Mulder, It’s Me

“I told you I was going to come ask you some questions about your husband Jim. I won’t take very much of your time.”

“Jim died,” she says bluntly. “They said it was his heart.”

“Yes, I know,” Mulder says, softening his tone. “And I’m truly sorry about your loss. I just have some questions to ask you that could help other people. If you open the door, I can, uh, show you my badge.”

The door widens at once, and Mulder sees who he’s talking to. She’s very thin, the bones in her face visible. Late thirties maybe, long dull blonde hair, unkempt. She looks like she has forgotten how to have feelings.

“It’s okay,” she says flatly. “I’ll help you. You don’t need to show me anything.”

***

“Jim and I met at singles group at church,” Malina says. She lifts a photo off of the end table to show him. “Here we are right after we started dating. Bowling Night. See?”

Mulder politely looks at the photo of Jim Knight with his arm around Malina in better times, lifting brightly colored marbled bowling balls for the camera. “You look very happy.”

“We were happy,” breathes Malina. “People worried, because there was an age difference. But we were always so happy.”

“Age difference?” Mulder studies the photo of the two of them.

“Only fourteen years. It bothered some of my friends, but it never bothered me. Because love is more important than numbers. Don’t you agree, Agent Mulder?”

Mulder lifts a shoulder noncommittally. “Did the age difference become an issue in your marriage?”

“No,” Malina says firmly. She looks at the photo in Mulder’s hand and her expression grows less certain. “At least … I don’t think it did.”

“Ms. Knight, I’m sorry to ask this,” Mulder says, watching her carefully, “but were there any difficulties in your marriage at the time he died?”

Malina’s lip trembles. “He needed some time,” she says. “A fishing trip. Some time away, to let us cool off.”

Mulder considers her wording. “He needed to cool off?”

“Jim could have a temper,” Malina says. “But it wasn’t anything serious, not really,” she adds. “He loved us. I know he did. Everyone could see it.”

Mulder walks to the mantel and picks up a large framed wedding photo. In that photo, Malina, dressed in white, has wrapped her arms around Jim’s neck and is beaming rapturously at him.

“You have a child?” Mulder says. His eyes roam over the photos on the mantel. Jim holding up a baby in overalls. Malina pregnant. Both of them swinging a toddler. “A son?”

“Our son Lyle,” Malina says, sounding like she’s behind a glass frame herself. “He’s seven.”

Mulder listens for a few seconds for any sounds in the house. “Where’s Lyle now?”

“He’s at my mom’s,” Malina says. “I…” She runs her fingers through her long blonde hair. “Well, I’m just not in a good place these days, since Jim. My mom is helping me out with Lyle, until I can get my head on straight.” Her eyes dart around anxiously, settling at last on the floor.

Mulder nods, pensively taking in her entire demeanor. She is, he’ll admit, not quite what he expected.

“They told me it was his heart.” Malina looks up with tears like ice shards all over her cheeks. “Do you think that someone killed Jim, Agent Mulder?” she says, her pitch rising. “Because yeah, our marriage wasn’t in great shape. Jim was unhappy. We were hoping to work it out. But I always, always loved him. I’d never have done something to hurt him. He’s the love of my life.”

The framed wedding photo is still in Mulder’s hand.

His world suddenly begins collapsing all around him as he sets it down carefully on the mantle.

“I think I understand you,” Mulder manages to say in a strange voice.

Malina loved her husband. Her heart was full of longing.

But it was Jim Knight’s heart that was stopped.

“Good,” Malina says. She wraps her arms around herself, nodding rapidly. “Good.”

Mulder staggers a little backwards, nearly tripping over the coffee table in the process.

Malina squints at him. “Are you okay?”

“I …” Mulder’s mind is flooded with terrible, terrible images, images that make him break out instantly into a cold sweat. “I’m so sorry… but I have to go. I need to get back to my hotel. Right now.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I realized that… it isn’t…” He breaks off, swallowing. “I’ll be in touch, Ms. Knight. Thank you.”

***

He’s walking so fast to the car, trying to dial Scully as he does, that his feet begin to slip under him on the ice. He has to stop and steady himself, extending his hand with his phone out for balance, cursing.

As soon as he can, he smacks the phone back to his ear. She’s not answering. “Pick up, Scully. Fucking pick up the phone.”

His foot slams on the gas, and he begins to tear too fast on icy country highways back to the Beacon Inn.

Please, he thinks, it might be pathetic, it might be absurd, but she’s my only light in dark places.

***

By the time he pulls back into the parking spot at the Inn, he’s shaking all over like he’s twelve again, like he never grew into the adult he resembles. He forces himself to be steady, to think clearly.

He rushes through the door, waving a distracted hand at Banoy behind the desk, and he races for the stairs, thumping up two and three at a time.

There’s no ghost woman waiting for him in the hall. No living woman either.

“Scully,” he shouts. He bangs on her door. “Scully,” he calls louder. He realizes he should have asked Banoy for an extra key. If she is in cardiac distress, every second will count. He could have asked Banoy to call for the hospital right away. He tries to remember how to do CPR; he thinks he can—

Scully, wearing her glasses and holding a stack of papers, opens her door with an amazed expression.

“Mulder,” she says calmly, “why the hell are you screaming in the hall?”

“Scully,” he breathes in relief, his eyes drinking her in. He wants to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight, but he knows he can’t, he shouldn’t.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I—” He realizes certain limits in what he can say. “Why weren’t you answering your phone?”

She scowls, walking over to the bedside table to pick her phone up. “I guess reception is spotty here,” she says. “I didn’t hear your call. Did something … happen?”

Mulder walks inside, his adrenaline still coursing. He feels like he may never be able to stop moving again. He paces a little back and forth to try to burn off his excess tension. “I was wrong,” he says. “Duncan was wrong. It can’t be that the ghost is targeting unrequited love. Because Malina Knight? Scully, that lady loved her husband. If anything, it was her love that was unrequited. Her feelings seem like they were stronger.”

Scully backs up to sit on the edge of the bed, giving him a quizzical look. “So now you think the ghost could be killing people who are the focus of unrequited love?”

“I don’t know,” Mulder says, throwing his hands up. His pulse is still racing. “I don’t know anything about the other victims.”

“And how do you know that Jim Knight wasn’t simply in unrequited love with someone else?” Scully says practically. “You know. With someone besides his wife.”

Mulder stops pacing mid-step.

“You did ask the wife whether she knew if there’d been infidelity, right?” Scully says. She looks incredulous at his blank expression. “You didn’t?”

“I didn’t have the opportunity to,” he says, rubbing his hand across his mouth. “To be honest, I got worried and came back fast.”

“Why?” she says sharply. “Why did you come back? Did you have some reason to think I might be in danger, too?”

Mulder feels like a caught schoolboy. “No,” he says quickly. “No. I came back because until we figure this out, I’m not sure this inn is safe for anyone. I’m just getting spooked, I guess.” He swallows. It was a weak save, but she doesn’t seem visibly perturbed. He studies her. “And everything’s been… as expected here?”

Scully takes a half second too long to answer. “Yes.”

There’s definitely something off in that answer, but he doesn’t dare press more. “What have you been doing?”

“I’ve been sitting here reading through your historical research,” she says. She points to some books stacked on the bedside table. “As well as the myth of Hero and Leander, and the famous poem about the myth by Christopher Marlowe.”

“‘Who ever loved, who loved not at first sight?’” Mulder quotes wearily.

“Right,” Scully says, picking up the poetry book with a sniff. “That line is silly. The poem is interesting. I wonder if Hero was familiar with it.”

“You don’t believe in love at first sight?”

“Oh, I might,” she says, flipping idly through the pages. “But I don’t think it’s the only way to love.”

“Yeah,” he says, “I think I agree with you about that.”

There is a tense, unbearable pause.

“So now we have deaths that may or may not be homicides, inflicted by a killer who may or may not be alive, targeting victims who may or may not be experiencing unrequited love,” Scully says, snapping the book shut suddenly.

Mulder walks over to examine the silhouette of the man above her dresser again. He reaches out his finger to trace the craggy outline of the man’s face over the glass. “Maybe Hero is drawn to longing of some kind, some kind of heartache. Maybe it doesn’t matter if the person is the subject or object of longing. Maybe it only matters if the person is in her proximity. Maybe it’s the wanting, the unresolved, that draws her.”

When he turns around, Scully looks prim and disapproving, crossing her arms.

“But what if—”

She’s interrupted by a knock on the door.

***

Scully, her arms still crossed tightly over her chest, purses her lips in dread at the closed door, making no move to get it.

“Scully?” Mulder prompts.

“Yes.”

She has absolutely no way to explain why she doesn’t want to answer the door, for the simple reason that she has no way to tell Mulder what she saw in the hallway before.

Not simply, not casually, anyway. It’s something she can’t easily explain with scientifically plausible language.

A figure that certainly appeared to look at her and beckon to her. There for five seconds, gone the next. A classic … ghost.

Admitting she had seen this—or that she thought she saw this, anyway, because even now she can’t rule out she was misled, deluded, mistaken—seems impossible just to say. Allowing these words to pass through her mouth is a Russian nesting doll of further implications.

Because what would telling Mulder she saw Hero communicate to him, exactly? What would she be tacitly admitting to? That she just deeply wants to see a dead woman because of her sister? That her subconscious hopes to be able to extend her reach beyond death?

That’s embarrassing enough, but then there is also what it could imply about her feelings, about a possible imbalance in emotional attachment towards her partner.

When he came rushing in like that, she thought he must have guessed. It’s the kind of thing he might do, with his frustratingly prescient mind. She thought he might have even guessed why she might see Hero, and rushed back to the Inn to save her from her embarrassing death by unrequited feelings.

But now she doesn’t think that’s the case. He’s not acting like he really knows anything is different. He’s just chaotic Mulder, who disappears one moment and shows up unexpectedly the next.

“Are you all right?” he says, staring at her with a quizzical expression.

“Sorry,” she says. “Yes, of course. Just tired.”

This is silly. You aren’t a jumpy teenager at a slumber party.

She forces herself to walk to the door and slowly opens it, steeling herself to see a woman standing there with an impossible lack of opacity, speaking nonsense to her about being her love. Instead, it’s Duncan and Banoy.

“Hey,” Duncan says, an expression of curious concern on his face. “We just wanted to check in. Banoy said Agent Mulder seemed to be experiencing some kind of emergency before?”

“Oh, yes— just a misunderstanding,” Mulder says quickly, walking to the door. “Everything’s fine now.”

“You’re sure?” Banoy looks him up and down suspiciously. “I almost called for an ambulance.”

“Yes,” Scully says. Her eyes move involuntarily to the space behind Banoy, darting up and down the hallway without thinking.

Duncan notices the direction of her gaze. “And you haven’t seen anything unusual, Agent Scully?” He raises an eyebrow. “Forgive the expression … but you look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

She’s keenly aware of Mulder’s eyes on her. “Do I?” Scully says with a tight smile. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a believer in ghosts.”

Of course she isn’t. Not only are they the usual phenomena beyond the reach of science, they fly in the face of her understanding of a loving and omnipotent God. Her God wouldn’t let souls be stranded, unhappily plaguing the living.

You know what you saw. And you know you should discuss it with Mulder.

“I see,” Duncan says. “Of course.”

“I’m sorry to worry you,” Mulder says.

“Well, I also wanted to mention that you’d asked about Gary and Pam, the couple that stayed here Halloween and said they saw Hero. I called Pam this afternoon, and she insisted they come up to see you. Said they’d drop by right after they get off work.”

“That should be soon,” adds Banoy. “They work at the ski lodge, and they said they’d be here before six.”

“Oh.” Mulder seems to perk up. “I’m very interested in speaking to them, actually. Maybe we should go downstairs and wait, Scully.”

She nods, twisting her mouth to mask her frustration. She wants to slow down, talk matters through with Mulder, find a way to broach the topic of ghosts in the hallway on her own terms.

“Let me grab a sweater,” she says instead.

***

Gary and Pam Kromkowski are both young, no older than twenty-five, both willowy and athletic. They stand in the lobby of the inn peeling off their coats, matching sky blue with the logo of a nearby ski lodge.

“We work at Frosty Ridge,” Pam explains to Scully, when she sees her eyeing the logos on the coats. “Gary’s an advanced ski instructor and I do the kids’ lessons.”

Gary flops onto one of the sofas with colored cushions in the lobby and rolls his head back. “Whew-ee. We’re pretty worn out—this is our busy season.”

“We appreciate you taking the time to come talk to us,” Scully says politely, glancing at Mulder, who is standing next to her, looking unhelpfully dazed.

“Oh, we had to,” Gary says earnestly. “After we found out you were looking into those people that died.”

“See, we could have died ourselves,” Pam says, plopping down next to Gary. “We were so close, weren’t we, babe? We said, we have to tell people what happened.”

Mulder looks like he is taking all that they’re saying extremely seriously. He scrambles to sit down across from the sofa and leans towards them, his forearms on his thighs. “Tell me what you mean.”

“The ghost,” says Gary, lowering his voice and looking around, like he thinks Hero might drift around the corner. He clasps Pam’s hand. “I had the idea it would be fun to spend Halloween here, see. We both like horror movies, so I thought… scary creepy old inn, right? Good place for a couple days away.”

“Perfect for Halloween,” Pam agrees.

“Okay,” Mulder says. He seems to be thinking something over. “And you two were … dating? Together?”

The couple looks at one another slyly. “Well, yes and no,” Pam says. “We were… uhhhh…” She giggles. “We were fucking around. But we hadn’t, like, had the talk, right?”

“Right,” Mulder says seriously, like he is considering and absorbing that concept. Scully wonders if Mulder has ever had “the talk” with a woman.

“So she goes downstairs to get our food,” Gary says, “and I am coming out of the shower, and holy shit, there’s a lady standing in our room. Not standing, floating. A ghost. Like, an actual ghost you can see through.”

“Hmm,” Mulder says, nodding. “What did the ghost do? Did she say anything?”

“She kinda stood there in her old-fashioned dress and she said… what was it, babe? ‘Come on, I love you,’ all that creepy shit,” Gary says. “Pam knows because she saw her, too, like five minutes later.”

“I saw her in the hallway,” Pam says. “I was bringing up our food, Chinese. And when I get upstairs to go in our room, what do I see?”

“Ghost,” Gary jumps in emphatically.

“A fucking ghost,” agrees Pam. “And yeah, I admit I was scared. We didn’t think this was real.”

Mulder nods again thoughtfully.

“So Pam came back into the room. And she was completely freaking out, and I was completely freaking out,” Gary says. He looks Pam in the eyes, speaking affectionately. “We had to calm each other down.”

“What had you heard about the ghost before this?” Scully says, trying to get to the point.

“Well, we knew she was the love ghost,” Pam says. “We knew you had to, like, have feelings to see her. Everyone knows that around here.”

Gary runs his finger down Pam’s cheek tenderly. “So it kind of spilled the beans, and we told one another how we felt that night, once and for all. Got it all out in the open.” He lowers his voice. “And I asked her to marry me.”

He leans forward and kisses Pam enthusiastically, practically shoving his tongue down her throat. It quickly devolves into somewhat uncomfortable intimacy, hands crawling aggressively over ski pants. Mulder clears his throat, and Scully averts her eyes. She wonders wistfully when she got cast in the role of maiden aunt.

“So,” Mulder says as they break apart at last, “do you have any idea why you weren’t killed like the others?”

“I think it’s because our love was pure,” Pam says, still gazing at Gary. “Because she could tell we’re soulmates.”

“Ah,” Mulder says with a barely-contained sarcastic edge. “That could be it.” Scully notes his jaw muscle is tense. “You never saw Hero again after that?

“Nope,” Gary says. “That was all. We got married a month later, and now we’re newlyweds.”

“Congratulations,” Scully says formally.

“We just wanted to tell you,” Pam says proudly. “In case our story was important. Other people might want to protect themselves.” She leans back towards Gary, tilting her head invitingly. “With the power of love.” He takes the bait and presses his lips to hers, sloppily kissing her again.

Scully holds herself back from rolling her eyes. “We appreciate your assistance,” she says loudly. “I’m sure you’re very tired—”

“Pam, before you saw the ghost,” Mulder interrupts as the couple pulls apart, “you experienced … some kind of longing for Gary? And you for Pam, Gary? Would you say that’s accurate?”

Pam smirks. “Longing, sure,” she says. “If that’s what you wanna call it.” She giggles a little again, running her hands up Gary’s chest.

“I’ve got something longing for you right here, babe,” Gary growls playfully in a low voice.

“Thank you for your time,” Scully says, very weary of this, walking towards the door. “We’re grateful for your help.”

Even if it’s no help at all, she thinks darkly. She isn’t sure these two even saw the ghost. Like Duncan, she is suspicious that this is a little too good of a proposal story.

Mulder has apparently been deep in thought, staring steadily across the room, and looks vaguely surprised to see that the Kromkowskis are leaving. “Oh yeah … thank you,” he says vaguely, still staring. “Happy holidays.”

He doesn’t stand to walk them out, flopping back instead in the chair he is sitting in. Scully feels another twinge of irritation as she leaves him to his sprawl.

***

It feels like he’s losing his mind. One second he is sitting here talking to the Kromkowskis, and the next moment, he spots her out of the corner of his eye. Staring at him, silently, across the room.

Hero doesn’t say a word this time or move a transparent muscle. She only stands tall and straight, her expression something between judgmental and sorrowful. Mulder can do nothing but let his attention be completely distracted. He can do nothing but stare back at her in shock.

The Kromkowskis don’t see her, and they are sitting where they would have, if she were visible to them. It seems clear their vulnerability to ghostly murder was cured by eliminating their longing. How lucky can you be, he thinks, to have the yearning of your heart satisfied like that. Do the Kromkowskis even understand their good fortune? What happened to them was something that was probably not possible in the other cases. It’s certainly not possible in his own.

Of course Scully doesn’t seem aware of Hero’s presence either, although she doesn’t ever turn that direction. Maybe the best he can hope for from any of this is that it’s only him who dies.

It’s funny, he thinks, that he started this case hoping that she wouldn’t quit, and now he’s just happy if she survives him.

As he slumps in his seat in despair, his gaze irrevocably held by the strange countenance of a dead woman, he begins to hear something. Or so he thinks. He listens hard. A hushed roar in the distance, rising and falling. He pays close attention, but he can’t decide if it’s really there or if it’s his own troubled imagination.

The Kromkowskis leave, and Scully walks back to him, her mouth pinched in annoyance. He sits up and forces himself to look at her.

“Do you hear something, Scully?” he says, trying to sound nonchalant.

She tilts her head and listens, scowling. “No,” she says. “What do you hear?”

When he glances anxiously back across the room again, Hero is gone. The rushing sound has vanished.

“I told you I was going to come ask you some questions about your husband Jim. I won’t take very much of your time.”

“Jim died,” she says bluntly. “They said it was his heart.”

“Yes, I know,” Mulder says, softening his tone. “And I’m truly sorry about your loss. I just have some questions to ask you that could help other people. If you open the door, I can, uh, show you my badge.”

The door widens at once, and Mulder sees who he’s talking to. She’s very thin, the bones in her face visible. Late thirties maybe, long dull blonde hair, unkempt. She looks like she has forgotten how to have feelings.

“It’s okay,” she says flatly. “I’ll help you. You don’t need to show me anything.”

***

“Jim and I met at singles group at church,” Malina says. She lifts a photo off of the end table to show him. “Here we are right after we started dating. Bowling Night. See?”

Mulder politely looks at the photo of Jim Knight with his arm around Malina in better times, lifting brightly colored marbled bowling balls for the camera. “You look very happy.”

“We were happy,” breathes Malina. “People worried, because there was an age difference. But we were always so happy.”

“Age difference?” Mulder studies the photo of the two of them.

“Only fourteen years. It bothered some of my friends, but it never bothered me. Because love is more important than numbers. Don’t you agree, Agent Mulder?”

Mulder lifts a shoulder noncommittally. “Did the age difference become an issue in your marriage?”

“No,” Malina says firmly. She looks at the photo in Mulder’s hand and her expression grows less certain. “At least … I don’t think it did.”

“Ms. Knight, I’m sorry to ask this,” Mulder says, watching her carefully, “but were there any difficulties in your marriage at the time he died?”

