts while we wait for trick-or-
treaters?" He thought it must be, but it wouldn't hurt to
check
with Scully.
She looked at him for
several seconds before she replied. "Yes,"
she answered gently. "But don't let's forget what we're
going to
do later."
"We don't have
to do it. I don't care if we do." He realized he
really didn't care. Maybe it was all an elaborate scheme hatched
by his lizard brain to secure Scully's company outside of working
hours.
"Are you getting
cold feet?" she teased.
"Me? Spooky Mulder?
Please."
"Here you are."
Maggie entered with two steaming mugs on a tray.
"Cider mulled with cinnamon sticks."
Mulder loved the heated
spiciness of the cinnamon, but the cider
got painfully sweet before he reached the bottom of the cup.
"Why
don't you have a doughnut, Scully?" he suggested.
"I'm not that
fond of doughnuts."
"Some of these
then?" he asked, after he swallowed the last of
his cider. He held out a bowl of bite-sized chocolate candy bars.
"I shouldn't eat
that stuff. I'll get fat. You didn't like me
when I was fat," she stated, with a hint of challenge in
her
voice.
"When were you
fat?" he inquired with a puzzled look. "I remember
when you were rounder and softer---I mean you looked softer,"
he
added hastily. He'd better quit talking right now. There were
several reasons he shouldn't have said that. One reason was the
mindlessly hopeful stirring in his groin when he considered the
question of Scully's softness. Another was the possibility she
would conclude her past self had been insulted.
Or her present self.
She had been softer when she was younger.
That was before life had worn her to a whisper thin edge, like
a
brittle blade too often sharpened.
The moment to protest
that he'd always liked her had already
passed. At least she didn't seem upset. This was a good time
to
change the subject.
"That's a weird
looking jack-o-lantern on the porch."
"I carved it myself,"
she informed him with pride in her voice.
"Oh. I guess the
pumpkins were kind of picked over by the time
you got to the store."
"Mulder, they
had hundreds of perfectly shaped, round pumpkins.
All of them alike, very uninteresting, very uninspiring. That
one
appealed to me because it was different."
"Well, it's certainly
interesting."
Maggie appeared in
the doorway with her hands on her hips. "Dana
honey, it's nine thirty. Trick-or-treating was supposed to end
at
eight-thirty. I don't think we're going to get any more kids.
I'm
going to take a shower and get ready for bed. You're welcome
to
stay as long as you like. Just be sure you lock up."
"That's OK. We're
just getting ready to leave. You can lock the
door after us," Scully replied hastily. She rose swiftly
from the
couch and passed by her mother to get her coat from the hall
closet.
Mulder turned to Maggie
to say good-bye. As usual, it was an
awkward moment for him. He thought there must be some polite
form
that would cover "I'm still sorry about your dead daughter
and
lost grandchildren," but he hadn't found it yet.
It was too bad he couldn't
ask his own mother. She managed to
come up with stunning banalities suitable for the most extreme
emotional situations.
"Thanks for the
hot cider," he said.
"Don't mention
it, Fox. Thanks for bringing it."
Mulder wondered if
Maggie sometimes searched for the empty
courtesy that contained secret code for "Please don't get
Dana
killed."
"Good night, Mom,
I love you." Scully gave her mother a hug, and
then they were outside in the cold dark.
Maggie must have turned
off the decorative chatterers. Mulder
enjoyed the silence.
The moon had a mellower
look now---more like a piece of honeycomb
than a chip of stone.
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Traffic was almost
non-existent. It was still a forty-five minute
drive to the church from Maggie's house. Mulder was curious.
"When did you
stop going to St. John's Church?" Mulder asked.
"It's been more
than a year."
"St. Dymphna's
is a long drive from your apartment and from your
Mom's house," he remarked.
"Yes."
"I wouldn't have
thought you'd choose Father Giles as your
priest. He seems a little . . . ."
"Out of it?"
she finished for him. "Half the time he starts the
mass in English and finishes it in Latin."
"Why is he still
running a parish in his condition?" Mulder asked
frankly.
