Something I wrote during Christmas Vac. It's rather long and disgusting and I divided it into sections. I give it an R for adult situations involving gore. And of course, of course, I beg forgiveness for stealing the characters of the X-files from Ten-Thirteen productions. Amp. THE SACRIFICE By Amperage@aol.com 2/1/95 The cushion under her was of velvet, a dark velvet. Meredith opened her eyes dazedly. She sat up, still half-awake, looked around her. The church around her was very big. It had three aisles and a balcony. Long windows told the story of Christ's life. It was very pretty. This was a Baptist church or some sort of evangelical church anyway, because of the front. Except the pulpit had been moved over to one side and the communion table that normally set in front of a pulpit was on the platform down in front. There was a little boy on the communion table. He had been tied down with black straps and he struggled. His mouth was full of cotton so he could not scream, only make little strangling noises. They had taken the little boy's clothes away. This was usual, of course. Meredith hated the thinness, the paleness of the human body against the plastic sheeting. Her own skin did not seem as white, as devoid of color. Even the black children killed in such places seemed pale, cold. But Meredith did not cry; she had seen many other children in other midnight churches and she knew what would happen. The worshippers did not watch Meredith. At first she had been frightened they would see her, but they never did. They were still covering the area around the communion table with clear plastic sheeting. The table was already wrapped in plastic. The worshippers wore white and black robes with large, veiling hoods. Their leader was not present. When he arrived they would make twelve. A coven, according the books in the school library. That was so the thirteenth member could come--the devil. But Meredith was thirteenth and she wasn't a devil. She was a preacher's daughter, which put her firmly on the other side. Sometimes, when Meredith thought about it, she though that maybe she saw the murders so she would be thirteenth, so that the devil couldn't come. Meredith knew what was coming next and hated it. They would gather around the little boy and then the leader would take a long knife with a white handle and he would cut the little boy open. He would show the little boy his own heart. The heart, not very big, not as big as Meredith would have guessed before she saw one, would beat two or three times, then the leader would crush it in his hands. And the little boy would die. And then Meredith would go back to sleep. She would wake up in her own bed, crying. Dana Scully had nightmares now. There were three main kinds that woke her from her sleep with a worrying familiarity: dreams of a case, dreams of her abductions, and dreams of betrayal. No matter what the subject of her dream, their ending had a definite pattern. Waking with a start, a sudden intake. Then staring at the alarm clock, trying to remember where she was, reminding herself that she was safe, the dream was not real, was not happening, that right here, right now, everything was all right. Sometimes when the dream was too vivid, too real, she would turn on her bedside lamp and read for a while. Usually she just rolled over in bed. Two and a half years ago she had not had many nightmares. She thought about that, where her life had gone, rolling over in bed, waiting for sleep. She wasn't unhappy. She had work that she enjoyed, hard work, good work. There was Mulder. There was the truth. Being Mulder's partner was kind of satisfying in and of itself. It was like a marriage: she knew his quirks, his likes and dislikes, his personality traits, strengths and weaknesses. Mulder knew the same about her. She trusted Mulder and Mulder trusted her. Implicitly. She cared about Mulder and Mulder cared about her. Absolutely. Scully would yawn, think about going back to sleep. As she would fall back asleep she would think of Mulder and worry that he was dreaming. He woke, heart pounding, mouth dry, terrified. Tears coursed his face, clogged his nose so he couldn't breath. For a moment he could not think, could not remember who he was. The pain constricted in his chest, extended up into his neck, into the inner part of his throat and stretched down into his groin and into his hips. His arms were already wrapped around his chest, waiting for the pain to alleviate. The worst dreams were those that hurt so badly that he could only curl fetal to pad himself against the pain. He rocked back and forth, finding comfort in the motion. Those times he was beyond crying: then he moved into the soft moans, the anguished animal sounds that betrayed how badly he had been hurt. He had never been in such pain before and could not explain it now. He only knew it hurt, only knew the dreams would come. A few weeks ago, on a stakeout, Scully had seen him come out of one of the worser dreams. Mulder hoped she never saw it again. She had been frightened for him. She had held him the way a mother holds a child in need of love, held his fighting arms down with a gentle strength. It had helped the pain go away. Crying against her chest made him feel safe and secure, made it easier. But her concern later had been overwhelming. The fear she felt for Mulder's mental state had reflected in her eyes for a long time. Sometimes he still saw it. This dream wasn't so bad. Mulder focused on the television set. Focusing on something else was hard. Still, he concentrated. After a while he realized he was watching a t.v. show in black and white. A little while longer he recognized it was a sitcom. Then he tried to remember what the show was. Father Knows Best. That was it. Mulder reached for the remote, flicked channels until he found an old Battlestar Glactica episode. He tried to stop crying. He would watch the rest of the show then get up, go jogging. Meredith sat up. She knew this dream well. The boy was dead, but she must accompany