Malina’s lip trembles. “He needed some time,” she says. “A fishing trip. Some time away, to let us cool off.”

Mulder considers her wording. “He needed to cool off?”

“Jim could have a temper,” Malina says. “But it wasn’t anything serious, not really,” she adds. “He loved us. I know he did. Everyone could see it.”

Mulder walks to the mantel and picks up a large framed wedding photo. In that photo, Malina, dressed in white, has wrapped her arms around Jim’s neck and is beaming rapturously at him.

“You have a child?” Mulder says. His eyes roam over the photos on the mantel. Jim holding up a baby in overalls. Malina pregnant. Both of them swinging a toddler. “A son?”

“Our son Lyle,” Malina says, sounding like she’s behind a glass frame herself. “He’s seven.”

Mulder listens for a few seconds for any sounds in the house. “Where’s Lyle now?”

“He’s at my mom’s,” Malina says. “I…” She runs her fingers through her long blonde hair. “Well, I’m just not in a good place these days, since Jim. My mom is helping me out with Lyle, until I can get my head on straight.” Her eyes dart around anxiously, settling at last on the floor.

Mulder nods, pensively taking in her entire demeanor. She is, he’ll admit, not quite what he expected.

“They told me it was his heart.” Malina looks up with tears like ice shards all over her cheeks. “Do you think that someone killed Jim, Agent Mulder?” she says, her pitch rising. “Because yeah, our marriage wasn’t in great shape. Jim was unhappy. We were hoping to work it out. But I always, always loved him. I’d never have done something to hurt him. He’s the love of my life.”

The framed wedding photo is still in Mulder’s hand.

His world suddenly begins collapsing all around him as he sets it down carefully on the mantle.

“I think I understand you,” Mulder manages to say in a strange voice.

Malina loved her husband. Her heart was full of longing.

But it was Jim Knight’s heart that was stopped.

“Good,” Malina says. She wraps her arms around herself, nodding rapidly. “Good.”

Mulder staggers a little backwards, nearly tripping over the coffee table in the process.

Malina squints at him. “Are you okay?”

“I …” Mulder’s mind is flooded with terrible, terrible images, images that make him break out instantly into a cold sweat. “I’m so sorry… but I have to go. I need to get back to my hotel. Right now.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I realized that… it isn’t…” He breaks off, swallowing. “I’ll be in touch, Ms. Knight. Thank you.”

***

He’s walking so fast to the car, trying to dial Scully as he does, that his feet begin to slip under him on the ice. He has to stop and steady himself, extending his hand with his phone out for balance, cursing.

As soon as he can, he smacks the phone back to his ear. She’s not answering. “Pick up, Scully. Fucking pick up the phone.”

His foot slams on the gas, and he begins to tear too fast on icy country highways back to the Beacon Inn.

Please, he thinks, it might be pathetic, it might be absurd, but she’s my only light in dark places.

***

By the time he pulls back into the parking spot at the Inn, he’s shaking all over like he’s twelve again, like he never grew into the adult he resembles. He forces himself to be steady, to think clearly.

He rushes through the door, waving a distracted hand at Banoy behind the desk, and he races for the stairs, thumping up two and three at a time.

There’s no ghost woman waiting for him in the hall. No living woman either.

“Scully,” he shouts. He bangs on her door. “Scully,” he calls louder. He realizes he should have asked Banoy for an extra key. If she is in cardiac distress, every second will count. He could have asked Banoy to call for the hospital right away. He tries to remember how to do CPR; he thinks he can—

Scully, wearing her glasses and holding a stack of papers, opens her door with an amazed expression.

“Mulder,” she says calmly, “why the hell are you screaming in the hall?”

“Scully,” he breathes in relief, his eyes drinking her in. He wants to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight, but he knows he can’t, he shouldn’t.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I—” He realizes certain limits in what he can say. “Why weren’t you answering your phone?”

She scowls, walking over to the bedside table to pick her phone up. “I guess reception is spotty here,” she says. “I didn’t hear your call. Did something … happen?”

Mulder walks inside, his adrenaline still coursing. He feels like he may never be able to stop moving again. He paces a little back and forth to try to burn off his excess tension. “I was wrong,” he says. “Duncan was wrong. It can’t be that the ghost is targeting unrequited love. Because Malina Knight? Scully, that lady loved her husband. If anything, it was her love that was unrequited. Her feelings seem like they were stronger.”

Scully backs up to sit on the edge of the bed, giving him a quizzical look. “So now you think the ghost could be killing people who are the focus of unrequited love?”

“I don’t know,” Mulder says, throwing his hands up. His pulse is still racing. “I don’t know anything about the other victims.”

“And how do you know that Jim Knight wasn’t simply in unrequited love with someone else?” Scully says practically. “You know. With someone besides his wife.”

Mulder stops pacing mid-step.

“You did ask the wife whether she knew if there’d been infidelity, right?” Scully says. She looks incredulous at his blank expression. “You didn’t?”

“I didn’t have the opportunity to,” he says, rubbing his hand across his mouth. “To be honest, I got worried and came back fast.”

“Why?” she says sharply. “Why did you come back? Did you have some reason to think I might be in danger, too?”

Mulder feels like a caught schoolboy. “No,” he says quickly. “No. I came back because until we figure this out, I’m not sure this inn is safe for anyone. I’m just getting spooked, I guess.” He swallows. It was a weak save, but she doesn’t seem visibly perturbed. He studies her. “And everything’s been… as expected here?”

Scully takes a half second too long to answer. “Yes.”

There’s definitely something off in that answer, but he doesn’t dare press more. “What have you been doing?”

“I’ve been sitting here reading through your historical research,” she says. She points to some books stacked on the bedside table. “As well as the myth of Hero and Leander, and the famous poem about the myth by Christopher Marlowe.”

“‘Who ever loved, who loved not at first sight?’” Mulder quotes wearily.

“Right,” Scully says, picking up the poetry book with a sniff. “That line is silly. The poem is interesting. I wonder if Hero was familiar with it.”

“You don’t believe in love at first sight?”

“Oh, I might,” she says, flipping idly through the pages. “But I don’t think it’s the only way to love.”

“Yeah,” he says, “I think I agree with you about that.”

There is a tense, unbearable pause.

“So now we have deaths that may or may not be homicides, inflicted by a killer who may or may not be alive, targeting victims who may or may not be experiencing unrequited love,” Scully says, snapping the book shut suddenly.

Mulder walks over to examine the silhouette of the man above her dresser again. He reaches out his finger to trace the craggy outline of the man’s face over the glass. “Maybe Hero is drawn to longing of some kind, some kind of heartache. Maybe it doesn’t matter if the person is the subject or object of longing. Maybe it only matters if the person is in her proximity. Maybe it’s the wanting, the unresolved, that draws her.”

When he turns around, Scully looks prim and disapproving, crossing her arms.

“But what if—”

She’s interrupted by a knock on the door.

***

Scully, her arms still crossed tightly over her chest, purses her lips in dread at the closed door, making no move to get it.

“Scully?” Mulder prompts.

“Yes.”

She has absolutely no way to explain why she doesn’t want to answer the door, for the simple reason that she has no way to tell Mulder what she saw in the hallway before.

Not simply, not casually, anyway. It’s something she can’t easily explain with scientifically plausible language.

A figure that certainly appeared to look at her and beckon to her. There for five seconds, gone the next. A classic … ghost.

Admitting she had seen this—or that she thought she saw this, anyway, because even now she can’t rule out she was misled, deluded, mistaken—seems impossible just to say. Allowing these words to pass through her mouth is a Russian nesting doll of further implications.

Because what would telling Mulder she saw Hero communicate to him, exactly? What would she be tacitly admitting to? That she just deeply wants to see a dead woman because of her sister? That her subconscious hopes to be able to extend her reach beyond death?

That’s embarrassing enough, but then there is also what it could imply about her feelings, about a possible imbalance in emotional attachment towards her partner.

When he came rushing in like that, she thought he must have guessed. It’s the kind of thing he might do, with his frustratingly prescient mind. She thought he might have even guessed why she might see Hero, and rushed back to the Inn to save her from her embarrassing death by unrequited feelings.

But now she doesn’t think that’s the case. He’s not acting like he really knows anything is different. He’s just chaotic Mulder, who disappears one moment and shows up unexpectedly the next.

“Are you all right?” he says, staring at her with a quizzical expression.

“Sorry,” she says. “Yes, of course. Just tired.”

This is silly. You aren’t a jumpy teenager at a slumber party.

She forces herself to walk to the door and slowly opens it, steeling herself to see a woman standing there with an impossible lack of opacity, speaking nonsense to her about being her love. Instead, it’s Duncan and Banoy.

“Hey,” Duncan says, an expression of curious concern on his face. “We just wanted to check in. Banoy said Agent Mulder seemed to be experiencing some kind of emergency before?”

“Oh, yes— just a misunderstanding,” Mulder says quickly, walking to the door. “Everything’s fine now.”

“You’re sure?” Banoy looks him up and down suspiciously. “I almost called for an ambulance.”

“Yes,” Scully says. Her eyes move involuntarily to the space behind Banoy, darting up and down the hallway without thinking.

Duncan notices the direction of her gaze. “And you haven’t seen anything unusual, Agent Scully?” He raises an eyebrow. “Forgive the expression … but you look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

She’s keenly aware of Mulder’s eyes on her. “Do I?” Scully says with a tight smile. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a believer in ghosts.”

Of course she isn’t. Not only are they the usual phenomena beyond the reach of science, they fly in the face of her understanding of a loving and omnipotent God. Her God wouldn’t let souls be stranded, unhappily plaguing the living.

You know what you saw. And you know you should discuss it with Mulder.

“I see,” Duncan says. “Of course.”

“I’m sorry to worry you,” Mulder says.

“Well, I also wanted to mention that you’d asked about Gary and Pam, the couple that stayed here Halloween and said they saw Hero. I called Pam this afternoon, and she insisted they come up to see you. Said they’d drop by right after they get off work.”

“That should be soon,” adds Banoy. “They work at the ski lodge, and they said they’d be here before six.”

“Oh.” Mulder seems to perk up. “I’m very interested in speaking to them, actually. Maybe we should go downstairs and wait, Scully.”

She nods, twisting her mouth to mask her frustration. She wants to slow down, talk matters through with Mulder, find a way to broach the topic of ghosts in the hallway on her own terms.

“Let me grab a sweater,” she says instead.

***

Gary and Pam Kromkowski are both young, no older than twenty-five, both willowy and athletic. They stand in the lobby of the inn peeling off their coats, matching sky blue with the logo of a nearby ski lodge.

“We work at Frosty Ridge,” Pam explains to Scully, when she sees her eyeing the logos on the coats. “Gary’s an advanced ski instructor and I do the kids’ lessons.”

Gary flops onto one of the sofas with colored cushions in the lobby and rolls his head back. “Whew-ee. We’re pretty worn out—this is our busy season.”

“We appreciate you taking the time to come talk to us,” Scully says politely, glancing at Mulder, who is standing next to her, looking unhelpfully dazed.

“Oh, we had to,” Gary says earnestly. “After we found out you were looking into those people that died.”

“See, we could have died ourselves,” Pam says, plopping down next to Gary. “We were so close, weren’t we, babe? We said, we have to tell people what happened.”

Mulder looks like he is taking all that they’re saying extremely seriously. He scrambles to sit down across from the sofa and leans towards them, his forearms on his thighs. “Tell me what you mean.”

“The ghost,” says Gary, lowering his voice and looking around, like he thinks Hero might drift around the corner. He clasps Pam’s hand. “I had the idea it would be fun to spend Halloween here, see. We both like horror movies, so I thought… scary creepy old inn, right? Good place for a couple days away.”

“Perfect for Halloween,” Pam agrees.

“Okay,” Mulder says. He seems to be thinking something over. “And you two were … dating? Together?”

The couple looks at one another slyly. “Well, yes and no,” Pam says. “We were… uhhhh…” She giggles. “We were fucking around. But we hadn’t, like, had the talk, right?”

“Right,” Mulder says seriously, like he is considering and absorbing that concept. Scully wonders if Mulder has ever had “the talk” with a woman.

“So she goes downstairs to get our food,” Gary says, “and I am coming out of the shower, and holy shit, there’s a lady standing in our room. Not standing, floating. A ghost. Like, an actual ghost you can see through.”

“Hmm,” Mulder says, nodding. “What did the ghost do? Did she say anything?”

“She kinda stood there in her old-fashioned dress and she said… what was it, babe? ‘Come on, I love you,’ all that creepy shit,” Gary says. “Pam knows because she saw her, too, like five minutes later.”

“I saw her in the hallway,” Pam says. “I was bringing up our food, Chinese. And when I get upstairs to go in our room, what do I see?”

“Ghost,” Gary jumps in emphatically.

“A fucking ghost,” agrees Pam. “And yeah, I admit I was scared. We didn’t think this was real.”

Mulder nods again thoughtfully.

“So Pam came back into the room. And she was completely freaking out, and I was completely freaking out,” Gary says. He looks Pam in the eyes, speaking affectionately. “We had to calm each other down.”

“What had you heard about the ghost before this?” Scully says, trying to get to the point.

“Well, we knew she was the love ghost,” Pam says. “We knew you had to, like, have feelings to see her. Everyone knows that around here.”

Gary runs his finger down Pam’s cheek tenderly. “So it kind of spilled the beans, and we told one another how we felt that night, once and for all. Got it all out in the open.” He lowers his voice. “And I asked her to marry me.”

He leans forward and kisses Pam enthusiastically, practically shoving his tongue down her throat. It quickly devolves into somewhat uncomfortable intimacy, hands crawling aggressively over ski pants. Mulder clears his throat, and Scully averts her eyes. She wonders wistfully when she got cast in the role of maiden aunt.

“So,” Mulder says as they break apart at last, “do you have any idea why you weren’t killed like the others?”

“I think it’s because our love was pure,” Pam says, still gazing at Gary. “Because she could tell we’re soulmates.”

“Ah,” Mulder says with a barely-contained sarcastic edge. “That could be it.” Scully notes his jaw muscle is tense. “You never saw Hero again after that?

“Nope,” Gary says. “That was all. We got married a month later, and now we’re newlyweds.”

“Congratulations,” Scully says formally.

“We just wanted to tell you,” Pam says proudly. “In case our story was important. Other people might want to protect themselves.” She leans back towards Gary, tilting her head invitingly. “With the power of love.” He takes the bait and presses his lips to hers, sloppily kissing her again.

Scully holds herself back from rolling her eyes. “We appreciate your assistance,” she says loudly. “I’m sure you’re very tired—”

“Pam, before you saw the ghost,” Mulder interrupts as the couple pulls apart, “you experienced … some kind of longing for Gary? And you for Pam, Gary? Would you say that’s accurate?”

Pam smirks. “Longing, sure,” she says. “If that’s what you wanna call it.” She giggles a little again, running her hands up Gary’s chest.

“I’ve got something longing for you right here, babe,” Gary growls playfully in a low voice.

“Thank you for your time,” Scully says, very weary of this, walking towards the door. “We’re grateful for your help.”

Even if it’s no help at all, she thinks darkly. She isn’t sure these two even saw the ghost. Like Duncan, she is suspicious that this is a little too good of a proposal story.

Mulder has apparently been deep in thought, staring steadily across the room, and looks vaguely surprised to see that the Kromkowskis are leaving. “Oh yeah … thank you,” he says vaguely, still staring. “Happy holidays.”

He doesn’t stand to walk them out, flopping back instead in the chair he is sitting in. Scully feels another twinge of irritation as she leaves him to his sprawl.

***

It feels like he’s losing his mind. One second he is sitting here talking to the Kromkowskis, and the next moment, he spots her out of the corner of his eye. Staring at him, silently, across the room.

Hero doesn’t say a word this time or move a transparent muscle. She only stands tall and straight, her expression something between judgmental and sorrowful. Mulder can do nothing but let his attention be completely distracted. He can do nothing but stare back at her in shock.

The Kromkowskis don’t see her, and they are sitting where they would have, if she were visible to them. It seems clear their vulnerability to ghostly murder was cured by eliminating their longing. How lucky can you be, he thinks, to have the yearning of your heart satisfied like that. Do the Kromkowskis even understand their good fortune? What happened to them was something that was probably not possible in the other cases. It’s certainly not possible in his own.

Of course Scully doesn’t seem aware of Hero’s presence either, although she doesn’t ever turn that direction. Maybe the best he can hope for from any of this is that it’s only him who dies.

It’s funny, he thinks, that he started this case hoping that she wouldn’t quit, and now he’s just happy if she survives him.

As he slumps in his seat in despair, his gaze irrevocably held by the strange countenance of a dead woman, he begins to hear something. Or so he thinks. He listens hard. A hushed roar in the distance, rising and falling. He pays close attention, but he can’t decide if it’s really there or if it’s his own troubled imagination.

The Kromkowskis leave, and Scully walks back to him, her mouth pinched in annoyance. He sits up and forces himself to look at her.

“Do you hear something, Scully?” he says, trying to sound nonchalant.

She tilts her head and listens, scowling. “No,” she says. “What do you hear?”

When he glances anxiously back across the room again, Hero is gone. The rushing sound has vanished.

Banoy, on the other hand, has been at the stove, making some kind of Filipino chicken and rice soup and cheerful conversation. The smell of ginger and garlic wafts tantalizingly through the air. Scully is hungry, and if Mulder had come when he said, they could already be eating. She could be explaining what she found at the medical examiner, which she’d been excited to share.

When Mulder does show up in the door, disheveled and carrying an untidy stack of paper, the soup has long been simmering, and she’s downright cranky.

“Hey, Scully,” he says, sounding tired. “Duncan said you were back here.”

“Yes,” she says sharply, sitting up stock straight. “Waiting for you. You’re forty-five minutes late.”

This seems to vaguely surprise him, and she has the urge to stand up and forcefully push him over. “Oh, am I?” He drops the stack of papers on the table in front of her, partially covering her reports from the medical examiner. “Sorry about that. I must have lost track of time.”

She presses her lips together so hard she feels a jaw muscle twitch.

“Something smells really good,” he says, looking over towards Banoy at the stove. “Did you already eat?”

“I did not,” she snaps. “As I said, I’ve been waiting.” Finally her tone seems to get Mulder’s attention. His head whips around to look at her.

Banoy, stirring the pot, turns around and gives them a polite smile. “Hey,” he says. “Why don’t I serve up some bowls and give you some space to have your F.B.I. partner talk?”

***

They spoon soup into their mouths in silence for a few minutes, and Mulder watches Scully carefully for hints about what she’s thinking. She is staring determinedly out the large window, apparently unwilling to talk.

He knows she hates it when he vanishes and goes incommunicado. This issue has come up before in their partnership. But her anger in this instance seems a little over the top, doesn’t it? He was only late for lunch. It hadn’t really been that long.

He sips another spoonful of soup. It’s delicious, thick with rice, exactly what he’s in the mood for after being out in the cold. But he can barely focus on what he’s eating, his insides churning with anxiety. He can’t help but wonder if this is about more than him being late. He can’t help but worry that she is really upset with him for different reasons altogether.

Does she suspect that all of this ghost business—and his ungraceful reaction to it—suggests maybe his feelings have crossed an inappropriate line? Is she second guessing every one of his motivations?

She lifts the spoon to her perfect lips, precisely slurping, her face a mask.

“Scully, I’m sorry,” he tries again hesitantly. “I don’t mean to be … inconsiderate.” He lets the word hang in the air, allowing her to interpret it as she wants.

She puts the spoon down and sighs deeply, her eyes closing for a few seconds and then opening to take him in.

“It was inconsiderate,” she says. She pauses. “I do find I’m growing more forgiving now that I’ve eaten.” Some of his tension releases. “But Mulder, you need to learn to check a clock. Or your phone.”

“I know,” he says, eager to accept responsibility. “I know. You’re right. I’m sorry.” He bites his lip, unsure whether they’re ready to move on. She nods and resumes eating, which he takes to be a good sign. “Do you, uh, want to talk about what we found out this morning?” he adds.

“All right,” she says. “Yes.” There's a tiny glint in her eyes, and he knows there’s something she is excited to share. He feels relief wash over him. This is a normal interaction. Maybe he’s not completely exposed here. “These are copies of the autopsy reports on the three victims,” she says.