"There's a priest
shortage, Mulder. If St. John's wasn't the
archbishop's pet parish it wouldn't have two priests in
residence."
Apparently Scully didn't
want to discuss her decision to attend
another church. He knew it was time to change the subject again.
"I heard a funny
story from Langly last week. He told me he, um,
browsed some confidential files on the Vatican network. There
was
a draft of a report to the Pope on aliens. No, it's true,"
he
added, sensing skepticism in her continued silence. "The
Pope
appointed a commission to study the impact of an extraterrestrial
visitation on the Roman Catholic Church. You'll never guess the
focus of the report."
"OK, I'll bite.
They laid out a process for determining if the
aliens had souls."
Mulder shook his head.
"They debated
whether the aliens would be redeemed by Christ's
sacrifice."
"Nope," Mulder
said, with as little gloating as possible in his
voice.
"They discussed
how the concept of original sin would relate to
extraterrestrials."
"No, you're getting
colder," he replied, allowing a little
triumph to sneak into his voice.
"I give up,"
Scully admitted. "I can't think of anything more
fundamental to Catholicism."
He proceeded enthusiastically
with his story. "The commission
decided the first day that aliens were fair game for conversion.
They devoted the next thirteen days to the problem of sexing
extraterrestrials. They're pretty worried about inadvertently
ordaining females or performing same sex marriages."
"You're kidding,"
Scully said in a flat voice.
Mulder let himself
go. "Langly swore it was genuine," he crowed
gleefully.
"Yes, it's probably
true," she sighed unexpectedly.
At the next stoplight
Mulder swiveled his head to look at her.
She wasn't playing the game. They'd been sparring and she sounded
as though a blow had connected.
She sat with her eyes
cast down, her hands folded neatly in her
lap. He knew what he had to do. Change the subject again. At
need, he could always hold forth.
"It's hard for
us to understand how clear it was to the ancient
Celts that the past, present and future mixed it up tonight.
They
saw an endless cycle of seasons based on the solar year. It made
perfect sense to them that the structure of the old year
dissolved into chaos and the new year coalesced out of the
disorder. During the process they were outside time, and every
point inside time was equally accessible. For linear thinkers
like us that makes no sense."
"The never-ending
story," Scully mused. Then she laughed without
humor. "The symbol for it is the serpent swallowing its
tail,
isn't it? The Oroborous. I carry it around with me. You'd think
it would remind me to not to repeat past mistakes."
Her sucker punch jabbed
wickedly into Mulder's unguarded heart.
If Scully had gone out for another walk on the wild side with
someone like Ed Jerse, he didn't want to hear about it. He
couldn't find a safe topic tonight. "Repeat mistakes?"
he echoed
reluctantly.
"You want to know
why I switched parishes, don't you?" she asked.
No, not anymore. But
it wasn't exactly fair to tell her to shut
up about it now. She didn't wait for an answer.
"I had another
chance to show what a bad judge of character I am.
Do you remember Father Gregory and Dara Kernoff?"
Of course Mulder remembered.
He hated those cases where Scully
mixed her superstitions up with unexplained phenomena. She'd
told
him about the seraphim and the nephilim as defiantly as though
she were defending a secret vice. When her religion was involved
she lost all perspective.
"Father McCue
asked me to look into that as a favor. He didn't
believe me when I told him what happened He said I was imagining
things. But I talked about it to Father Schumann, the assistant
pastor, in confession. He was very understanding. I made him
my
regular confessor after that. He always spent a lot of time
talking to me, getting to know me as a person, asking me to
explain things. I thought he understood.
"Then one day
Mom called me. She told me Father Schumann had
visited her and tried to persuade her to have me committed for
observation. He told her I was clearly delusional, probably
schizophrenic, and likely to continue to deteriorate without
medical intervention."
"Oh no. Oh no.
Oh no." Mulder found himself repeating the phrase
and shaking his head mechanically. He felt a thousand conflicting
things. Long ago he might have taken a mean satisfaction in
seeing his complacent partner gagging on a taste of his daily
fare. Disillusionment. Disappointment. Humiliation. Betrayal.
Loss. It had been a long time since he believed she was truly
complacent, or he could stand to see her suffer.