She places three pieces of paper in front of his bowl, and by reflex, he pulls back. He’s had his stomach turned by more autopsy photos than he’d care to count.

“No photos,” she reassures him. “Just look, here, at this box on each of the forms. All three have the same official cause of death, ‘sudden cardiac arrest.’”

She places a small fingertip on the line stating cause of death on Austin Spantikow’s report, looking at him expectantly. Mulder nods cautiously. They knew this much.

“Now usually when this is the cause of death, they’ll be some underlying cardiovascular issue—coronary artery disease, a congenital heart defect,” she continues. “But it is possible for cardiac arrest to happen with no easily identifiable cause. Even to young and healthy people. The heart is electrical. And if the electricity goes out for some reason… well…”

“Lights out,” Mulder says grimly. It’s making his own heart pump faster just thinking about it. “But … it’s not that common, right?”

“Not terribly uncommon, actually,” Scully says. “A leading cause of death in the United States, as I said. But … three healthy people with no known risk factors experiencing sudden cardiac death in the same location in a short time frame? The odds do seem pretty slim.”

“I don’t suppose the ME found any evidence of the kind of toxin you were talking about? Your heart stopper dust?”

“No,” Scully says. “Unfortunately, they wouldn’t have run that kind of toxicology. I’ll think of some other way to follow up on that. But Mulder, there’s something else.” She places her finger emphatically on one of the other pieces of paper. “In Jim Knight’s report, there’s some evidence of pulmonary edema.”

“Ah ha.” Mulder scratches his face. “Something having to do with lungs?”

“Fluid in lungs,” she says. “Like you would expect to see from a drowning victim.”

“A drowning victim.”

“Yes,” Scully confirms with a nod.

“Like Leander in the myth.”

“Like Leander in the myth,” Scully agrees emphatically. “And Hero. And Sophronia and her lover, according to the ghost story Duncan told us.”

Mulder frowns. “Where was Spantikow found again?”

“In bed,” she says. “In his room by himself. No obvious method of drowning.” She puts her finger on a line on another piece of paper. “And the woman, Elena Denney, she was found slumped over her computer. But there’s mention on her report of some frothy fluid in her airways.”

Mulder stares at her, mulling this over. He taps his fingertips on the table. “Did the ME have an explanation for any of this?”

Scully scoffs. “No,” she says. “And at the risk of sounding elitist, these reports aren't the work of a pathologist. There’s the bare minimum of description. It makes me wonder what else was present and missed, and whether there were any indications of drowning on Spantikow, too—maybe that were ignored because they didn’t fit the perceived cause of death.”

Mulder resists the urge to clutch his hand to his own heart. He regards his partner. “What is your explanation, Scully?”

“Sudden cardiac arrest is often the cause of death in drowning victims,” Scully says. “Without the other signs of drowning—liquid in the body cavity, for example—it would be hard to distinguish cardiac arrest from drowning … from any other kind of cardiac arrest.”

Mulder’s eyebrows lift. “So… you think they drowned. In their hotel rooms. Without water.”

“There is a phenomenon called delayed drowning. A person is submerged in water, some gets into the lungs, and much later—hours, days—it manages to cause pulmonary edema. But it’s very rare.”

“Three times in a row at the same hotel also seems unlikely?”

“Exactly,” she agrees. “Another possibility is that maybe someone wanted it to be death by drowning that didn’t look on the surface like death by drowning,” Scully says. “Maybe someone is using the Hero and Leander story, as well as Sophronia’s story, for personal inspiration for homicide.” She shrugs. “I don’t know, Mulder. It’s intriguing.”

“I wish there were some way to know if it was salt water in his lungs,” Mulder muses, tapping his fingers on the table again. “The presence of ocean water could be evidence for the ghost.”

“Naturally your explanation is that it’s a murderous ghost,” she sighs.

“I definitely am not ruling it out.”

She looks at him with an unreadable expression. “Did you learn anything new, Mulder?”

“Oh,” he says, trying to marshal his papers into a stack, “yeah, I did, actually.”

“Do the details of Duncan’s ghost story check out?”

“Yes and no,” Mulder says. “The woman working at the historical archives is actually a descendant of the Younge family. So she knew her way around the family papers, and she was happy to help me out.”

Scully’s lips curl upwards. “I’m sure you smiled, complimented her and laid it on thick.”

“She was in her seventies, Scully,” Mulder says in mock indignation, “but yes, as a matter of fact, I was pleasant. I did what it takes for our work.”

“I hope you warned her that your heart is committed to another,” Scully says lightly. “At least, according to the family ghost.”

Mulder freezes in mortification for a beat.

Immediately he realizes he needs to recover for his own dignity. “Uh, no,” he says. “I left that detail out.” He pauses. “That’s all just … ridiculous, Scully.”

“Hmm,” she says, nodding, not meeting his eyes. She has lifted her spoon to take another bite of her soup. “Well? What did you learn?”

“There was a Sophronia Younge, and she did live in this house. Her father was a wealthy scholar and a founder of the town.”

“All consistent with what Duncan told us.”

“Right,” Mulder says, “but the story veers off from there. In her father’s papers there are journals and letters. He was worried about Sophronia’s mental health, as we would put it nowadays. Or… about her ‘going mad,’ as they’d say back then. He talks about her referring to herself as Hero, the character from the myth. He talks about her refusing to come out of her room, of lighting a beacon for some imagined Leander every night.”

Scully’s soup spoon stops, her eyes narrowing. “So … there was no actual Leander?”

“Possibly not,” Mulder says. “Not a person anyone could name. Just … a fantasy she had.” He feels his ears warming again, even though this early 19th century drama has absolutely nothing to do with him.

“So what happened?”

“Someone turned off Sophronia’s beacon lantern one night,” Mulder says, “and she assumed her fantasy Leander drowned, and, well, she reacted like Hero did in the myth.”

Scully’s head swivels to look out again at the Vermont landscape below. “I don’t get it. She drowned herself in maple trees?”

“Actually, she threw herself into a well and drowned,” Mulder says. “In 1809. It’s documented by several sources. Cause of death was probably sudden cardiac arrest, right?”

Scully nods slowly, still staring out the window. “Probably.” She turns back to him, her cool blue eyes melancholy. “Actually, it’s a much sadder story than the one Duncan tells.”

“Yeah,” Mulder says softly. A more lonely story, certainly.

Scully’s gaze circles the room. “Why do you think Duncan hasn’t gone to the archives himself? You’d think he would want to find out all he could about the history behind this place.”

“Well… he may have tried,” Mulder says. “Mrs. Davenport—she isn’t a fan of the inn being owned by outsiders. She may have mentioned that to me a few times.”

“Oh,” Scully says. “Yes, Duncan referred to some resentment.” Her chin tilts contemplatively. “Isn’t that a possible motive? Multiple deaths are certainly bad for the inn’s business.”

“You think … Mrs. Davenport…?”

“Maybe not her per se,” Scully says. “But maybe someone like her. With ties to the old family.”

“Maybe,” Mulder concedes. He licks his lips anxiously. “In any case, I think Mrs. Davenport’s history further supports Duncan’s theory.”

“Duncan’s theory?”

Mulder looks down at his soup, attempting to come across as casual and disinterested. “That Hero only appears to people who aren’t in reciprocated love,” he says. “You know. The longing thing. It fits with her own history, her own psychology.”

Scully is silent a moment. “You’re profiling a ghost now?”

“This… Austin kid,” Mulder says, speaking quickly. “The first victim. He’s taking a new girlfriend on a weekend away. Maybe she’s not as into him as he is into her. The Knight guy, Jim, is having trouble with his wife and is on a fishing trip to give her space. Maybe he still loves her and she’s moved on. And maybe Elena Denney is having some kind of online relationship with someone who doesn’t feel as strongly as her.”

“Do you actually know any of that, or are you making incredible assumptions and leaps?”

“We can investigate it,” Mulder says impatiently. “I’m extending a theory right now.” He puts his spoon down, folds his hands behind his head, leaning back to gaze at the plaster ceiling. He hopes he looks loose and relaxed.

“Does your profile include a reason why she would abruptly start to kill the lovelorn after nearly two hundred years of simply appearing to them?”

“No,” admits Mulder. “I’m still thinking about that.”

“Did Mrs. Davenport say anything else?”

Mulder shrugs. “Yeah. She said that when they lived here, they thought lighting all those brass lanterns in the house was good luck. Because of the beacon light thing and all that.”

Scully smiles a tight-lipped smile. “Ah,” she says. “I suppose we could use a good luck tip.”

“We do if…” He stops. “Never mind.” He pushes the papers towards her. “I brought copies of all of the historical records. If you want to look them over yourself.”

“All right,” she says, restacking them.“Mulder …” She hesitates, shuffling the papers without purpose. “You think the ghost is coming after you next, don’t you?”

His apparently-endangered heart begins to thump so hard he can feel it down to his toes. Every second longer he takes to answer this question, he knows he makes it worse. Isn’t the real question all too obvious? Are you longing for someone you can’t have, Mulder?

“I don’t know,” he says miserably, looking at his hands. “Maybe.”

“Oh,” she says, her lips remaining in a small circle. Her eyes are wide, and she looks uncertain, but he doesn’t see how she possibly could be. How could she not at least wonder? Is she having some kind of inner crisis? Is she horrified by the lack of professionalism implied? “Should we find another place to stay?” she suggests in a kind, patronizing tone he hates. “There’s no sense in making you worry.”

“No,” he interrupts, humiliated. “No, no, that’s silly. I’m not… I mean, I can’t think of how it would actually fit. For me. I’m not really a lovelorn kind of guy.” He smiles, hoping he has been convincing enough.

She smiles back wanly. “All right.”

“This afternoon, I thought I might drive over and talk to Mr. Knight’s widow,” Mulder says, keeping his tone easy. “She lives about twenty minutes away. That will keep me out of Hero’s hands for a while, right?”

“Right,” she says. She considers him. “I’ll take some of those samples of the renovation materials and send them to be analyzed. Maybe I’ll read through the history you found.”

“Sounds good,” he says, nodding. She begins to stand up from the table. “And, uh, Scully?” She turns around and meets his gaze with round, expectant eyes. “I’ll check in this time.”

She nods shortly, then hurries off, her face shuttered.

She must have some idea. She must.

He stares at his bowl of soup, half eaten. He should get up and drive, not sit here and sift through his garbage bin of feelings.

Actually, Mulder has never picked out words for how he feels about her. Those feelings just are what they are. A truth. A nameless reality. If pressed, he’d have gone to great lengths to avoid assigning language to them. It’d be stupid anyway. It doesn’t matter what she is to him exactly.

She’s just my work colleague, the kind you know their lunch order by heart, the kind you cover for if they’re running late, the kind you'd protect by consuming exotic poison or sticking a dagger in your chest or throwing yourself in front of a bus. She’s my friend, the type of friend whose opinions intertwine and fuse permanently with the foundational architecture of my brain. She's a woman I work with, that kind of woman you fill out paperwork with during the day and then dream about that night, who in dreams raises her hands to catch snowflakes in her fingers in the moonlight, and somehow when she does that makes you cry and makes you hard at the same time.

You know. She’s someone like that.

He doesn’t want some case, some fucked-up insane ghost, to force language on what shouldn’t ever have had language. He doesn’t want to have to say it, to think it, to bring it to light.

Of course, this could all be very moot if the ghost straight-up drowns him tonight and stops his miserable heart altogether.

He basks for a moment in the warmth of the afternoon sun on his face through the window, and he sighs deeply. The currently healthy function of his lungs is not lost on him. He breathes perfectly in and out. Ostensibly freely.

His whole life he’s spent alone, longing for what he doesn’t have. He guesses it makes a kind of dark sense that’s how he would die. Drowning in oceans of want.

***

For the next two hours Scully does exactly the kind of efficient work that usually gives her great satisfaction. She takes samples of the renovation materials, she walks to town to FedEx them to the lab in Washington, and she trods back up the icy hill knowing that the task is done. Now she clomps up the staircase to the second floor of the inn, her nose still stinging from the cold, her cheeks slightly windburned.

There’s no sense of accomplishment, only a heavy pall over her mood she can’t shake.

At the top of the stairs, she stops to catch her breath, brushing some snow off of her trench. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees someone walking down the hall. When she turns her head, there’s nothing: just one of the inn’s impressive Christmas trees twinkling.

She blinks. She’d been half hoping it was Mulder returned already, but of course it isn’t. The car is still gone; he is questioning Jim Knight’s wife. She’s being illogical.

Scully stares at the Christmas tree for a moment, swaying slightly. Her thoughts return again to Mulder’s behavior in the kitchen. He was so obviously anxious that he was the ghost’s next target.

Of course Scully continues to believe that there’s something happening here other than a homicidal ghost. True to character, Mulder latched on to that ghost story too quickly. But Mulder believes that Hero is a ghost who targets the longing and lovelorn. And though he was trying to be evasive, he was also uncharacteristically self-conscious and nervous.

He thinks it’s plausible he could be a victim.

As though in a dream, Scully steps slowly towards her door.

So somewhere out there there is a person Mulder longs for, a regular human relationship he aches to have. He has that in mind when he discusses it.

She knows it shouldn’t bother her. And it doesn’t bother her, not really. It just hurts right now, when she is missing Melissa, that’s all.

Because she stands outside of everything now, pressing her nose up against the snow globe looking inside at all the normal people living normal lives. She thought he, at least, might be standing with her: her partner who’d long ago given up on any of that. Even if they couldn’t have normal lives, they could have the companionship of one another.

But it’s all too clear he keeps his heart from her, hides his inner desires. He lies to her about it.

Of course he does; he doesn’t even always tell her where he’s going on a case. There’s too much she doesn’t know, really, about him. Their close companionship is an illusion she’s taken too seriously.

She feels tears overwhelming her eyes as she unlocks the door.

Fine. It does bother me. It does.

She’s pushing at her door to go inside when she’s distracted again by a movement from her side vision.

A figure drifting from the direction of the far end of the hall.

“She spoke to you?” Scully looks up in mild interest, then begins putting folded items in dresser drawers. “What did she say?”

He gnaws on his lip, feeling strangely self-conscious. “Uh, something about, ‘Come to me… my love,’” he mumbles.

Scully raises her eyebrows in amusement. “Pretty intimate, Mulder,” she says, folding another shirt. “Do you know this ghost?”

“It doesn’t sound like something a random living guest would just … say to a stranger, does it?”

She shrugs with a tiny smile. “Maybe the guest found you attractive. Maybe some nice lady was inviting you into her room.”

He feels the tips of his ears growing very warm, but smiles in an attempt to appear unruffled. “Well, admittedly it’s been a while, but I'm pretty sure you scare people off when you start talking about love right out of the gate.”

She shuts the dresser drawer and turns around to face him, folding her arms. “So is what you saw consistent with what this ghost is said to be like, Mulder? From the reports and the stories?”

He shifts positions uncomfortably. The truth is that he doesn’t know. He is much less informed than usual about the details of this case. He’d seized on this impulsively, based on Scully’s state of mind, and he didn’t take the time to do his normal deep dive into research beyond what was in the file. He didn't really read anything about the history of the inn.

“I’m not sure,” Mulder says. “I’m a little light on details, like I said, until we talk to Duncan.”

She fixes him with a searching look. “All right. Then let’s wait and talk to him,” she says.

Mulder huffs. “May I remind you that what we do know about this case is that people who reported seeing this ghost were dead from heart failure within the week?”

He’d think maybe she would want to check him out as his doctor at the very least—express some concern for his well-being—but she’s not even looking his way now. He feels petulant, even though he knows that Scully simply doesn’t believe in ghosts who can cause hearts to stop. That’s who Scully is.

“Yes, and speaking of, I had a thought about that,” she says, pulling her shoes out of the suitcase. “I was going to take some samples of the piles of renovation materials outside and send them to a lab. I was wondering if maybe some of the building materials being used might be aggravating pre-existing heart conditions in some guests.”

“Really?” Mulder thinks this over. “So… guests stay here, they inhale some dust or something, and it causes a heart attack?”

“Only if they had some unknown underlying cardiac issues already,” Scully says. “So it wouldn’t be that common—it would only affect a select few. This isn’t completely unknown in the literature. It seems like a possibility worth looking into, anyway.”

“Hmm,” agrees Mulder. “Yes. If the timing works out. If the renovations were happening at the same time as the deaths.”

“That’s the kind of thing we’re here to investigate, right?” Scully says with a wry smile. “Why they put the I in FBI and all that?”

She’s moving briskly back and forth from her suitcase, all energy, all purpose. And it hits him: he didn’t notice it before in his excitement over seeing the ghost, but Scully is in a much better mood. She’s practically bustling. A little flirty, a little argumentative, a spring in her step, a theory on the tip of her tongue.

The case has her, he thinks. Being in the field has her. He knew this was a good idea, even if it has already put him in the crosshairs of a murderous ghost.

“The toxic dust wouldn’t explain the ghost sightings,” he points out to her, in part because it’s true and in part because he craves her engagement again.

“No,” she admits, “it wouldn’t. But we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to learn anything else.” She points a firm finger towards him. “No ghost hunting tonight, Mulder.”

“Fine,” he acquiesces, raising his hands in surrender. “Fine.”

He sees her pull what certainly looks like some lacy scraps of underwear out of the suitcase. His eyes track hungrily as she places them in the drawer, and then he quickly looks away so she doesn’t notice him watching.

There is a moment’s pause. He quietly clears his throat.

“What are we doing for dinner?” he asks.

“Banoy said there was pizza delivery.” She looks at him hopefully, shutting the drawer. “Pizza in your room in 30 minutes?”

“It’s a date,” he says lightly. ***

They eat the pizza sitting side by side on his bed, looking out the large window into the black Vermont woods. Lamplight outside bounces off the falling snowflakes, each one flickering and sputtering against the dark canvas of the night. Mulder tells her a ghost story he remembers from the Vineyard, one about a whaling captain’s widow. She listens and rolls her eyes in the right places.

He walks her back to her door—just to be safe. She gives him a strange, bemused look as he does. Maybe because it’s exactly a three step walk.

That night he dreams of Scully with a flashlight in a field on a snowy night, Scully cracking jokes with flushed cheeks in the light of the moon, Scully calling out his name with snowflakes all around her. “Come with me, Mulder. How I miss you.” ***

“So you’re here to learn about our ghost,” Banoy says eagerly, pouring coffee at the stone counter. “All the way from Washington. All the way from the F.B.I..”

In the morning they meet Duncan and Banoy in the inn’s large and airy country kitchen. There is a breakfast nook with a round table and a cushioned bench seat surrounded by windows. Scully gazes admiringly at her surroundings as she sits down. Some of her best memories are of time spent in comfortable, cheerful kitchens like this. She thinks of cooking for the holidays in her grandmother’s large kitchen in California with all her female family members: mother, aunts, grandmother, cousin. Sister.

This kitchen is filled with bright white winter sunshine, the kind of light that has a pure, clear quality, like it was refracted through ice. She glances at Mulder’s face as he slides in next to her on the bench. His expression is serious, and the diffuse light gives him an ethereal look.

“I have lots of questions, as a matter of fact,” Mulder says.

“But we’re actually here to investigate the three deaths,” Scully corrects Banoy, trying to steer the conversation on track. Actual human deaths, not ghost stories. “Three deaths in six months, correct?”

“Yes,” Duncan says sadly, setting a platter of pastry in front of them on the table. “And it’s never happened like this before, has it, Banoy? I can’t understand it. That’s why I called you.”

“Maybe it’s not connected,” Banoy says, setting their coffee down on the table. “I have always said that. Maybe the deaths and the ghost are just a coincidence.”

“I’d like to talk through the deaths,” Scully says. “When did the first—”

“I saw her,” Mulder interrupts her, leaning urgently towards Duncan. “Last night, almost as soon as we arrived. Is that common? Do all guests see her?”

“Saw …?”

“The ghost,” Mulder says eagerly.

Well, Scully thinks with some irritation, there goes our opportunity to cling to the illusion of professionalism.

“Did you?” Duncan says, visibly taken aback.

Banoy smiles sympathetically and leans over to fluff Mulder’s hair. “Oh, you sweet boy.”

Scully frowns, failing to understand this reaction.

“What does that mean?” Mulder says, his eyes darting between the two men, apparently equally bewildered.

“Nobody’s explained about our Hero? Who she visits?”

“No,” Mulder says. “All we know is that she’s allegedly visited some people who later died of cardiac arrest.”

“No, no,” Duncan says, taking off his glasses to wipe them on his shirt. “She has been appearing for years. Decades. Long before the heart failures.”

“Hero is her name?”

“It’s what she called herself,” Duncan says. “Her real name was a mouthful, Sophronia Younge, a daughter of one of the town’s founders. The family built the original house we’re in, although it was expanded in the later nineteenth century to its current size and layout, of course.”

“And Hero has appeared to others?” Mulder asks, a crease deepening between his eyes.

“Well, not just to anyone…” Banoy says, winking at Mulder.

“By legend, she only appears to the lovelorn,” Duncan says. “Only those who hold deep and abiding love, like Hero did in life herself. You’re sure you haven’t heard this? It’s a reasonably famous local story.”

Scully’s gaze had been shifting out the window, to study the bird’s eye view of the town’s streets, but now her head swivels and her eyes lock on Mulder. She finds herself very curious to see his reaction.

“No, I had not,” Mulder says, raising his eyebrows. He straightens his posture in the seat, shifting uncomfortably. “But I’m a single guy, so she’s obviously wrong in this case.”

“Is she?” Banoy says.

“I’ve never heard of her being wrong,” Duncan says, amused.

“It’s not about being single,” Banoy says. “Single people can have longing in their heart. No lucky lady you pine for, Agent Mulder? Or man?”

“Sorry,” Mulder says with a tight smile. “I’m going to prove a pretty disappointing romantic hero.”

He picks up a piece of pastry and shifts his full attention to taking a bite.

Feeling inexplicably discomfited herself, Scully lets her eyes wander back to the window. The town’s streets are visible down the hill, and she can see two children marching down the road, dragging toboggans across the newly fallen snow. She stares at them like they are suddenly very interesting.

She knows Mulder has dated women before, and she even saw him interact once with an old paramour. But it’s hard for her to imagine him pining. It’s hard to imagine him giving that much thought to anything besides work, honestly. She can’t imagine him thinking about anything besides the Truth, besides some esoteric case he’s read about, about some work-related puzzle.

She tries to imagine him sitting at his desk thinking about a romantic partner with those kind of feelings. Or waiting in his apartment, sitting on his couch eager to see someone, eager for someone to come over.

The idea of him wanting someone—of having some walled-up secret desire—well, it unsettles her. It makes her ache to think of it, something so human and vulnerable inside of him that he’s intentionally holding back. Probably it’s because she isn’t used to thinking of him as an ordinary man, she tells herself.

Being so close to the windows gives her a little chill, makes goosebumps rise. She rubs her arms to warm them.

“Of course now you should be careful,” adds Duncan, his tone growing serious. “It used to be that seeing Hero was just fun, just local color. But it’s become so dangerous.”

“How’s your cardiac health, Agent Mulder?” queries Banoy.

“What do you mean?” Scully says, her attention now fully engaged.

“That’s exactly why I called you,” Duncan says. “Because lately people have … perished after seeing her. At least some people.”

“You should tell us all you know,” Scully insists.

“Starting with Hero?”

“Yes,” Scully says, making quick affirmative eye contact with Mulder, who looks stunned. “Starting with Hero.” ***

Her name wasn’t Hero. Her name was Sophronia, from the Greek for wisdom. Her father was a scholar, a classicist like all good 18th century educated men. He must have been some sort of eccentric to end up in Vermont, which was the frontier back then, but he was well-to-do enough to get some land and farm and start the town. At one point, Duncan tells them, their house—this inn—was the biggest, most impressive in the region.

Duncan recounts this with the precision and storytelling flair of an amateur historian, pausing to wipe his glasses with care.

“This is where the story becomes more local legend and less history,” he says. “Sophronia had a lover, a young man. But legend holds that her father disapproved, and so Sophronia had no choice but to meet her lover secretly. When she wrote him letters, she called herself ‘Hero’ and her lover ‘Leander.’ You know. Like the famous lovers in mythology who couldn’t be together.”

“I don’t recall that myth, as a matter of fact,” Scully says. She glances at Mulder, who is not asking the many questions he’d initially claimed to have. He’s listening, but his face is stone.

“Oh, it’s a tragic one,” Banoy says. “The ancient Greek lady Hero lives in a tower on an island, and her beloved Leander swims across the sea at midnight to meet her. She puts a beacon light in the window so he can find his way. But one night the light goes out, poof, and Leander is lost in the stormy sea. Hero is wracked with grief and throws herself out the window to join him in a watery grave soon after.”

“A beacon light,” Mulder says, speaking for the first time in a while. “Like the name of the inn?”

Duncan shrugs with a smile. “The drama of this story has been good business for us,” he says. His expression grows serious. “Until the deaths, that is.”

“So what happened?” Scully wonders. She gestures to the town and snowy Vermont landscape outside the window. “There’s no stormy sea here.”

“Well,” Duncan says, “somehow Sophronia’s father found out about her carrying on with her own personal Leander, and he kicked her out. Sometimes you hear he kicked her out in a snowstorm, but more often, it’s mild weather, which makes more sense given what happens next.”

“Just tell them the story,” Banoy urges with an eyeroll. “You say I’m the dramatic one.”

“The following morning, the two of them are found, Sophronia and her lover—Hero and Leander—drowned in the center of town. Soaking wet and completely dead, caught tragically in one another’s arms.”

“When you tasted the water saturating her dress,” Banoy says theatrically, “it was salty, even though we are seventy miles from the sea.”

There’s a pause, as though Duncan and Banoy are waiting for their tale to be fully appreciated by their audience. Scully clears her throat impatiently.

“A compelling story,” she says, “but what about the ghost?”

“Oh, well, ever since, people have occasionally seen Hero in the inn,” Duncan says. “Sophronia, really, although we always refer to her as Hero. She traditionally appears to people in love, and she speaks to them like they’re her Leander. It was a common ghost story, growing up here in Hellespont. In those days, members of the old family still lived in this house.”

“You’re from Hellespont originally?” Scully asks.

“Yes, I’m a local,” Duncan says. He looks around the kitchen with a look of wonder on his face. “I grew up adoring this house from afar. Used to sit on my bike outside and stare at it as a kid, make up fantasies about it. Eight years ago, Banoy and I were living in California, and I heard this place was up for sale. By that time, I had the money we didn’t have when I was a kid. I couldn’t resist coming back to make it ours.”

“We couldn’t resist,” Banoy adds softly. “A historic inn in Vermont? Please, it’s like living in White Christmas.” He smiles adoringly at Duncan. “With my very own Bing Crosby.”

Duncan smiles back at Banoy and reaches out to take his hand. Scully feels a pang of something that she worries might be envy.

“At first, some members of the Younge family—the descendants—were somewhat … hostile to us moving in,” Duncan says. “You know, years of the original family owning the place… and then a kid from a nobody family and his gay Filipino lover move in to make a bed and breakfast. Not everyone’s favorite thing. But … I think they’ve warmed up to us now. Don’t you, Banoy?”

Banoy smiles thinly and shrugs. Scully makes a mental note to follow up on that—local resentment of current inn owners. “Tell us about the deaths,” she says.

“The first was maybe six months ago,” Duncan says. “Right, Banoy? The beginning of summer. June. That first one was Austin Spantikow, a young man, in his twenties, vacationing with a girl he was looking to impress.”

“They started talking about seeing Hero at breakfast the first day. We teased them about his feelings,” Banoy says regretfully. “We thought it was cute.”

“Two days later we called for an ambulance, but it was too late,” Duncan says. “He was so young. No previously known heart problems. But if it had just been that one incident, we wouldn’t have thought anything about it. We definitely wouldn’t have thought Hero and his death were related.”

“I’m still not sure Hero and the deaths are related,” Banoy sniffs. “I’ve said it a thousand times. The other two people who died didn’t mention seeing her.”

“Mr. Knight, Jim, a guest in his fifties, staying here on a fishing trip to give his wife some space. Elena Denney, thirtysomething, who was talking to someone online the whole time she was here for a girls’ weekend,” Duncan continues. “Both of them dead within a few days – almost exactly the same situation as Mr. Spantikow. No prior heart conditions, found in their beds already unconscious by our staff.”

“Has anyone else mentioned seeing Hero?” Mulder says.

“A local couple, Gary and Pam Kromkowski, stayed here for a romantic night at Halloween,” Duncan says. “They claimed they saw her, too, and they left with no incident. But … Gary proposed that night, and I wondered if saying they saw the ghost just made for a good engagement story.”

Scully nods, making a mental note of that.

“Did any of the victims report seeing anything else unusual? Besides the ghost?” Scully asks. “Anything else that you might say would qualify as a hallucination?”

Duncan and Banoy look at one another, squinting in thought. “No,” Duncan says. “I can’t remember anything like that.”

“Me neither,” Banoy agrees. “And Mr. Knight and Ms. Denny, we don’t know for sure that they saw the ghost.”

Duncan has still been holding Banoy’s hand, and Scully sees him squeeze it. “It’s been upsetting, of course,” he says. “We love this place. We don’t want anything like this associated with it.” Banoy places his hand on Duncan’s forearm comfortingly.

“Please forgive me for asking such a potentially personal question,” Mulder says suddenly, his face very serious, “but have you seen Hero?”

There’s a pause as the two men look at one another again. “No,” Banoy says mournfully. “And we don’t know why.” Duncan shakes his head.

“Maybe she’s homophobic,” Duncan suggests with a shrug.

“Bigoted 18th century bitch,” Banoy adds wryly.

“I have another theory, too,” Duncan says. “I personally believe she doesn’t appear to people who are happily partnered, reciprocally in love. I think she appears to people who are yearning. You know. Looking across the water for the beacon.”

“Unrequited,” Banoy agrees with a judicious nod.

Mulder nods distractedly. Then, unexpectedly, he stands up.

“Mulder…?” Scully begins.

Without warning, he spins on his heel and walks out of the kitchen. Scully and the two men sit behind staring blankly after him.

“Oh no,” Banoy says in a hushed voice. “Did we… strike a nerve?”

Duncan turns to Banoy. “God, what if he had a recent break-up or something?”

“We’re over here practically saying he’s unloved,” Banoy says, shaking his head.

“I apologize.” Duncan turns to Scully. “I sometimes say too much.”

“No, no,” Scully says inadequately, “he doesn’t … no. No recent break-up.”

“He just seemed upset,” Banoy says.

Scully suddenly feels a bubble of frustration well up inside of her. How typical, for Mulder to be upset for reasons she doesn’t entirely understand, by a ghost story, of all things. No doubt there’s more to this story she didn’t know in advance that has caused him only to rush off to some unknown location.

“It’s just how he is,” she explains. “He’s … an unusual man.” Her voice sounds more exasperated than she expects.

“Hmm,” Banoy says, nodding at her appraisingly.

Swallowing back her annoyance, she makes her apologies and goes to search for Mulder.

She can’t think of where he could have possibly gone, and she has a well-earned suspicion he might have gone off investigating on his own, possibly seeking out his precious ghost.

But she rounds the corner from the kitchen to find him standing in the living room, staring at the open door that leads to the staircase, his expression frozen.

“Mulder?” she says.

He doesn’t move or respond, like he’s been hypnotized.

“Mulder.”

He startles, swiveling to face her suddenly. His face is ashen.

“Hey,” she says in concern, walking to his side. “Are you okay? Did you see something?”

He turns to look back at the staircase, and her gaze follows his. There’s absolutely nothing to see. Just empty wooden stairs, old-fashioned wallpaper, a well-worn hand rail. It’s the same staircase they came uneventfully downstairs on this morning.

“What’s wrong with you, Mulder?” she asks him.

He’s still staring at the empty stairs, his face expressionless. “Uh, nothing,” he says. “I thought I saw something. Probably just my mind playing tricks.”

“Something like before? What you thought was ….?”

“Maybe,” he says. He scratches the back of his neck. His eyes and mouth show no sign of his emotion.

Scully peers at the stairs again, seeing nothing but the most commonplace details. “Maybe? You’re not sure?”

“I don’t know,” he says suddenly. “Maybe.” He shrugs violently. “The truth is … having heard what Duncan said, I don’t know about before either. Maybe you were right.”

Scully blinks, somewhat taken aback.

“I guess it is possible … I misunderstood what I saw,” he says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Maybe I did just see another guest and I somehow just misinterpreted.”

“You misinterpreted,” she repeats incredulously. “You were so confident earlier.”

“Yeah,” he says, looking away awkwardly. “But … well…”

He doesn’t finish, but in a bolt of certainty she realizes what this change of heart is about.

He believes Duncan’s tale. And he really doesn’t like what being able to see Hero’s ghost reveals about him. To him, it uncovers something private. Something he’d preferred others not know, not even his partner.

This idea shocks Scully into complete silence. Her mind races furiously as she tries to process this, the possibility that Mulder actually could be harboring some kind of secret feelings of love. Which would mean Mulder could be actually seeing someone. She remembers in the car earlier when he said he had a hot date for Christmas. She’d taken it as a self-deprecating joke, but why did she assume that? Why wouldn’t he have a hot date for Christmas? He’s single, good-looking, capable of wit and charm.

And apparently … capable of deep and abiding love. According to a ghost, anyway.

Maybe it’s only me who lives outside the boundaries of ordinary human life.

“Anyway,” Mulder says, apparently eager to change the subject. “I was thinking maybe we should do some research this morning, then meet up later and check in. What do you think?”

“Okay,” she says, trying to match his businesslike, conversational tone. “I should go to the medical examiner and check into their records on the victims.”

“Yeah,” agrees Mulder. “I was going to check out the town’s historical archives. See if I can look further into the inn’s history.”

“All right,” she says, falsely cheerful. He still isn’t meeting her eyes. “Should we meet back here for lunch? One?”

“Sure,” he says. “I’m… going to go upstairs and put on a sweater before I go.” His eyes rise to the stairs again, and he looks hesitant.

“Me, too,” she says, after a beat.

He doesn’t respond or look at her, but walks up the stairs decisively. Scully, left standing by herself in the living room, is suddenly aware of being entirely alone.

Maybe that’s what a ghost is, really, she thinks, looking around the inn’s living room lobby slowly. An absence. A form given by our minds, by our subconsciousness, to what is simply a lack of presence. Isn’t that the tragedy of the dead, after all? The negative space left by what we once cherished. It’s the most cruel that nothing can be.

But the dead are not really nothing, she reminds herself. They’re merely unseen. And what’s unseen isn't necessarily what’s unreal. That’s precisely what faith is, belief in the God of things seen and unseen, like the familiar words of the Nicene Creed say. Just because you don’t see someone with your physical eyes doesn’t mean they’re truly gone. Just because you’re looking at a lump of flesh in an autopsy bay doesn’t mean you’re seeing anything real or meaningful about that person.

This has been something she’s been holding on to as of late. Since Melissa, since she came back to the church.

She stands there a moment, hyperaware of absence around her. The dead, the unborn, the lost, the unrealized. In her imagination all of the absence in her life seems to be congealing in the air, growing thick and oppressive, making breathing impossible, choking the life out of her.

She turns to the window again to observe the little downtown. It vaguely reminds her of a full-sized version of a painted porcelain Christmas village her mother owns, every building conspicuously charming. All sharp edges blunted with snow, vaguely glowing with bulbs, the downtown is old-fashioned in a way that makes one think of Bedford Falls, of Jimmy Stewart.

“You’re sure we’re in the right place?” she wonders, peering intently out the passenger window. “This is the location of your ghost deaths?”

“Hellespont, Vermont,” Mulder agrees, nodding, tapping on the steering wheel restlessly. “Established 1785. We’re looking for the Beacon Inn, so keep your eyes peeled.”

The light changes, and he drives past a historic town hall. There is, honest to god, a grouping of rosy-cheeked children in wool caps singing in a formation on the front steps. Scully observes them closely as the car moves by. Electric candles in their hands, ruddy glow on their faces: angels we have heard on high.

“It doesn’t seem like the site of supernatural murder.”

“Well, Scully, like I said, the deaths haven’t officially been described as homicides,” Mulder says. “They’re all—”

“Yes,” Scully says. “Sudden cardiac deaths. You did say.” She isn’t in the mood for Mulder’s withheld key information and sudden reveals. “Which, as it happens, is one of the most common causes of death in the United States.”

“Three cardiac deaths in six months in one New England inn,” Mulder reminds her. “That’s a little uncanny. And my source says—”

“That it’s a ghost,” Scully cuts in again. “Some tortured soul who has made the journey back from the great unknown to attack with the power of coronary artery disease.”

“Sure,” Mulder says uneasily. She feels him glancing at her. “We both agreed this one was worth poking into, didn’t we?”

A slight pause. “Yes,” she says. “Of course we did.”

“Good,” Mulder says. His eyes bounce off of her again. “I’m mostly going off of what the source told me, the inn’s owner. There aren’t … many details. It’ll probably be too late tonight, but I’m hoping we can both run through the whole story with him tomorrow morning.”

She takes a breath, pushing back her irritation. “I assume we’re staying at the haunted inn.”

Mulder flashes her a placating grin. “It’s actually a much nicer place than what I usually book.”

“Besides the high rate of sudden death, of course.”

“Hopefully we can help them out with that,” Mulder says. He drums on the steering wheel again and serenades her. “‘Something strange in your neighborhood. Who you gonna call, Scully?’”

Scully smiles tolerantly and turns back to the window. She’s unable to stop herself from peering out to watch the people milling around downtown Hellespont: cozy scarves pulled over their faces, shopping bags over their arms, hand in hand with significant others. Ordinary lives that seem increasingly distant from her own.

“I, uh, know you’re probably eager to be finished up before the holiday,” Mulder adds. “Get back to your mom’s.”

Scully nods slowly, her gaze still out the window, unable to respond right away. Yes, she is eager to be back with her family for Christmas, and yet it’s also the very last place she wants to be. Her sister absent. Her sister never coming to Christmas again. Her mother’s dull-eyed grief. It might be better to turn her energy to ghostbusting after all.

“What are you doing for the holidays, Mulder?” she asks the window, keeping her tone light and conversational. “Going on an adventure? Going skiing with the Gunmen? Hot date?”

“Hot date, for sure,” he says. She turns to look at him, and he’s picking some sunflower seeds out of a bag he’s stashed in the console.

“Ah, then you must be eager to finish the ghostbusting case up, too.”

“Oh, I’m not worried,” he says. “You know we tend to wrap these cases up fast and tidy, Scully. We’ll be back to family and holiday love in no time.” Just as she is about to give him an incredulous look, he gestures out the window. “Oh, look, there it is,” he says suddenly. He’s pointing to the ornate sign outside a Victorian house perched on a hillside. “Beacon Inn.”

***

There is ice coating the uphill walk to the Beacon Inn, and Mulder resists the urge to offer Scully a steadying arm. She might refuse it, and that would needle him, even though it has nothing to do with him. Well, it might have something to do with him. But mostly, he thinks, it isn’t about him at all.

He’s aware that Scully’s grieving this holiday; this first Christmas without her sister. He sees it in the slump of her shoulders when he mentions time off coming up, the way her eyes focus on some unseen place at work, the way he finds her sister’s file left sitting out, thumbed through yet again. Still raw, still unsolved.

His own sister’s case has haunted him for more than twenty years. Everyday he has to grapple with what it means to still not have justice and to still be seeking even the barest minimum of answers. Does Scully fear the same for herself? Does she look at him and see a bleak future? This recent interest of hers in religion: it troubles him. He knows she’s started going back to Mass, after the stigmata case, the case with Kevin Kryder. It’s like she’s searching for something to hold on to, any port in a storm.

He doesn’t know what it portends.

In quiet moments he’s studied her across the office. Every day he half expects to hear her say she’s giving her notice. He wonders if he shouldn’t encourage her to.

But what would the work be like without her? What would the basement be like? Who would he talk to about his ideas, his theories, his weekend? He’s not quite selfless enough to urge her to walk away.

This case—haunted deaths in bucolic New England—has sat in his “maybe” pile for weeks: intriguing, definitely, but with a distinct odor of “junior high ghost story.” After observing Scully for one listless morning last week, he pulled the file out again, spread out the pages, and began putting together a slideshow.