But what did she expect
from an archaic institution that had
never lived up to its advertising? Still, he ought to call on
Father Schumann and show him what a really crazy person looked
like.
Scully continued talking.
"I'm just lucky
that Mom knew better. She told him I was as sane
as anybody. But can you imagine what he did? To persuade her
he
told her things I'd told him in the confessional, like seeing
Emily and the devil in that church. He broke his promise!"
He heard all the pain
of a child's first experience with
treachery in her voice. How had she managed to retain so much
innocence?
"I went to Father
McCue. He promised to talk to Father Schumann.
I could tell Father McCue wasn't impressed. He put me off with
excuses. 'We worry about the mental health of our parishioners.
Father Schumann just got carried away. It wouldn't hurt you to
talk to a therapist, would it?' That's what he said. A priest
had
broken the seal of the confessional and he didn't think it was
any big deal! In grade school they told us a priest would die
before he'd betray a confession."
"I'm sorry, Scully.
But it doesn't surprise me. How could he
understand what you've been through? Parish priests learn to
answer a question with a question, like any good little
counselor, and to watch out for psychos. They're just people."
"God's supposed
to guide them," she said, in a voice so low he
could barely hear.
"Then I'd say
God's long overdue for an independent audit of his
managerial performance."
She didn't reply. Mulder
knew he hadn't convinced her. If he had
any sense he wouldn't try to discuss religion with her. The faith
tracks in her brain were laid down in babyhood. They were buried
too deep to share a junction with a rational train of thought.
He
should pat her hand and be glad she had a source of comfort,
illusory as it was. Perhaps hope couldn't exist without illusion.
The combined area of his own blind spots probably stole half
his
field of vision.
Scully's next deep
breath had a telltale shake in it that made
him feel as though he'd drop kicked a kitten behind a junk yard
fence.
"Father Giles
understands me. No matter what I tell him he always
gives me a penance of five Hail Marys and tells me I'm a good
girl," she said, with a sad little laugh.
"Well, that proves
it. He does understand you. You are a good
girl."
He pulled into the
church parking lot thankfully as he spoke. His
swift exit from the car left no opportunity for a reply. In long
strides he easily beat her to the main entrance, where he found
the electronic lock with his flashlight. Above and around them
the narthex extended into uncertain darkness. Scully used her
own
flashlight to search out a light switch. Mulder stopped her with
his hand over hers before she could flick it on.
"We shouldn't
ruin the atmosphere by turning on electrical
lights. It might discourage the spirits."
"But they used
to build bonfires out in the fields to draw the
dead away from the villages. Light might attract them,"
she
objected.
"Not electric
light. We need candles." He pushed at the heavy
door to the nave. It swung easily on its hinges with a noise
like
a 'thwap.'
A very dim light from
the sky crept in at the highest windows.
The dark made the arched roof seem miles away. In the sanctuary
one small light burned. Every faint sound echoed hollowly from
wall to wall. The gloom obscured any details.
"There are candles,"
Scully acceded, swinging her flashlight's
beam from one side of the church to the other. They walked down
the aisle to the left side of the chancel. Ranks of unlit white
votive candles rose on an elaborately worked metal stand in front
of a marble Virgin. "You're supposed to make a donation,"
she
said, pointing to a slotted box at the front.
Mulder counted six
twenty-dollar bills out of his wallet. "Is
this enough?" he asked, displaying them in the beam from
Scully's
light.
She gave him a startled
look. "For all of them. Yes. I think so."
He stuffed the money
into the opening and took a thin wooden
stick from the little bucket of fine sand beside the candles.
Several books of matches lay on the donation box. Mulder lit
the
end of the stick and offered it to Scully. "Here. You do
the
honors. I'll bet you always wanted to light all the candles you
could reach." At her quick smile he responded lightly. "Don't
ever let them say Agent Mulder doesn't know how to show a lady
a
good time."
While Scully methodically
lit candles he memorized the effect of
their gentle glow on her pale skin and clear eyes. When she
finished, the array generated heat like a small campfire. They
took seats in the front row of benches as though they huddled
close for the warmth. The flickering lights reached the most
prominent features of the nave, leaving black corners and
encroaching shadows all around them.