She’s always one to find her purpose in work. They’re alike that way. And Vermont in the snow, a haunted inn—there’s a certain ambiance to this one, right? He knows he’s charmed by this sort of thing, so she might find it charming, too. At very least she’ll be able to complain about having to tolerate junior high ghost stories.

And he thinks she does like complaining about that, sometimes.

At the root of it, it’s just plain selfish. He can’t stand to be in the office and see that expression on her face anymore. Anything is better than that. So over the river and through the woods to the haunted inn they go.

He turns to look at her now as they approach the front steps. She’s wearing her long black trench. Her cheeks are pink from the cold; her expression is perfectly neutral. She notices his stare and looks back at him quizzically.

The case has yet to engage her full attention, he can see that perfectly well. But they’ve only just arrived. There is plenty of time to pull her in. On any case it sometimes takes a while for her to pluck at the thread that interests her the most. She always finds something, her own distinctive way into the labyrinth. It’s one of the things about Scully he likes the very most.

Stepping gingerly around piles of snow-crusted lumber and plaster debris around the front porch, they glance at one another.

“Under construction.” Scully gestures to a tarp over the front of the porch.

“Apparently they’re doing some remodeling,” Mulder agrees.

“Some remodeling,” calls a voice from inside the slightly-open door with an audible huff. “Tactful understatement. Did you hear what they said, Duncan? They said you’re doing some remodeling.”

The door, which is adorned with a fat evergreen wreath with bronze ornaments, cracks further open, and a slight white man in his late forties, clad in a thick wool sweater, an apron, and wire frame glasses, sticks his torso out. “Agent Mulder?”

“Yeah, hello,” Mulder says, stepping over piles to approach. “I’m Agent Mulder, and this”—he gestures with a sweeping arm to Scully, who steps next to him—“is my partner Agent Scully. You must be Duncan Macneill?”

“Just Duncan, please,” the man says. “I am the co-owner of Beacon Inn. As well as manager, cook, historian, night watchman. Come inside, please. It’s bitter cold.”

He beckons for them to follow him, and Mulder and Scully step inside after him. Immediately they’re greeted with a blast of warm air and the woody, aged smell of a historic house.

As they wipe their wet feet on a woven mat, Mulder carefully eyes the lobby, which is really a living room. It’s rustic, cozy, a mix of antiques and newer pieces, with somber historic portraits on the walls and some quirky mismatched furniture scattered with brightly-colored pillows. There is a giant glowing Christmas tree festooned with large red velvet bows. Mulder’s no expert, but it looks like a lot of care and love has gone into decorating.

“We’re so sorry about the mess outside,” another voice chimes in. A round-faced Asian man about Duncan’s age sits behind a desk across from the door. “It’s just inhospitable, isn’t it? I keep telling Duncan we need to wrap the project up, but it drags on and on through the seasons.”

“The new exterior will be worth it,” Duncan proclaims confidently. “Although I admit, it has taken a while.” He winks at the man behind the counter, then turns to Mulder and Scully. “This is the inn’s other co-owner… my partner, Banoy Borja.”

Mulder walks over to shake Banoy’s hand. “Agent Mulder—and my partner, Agent Scully.”

“So nice to meet you,” Scully says with a smile.

“Oh,” Banoy says, stepping back to look them over. “I’d reserved two upstairs bedrooms, both singles. Should I prepare the Beech Bedroom instead? It’s got a queen.”

“It’s fine,” Mulder says quickly.

“Two singles is perfect,” Scully adds.

“Different kind of ‘partner,’” Duncan stage whispers to Banoy.

“F.B.I. partners,” Scully clarifies quietly.

“Right, I just thought maybe both...?” Banoy explains.

“No,” Mulder says emphatically. “No. Just F.B.I. partners.”

“Ahh, of course,” Banoy says, his eyes flickering between them. “My mistake.”

Scully spins abruptly towards the porch again. “Your renovations look quite extensive,” Scully says, changing the subject. “Are you building on to the house?”

“No, no. The porch was falling apart,” Duncan says. “We’re modernizing it, rebuilding, but this is New England, so naturally we have to adhere to the town’s historic preservation code. And of course we want to maintain the inn’s Victorian exterior, too.”

“We had a tiny bit of trouble,” Banoy says. “It can be tricky. You know. Historic preservation commissions in small towns.”

“It’s all resolved now,” Duncan says, waving his hand dismissively.

Scully nods, but Mulder notes her eyebrows are drawing together the way that she does when she’s thinking about something.

“We’re going to want to ask you both some questions about the recent deaths,” Mulder tells them. “But … maybe not tonight.”

Banoy looks stricken. “Yes, of course, but please—” He lowers his voice and looks around nervously. “Just make sure that there’s none of that talk about death in front of guests.”

Mulder discreetly glances from side to side and sees no one else around but the four of them. He nods understandingly. These are touchy topics. “Sure, of course,” he says. “‘Maybe we can talk tomorrow morning, somewhere quiet? Mr. Macneil, you were the one to contact us—does that work for you?”

“Duncan, I told you,” corrects Duncan. “And yes, Agent Mulder. Why don’t we have coffee and pastry in the kitchen? Say 9-ish?”

“Duncan loves to talk about the ghost,” Banoy says with an affectionate eyeroll. “You’ll never shut him up. But let’s get you checked in and settled. You must be so worn out.”

“Grab the bags while I check in?” Scully says offhand to Mulder. He nods automatically. It’s a well-established system by now. Mulder turns for the door as Scully speaks to Banoy.

When he comes back in, Scully is still chatting with the two men about the inn’s renovations. Mulder’s eyes narrow as he drags their bags by; some detail has obviously attracted her interest there. Which is good, really. He wants to see her involved in the case. If it’s important, she’ll update him later.

He decides to take their room keys and go ahead with the bags upstairs.

Upstairs, he’s met by a long narrow hallway with six doors, three on each side, historic brass lanterns outside of each one, producing an uneven amber glow. It’s atmospheric. He likes it, New England boy that he is.

At the end of the hallway is another impressive Christmas tree, twinkling with white lights and draped with swaths of crimson velvet. The wooden floor boards, worn smooth by years of foot traffic, creak underfoot as he steps down the hall. He discovers his and Scully’s rooms are side by side.

Just before he tries to go inside, he stops. He looks back and forth, up and down the hall.

He has the strangest feeling he’s being observed. But there’s no one there. No one he sees, anyway.

Look at you, going full on junior high ghost story, he thinks to himself. He reminds himself that Scully probably thinks he’s always full on junior high ghost story. She probably thinks her career has turned into one big junior high ghost story after another.

He unlocks his own room first, stepping inside only to get a quick lay of the land: a simple star-patterned quilt on the bed, another faux brass lantern, an old-fashioned washing stand with a pitcher, and a framed silhouette of a young woman with her hair up above the dresser. There’s no adjoining door.

He puts his bag next to the bed and goes next door to unlock Scully’s room. Her room appears to be essentially identical, a mirror image of his own, except for the quilt is a slightly different star pattern, and the silhouette above the dresser is a young man instead of a woman. He looks at the silhouette for a moment, trying from idle curiosity to decide whether he can make out if the man has a mustache.

He wheels her bag inside and sets it next to her bed, too.

He’s locking up Scully’s door, about to go back downstairs to find her, when he again has the unmistakable, creeping sensation that someone is watching him.

Come on. It’s just one of the other guests Banoy mentioned, he thinks, his eyes still firmly trained on the key in the door.

With a slowness and caution he couldn’t fully explain if asked, he turns his body towards the far end of the hall.

And that’s when he sees it.

When he sees her.

What he sees certainly appears to be a her, anyway: a woman standing at the end of the hall staring at him.

His first impulse is to reach for his phone to call Scully, to insist she come up and see, but he isn’t sure if he should move. Instead he stares back at the woman stupidly, his mouth hanging open, his hand still holding the key to Scully’s room.

The woman is wearing a long white empire waist dress and a piece of fabric drawn around her like a shawl. She has dark hair parted in the middle and curling around her face. Her expression is hard, uncompromising, calculating.

And she is transparent—there’s no other word for it, that’s what she is. She’s entirely without solid substance. Ephemeral. This fascinates Mulder. He can peer through her body to make out each point of light spangling the Christmas tree at the end of the hallway behind her. If he stepped forward and put his hand out to touch her, would it go through? A very reckless part of him would like to try.

Standing contemplating her in frozen wide-eyed fear and wonder, he wonders what to do now. More than anything he wishes Scully would come up the stairs right this second, would stand here and witness this with him.

Before he can decide how to react, the woman, much to his alarm, takes a step. Towards him. Mulder hears his breath hitch, feels the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“My love,” she whispers, ever so softly. Her voice doesn’t sound ephemeral at all. It’s husky and tremulous. “How I miss you.”

All at once, Mulder remembers the danger associated with this case—what’s happened to the victims who had reportedly seen the spectral figure. The adrenaline of fear courses through him more powerfully.

“My love,” she repeats almost tenderly, holding her hand out towards him, her fingers beckoning. “Come to me. My love.”

Mulder moves his own hand in alarm, and looks down at his chest to see his left palm instinctively covering his heart in protection. He’s breathing a little fast for sure, but he feels no other symptoms, no impending heart failure.

When he looks up again to see the woman, he’s staring at an entirely empty hallway. There’s no one there. He’s alone, clutching his vulnerable heart.

She wonders if there’s any chance she was right—that this is a birthday surprise. He did sound excited, almost breathless—something she hadn’t heard in his voice in a long time.

His car, now visible, weaves its way through the traffic that always seems to choke the roads around the hospital, even on the weekends. She can see him waving manically at her through the windshield. She allows him a half-hearted wave in return, pressing her lips together disapprovingly.

She should have asked more questions about this.

He pulls directly into a delivery zone in front of her, rolling down his window. “Come on,” he calls. “Hop in.” He’s surprisingly clean shaven and high energy. Something is definitely afoot.

“I’m not getting my latte?”

“I’ll stop and pick one up for you somewhere else. Come on, Scully.” He makes an urgent beckoning gesture with his hand.

She walks unhurriedly around the front of his car, feeling his eyes watching every leisurely step she takes. She opens the car door and slides into the pleasantly warm passenger seat. She throws Mulder a wary glare.

“Thank you,” Mulder says, exhaling, beginning to turn the wheel to steer them back onto the street. “Jesus, Scully.”

A movement in the back seat startles her, and she whirls her head around. There is a boy in sunglasses hunched down low in the seat, as though he’s avoiding the windows.

“Hello,” Scully says, uncertainly. She turns more fully to see him better. “I didn’t see you back there.”

“Hi,” the boy replies, his voice flat. He’s dressed in too-big clothes that seem to swallow up his slender frame. He’s dressed in Mulder’s old clothes, she realizes. Even the prized Yankees cap.

She turns to look questioningly at Mulder. He gives her a mysterious look before being required to devote his attention to the road again.

“What’s going on?” she asks. The boy’s presence causes her to speak more politely than she might otherwise. “Are we investigating an X-file, Mulder?”

“This is Jackson,” Mulder says, cryptic as ever. “Jackson came to me for help.”

“For help. Okay.” Scully twists around again to face the boy, who is uncomfortably adjusting his hat and sunglasses. “Jackson,” she says, “I’m Dana Scully.”

He lowers his sunglasses to look directly at her. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

When she sees his face, Scully’s breath catches.

“What?” Mulder says immediately. “What, Scully?”

She isn’t quite sure how to handle this. “I recognize him.”

“You do?” Mulder’s voice is sharp.

“From the news story,” Jackson’s voice cuts in. “She recognizes me from the news story.”

“He’s wanted by police for a serious crime.” She throws Mulder a significant look. “You know about this?”

“Yeah,” Mulder says, swallowing.

“I didn’t do it,” Jackson’s voice says quickly from the back seat. “I didn’t kill my parents. That’s what I need help with.”

What on earth has Mulder involved himself with? Scully thinks wearily. He’s not an FBI agent any more, and this is serious, a private citizen aiding and abetting someone accused of a crime, juvenile or not. She worries that Mulder is so depressed and rudderless that he could believe anyone with a compelling story. She certainly hopes he’s been alert enough to confirm the boy isn’t armed.

Scully turns around to look at Jackson directly again, adopting her placating, sensible doctor voice. “Did Mulder explain that sometimes the best, most practical thing to do is to turn yourself in?”

The boy only impassively stares back at her. It seems at first that he is unaffected by her question, but then his mouth begins trembling.

Scully scowls faintly. “Jackson, I’m only saying. Sometimes speaking with an attorney is the best… the most ...”

She loses her train of thought. A fat tear has sprung from the corner of his eye. Seeing it troubles her more than she expects.

“Okay, Scully, listen,” Mulder says. “Just back up for one second.”

But she’s stopped listening to Mulder, because she’s become preoccupied with the struggle happening on the boy’s face. The way he’s trying to set his jaw and harden his look. He’s trying to keep his expression indifferent—to look like he doesn’t care—but this only makes him look more vulnerable. Like what she’s said has badly hurt him, and like he’s scared she is about to do it again.

His expression reminds her of something. She stares at him openly, not bothering to hide her interest, trying to pinpoint it.

A part of her chest begins to tighten.

His wobbling bottom lip, which he’s now biting hard, is round. His eyes are green, the cool grayish green of sage. Not a common color, but one she knows well.

“I want to get us to a quiet spot. Let me drive out of Arlington,” Mulder continues. “Then we can talk. We need to talk.”

The boy abruptly breaks eye contact with her. He furiously wipes the moisture on his cheek with the back of his hand, scoots over to the window, and turns to look out.

“You’ll understand all of this once I have a chance to explain,” Mulder tells her. “I promise, Scully.”

Scully continues to stare, knowing she’s making the boy feel self-conscious. He hunches down lower, adjusting the baseball cap over his eyes.

He’s wearing Mulder’s hat. Mulder’s given him his Yankees cap.

She can hear the steady build of her heart pounding in her ears.

“She already knows,” Jackson announces gruffly to the window, almost like he’s talking to himself. “She’s figured it out. She doesn’t want to let herself believe it.”

Scully can only shake her head wordlessly.

Mulder’s eyes are now rapidly bouncing between Scully, the rearview mirror, and the road. “Is he right? Did you?”

“It’s … true?” Scully manages, her voice broken. Her eyes don’t leave the boy.

She feels Mulder’s hand rest on her leg for a beat, warm and steady. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s true.”

There is a pause. Scully’s eyes fall on Jackson’s attire.

Jackson looks down at the sweater he’s wearing, pulling it out in front of him to examine it. “She’s wondering if you gave me this sweater to wear on purpose,” he says to the back of Mulder’s head. “Because it was the shirt you were wearing when you held me for the first time.”

Scully can’t quite process how he’s knowing all of this. She finds herself gripping the edge of the car seat as though it’s going to keep her from falling. She tries to pull her thoughts together.

“Did you?” he asks, arching his body to see Mulder better. “Give it to me on purpose?”

“No,” Mulder says. His voice seems so bizarrely calm. “God, no, I didn’t. I remember that moment well, but I honestly wouldn’t have remembered what shirt I was wearing.

“Well, she does,” Jackson says. He slumps back down in his seat, stealing fast, furtive glances at Scully.

Scully sifts through all of the questions and holds on to the one that is currently most important to her.

“You’re sure?” she says to Mulder in a low voice. “You’re sure that it’s him?”

“Yes,” Mulder says. “I’m sure. I asked Skinner to run the DNA through the FBI labs.”

“I’m sure, too,” Jackson says. “In case you were wondering.”

She turns back to him, and she’s met by those burning resentful eyes so much like Mulder’s.

Startled, she tries to think of something meaningful to say to him.

But all she wants to do is look at him. She wants to drink every single detail of him in. She can’t help comparing him to what she remembers. That hair, so dark now, had been lighter and redder as a baby. His eyes had been bluer. His face had been so much rounder. Now it has the early adolescent beginnings of a pronounced jawline, one a little like Mulder’s.

And yet it is him. It’s him. The corners of her eyes burn and prickle.

“I recognize you now…” she says, unable to marshal the right words into a sentence. “Your face is …. I recognize your face.”

Jackson’s eyes meet hers for a moment, then shift to look back out the window again.

“How long have you…” She stops, trying to think what she’s trying to say. “How long has he been here?” she asks Mulder.

“Since right after you left on Friday. He came right after that.”

“That long,” she says, stunned. “You didn’t call.”

“I know. We were trying to figure it out. I wanted to be sure,” Mulder says. “I thought it would be… well. I just wanted to be sure, Scully.”

Scully nods robotically, more shocked than angry. Something occurs to her.

“He’s like Gibson Praise,” Scully murmurs to Mulder. “That’s how he …. knows what I am thinking. He’s a telepath.”

“Yeah,” Mulder agrees heavily.

“Gibson Praise?” repeats Jackson in the back.

Scully doesn’t answer, but leans back on her seat again, thinking in a panic of the considerable trouble Gibson had in his young life. Were Jackson’s parents murdered because of his ability? So someone could get to Jackson? How many people already are aware of what he can do?

Behind her she hears the sound of the boy restlessly squirming around. “You knew another kid with my abilities?”

“I told you we knew other people with your abilities, Jackson,” Mulder says gently.

“A kid. Younger than me. A chess champion. Who was in danger constantly?” he asks. “Where is he now? Were his parents murdered? Was he?”

“We can explain it all, but let’s just try to calm down,” Mulder replies.

Jackson’s head thumps back against the seat. He places the heels of his hands on his forehead.

“I can’t,” Jackson says tightly. “I can’t calm down. It’s not that easy.”

“Everything is going to be fine,” Mulder begins. “Just be—”

“No, no, you don’t understand. It’s coming at me so much… I can’t do anything, and it hurts.”

“What’s coming at you so much?” Scully asks sharply. “What hurts?”

“You,” Jackson says in a low voice. He covers his face with his hands, as if trying to block out daylight.

“Are you okay?” Mulder’s eyeing him.

“I need a second,” mumbles Jackson from beneath his hands.

Scully sends Mulder a quick, desperate look. Please help me understand.

“He can tune into everyone’s thoughts,” Mulder explains to her, his voice still maddeningly steady. “And usually he can control it. More than Gibson could, I think. But he seems to tune into you especially … clearly. It’s like an extra loud, powerful frequency. He, uh, noticed it the other day when he saw you leaving the house.”

“He saw me leave the house?” And he was listening to my thoughts? Scully tries to remember all she had been thinking. She had been so upset, so angry. She could have been thinking any number of nasty things in the heat of the moment, things she didn’t mean.

“Yeah, you were,” answers Jackson’s muffled voice. “All kinds of things. All kinds of feelings. Every kind of feeling out there. And everything you could feel, I could feel, too. But it’s even worse right now.”

Scully feels her chest tighten further. How is she supposed to think anything knowing he can hear everything? If her feelings hurt him physically, how is she supposed to stop herself from feeling them?

“What can I do to make this easier?” she asks, practically begging. “Can I shield my thoughts in some way?”

“Even if you could, it wouldn’t stop the feelings,” Jackson’s voice replies raggedly. “Maybe you could just try to stop your memories?”

“How do I do that?” Scully asks Mulder anxiously.

“Your memories are … “ Jackson gasps abruptly. “They are just so … Like there’s the baby. I keep seeing the baby. And Mulder. It’s… Oh. Fuck.” Jackson’s face seems to change color, and he begins to pitch forward and back. “It’s too much. I’m going to—” He taps urgently on Mulder’s shoulder. “Can we… can we pull over? Like really quick?”

Mulder nods grimly, starts to steer the car into the parking lot of a shopping area.

“What’s wrong, Jackson?” Scully asks him. “I’m a doctor. I might be able to help.” He just shakes his head, pressing a palm over his mouth.

Mulder finds a spot and pulls in. Immediately Jackson throws open the door and staggers out. He stumbles a few steps away, taking off the Yankees hat and bending over at the waist, his hands on his knees. Mulder and Scully exchange bewildered looks. Scully scoots to the door of the car, considering whether to go out after him.

Jackson throws up explosively on the pavement.