What Mulder noticed
first were the eyes. Each pillar wore an
angel head with wings pinned unreliably to its neck. They peered
across the aisle at each other from under thick bangs. Windows
set with stained glass like gems depicted swollen cherubs casting
doubtful glances at ecstatic saints. A Christ Child bristling
with satin, lace, and flashing jewels stared woodenly toward
the
back of the church. Behind the altar the Madonna rolled her eyes
to the heavens. A bloodily realistic Jesus on the cross turned
a
suffering look earthward.
The long-suffering
dark eyes inspired an imaginary dialogue with
their owner: Let's see. Three hours on the cross ended by a spear
to the heart. Would you trade it for weeks of torture in a
boxcar? How about watching your half-human three-year-old die
of
a necrotizing tumorous infection? No deal, huh. Could I interest
you in a commitment to days of holding open house for the entire
world inside your skull? What's that you say? You'll stick with
the cross? Good choice. Of course I knew you were smart. You
opted to take on the punishment for the sins of the world---not
the guilt.
He wondered what conversations
Scully thought she carried on with
Jesus. Perhaps she contented herself with the simple
satisfactions of ritual, just as he turned on the TV
automatically, knowing all the time there would be nothing good
to watch.
"Uh, Scully, you
can go ahead and pray if you want to," he said
in a low voice. He gestured toward the kneeler folded up in front
of them.
"Thanks. I went
to mass this morning. I'll just sit with you."
She looked heavy-eyed
and cozy in her long wool coat. If he were
really lucky she'd go to sleep beside him. He'd have the perfect
opportunity to put his arm around her and allow her head to find
a natural pillow on his chest. When she woke he'd tell her she
snored, or drooled, or whispered sweet nothings to Frohike in
her
sleep. She'd never suspect that he sat and tried to take shallow
breaths so his movement wouldn't wake her up. He dreaded,
treasured and hungered for such fleeting moments of contact.
Checking his watch
quietly he found it was ten forty-five. If he
concentrated, he could sit without fidgeting. The extreme
jumpiness that followed his breakdown was subsiding into a
manageable restlessness.
Unfortunately, now
that he was forced to sit still and think, he
had nothing to do but question his reasons for bringing them
out
here on a wild ghost chase. He knew Scully didn't expect to see
anything. That haunted house last Christmas terrorized her.
Clearly she believed herself safe in this place. She had no
qualms about drifting toward sleep an hour before the supposed
arrival of disembodied souls.
Did he really expect
to see anything?
>From here his motivation
seemed laughably obvious. He came up
with this pathetic excuse for an X-file so he could pretend to
be
normal---normal for him, that is. His prolonged recovery still
didn't allow a strenuous trip across country to hunt down
mythical wild creatures or human monsters. So he convinced
himself there was a mystery worth investigating in his own
backyard. Scully felt sorry for him and played along.
She had drowsed off,
unconsciously leaning into him for support.
It was time to take a chance on easing his arm behind her. Church
pews made this much easier than individual car seats. Pews
offered no support above the back, making his chest much more
attractive as a resting place. He rocked sideways a little,
bringing his arm around her shoulders, angling himself into the
corner of the pew. Yes, he admitted to himself, this eventuality
had occurred to him when he let Scully precede him into the seat.
Last summer her steely
persistence and hard-won experience saved
his life. Her vulnerability in his arms left him awed and
uncertain. With her soft, light hair mussed across his jacket
he
could picture himself drawing the strands between his fingers.
He
could even imagine waking her with a touch on her cheek and then
brushing his lips across hers. What eluded him was a vision of
her reaction. In his mind he tried numerous expressions on her
face---shock, disgust, horror, hilarity, contempt. None of them
really fit. Scully cared for him. It would probably be a look
of
deep pity.
His imagination had
the agility to leap past this discontinuity
to a scene of her writhing beneath him, frenzied with lust under
his hands and mouth. But he could never bridge the gap
satisfactorily with anything other than that disheartening return
of sympathy for love.