Mulder leaps out of the car and is at his side at once, placing a hand on his back. “Okay, all right,” he says gently. Finished, Jackson coughs, and his body seems to wrack with something like a sob. Mulder’s hand pats his shoulder soothingly. “You’re all right. We’re going to figure this out.”

He’s so good with him, Scully thinks before she can stop herself, her feelings mutinously ambivalent. She had always believed Mulder would make a good father, she wanted him to be a good father, but her fantasies about getting William back had always centered on her. Her reunion with her baby. She’d been the one who’d known William as an infant. Yet here Jackson and Mulder are, seemingly already in some kind of simpatico. She knows it’s wonderful, a miracle, but it also makes some part of her ache.

“Is this making your head hurt?” Mulder questions Jackson, trying to meet his eyes. “Is that what’s happening?”

She wonders if Mulder is remembering when the crushing weight of other people’s thoughts made his own head hurt. Jackson looks so pale, so overwhelmed. Right now, he reminds her eerily of Mulder in those days, back when she thought she might lose Mulder to his telepathic ability.

The boy doesn’t answer Mulder’s question, but instead slowly rotates over towards Scully. Too late she remembers. He can hear what I think.

Jackson blinks at her, his eyes rimmed with red. He then turns back to Mulder. “You were telepathic, too,” Jackson accuses him in a dull, scratchy voice.

“Yeah,” Mulder agrees, glancing over at Scully, too. “For a short while.”

“She’s remembering it now.” Jackson gestures to Scully. “You touched some old artifact. Then you could read minds.”

Mulder and Scully meet eyes for a moment from over Jackson’s shoulder. Mulder looks pained. “That’s right. It didn’t last. But I remember what it was like.”

“She’s wondering if that has anything to do with what I can do. It happened not that long before I was born.” Jackson stands up again, tugging at his oversized shirt. Scully can’t help but notice as he straightens up that he’s lean and tall, already taller than her. “Do you think it might?”

“I don’t know,” Mulder says. “I don’t know what exactly you can see in Scully’s mind. But there are a few reasons you could have these abilities. Both Scully and I were exposed to artifacts with… some kind of potency shortly before you were conceived. That could be it. But we also both had been infected with a virus that is probably extraterrestrial in origin. Hell, we had been exposed to a giant fungus that caused us to have a telepathic link within the year. It could have been several things.”

“Okay,” Jackson says wearily. “Yeah.” He puts his hands on his face.

“Are you good?”

“Yeah. No. Of course not. I mean … for one, I’m wondering what the hell your life is,” mumbles Jackson. “You just brought up so much crazy shit.”

“That’s something I do,” Mulder says. He smiles at Scully. “Ask her.”

Jackson doesn’t smile. “When you were telepathic, you were … sick. In the hospital. In a white room.” He swallows, gesturing again at Scully. “She was really scared.”

“Yeah,” Mulder agrees somberly. “I didn’t know how to control it. It was like tuning into every radio station from everyone’s mind at once. It wasn’t anything like what you can do right now.”

“Are you sure? Because I don’t know how to control it right now.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Mulder says emphatically. “You’re just getting used to something new.”

Jackson again runs his hands through his hair, in what is maybe a self-soothing habit. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” He takes a few steps back and forth, then turns back to Mulder. “But I think I need a break. Please. Can I have a break before we drive again? Just a few minutes?”

Scully can see Mulder’s indecision in his body language, on his face. She grips her own leg in anxiety, wishing she could contribute to the conversation, but she doesn’t want to make things worse for Jackson.

“Whatever we do, you definitely need to get back in the car,” Mulder says to Jackson. He looks around, setting his jaw. They’re standing in a small parking lot along a busy road, within eyesight of a shopping center with a phone store, Chinese takeout, a pharmacy, a bakery. It’s mid-afternoon and there are other people walking to and from their cars, although the three of them seem to have avoided direct attention for the moment. “I don’t want you to be noticed,” he adds quietly. “I’m already worried about security cameras in the lot. You don’t think you could make it if we just drove back to my house? You could have a break there.”

“Maybe.” Jackson’s tongue darts out and nervously licks his lip. “But maybe I could lie down in the car for like fifteen minutes and you guys could go somewhere else, maybe get coffee or something? I just need to be away from all the feelings … for little while.”

His eyes snap over Scully again, and it hits her like a swift slap: she is “all the feelings.” It’s her he needs a break from.

Mulder dips his head up and down in a slow nod. “Okay,” he says in a measured voice. “That seems reasonable. In the car.” He looks over towards her. “We can go see if the bakery has lattes. Right, Scully?”

She hesitates. “All right.”

“The bakery is … far enough?” Mulder asks carefully.

Jackson looks around the shopping center, squinting at the store fronts. “Yeah,” he says. “I think so. Enough to make it easier. I haven’t really had this happen before.” He avoids Scully’s gaze. “But I think even a little farther is better.”

She tries not to react to that. She draws upon every bit of the professional armor she’s amassed over the years, and she slides out of the car, smoothing her pants and coat with a stoic expression.

Jackson watches her, then, pausing to pick up the Yankee hat, climbs into the back seat of the car again.

“All right,” Mulder says. “Just be careful.”

Jackson scrambles over the seat and immediately lies on his side, curling up, folding his arms over his chest in a too-familiar way that makes Scully’s heart ache again. He looks exhausted.

She spins around abruptly and begins walking quickly and determinedly through the parking lot. It will give them both relief, she realizes, if she moves herself away sooner rather than later.

Mulder lingers behind to say a few more words to Jackson, then jogs to catch up with her.

“Scully?” he says as he reaches her, cupping her elbow. “You okay?”

She throws him an incredulous look. “I don’t know … how I could possibly answer that question.”

“I know,” Mulder says. “I know that his not being able to be near you … is painful. We’re going to fix it. I know we are.”

She turns to face Mulder. She knows the signs of when he is excited, energized, and she sees them now. His eyes are intensely bright; his mouth is moving, twitching, like it is searching out a sunflower seed to latch on to. Mulder is so unbelievably happy, she realizes with a sharp shock. She can’t remember the last time she has seen him so unequivocally ebullient. It may have been the time he wore the shirt Jackson is wearing and held his newborn son.

Suddenly, Scully feels churlish. Mulder’s reaction is probably much more appropriate here than her own self-centered hurt feelings.

“It’s a dream come true to see him,” she acknowledges quietly, beginning to walk again.

“I know,” he exclaims quickly, keeping pace with her. “I know! Isn’t it? He’s great, too, Scully. He’s so smart. He’s a math guy. And when he was organizing my books for me—he reminded me so much of you. He sounded exactly like you.” He shakes his head. “I just wish he hadn’t had this shit happen to him. With his parents.”

“Mulder, I–” They are standing in front of the bakery now, and she turns to stare back across the lot at the car, wondering how well Jackson can read their thoughts from here. “Mulder, do you think it’s wise to leave him in the car like this? Is it possible he would try to run?”

Mulder follows her gaze. “No. No way,” he says. “Not possible.”

“He seemed rattled,” Scully points out. “He might not be thinking clearly. I clearly distressed him. You don’t think he might … be overwhelmed and decide to go?”

“He wasn’t considering running at all, Scully. He wants to get to know you. Or actually, he wants you to know him. He wants it really, really badly,” Mulder says.

Scully makes a little exasperated hiss. “Mulder,” she says. “I appreciate you putting a nice spin on things, but I don’t think the evidence points that direction. And it’s fine. He’s a young teen, and they’re not always rational or empathetic. I don’t need him to like me. We just have to protect him.”

Mulder sighs heavily, and looks around the parking lot as if carefully weighing his next words. “Scully,” he says. “I’m not putting a nice spin on things.”

“Mulder, I don’t know what you—”

“I know he wants to get to know you. With certainty.”

“He told you?”

“Not exactly.”

Scully blinks at Mulder, losing her patience.

“Let’s go in and have some coffee,” Mulder suggests. “Because there are a few more things I need to fill you in on.”

There’s still so much for her to do before this conference call. She wanted to go through yesterday’s results again and make more annotations. She wanted to crosscheck with the Amsterdam study. She doesn’t have time for this.

Fine. I’ll call you this afternoon.

There. Done. She should get back to work now, but instead she stares at the phone, waiting for his response.

Needs to be in person. Can you come to the house?

He has so much nerve. As much arrogance as ever, expecting her to be at his beck and call. She can feel her jaw clenching.

I’m busy, Mulder. I’m at work.

Sorry, it’s Sunday, didn’t realize.

Why do we need to talk?

The three dots appear, then disappear. He seems to be grappling with an answer.

After a moment, she adds: If this is about apologizing - not necessary.

The three dots pop up again on her screen.

Not an apology. Not about the other day. Something else. Important.

He adds a second message: Can I come to you? This afternoon?

She lets out a long, extended exhale, putting her head in her hands. After the conference call, she had been hoping to go home and enjoy a relaxing Sunday afternoon. Maybe go to yoga. Maybe take a bath. Seeing Mulder would almost certainly mean more emotional upheaval. The very opposite of the relaxation she needs.

But she’s always had such a hard time saying no to him.

Meet me at 3 at the cafe across from the hospital.

There’s a pause before he responds.

Okay. At 3.

Scully shoves the phone out of her sight, turning her attention back to her laptop. There’s still enough time to get ready. Her mind reviews her to-do list. Annotations, crosscheck with Amsterdam study, and then a quick overview of all of her notes.

But now her mind is distracted, wondering what Mulder wants.

Staring at the spreadsheet in front of her, full of all of the data she should be going through, she thinks a dangerous thought—one that will almost certainly come back to betray her.

Maybe he wants to give her a birthday present. Maybe he wants to do something nice for her birthday.

It’s so stupid of her. So adolescent. So ridiculous to even consider. It will only disappoint her later. Why would he do that? They’re not together anymore. And she knows he’s still struggling with their break-up, and she knows she should help give him space, so that he can recover and get better, get healthy. Even the idea is selfish.

She just can’t help but to imagine that kind of pleasant surprise. Like the old days. Maybe he has a present. A book, chosen just for her. A little bracelet, something exactly her tastes. A card he’s written tenderly for her.

The fantasy is irresistible because no one on earth has ever known her mind, known her heart, known her body like Mulder has. Being known to your core like that is a heady feeling, utterly addictive. She will never, ever stop wanting to experience it again.

She doubts she will. She can’t imagine any of the smarmy visiting surgeons who ask her out ever really knowing her like that.

Another idea pops into her mind, an even more foolish idea that reaches even further into her past.

Maybe he’s coming to her with a good old-fashioned slide show. With some bizarre monster to hunt, a spooky lead to track down, a haunted mystery to solve. Maybe he’s going to try to convince her to come with him on some wild goose chase.

That idea shouldn’t thrill her, it really shouldn’t, but it does. She longs for it in places she typically represses.

To be in some rental car with him, side by side, headed out to face grim small towns and sticky-table top diners and buzzing-sign motels. Her and him against the world. Partners against the darkness, ever and always.

She laughs softly, bitterly at herself. Jesus, she knows so much better than this.

These Mulders she’s longing for—the Mulder who remembers her birthday and painstakingly selects the perfect gift, the Mulder who gets caught up in the excitement of a case and coaxes his partner to be at his side—those versions of Mulder don’t exist any more.

Those versions of Mulder haven’t existed for a while, and that’s exactly why she had to leave.

She looks away from her laptop, massaging her forehead with a single fingertip, and takes another big drink of her coffee. Just take a break for five minutes, she tells herself. Get yourself together.

Her eyes drift back to her phone. She brushes past Mulder’s last message, and goes to scroll through the day’s headlines for the distraction.

Politics, entertainment, local news: she swipes through quickly. The phone offers so much convenience, but it brings something frenetic into her life, too. She sometimes misses the simple, tangible delight of having her hands on a paper Washington Post. Maybe she’ll pick one up today to read in the bathtub, if seeing Mulder doesn’t throw her too much for a loop.

There’s a national news story that catches her attention because of the words “Eighth grader” in the headline. This year, Scully’s attention is grabbed by anything mentioning eighth graders. Last year, it was seventh graders. Next year, it will be ninth graders, which makes her heart ache. High school. So old. He’s very possibly taller than her now.

This particular headline is rather upsetting: “Wyoming Eighth Grader Who Allegedly Shot Parents Still At Large.” Scully clicks on it and looks at the accompanying picture, a smiling school photo of a sweet-faced brown-haired boy who doesn’t look at all like a killer, which she knows from experience means exactly nothing. She decides not to read the story. Stories about killer eighth grade boys will upset her, and there’s no cause to upset herself.

The detour into the news is enough of a reset, though, for her to stop thinking about Mulder.

She turns back to the spreadsheet, her focus back. Only twelve minutes left now until her call. Scully lets herself shut the doors to everything but work.

***

Farrs Corner, Virginia February 22, 2015

“You ready?” Mulder says. He’s sitting in the driver’s seat, peering out the open passenger door with a too-bright smile.

Jackson climbs reluctantly in, reaching for his seatbelt. “I look stupid.”

“Not true.” Mulder says encouragingly. “You look like a kid who is being smart about not being recognized.”

News stories with Jackson’s photo have been making the rounds on the cable news stations, so Mulder has decided they can’t take risks. It seems like a long shot that someone would identify him on the roads of rural Virginia, but Jackson supposes it’s better safe than sorry.

So he’s wearing a worn old Yankees cap and a pair of dated oversized sunglasses. In Jackson’s opinion, the sunglasses make him more obvious, because no one under forty would ever wear sunglasses like that if they were not trying to disguise their identity.

The clothes he’d been wearing before were getting a little overripe, so Mulder has also made him borrow a pair of jeans and a black sweater. Like the sunglasses, they are really old—“vintage,” jokes Mulder—-and apparently from when he was a smaller size. But they’re still way too big for Jackson, who is skinnier and shorter. They hang off of him, even with the cuffs of the jeans rolled up and the sleeves of the sweater pushed back.

He looks like a kid playing dress up. Mulder is trying not to look at him. I hope he didn’t hear me think that. Jackson sighs a long, loud drawn-out sigh to let the man know he did.

They’ve now spent a full day together, him and Mulder, waiting for the DNA results to come back. It’s gone okay. Strange, but okay.

Yesterday morning, Mulder made him swab his mouth and drove the sample to drop off with some friend in the FBI. While Mulder was gone, Jackson snooped around, picking up every framed picture, opening drawers and cupboards. He didn’t find anything too interesting, except for a lot of evidence that Mulder didn’t clean up much.

By the time Mulder had returned, Jackson had decided to try to put all those piles of books back on his shelves, attempting to organize them by section. Mulder watched him in fascination for a moment and then joined in. It took them three hours to finish that project, mostly because Mulder kept going on tangents to tell him things about different books.

This book, which describes a fascinating incident with a wendigo, helped me solve a case once… I bought this paperback from a professional shaman in Brooklyn in 1989… This is a theoretical physics text about the practicalities of space travel Scully bought me as a joke.

Jackson didn’t hate it. Mulder was funny, mostly. And smart. He was definitely really smart. But he was intense, too, so eager to show Jackson things, so eager to impress him. Jackson’s shine wearied after a while.

That evening, they tried to watch TV, but turned it off when they saw a snippet of a news story with Jackson’s face. After that, they played chess. Mulder pointed out that telepaths had an unfair advantage in chess, but Jackson promised not to use it, and he really didn’t. Mulder won.

This morning, Mulder got the call about the DNA test, and while he didn’t say it in so many words, Jackson didn’t even need his shine to read the result from the man’s glowing face: it’s a match. You’re the daddy, like the talk shows say. Mulder obviously considers this great news.

Which means, of course, that it’s time to meet the other half of Jackson’s genetic equation.

“Okay,” Jackson mutters, clicking his seatbelt in place. “You said we’re going to a Starbucks or something?”

Mulder starts the engine. “We’re supposed to meet her at a cafe,” he says, maneuvering the car up the drive. “I’m not sure I like having you in public right now though, even master of disguise that you are. So we’ll convince her to talk elsewhere.”

“Hmm,” nods Jackson, the hat slipping over his face a little. He pushes it back. He feels Mulder stealing looks at him, and he wonders if Mulder has any idea how anxious he feels about meeting Scully. He makes a point of looking out the window, trying to make things seem more casual. “You know I could appear as someone else, right? If you want me to.”

“That might be useful,” Mulder says. “But I want Scully to see you as you are. Don’t you?”

Jackson doesn’t answer, keeping his gaze out the window. “On our way, are we going to drive by anywhere interesting? Like the White House or the Washington Monument?”

“Unfortunately, today we’re not leaving Virginia,” Mulder says. “But I promise, not too long from now I’ll take you to D.C. and show you the sights.”

Jackson lowers his stupid sunglasses and gives him a dubious look.

“What? I will.” Mulder protests. “Wait, hold on.” Mulder puts the car in park and hops out to open the gate. Jackson’s eyes follow him closely over the top of the sunglasses as he unlatches the gate and then slides back in.

“A lot of security,” comments Jackson. It seems like a pain in the ass to open and close the gate every time you leave. He wonders how often Mulder does leave. “This is because of those people you and Scully worked with?”

“More or less, yeah,” agrees Mulder, steering the car through the gate, then putting it in park again with a little jerk. He scrambles to hop out again, jogging back to close and latch the gate up.

At least, Jackson thinks, he didn’t grow up having to worry about all of this. He can’t imagine doing this all the time. Although, he thinks with a sudden sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, maybe he should have. Maybe if he and his parents had done all this, they would still be alive.

Mulder slides back in the car again. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Jackson manages.

Mulder nods without expression and drives the car onto the road. “Want to turn on some music?”

“That’s okay.”

“What kind of music do you like?”

Jackson smirks. “Do you really think you’ll have heard of it?”

“That depends,” Mulder says. “If you say you like Prince, or the Stones, or the Clash, then sure.”

“I like those,” Jackson says coolly. “I’m really into Bring Me the Horizon and Fall Out Boy?”

“Nope.”

Jackson gives him a withering “I told you so” look. He turns to face the front windshield, thinking about his mom singing along to When Doves Cry as she unloaded the dishwasher.

“What kind of music does Scully like?” he wonders.

“Oh,” Mulder sounds surprised. “Well, when she was young, she went through a rebellious phase. She liked punk, New Wave. All the music that would annoy her parents.”

“She didn’t get along with her parents?”

“No,” Mulder says. “She did, actually. She still does — her mom is still around. It was just teenage identity stuff. You know how it goes.”

Jackson nods seriously, making note of the existence of a living biological grandparent.

“Now, I think she still likes all that eighties music from when she was young,” Mulder says. “And sixties and seventies hits, too. She listens to that whenever she’s working out or doing something high energy. But she also likes classical music. She listens to a lot of classical music.”

“Is she, like, good at music? Does she sing or play an instrument?” Jackson and Louis had been talking about starting a band, and Jackson had been trying to learn guitar.

“No,” Mulder says. “Not really.” He smiles apologetically. “She’s really, really good at all kinds of other shit though, Jackson. Like being a scientist and a doctor and an F.B.I. agent.”

“She’s pretty, too,” comments Jackson.

“You can read my thoughts, so I assume you know how I feel about that,” Mulder says dryly. “I’m trying not to feel weird about it.”

“I don’t read every thought,” Jackson replies defensively. “I’ve been doing this my whole life, so I have a good idea when I am about to see something permanently damaging.”

Mulder laughs, but looks at him curiously. “What about at school, though? Teachers? Other kids? Girls—or guys—you might have a crush on? It must be tempting, huh?”

Jackson tries to think about how to explain it. “It’s not as tempting as you would think. It’s usually more trouble than it’s worth. You find out things you wish you didn’t. You see people think things about you that make you feel embarrassed or upset. You know information that’s hard to pretend you don’t know, and sometimes you mess up. I mostly don’t want to use my shine, if I can avoid it.”

“Your shine?”

“Oh yeah.” Jackson reddens. He’s only used the word with one other person before. “That’s what I call it. I call it ‘using my shine.’ I guess I mean like a light?”

“Okay,” Mulder says, nodding. “Interesting. Like the psychic boy in Stephen King? The Shining?”

Jackson frowns. “I haven’t seen it. Is there a shine in that?”

He doesn’t even know what I’m talking about. Jackson's mind tunes into Mulder’s thoughts like a radio. Don’t tell him. Too disturbing.

Instead, Mulder throws him a playful look. “Or like ‘Shine on, you crazy diamond.’ That’s an old Pink Floyd song.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of that,” Jackson says with a little tolerant nod. “But … yeah. It can make me feel weird to use it for no good reason. I mean, I’m not saying I have never tried to see answers inside a teacher’s head or anything like that. But mostly I just want to feel normal talking to other people. You know?”

“You do seem to be able to control your shine considerably better than other people I’ve known with this kind of ability,” Mulder comments. “It’s the kind of thing I would have been really interested in, back when I worked on the X-files.”

“You’ve known other people with this ability?”

“Oh yeah,” Mulder says. “Several people. I even… well, I don’t want to get into it all now. But I can talk to you about this in detail whenever you want to.”

Jackson is quiet. “I wish when I was little I knew that there were other people with these abilities. It would have been easier. Made me feel better.”

“I’m sure,” Mulder says quietly. “I wish I could have told you.”

There is a heavy pause.

“I go to therapy for anxiety and depression,” Jackson tells him.

“You do?”

“Yeah,” Jackson says. “What about you?”

“No,” Mulder says. He gives him a strange look. “But maybe I should?”

“Yeah,” Jackson agrees, thinking of several details he’s observed. “Maybe you should.”

“You’re in a position to see, I guess,” Mulder muses. He's silent for a beat.

“I read an article about how sometimes a baby, when they’re still in their mom’s womb, can sort of soak up her stress and trauma and then grow up to have problems with anxiety,” Jackson says. “Do you think something like that might have happened to me?”

“You read an article like that?” Mulder asks, scowling. “Why?”

“That’s the kind of article kids with closed adoptions read,” Jackson says, lowering the sunglasses again, an edge of dark humor. “If you're a big nerd like me, anyway. You sort of wonder about everything.”

Mulder raises his eyebrows. Then he seems to consider Jackson’s question.

“I mean, it’s possible,” Mulder says heavily. “It’s possible something like that happened to you when you were in utero. It’s also possible you have anxiety and depression because, each year since 2000, the number of children and teens diagnosed with anxiety and depression has gone up, and you’re just one of those kids.”

Jackson makes an impressed face. “You just happened to know that?”

“Scully read an article about it,” Mulder says. “The kind of article birth mothers with closed adoptions of kids born after 2000 read. If they’re big nerds like Scully, anyway.” He pauses. “It’s also possible you have anxiety and depression for any other number of reasons that have nothing to do with any of that. Like having these abilities you have to hide and deal with, for one.”

“Yeah,” admits Jackson.

“Hey, do me a favor, and please don’t mention reading your ‘anxiety forming in utero’ article to Scully. Okay? Never.”

Jackson’s brow furrows. Not having met Scully, it’s an easy promise to make. “Yeah, okay.” He looks over at Mulder. “Is that something that would bother her?”

Mulder nods emphatically. “Let me put it like this. You know how some families like to have Scrabble competitions? Or fantasy football? In this family we like to compete in feeling guilty for how we’ve hurt people we love.”

“Oh good,” Jackson deadpans. “I’ve been training for that.”

Mulder chuckles bitterly. “You really don’t understand your competition.”

Jackson hadn't even been aware his shine was active, but suddenly he's overcome: a painful onslaught of incoming information. There’s a rapid-fire series of images from Mulder’s mind, so fast Jackson feels his head thump back dramatically against the headrest, closing his eyes. He gasps loud enough that Mulder looks over.

“Whoa, whoa. You okay there?”

“Yeah,” Jackson says breathily, opening his eyes. “I just…” He feels like he got kicked.

“Feeling dizzy?”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Did you drink water today?”

“It wasn’t dehydration," Jackson murmurs.

Mulder’s face changes. Jackson sees that he has realized.

“Oh,” he says. "It was me, wasn't it?" A pause. “God, Jackson, I’m sorry about that.”

“Not really your fault.”

“You… what did you see?”

Jackson scrunches up his eyes to try to remember each detail. “I didn’t understand much of it,” he says. “There was a little girl, brown braids, bright light?” He looks over at Mulder, and Mulder nods tightly. “All these different people crying because they’ve lost someone, mostly people I don’t know. But Scully lots of times. Scully crying again and again and again.” Mulder presses his lips together tightly. “A baby crying in a crib. Me?”

“Yep,” Mulder says. “You.”

“You feel guilty about me?”

“Yep,” Mulder says. He doesn’t add any more detail.

Jackson takes that information in. He’s tempted to use his shine again, to add some context and see why, exactly, but again it seems a little too much for him to cope with. Better to take all of this information in in tiny bite-sized chunks.

He thinks of something else he’s kind of been wanting to ask instead.

“Am I the only kid you guys ever had? Or did you have others?”

“Just you,” Mulder says, his voice melancholy now. “You weren’t supposed to be possible. She wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant at all. We thought you were a miracle.”

Jackson chews on that thought, staring out the window at the passing late winter Virginia landscape.

Some very dark, small voice inside his mind tells him something else: All your training assumes you don’t want someone to strike you down. That you have something to live for. But that’s not an accurate assumption in this case, is it? Why do you bother? She’s never coming back.

He shakes his head. He can’t think like that. Besides, there’s comfort in just slipping into g-man mode, something he knows how to do without thinking. 

The curtains in his front window are drawn, so he can just peer out from the side. There is someone standing there, but Mulder can only see the back slope of their head and back. A man, he thinks. He’s standing too close to the door for Mulder’s vantage point. If this guy would just take one little step back, Mulder could see him perfectly.

Almost as if he could hear Mulder’s request, the figure takes a step back, stepping precisely into Mulder’s frame of sight. 

It’s not a man. It’s a boy. A  young teenager, facing the front door expectantly.

Mulder lets out a deep breath. All right. This is more likely a neighbor request then. Probably a kid selling magazine subscriptions for the junior high track team or something. 

“Hi,” Mulder says, opening the door with a tepid, friendly smile. “What can I do for you?”

The boy stares back at him, and Mulder’s investigator instincts snap back into place. This doesn’t look like a kid selling magazines. This looks like a kid who is very, very anxious.

“I–” The kid stops, bites his lip, looks at his feet. “Somebody, uh, told me to come talk to you.”

“To me?” Mulder scratches his head. He tries to wrack his brain about why a local kid could be sent to talk to him. He knows some of his neighbors probably think he needs help with keeping up the yard. “Oh. Uh, is it about those downed trees on the edge of the property? I know sometimes people pay kids to cut wood up and haul it away or whatever. Were you … interested?”

“No, no,” the boy says. He’s got brown hair, straight, and he runs his fingers through it nervously. “It’s not like that. I came here … for your help.”

“For my help,” repeats Mulder. His eyes scan the yard, the road beyond, looking for signs of a car that could have dropped the kid off. 

“Yeah,” the boy says. He clears his throat. His eyes land, just for a moment, at the handle of the gun visible at Mulder’s waistband. “I need help. Somebody told me you could help me. Fox Mulder, right?”

Mulder nods. “Yeah, I’m Fox Mulder,” he says. He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Listen, I used to be an F.B.I. agent, but I’m not anymore. I’m not really someone who can…help people.”

The boy is undeterred. “I think you can help me.”

Mulder looks him over. He has a lightweight jacket on, but his shoes look dirty. He’s shifting his weight from foot to foot. There’s something sad about the kid, like he’s carrying an invisible burden. 

Mulder has the oddest sensation, just for a moment, that he can actually feel the kid’s sadness. That he’s experiencing the same heavy sensation blooming in his chest as the kid is.

The feeling fades away quickly. Probably just one depressed guy feeling empathy for another.

Why the fuck don’t you try to help him? What else do you have to do?

“Okay,” Mulder says with a sigh. “Sure. I have a lot of questions. But come inside. I’ll see what I can do.”

The boy follows Mulder obediently. His eyes, sharp and observant, fly all over the room, taking in every detail. He stares at the piles of books on the floor, the same perturbed expression on his face that Scully had.

“I’m reorganizing my books,” Mulder explains halfheartedly. “Why don’t you come sit at the table with me? More room over here. What’s your name?”

“Jackson,” the kid says, sliding into one of Mulder’s kitchen table seats. 

“Are you hurt, Jackson?”

“No,” he says. 

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

Some muscle twitches in the kid’s face, and Mulder can see that yes, he definitely is hungry and thirsty. He wonders how far the kid has walked today. So many questions, but experience has taught him to take care of basic needs first. 

“I’m okay,” the kid says with a modest lift of his shoulder.

“I was thinking about ordering a pizza,” Mulder says. “If I get one, will you eat it? It would be a favor. I can get more if you share it with me.”

“All right,” Jackson says, watching him closely. “I like Italian sausage.”

“Hey, that’s my favorite,” Mulder says pleasantly. “What a coincidence. Let me order, and then we’ll talk.” 

Mulder picks up his phone to call. There’s only one place that delivers out here in the boondocks, and he has their number saved. As he gives them the order, he watches Jackson rise from his seat and wander around the room, examining Mulder’s belongings, picking up books and pictures on the shelves. Mulder realizes with bemusement that for a few minutes the mystery teen has managed to entirely sidetrack him from his own troubles.

An intriguing case could always do that, he thinks.

“Who are they?” Jackson asks, when Mulder is off the phone. Jackson is holding up a framed black and white photo from the sixties, a relic from the intact days of his parents’ marriage that Mulder has only recently had framed.

“They’re my parents,” Mulder says. “A long time ago, when they were young.”

“Are they still alive?”

“No,” Mulder says. “No, they’re gone.”

Jackson nods seriously, looking at the photo. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. It’s been some time now.”

Jackson tilts his head thoughtfully. “Can I ask you… do you sometimes feel bad that they died? Like it was your fault?”

Mulder frowns, startled. “How would you—why would you say that?” 

“Sorry,” Jackson says, his face flushing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to … My parents are dead, too.”

“Oh,” Mulder says, his tone changing. “I’m sorry.”

“They were murdered,” Jackson adds in a monotone. “They were shot. Just a few weeks ago.”

Mulder lets out a breath. “Oh, wow,” he says. “That’s recent. That’s a lot, Jackson.”

Jackson puts the photo down and walks back over to his seat at the table. He makes unsettling direct eye contact with Mulder, and when he does, Mulder can see that his eyes are wet. 

“Is the reason you came here to see me …. something to do with that?” Mulder asks. “Something to do with your parents?”

Jackson nods, but can’t seem to say anything else, his lip quivering. Some tears stream down his face. Mulder recognizes signs of trauma all over the kid and knows not to push, even though he definitely wants to know more. 

“You want something to drink?” Mulder says gently. “I have spiced apple cider. That good kind from Trader Joe’s. You want some of that?”

“Okay,” Jackson says, sniffing. Mulder stands to get the cider. “I don’t know what Trader Joe’s is.”

“Oh, it’s just a grocery store,” Mulder says, opening the fridge. “There’s not one near here, but I go to the one in Alexandria sometimes and stock up. Maybe you’ve seen one before if you’ve gone into DC.”

“I’ve never been to DC,” Jackson says. “I’m from Wyoming.”

Mulder turns around from the counter to look at Jackson, surprised. “You’re from Wyoming?”

“Yeah,” he says. “This is the first time I’ve ever been this far east. Really the first I’ve been anywhere except Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho — and my uncle Wyatt’s in Minnesota.” 

“How did you get here? To Virginia?”

“Someone drove me. To see you.”

Mulder’s puzzled. “Someone drove you? Who drove you?”

Jackson looks down at his hands on the table. “I can’t tell you that.” He swallows, looking ashamed. “Is that okay? I just … can’t tell you.”

Mulder shakes his head in bewilderment. “Yeah, well, of course it’s okay,” he says. “Tell me whatever you want. I’m just trying to figure out what you need from me, Jackson.”

The microwave, which has been humming, now dings, and Mulder lifts two mugs of cider to the table, placing them in front of Jackson and himself. He notices that Jackson never stops staring at him, taking in every detail. His eyes are intensely green, bright, constantly shifting at everything around him.

“All right,” Mulder says. “What do you need me to know?”

Jackson sips his cider, sitting up very straight and stiff. He bizarrely reminds Mulder of Scully sitting on the couch before, sipping her tea and refusing to let her guard down. 

The kid sets down his cup. “They think I killed my parents,” Jackson says. He stares meaningfully at Mulder. “They think I woke up and shot them, then went to school like nothing happened. They’re trying to arrest me.”

Mulder stares back at him, blinking. “But you didn’t shoot them.”

“No.”

“So you’re on the run? From the police?”

“Yeah,” Jackson says. “I left my school. I snuck out. I’ve been running since.”

“And somehow, you ran all the way from Wyoming to Virginia,” Mulder says. “To see … me.”

Jackson scowls slightly. “I can tell you don’t believe me all the way. That you’re suspicious,” he says. “But that’s the truth, I swear.”

“I’m not exactly suspicious,” Mulder says, although he is, just a little. “I’m just trying to figure out how I might be of help. I mean, I’m not a lawyer, or even a private investigator, Jackson.” He cradles his cup of cider, appraising the boy. “Back when I was an F.B.I. agent, my partner and I, we dealt with cases that had to do with unusual circumstances. The supernatural. Is there anything about what happened to your parents that might be … unusual?”

“They were shot,” Jackson says, monotone again. “It wasn’t supernatural.”

“Why do the police think that you killed them?”

“I don’t know,” Jackson says. His stoic face crumples. “I don’t know the answer to that. I wish I did. They seemed really sure.”

Mulder studies him. He’s experiencing a strong feeling of certainty that the boy didn’t kill his parents. It’s a feeling probably derived from his rusty profiling skills, but right now it feels more like a pure feeling. 

“Hey,” he says impulsively, reaching for the kid’s arm. “Whatever happened  …  it’s not your fault, Jackson.”

The boy draws away. “No,” he says, his voice tight. “That’s the thing. I think it might be my fault.” 

Mulder sits back in his chair again, then slowly crosses his arms. “I don’t follow.”

“I didn’t kill them,” Jackson says. “I loved them.” He swallows. “But I think they were killed because of me. I can’t think of any other reason why. That’s why I’m here.” He licks his lips anxiously.

Mulder waits a moment expectantly, but Jackson doesn’t continue. “Why do you think they were killed because of you?” he prompts.

Jackson’s staring at the table, not looking up. “I think it has something to do with my birth parents,” he says, so quietly Mulder can barely hear.

Mulder’s mug had been halfway to the table, but he now freezes in place. Gradually, he becomes aware of the sound of the clock on the kitchen wall ticking and finds himself moving again.

“You’re adopted?” Mulder asks in a careful, precise voice. He sets his mug down.

“Yeah,” Jackson says. 

“How… how old are you?

“I’m almost fourteen.”

Mulder has to stop again. Almost fourteen. Born in spring 2001. The boy is watching him closely, a curious expression on his face. 

“Do you…know who your birth parents are?”

“I know who my birth mother is,” Jackson says. “Not her name. I don’t know her name. But I know who she is.”

Mulder finds he can’t speak. He sits there staring at the boy, trying not to observe a hundred new things about him. The texture of his hair. The color of his eyes. The shape of his face. His tendency to lick his lips when he is nervous.

“How do you know who she is?” Mulder manages finally.

“You said you’d worked supernatural cases, right?” Jackson asks. “Well. I’ve seen her… in my mind. In these flashes. That’s something I can do. I’ve seen her calling for me. Crying for me. A few times in my life. I sort of figured out that was who it was.”

Mulder runs his hands down his face, trying to absorb this.  “Okay,” he says. “Okay. I have questions about all of that, but okay.” He steels himself. “You said you knew who she was. Who—who is she?”

Jackson looks up directly at him, with a pointed expression, like he thinks he should have figured this out already. “The woman who was here before. Who you fought with. The woman who drove off. With the red hair.”

Mulder closes his eyes. He keeps them closed for a moment, searching desperately for some idea for what to say or do next. 

He opens them and nods slowly at the boy.

“All right,” he says in a rough voice, running his hands together. “All right then.”

He folds his hands on the table.

“Then first off,” he says, “you should know you have been to DC before.”

“Can I take your coat, Scully? Did you want something to drink?”

“Oh,” she says, running her palms anxiously down the front panels of her sleek pale blue coat. “I don’t think so. I don’t mean to stay long. I just need that box of bedding.”

“It’s right there,” Mulder says, gesturing behind a tower of books. “Behind the psychology section.”

“Right,” she says, craning her head to see it. Her eyes meet his again, and they’re soft and reluctant. “Then… I should probably go.”

“No,” he calls out quickly. A furrow appears in her brow. “I mean … please. Scully. Just stay and have a drink. You haven’t been home in so long.”

“It’s not my home any more,” she points out softly.

“I know,” he replies. “Really. I’m not confused about… anything. I just want to talk to you. Sit down for a bit. I have tea. Or that apple cider from Trader Joe’s you like.”

She seems to hesitate. “There are books all over the couch.”

“I can move them. Hold on.” His voice is calm, but inside he’s churning. He moves to the couch, begins moving books. “Just stay a while.”

Her lips lift into that small, closed-lip smile he’s missed so much. “Okay. Just a little while.”

***

She’s clutching her mug of tea, telling him about work, and he can’t help but notice how physically straight and formal she is right now. It almost looks like she’s bracing herself, worried the couch is going to trap her somehow, like it’s going to try to bundle her up in his Aztec blanket and hold her there.

Mulder doesn’t like this body language. It looks too much like she doesn’t live here anymore.

“So things are really much the same at Our Lady of Sorrows,” she finishes. “Some good days, some bad.”

“It sounds like overall you’re still satisfied at the hospital then,” Mulder says.

“Yes,” Scully says, nodding. “I’d say that’s accurate. I wouldn’t rule out doing something else someday though.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, Mulder,” she says, another tiny smile. “But you know. You have to stay open to extreme possibilities.”

He returns her smile. “And uh… all the other parts of your life are good, too?” He can’t bear to ask her any more directly than that. He picks up his own mug and takes a sip to give himself something to do.

She bites her bottom lip. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I have a nice new house. Very contemporary. I get together with friends from work occasionally. I see Mom regularly.”

He wonders what she means by “friends from work.” He knows what it meant back when they were “friends from work.”

“What about you, Mulder?” she asks. “What are you doing these days?”

“I told you,” he says. “I’m reorganizing the library.”

“Besides that.”

I miss you terribly everyday. I spend hours cataloging each one of my mistakes. I ponder all the big questions, like: is there any future where I might be with you again? Is there any alternate reality where I could have made you happy? Is there any world where we have our son and live together as a real family, and that grief that’s always in your eyes isn’t there?

“I write articles,” he says. “I’m thinking about a book.”

“That’s great, Mulder,” she says. Again, that false encouraging tone.

If she still lived here—if she was still his Scully—she would have considerably more to say about these messy piles of books and this aimless underemployment. She would have some dry comment. She would be suggesting constructive ideas. She would be pushing him to do better.

This Scully sounds like a stranger. Like she has no place in his life to have an opinion. Like she has no place in his life to care.

There is an awkward pause.

“Well,” she says. “I think it’s probably time I take off.”

“Oh yeah?” he says. Don’t beg, he tells himself. “You sure?”

“Yes,” she says, looking around for a coaster on the coffee table and setting her mug down. She stands up, smiling courteously. “It’s been very nice catching up with you, Mulder.”

The innocuous sentence hits him like getting socked in the stomach. He feels his face flushing red hot. He swallows, unable to politely respond.

“Okay,” he says, too shortly. He stands, too. “Sure. Ever so nice.”

She’s lifting her coat from the coat rack, but turns around to regard him stoically. She seems to debate asking her next question. “Is there a problem?” she says carefully.

Mulder hesitates. He knows he shouldn’t say anything else. Just let her go. Let the visit end pleasantly. “No,” he says with effort. “I … guess not.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No, it’s only …” No. He just can’t hold it in. “Look, I’m sorry,’” he snaps. “It’s just … it’s fucking hard to hear ‘nice catching up with you, Mulder’ come from your lips.”

“It is nice catching up with you.”

“We didn’t used to be people who ever had to catch up,” Mulder says bitterly. “We used to know everything about each other, we used to be everything to each other, and excuse me if I just can’t stand talking to you like we’re old college chums.”