Of course he hadn't
really believed there was anything to the
folklore. He'd never heard the story told about an American
church. There weren't even any rumors that targeted St. Dymphna's
as a likely location for uncanny events.
It was so quiet now.
And chilly. Almost unnaturally chilly. His
leather jacket seemed to be conducting cold to his skin instead
of trapping warmth. The stone floor sucked the heat out of his
feet and legs. A careful peek at his watch showed it was only
eleven. An hour to go before he could leave with honor satisfied.
There was a tiny sound
from beyond one of the doors leading off
the altar. It could have been the crack of a board expanding
or
shrinking with a temperature change. At the edge of audibility
something rumbled below the floor with a drawn-out boom, like
a
balky water pipe.
If Scully didn't wake
up before midnight he'd tell her a tall
tale about what happened.
"I was sitting
there debating about who'd win in a mudfight---
Wonder Woman or Cat Woman---when I noticed a sort of fog drifting
in at a window. The window that shows the unfortunate woman
holding her eyeballs on a plate. A little whirlpool of mist
swirled around slowly. More and more was seeping in. It started
moving faster, until it looked like it was boiling. Then, all
of
a sudden, it flung itself up like a snake striking. The mass
of
it stretched out about ten feet and then it snapped back into
this ordinary looking geezer in pajamas. He looked through me
like I was the ghost.
"Then he glided
reeeal slooowly on a path straight toward us. His
body or whatever it was passed right through the pews. I wondered
what was going to happen. If he didn't change his path, he'd
go
through us too, and I didn't much like that idea. He got closer
and closer. He body looked solid when he wasn't halfway through
a
bench, but he was too pale. I knew he couldn't be alive. What
could I do? There wasn't time to wake you up and run, and I
couldn't leave you there alone. When he got to be about a foot
away I held up my hand to signal 'Stop.' Instead of stopping
he
went . . . ."
This was where he'd
jump forward at Scully and shout "Boo!" He
remembered getting a wonderful reaction from Samantha with a
story like that. It was on the Halloween before she'd been taken.
His jaw had been sore for days. It was true Sam hadn't been
trained to deliver killing blows. He might not want to jump too
close to Scully when he yelled.
Or he could tell Scully
he saw her in the ghoulish procession.
This was her parish, after all.
A more awful, stupid
joke didn't exist. He'd give a lot to be
able to unthink that thought. The dead face he saw earlier in
the
mirror mocked him from the back of his mind.
An almost subliminal
vibration thrummed through the wood of the
pew they sat in.
The legends didn't
imply a change in the material world.
According to folklore time shattered around the onlooker like
a
crystal lattice tapped by a hammer. The rest of creation stayed
intact. Mulder wondered if he should expect a change in his
surroundings.
Then he remembered
that nothing was going to happen, and
attributed the movement to a passing truck.
The candles had created
a haze. Anything he focused on wavered
slightly when viewed through the thicker atmosphere. It struck
him as strange that the smokiness seemed denser around the
windows, when any crannies that let fresh air through should
disperse it.
The story was a ridiculous
mish-mash of Celtic superstition and
Christian attempts to assert control over the old gods. Churches
were dragged into it at a late date when the priests came up
with
the feast of All Souls.
What if he actually
did see Scully at midnight in a parade of
ghostly shapes passing through the Church? If he wasn't careful
he'd work himself into a state where he'd imagine something like
that. Maybe he wasn't ready even for this baby-step back into
the
field.
He remembered what
it was like two years ago to believe that only
days of life were left to Scully. It felt like the old doom of
being pressed to death. The passing of each hour added another
stone to the weight slowly crushing his chest. Eventually he
would no longer be able to breathe.
If there were only
months left to them, he didn't want them
poisoned by the despair of knowing the limit. He needed illusion
and hope. Hell, even if all they had left was the drive back
to
her apartment tonight, he wanted the pure, innocent experience.
Relax, he instructed
himself. Probably it would be best to leave
before midnight. He just had to figure out a face-saving way
to
do it.
The door at the back
of the church swung open with its
distinctive 'thwap.'
He turned his head
as far as he could without waking Scully, but
he couldn't see the door. Steps came down the main aisle slowly,
shuffling and scuffling as though the feet were hobbled. Mulder
had a wild vision of a livid corpse hampered by a clinging pall,
compromised by disintegrating limbs.
When he saw from the
corner of his eye that it was only Father
Giles he almost blacked out from the drop in his blood pressure.
The small, shriveled figure of the priest wandered uncertainly
toward the east transept, where the murk behind the pillars
swallowed him. He'd never even glanced at the blaze of candles
or
the two agents sitting at the front of the church.
Moments later Mulder
sensed a rustling presence above and behind
them. This time he moved as much as necessary to peer up into
the
inky spaces of the choir loft. He thought he could make out a
slight movement at the very back of the balcony area. It was
so
dark he couldn't have seen anything if the form hadn't glimmered
with a hint of iridescence. Or perhaps it was a reflection.
When he turned back
he noted that Scully still slept. The
illumination around them had changed, shifting subtly from the
yellow toward the blue end of the spectrum. Mulder watched in
fascination as the sapphire heart of each candle flame expanded,
and its golden crown diminished proportionately. The skin on
his
whole body seemed to draw up tightly, as though he'd been dowsed
in an icy astringent. The back of his neck felt exposed to unseen
eyes.
It was only eleven-thirty.
He still had time to plan a graceful
exit strategy.
Unless ghosts didn't
recognize the standard time zones.
He shook Scully's shoulder
and then sat her up straight with
brusque movements.
"C'mon Scully.
It's time to go."
Mulder stood in the
aisle before she'd thoroughly waked up. The
main door seemed to beckon for his attention while he scrambled
for options. If he looked at the door it would certainly open.
He
didn't know what would walk in or what might find its way down
from the choir loft. If they stayed here one more minute he would
find out.
They'd have to walk
through the somber shadows behind the pillars
to reach the door in the west transept. It was the only door
he
wanted to risk.
"We'll go out
the side," he informed Scully, as he came close to
levitating her out of the pew with the vigor of his pull on her
arm.
"What's the hurry?"
she objected.
He ignored her question,
keeping a tight hold on her forearm with
his right hand. With his left he took out his flashlight and
turned it on. The beam made a direct path he could follow without
lifting his eyes from the floor. He steered them across the
church as urgently as if they were pedestrians defying rush hour
traffic. The clatter of their footsteps pleased him. It was
impossible to hear any other sounds.
Just before he let
go of Scully to open the door he stopped
abruptly. There was no keypad to enter a code. It might be locked
manually from the inside. At the same moment he registered the
little 'thwap' sound that signaled the opening of the main door.
At his hesitation Scully reached out casually and shoved the
side
door wide. He towed her through it with the firm purpose of a
parent removing a toddler from a cutlery display. Afterwards
Mulder didn't even remember descending the steps outside.
There was a gusty wind
now. The sliver of moon skidded recklessly
through a grid of white, backlit clouds. Mulder froze in
momentary panic when the muttering began in his head. Scully
took
one look at his face and began tugging him back toward the
church. He realized suddenly that the tremulous sighs he heard
were the movements of leaves stirring in the trees.
With careful control
he arranged a smile on his face. "Scully,
stop. Don't worry. I was just trying to remember if I deposited
my last paycheck. I have anxiety dreams about that."
She looked at him quizzically.
"Are you sure that's all?"
He reversed their direction
back to the parking lot, suppressing
his urge to pick her up and run to the car.
"Well, did you?"
she asked, refusing to be hurried.
"Did I what?"
he replied distractedly, unlocking the car doors as
they approached.
"Remember to deposit
your check," she rejoined.
"Oh, yes. No problem.
All taken care of. Let's get in out of the
wind."
He started the engine
while Scully fastened her seatbelt. Before
he put the car in gear he fussed with the clock settings. "This
clock is wrong," he complained, covering the display with
his
hand as he changed the numbers from 11:35 to 12:15.
"I guess I nodded
off. Did I miss anything?" Scully asked. She
gazed out at the church and gave an exclamation of surprise as
he
backed out of the parking space. "That's odd. The windows
showed
some light before. It looked like all the candles went out just
now."