“You invited me to stay and have tea.” Her pitch has dropped a full octave. “You suggested we talk. I was doing what you asked me to do.” Her voice breaks midway through her sentence, and he realizes she’s got tears in her eyes. She closes them, evidently trying to calm herself. “I have to go, Mulder.”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice trembling. “Yeah, okay.”

“I… I’ll see you, all right?” she says, practically a whisper.

“Will you?”

Someday there will be a last time, he thinks. A time visiting him will just be too much trouble. A time she’ll decide her attention is better spent on other things, on other people.

“Of course,” she says. She walks over and picks up her box of bedding. “Of course I will. I always will.”

He watches her turn and hurry out the door. He remains frozen in place near the couch. He doesn’t trust himself to do anything to respond. Not to say good-bye, not to walk with her to the porch, not even to wave. He might do something unbelievably stupid, like tell her he still loves her. Or try to stop her from leaving. Or shout obscenities at her in anger.

Instead, he focuses all of his energy on listening. He listens as her car door opens and closes, her engine starts. There is the rough clatter of her tires down the gravel drive. Faintly, he can hear her car door opening and closing again as she lets herself out the gate and closes it up again. Then finally there is the sound of the motor of her car growing gradually more distant. Far away from him again.

Mulder lets himself sink down again on the couch.

In a flare of angry self-hatred, he kicks the towering pile of novels nearest him. They tumble sloppily into a messy heap on the floor. He watches this destruction morosely and thinks about how good she smelled.

He wishes he’d remembered to wish her a happy birthday.

***

About thirty feet outside, between two bushes, Jackson sits, hugging his knees, his back pressed uncomfortably against the wooden frames of the side of the farmhouse. Between the branches of the bush he has a clear view of the red-headed woman driving away.

It’s not a very good hiding place. All day long, since he arrived this morning, he hasn’t had to worry too much about hiding. The man inside—the man who lives here— has been distracted, concerned about the woman’s visit, thinking almost nonstop about what she’ll say and do. Jackson’s been able to circle around the house cautiously, trying to examine everything with his eyes and with his mind.

Which is good, because he’s nervous.

Just now, if the red-headed woman had looked up towards the house as she rushed out the door—if she’d turned back to give it one last careful look—she’d easily have seen Jackson there, crouched, watching furtively at the side of the house.

But she didn’t look back. Not even once, quickly.

She only wanted to get in her car and go, go, go. Her mind was so loud Jackson didn’t even have to really use his shine. Her mind broadcast inside his brain without him trying at all.

Jackson watches her car closely, holding his breath, until she’s completely driven away, until he can’t see any sign of her car anymore.

She’s pretty, Jackson reflects, even for a mom-aged lady. Her car is nice, fancy, like she’s got some money. And even though she’s not a kid, even though she’s an adult, with an extremely complex mind— it’s easy to know her thoughts. The easiest it’s been for anyone he’s ever met.

What’s really weird, though, is that with her, it’s really more than thoughts. Something strange was happening with Jackson and her feelings, too.

He felt these little explosive bursts of her emotions, wracking his own body unexpectedly like fireworks and then quickly fading. That’s never happened before. It’s interesting, but it’s also upsetting, like having your own emotions pushed aside by someone else. Her feelings fade, but they don’t entirely go away. They leave a kind of residue for a minute or two.

And just now? She was very, very upset, in about fifty different ways Jackson can only barely sort out. She was angry, for one—angry at the man inside for not being fair to her. She was really guilty, hoping she’s doing the right thing by leaving. She was sad, so sad, wishing she could go back inside and be with him again. Jackson wonders why she doesn’t just go back. He felt her wishing hard for something she thinks is gone now. She’s grieving it. Almost like you grieve for parents that have been shot.

And mixed up in all of this, Jackson feels how much she loves the man inside the house. That’s just this big, enormous feeling, like a tsunami of emotion. More than he can cope with, really. It makes his head hurt. He rubs his temples slowly, trying to massage the feeling away.

Jackson knows who the woman is, of course.

He recognizes her, at least her mind. He wonders if that’s why he is able to feel her feelings and see her thoughts so easily.

It feels weird, seeing her. He always thought that if he ever met his birth mom, he’d want to talk to her right away. But he doesn’t have any urge to chase her down the driveway and introduce himself.

He’s just so afraid. It’s hard to understand, because closed adoption or not, he thinks she’d want to talk to him. In his visions, she’s usually calling for him—not his name, but a name he somehow knows is supposed to be him. So he thinks she wants to see him. She seems to want it very badly, at least sometimes.

But what if when she looks at him, it’s with the same huge sadness she’s feeling about this man inside the house? What if it isn’t what he imagines, meeting this woman? He doesn’t want all that right now. He can’t handle it.

Besides, he’s not supposed to see her. That isn’t why he came. She wasn’t the name he was given.

He doesn’t recognize the man inside, the man she fought with a few minutes ago. When he reaches out to poke his shine into this man’s mind, it’s like a forest at night: it’s dark, disorienting, full of paths that lead unknown directions. He sees a few things he understands: the woman’s face, their conversation just now, the man’s devotion to her, his anxieties. But he sees lots he doesn’t understand, too. The man is very complicated. And broken, Jackson thinks. He has cracks that make his thoughts difficult to follow.

He knows the man’s name. Fox Mulder. He wishes he knew more about who he was, exactly.

Because that’s the man he’s supposed to see.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m positive. And I heard it was because there was a bomb threat and they’re going to close school right after lunch.”

“If it was a bomb threat, they wouldn’t wait to close school,” Jackson points out. “They’d close it right away.”

“Maybe it’s not a for sure bomb threat,” Louis replies. He looks suddenly doubtful. “Fuck, it better be true. I haven’t finished my essay yet.”

“What did you plan to do if there wasn’t a bomb threat?” Jackson asks curiously.

“Hey Vandy.” Delia Rich suddenly appears next to Jackson, and he quickly straightens his posture. Delia is so pretty: brown hair, bangs, pink cheeks, round behind. “Did you hear about the girl in seventh grade?”

“No, I didn’t,” Jackson says. His tone is considerably more polite all of a sudden. “What about her?”

Delia leans toward him seriously and lowers her voice. “She killed her parents and herself and the police are here to question everyone.”

“Naw, the police are here for the bomb threat,” Louis says dismissively, shimmying to the side to avoid a group of loud and oblivious sixth grade girls walking past them.

“Who told you about that?” Jackson asks Delia, frowning.

“Hannah R. in 8C,” Delia says, shrugging. She seems to think of something else. “Oh, Vandy.” Her eyes widen and roll dramatically. “Did you study for algebra? Oh my god, it was awful.”

“Yeah.” Jackson nods, but he’s distracted, even from a conversation he would normally be thrilled to be having.

“I spent three hours last night on quadratic equations,” Delia says. “I’m not even exaggerating. I should have asked you for help.”

“Because he’s such a fucking nerd?” Louis adds helpfully.

“No, because he’s really good at helping with math,” Delia says to Jackson, bumping into him a little. “Can you quiz me before class?”

Over Delia’s shoulder, Louis begins to raise his eyebrows up and down significantly like a maniac. Jackson studiously ignores him.

“Yeah, but I, uh, gotta stop in there first,” Jackson says, gesturing vaguely behind her.

“Stop in where?” She looks around the hall.

“Restroom,” Jackson says, irrationally embarrassed.

“Oh, right.” Delia turns back around. “I’ll see you in a few minutes then?”

“Yeah,” Jackson says, attempting the most winning smile he can muster as she darts across the hall into the classroom.

Louis immediately shoves his shoulder. “What are you doing, dumbass? I thought you liked her.”

“I do,” Jackson says pathetically. “But I have to use the restroom. For real.”

“Jesus, you have absolutely no game.”

Jackson decides not to bring up his friend’s own unsuccessful record with girls. “I’ll talk to you later, Louis.” He begins to make a beeline for the boys’ room.

“Wait, are we playing GTA after school?” Louis calls as Jackson begins to walk away.

“Uh, no,” Jackson calls back. “I can’t today. My parents stayed home to meet the guy delivering our new washer and dryer.” Jackson’s mom hates Grand Theft Auto, so he can only play when she’s out of the house.

“You’re a loser,” Louis responds good-naturedly. “See you later.”

Jackson flees, weaving in and out between students hurrying to make it to class on time.

As soon as Jackson is inside the restroom, he heads directly for the third stall, the only one with a fully functioning lock on the door.

By some miracle, it’s unoccupied. Actually, the whole bathroom is empty. He hurries inside and fastens the latch as quickly as possible.

And then for a moment he stands there, clutching his books and trying to catch his breath. He stares at the back of the stall door. It is covered in scrawled “suck my dick” and “turrrn uuup” in black marker.

Jackson’s not sure why the news of the police coming to his school has him so worked up, but it does. He can still feel his heart racing. Every muscle in his body is tense.

Calm down. Calm down.

He places a hand on his chest and counts to four as he breathes in, then holds his breath for a count of seven, then breathes out. It’s a technique his therapist likes to recommend to him. He’s slightly skeptical that it really works, but he tries it anyway. When he’s getting worried or irrationally fearful, when his emotions start to betray him, he wants anything that will help.

After a minute, the bell rings. Now he’s officially late for algebra. And they’re having a test, one he’s prepared for.

He should leave this bathroom.

He should go to class right now, take his tardy gracefully, sit down, smile at Delia, get out his pencil, and take his test.

Still, he doesn’t move. He doesn’t even begin to move. Every instinct is telling him not to move.

Instead, he closes his eyes and empties his mind.

Hesitantly, he begins to push out cautious little tendrils to probe around him in the school. He doesn’t really want to do this, but something deep inside tells him it’s important. That he needs to.

People’s minds feel different, have different textures to them. Right now, as he shines into people, as he gently touches the minds closest around him with his own, he can tell that most of them are kids, his friends and classmates. Kids’ minds are usually sort of bright and loud and flashy, like commercials for kids’ cereals. Every once in a while there’s a kid mind that’s very sad, unusually sad, but even then it’s sad in stark, dramatic colors, clear and tragic and obvious. Kids don’t hide things well.

But he brushes against adult minds in the school, too: teachers, mainly. Adults’ inner lives are so much more complicated than kids’. Harder to get into. Some of them are complex and curlicued, like honeycombs, and others are like smooth stones you find on a riverbed. Some are like an animal carcass rotting, full of holes you don’t want to shine into too deep.

It’s because of adults’ minds that Jackson doesn’t like shining into people’s heads very much. He’d prefer to stay out of other people’s minds as much as possible.

He peeks into the teachers’ minds just enough to identify them, to see their memories: their own faces in the mirror, their classes back up at them, bored faces staring from desks. He’s not looking for a teacher, so he moves along quickly. He doesn’t want to see any of their secrets.

Finally he’s found something different: the front office, a group of minds clustered together, a cloud of anxiety shared among them. One of them he recognizes must be his principal, Mr. Werther – he can see in his memories speaking into the intercom for the morning announcements today. Mr. Werther is feeling very troubled about something right now. His thoughts are racing. He’s wondering what the right decision is. He’s wondering whether he will be blamed if something goes wrong. His mind feels like a soda bottle shook up, ready to burst.

Quickly, Jackson switches his shine to another mind in the group, someone calmer. This mind is sharper, metallic-feeling, and he realizes that it’s a police officer, someone in charge, someone named Davis. He pushes further into Davis’s mind, into his current consciousness, and he sees that Davis is trying to explain the situation to Mr. Werther, trying to assure him that everyone will be safe, trying to let him know that there is back-up waiting right outside the school. Davis doesn’t think Mr. Werther is very smart.

Dimly, Jackson is aware that he is tightening his grip on his books, his anxiety rising. Something is very wrong here. He feels it in Davis’s thoughts. He sees flashes of himself.

He prods the shine deeper into Davis’s mind, pushing back thin layers that seem a little like aluminum foil.

In Davis’s recent memory, there is an image of something horrible: a crime scene. Bodies, shot, a man and a woman. Lying on their kitchen floor in a pool of blood, their faces vacant. Davis stands over them, shaking his head, writing notes.

The bodies’ faces are familiar. They’re Jackson’s parents.

Jackson feels himself start to breathe faster.

As though seeing light behind a dirty window, he starts to see what Davis thinks happened.

He thinks Jackson shot his parents before he went to school that morning. Davis pictures it happening: Jackson, shouting, lifting a gun and shooting first his father and then his mother. Davis thinks he possibly has a gun on him now, at school. The police want to apprehend him safely, with no one being hurt.

“We need to consider him dangerous,” Davis’s voice is echoing through his thoughts. “But we can do this in a way that makes sure no one gets hurt.”

All at once Jackson opens his eyes, falling back into his own consciousness, feeling short of breath.

He realizes he’s trembling. Mom. His parents.

Are his parents really dead? How could they be? He saw them just this morning. His mom had reminded him about his therapy appointment tomorrow and his dad had told him to stop leaving lights on. He hadn’t kissed his mom good-bye. He had been in a hurry.

Jackson feels sick. Mom. Mommy.

It’s impossible. He doesn’t want to think about it. He wants his mom. He wants to throw up.

There is a crackling sound echoing through the bathroom, and then the sound of a tinny voice speaking over an intercom. “Students and teachers, please pardon the interruption. Jackson Van De Kamp in eighth grade, would you please come to the main office? Jackson Van De Kamp in eighth grade, come to the main office.”

Jackson tenses his whole body behind the door of the bathroom stall, ready to push through, an instinctive defensive maneuver.

They’re really going to try to arrest him, he realizes. They really think he killed his parents.

He feels panic rising in his stomach, seriously threatening to make him lose his breakfast. They think he’s a killer.

You don’t have to worry. Not you. You can protect yourself. Stay calm.

He closes his eyes again and carefully shifts the perception of all minds around him, giving himself a thirty foot perimeter of altered reality.

It’s a big effort for him — bigger than his usual modest experiments — but he doesn’t feel any headache. Maybe it’s the adrenaline.

Walking like he’s in a dream—like he’s in a nightmare, really—he cautiously steps out of the bathroom.

Anyone looking in the hall simply sees Louis.

Jackson, as Louis, walks down the hallways of his school at the same slow pace, so as not to attract attention. It’s an effort to keep the minds around him altered and his own posture casual and unassuming. He walks past classrooms, watching all around him with his peripheral vision and the little fingers of his mind. Louis, please don’t happen to come out in the hall to use the restroom at this exact moment. Please.

He heads towards the entrance of the school, which means passing the front office. As he approaches, he sees that now there is actually almost no one around the front office at all. That seems weird—usually there are tons of students and teachers congregating near it.

Just keep walking, he thinks. Hopefully you’ll be unnoticed.

As he’s stepping past the door, two policemen emerge, moving quickly.

“Where are you headed, son?” From a quick tap of his mind, Jackson recognizes this man as Davis, the officer apparently in charge.

“My mom’s car. Dentist appointment,” Jackson mutters.

Davis glances out the door, where there is fortunately a car in the parking lot that looks plausibly like a waiting parent. “All right, go quickly. Don’t hang around. We need all students out of this general vicinity.”

Davis waves him out, and Jackson eagerly follows in the direction of his gesture out the door.

The February temperature hits him like a slap in the face. Regretfully he realizes his good winter coat is in his locker, back inside the school.

He keeps walking casually down the steps of the school and down the driveway, already beginning to shiver uncontrollably.

When he gets to the road, out of easy eyesight of the school, he drops his books on the ground and begins to jog. The school is on a wind blown, gray, desolate-looking Wyoming road, with little traffic except for those coming to the school. He drops his Louis perception filter. There’s no one to see.

And after he does, he discovers to his surprise that he’s crying.

He has no idea where he’s going now.

He has a vague idea that he should get out of town—maybe to a big city, like Cheyenne or Denver—but he isn’t sure how to get there. He has no money. He could hitchhike, but the idea of hitchhiking scares him, which makes him feel ashamed.

It’s just he’s too familiar with the kinds of things that adults think about. And after all, someone just killed his parents.

Why did someone kill his parents? Who would do that? His parents never did anything to anyone. They weren’t drug dealers or thieves. They were Lutherans. His mom made casseroles, and his dad carved wooden ducks. They were cheerful, optimistic, the type of people to see the good in everyone. Sometimes Jackson felt like he didn’t have much in common with them— like they saw the world very differently from him— but he loved them. He could never have hurt them. And he hates to think of what they thought, in the moment they died.

He finds himself crying harder as he jogs. He shouldn’t do this now; it’s too cold for tears. He tries to wipe them off with the sleeve of his sweater. But it’s hard to stop crying once he’s started.

He tries to jog faster. Turns it into a run. Maybe this will snap him out of it, clear his head. He’s always been good at running. At the very least it will warm him up.

Just keep running, he tells himself. He smiles a little, because it reminds him of a line from one of his favorite movies when he was a kid, Finding Nemo. Just keep swimming. His mom would repeat the line to him as a joke when he was learning to swim.

He blinks back the tears again and runs harder.

He wonders if Louis will think he really did kill his parents. He wonders if Delia will. He wonders if the other kids at school will all talk about it: Jackson Van De Kamp, the psycho kid who shot his family and was planning on shooting up the school. If they will make up stories about why he was going to do it.

A car passes on the road, and he quickly slips a filter into the driver’s mind: he’s a nice old lady picking up trash along the side of the road.

When the car passes, he continues running and considers his options. He doesn’t have a phone. His parents were waiting until high school to get him one. Even if he did, he couldn’t use it now anyway—the police would track him.

Shelter is an immediate problem. There’s a Frontier Museum in downtown Rawlins. He wonders if he might go inside and find a place to hide overnight, at least until he has a better idea. But the museum costs money to get a ticket, and he doesn’t have money.

He could try to contact his Uncle Wyatt to see if he would help him. But what if Uncle Wyatt believes the story and thinks Jackson killed his parents? Uncle Wyatt has always found Jackson annoying, ever since Jackson threw that basketball into his flatscreen TV when he was six. He could very well decide to turn his nephew in.

Then there is his birth mom. Jackson wishes he could ask her. He thinks he’s seen her, once or twice, in his occasional visions that come in fast and bewildering flashes. At least he thinks it’s her. It’s a woman he has some very close connection to, a red-headed woman, who is always very sad. He wonders if she would help him. He likes to think she would. But that’s a childish fantasy, because he has no clue where to find her. He can’t reach out and try to shine every mind in the whole world to try to locate her. He needs to stick with practical ideas right now.

He’s been walking and running for three miles, the wind biting incessantly into his clothes, when he hears another car coming down the road. With the fingers of his mind, he reaches out towards the driver’s mind to tweak their perception.

But strangely, he finds he can’t. Something in the driver’s mind is pushing back, keeping a wall up so that Jackson can’t change what they see.

He feels a stab of panic. He didn’t know this was possible. He’s never seen this before. Some paranoid part of him wonders if this is the person who killed his parents.

The car is sleek and black, with mirrored windows. It slows down right next to him. Jackson looks wildly back and forth for somewhere to run and hide, just in case there is someone inside with a gun—but there is nothing around him but open land, no possible shelter for miles.

He finds himself doing nothing but standing there stupidly, an open target, his eyes widening as the window rolls down.

“Jackson Van De Kamp?” a female voice says.

“Yeah,” Jackson manages, his voice scarcely a whisper.

It’s a woman: a surprisingly young woman wearing mirrored sunglasses, her blondish hair pulled back in a ponytail. She doesn’t look like a killer. But Jackson knows very well that evil people don’t always look evil.

“It’s come to my attention that you might need some assistance.”

He can’t think of anything to do but bob his chin up and down in a nod.

“Why don’t you get in the car, and we’ll talk?”

It looks so warm inside. He has nowhere to go. She dangles the promise of information, something important he doesn’t know.

Still, some sense of self preservation keeps him from stepping forward. Desperately, he tries to noodle a shine into her mind, trying to see what she’s all about. But he can’t. It’s like it’s boarded up.

She smiles a little at him in a guarded way, not showing her teeth. He has the weirdest feeling that she knows exactly what he is trying to do.

“W-who are you?” he says hoarsely. “Do I know you?”

She sighs, as if she expected this. “If you get in the car, I promise I’ll explain, Jackson.”

He hesitates. Then, taking a deep breath, he starts to make his way toward the passenger door.

Really, what other choice does he have?