He peeled out of the
parking lot with more acceleration than he
intended. His answer to her question was offhand.
"Nothing happened.
Except Father Giles popping in for a few
middle-of-the-night prayers. There are two possible
interpretations of the evidence. One is that the legend isn't
true. I think it's more likely that no one in your parish is
going to die this year."
She answered him with
a brief laugh.
They passed a brilliantly
lit billboard featuring a wolfman, a
bug-eyed alien and a cloud of bats. The text read, "Come
to the
Mad Hatter for your Halloween costumes."
Scully made a sound
so much like a giggle that Mulder couldn't
place it. He listened worriedly for more clues.
"You know something
Mulder? We own this holiday. It doesn't ask
anything we can't give. It doesn't have any baggage. For once
we
fit in because everyone around us is thinking about the
paranormal and the unexplained. We should celebrate it like this
every year."
"Maybe a cemetery
at midnight next time?" he played along.
"That might be
too cold. Let's make it a mausoleum and bring
stadium blankets."
"How about a sleeping
bag?" he suggested nonchalantly.
After a beat she responded
with another laugh. "I got an electric
blanket for Christmas last year. That would be more efficient
than a sleeping bag."
He thought she might
actually have enjoyed their outing. Maybe it
wasn't entirely an act of mercy on her part.
His improved mood lasted
until they opened Scully's door. The
face of her living room clock was clearly visible when she turned
on her lights.
"My clock only
shows ten past twelve. I wonder if the power went
out," she commented.
Mulder braced himself
to lie as he watched her check her own
watch.
"We must have
left the church at eleven-thirty."
"My watch must
be wrong," he said, frowning at his wrist
impatiently.
She surprised him by
seizing his hand and pushing his sleeve up
to look for herself.
"You didn't want
to stay until midnight," she accused. "You
should have woken me up and told me if you felt . . .
uncomfortable."
"Haven't the past
two months given you enough chances to play
keeper to my lunatic?" he asked, jerking away more roughly
than
he intended.
"I enjoyed tonight.
It was good to have you back."
The sincerity in her
voice brought him around to face her
immediately, too quickly. His own anxious face would have given
him away.
She had already figured
it out. "You were afraid you'd see me in
the church---my doppelganger, or ghost or whatever," she
asserted. "I didn't know you really believed in that legend.
I
don't believe in it."
"I don't know
if I believe in it either but . . . . Scully, I
wasn't thinking when I suggested going to your church. I couldn't
. . . I just couldn't." He moved toward the door, regretting
that
he had turned a fairly good evening into yet another
demonstration that he wasn't the man he used to be.
"Wait a minute.
I've got some cider and cinnamon sticks too." She
held out her hand to take his jacket.
He wavered. She smiled
firmly and moved between him and the door.
He bargained for some self-respect.
"How about decaf
coffee instead of cider. That stuff we had at
your Mom's---it was too much sweetness all at once," he
said with
a slight grimace.
Scully looked at him
thoughtfully. "Did you have anything to eat
all day before those doughnuts and that cider? Maybe you had
a
hypoglycemic mood swing."
"Thank you for
the twinkie defense, doctor. I plead a serious
drop in blood sugar. Unmanned by my own hostess gifts,"
he said
with heavy irony.
Ten minutes later Scully
served coffee, with a side of re-heated
pizza for Mulder. She seemed preoccupied with her thoughts. They
talked a little about Monday's schedule. Mulder sighed at the
prospect of another week at his desk with reports to review.
When he stood to go
Scully accompanied him to the door. As he
fished for his keys in his jacket pocket she took an oddly formal
stance in front of him. Setting her jaw, she bore into him with
her most determined stare. He could see her swallow hard before
she spoke.
"I think I should
tell you. Even though I don't believe the
story, I wouldn't have agreed to sit in your church tonight.
If
you had one. I just couldn't," she said.
He acknowledged her
self-revelation with the restraint they
always observed, in spite of the shining tears gathered in her
eyes.
"Thanks for telling
me," he returned. "Good night, Scully."
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End --Feedback Branwell