him to his final spot before she was released. Woods, but not woods like those close to home. There were Mountains. The ground sloped. Three men got out of their bronco in the darkness. There was a shallow grave already dug. The little boy, wrapped in the plastic, was dumped into the grave and the men began filling the grave. Meredith waited as they filled the grave. She was terribly cold. It was warm at home, but cold here. Terribly cold through her thin nightgown; icy on her little bare feet, but she was the only mourner. She would stay until they finished. "Morning." Scully said. She assessed her partner's mood quickly as he sat behind his desk and handed over her ritual morning cup of coffee. It was a clear sign of just how bad his night had been that Mulder took the coffee without a single snide comment. Scully sighed, put her hands on her hips, but didn't say anything. Any word would put him on the defensive. He drank her coffee, savoring every sip. "We've been invited to work on a high profile case." He said after her coffee had been deposited down his throat and he'd gone for a second cup--in her mug. "Hmm?" Scully looked up, curious. She had resumed her own desk, was going through her own paperwork. "I am still the FBI's best Satanic killer profiler." Mulder told her. "The Church murders." Scully guessed. She leaned back in her desk chair. "So they want you to. . ." "Go in and look things over, profile the murderers. See if I can find any pattern to the choosing of victims and the choosing of ritual sites. I get to choose my forensics expert. .." "Does this mean I can stay home?" Mulder honored her remark with a withering look. "I get carte blanche on the case. We won't be working with the task force, except in name. There are eleven other agents on this thing and they're getting nowhere." "Are they scared you'll corrupt everyone?" "Or that I'll strangle them all after one too many Spooky jokes." Mulder replied. "We'll make more progress on our own." "What do you think's going on?" "I'm not sure. I know it's more than one person, probably more than two or three." Mulder stood, paced a moment. "From what I've read this morning, they're a wealthy group, very intelligent. This is part of a larger ritual. From the professional nature, I'd guessed that the five murders that have been identified are just the tip of the iceberg. Children have probably been murdered in numerous Churches. The five that have been found and paired off with the appropriate churches were exposed due to the kind of sloppiness that comes from doing a thing too often." Mulder handed his partner a file. "If you write the monograph that catches the murderers you'll be the FBI's darling again." Scully commented, glancing through detailed photographs of butchered remains. Mulder smiled almost sardonically. "I doubt that I could ever do anything to make me the FBI's darling again, short of proving that Hoover wasn't a transvestite." "We're not going." Mulder announced as Scully slid into the Taurus beside him. "What?" Scully frowned at her carry-on bag. They were supposed to be headed for Archer, Nevada where one of the bodies had been found. "I got this early this morning." Mulder handed his partner a computer printout. "This is a listing of phone calls from America's Most Wanted Hotline; they ran a story on the murders a week ago. Look at the synopsis of the ones I've circled." "A child. No message posted. A child again. This time she said it was a coven. Hung up. Umm. . ." Scully scanned quickly. "All right." "Read the two I highlighted. Read it aloud." Mulder clenched the steering wheel. Scully glanced at her partner. "All right `There are many children. Many bodies. They bury them in round holes.' Umm. . . `In the churches they are very neat. They move the communion table to the stage and the podium to the wall. One you found they scuffed the wall.'" "It's the same child." Mulder told her. "The child's only on maybe a minute before she hangs up, so she's scared of someone knowing that she's talking. She's giving us information she couldn't know from any source other than as an eyewitness. I didn't even know they dug round holes. I asked investigators to check the churches. There were scuffmarks on a piece of drywall in a rural church that matched the corner of the lectern." "Do you think she's involved in this?" "I don't know. But I'm going to try and talk to her. She's called every day, between two thirty and four thirty." Scully stared at the printout, aghast that no one else had caught this. The operator nodded, waved her hand. Mulder spit out his sunflower seed and ran to the cubicle, grabbed the headset. It was faster, safer than transferring the call. "Hi. I'm Agent Mulder. I'm working on this case." "Hi." "You've been calling a lot." "Mhm." "Can you talk to me some more?" "No." "Please don't hang up." "You'll trace it." The voice was self assured. "I seen it on t.v.." "Why don't you want us to know who you are? Are you scared? Is someone you know involved?" Silence. Click. "Damn it." Mulder threw down the headset, exasperated. "Damn it. How long was she on?" "One minute twenty seconds." The operator cleared her boards. "A child's asking for Agent Mulder." A man, three chairs down, handed over the headset. "I'm not scared. But I'm not supposed to be having dreams. My momma and daddy think I'm taking my medicine." "You're having dreams?" "I see them in dreams. All of them. The devil is supposed to be 13 but it's me so he can't come." "You see the murders in your dreams?" "Mhm." "Listen, if you tell me who you are, I promise your momma and daddy won't be mad when they find out." Click. She did not call back. Two a.m. The hotline had only a skeleton crew. A memo had been posted above each cubicle about the child. "Hi. Is Agent Mulder there?" "Hi honey. No. He went home." "Oh. I'll call back. In a half hour? Or tomorrow?" "Why don't you talk to me I can get another FBI agent." "No. I want Agent Mulder. He's probably asleep I'll call back tomorrow. Okay?" "Honey, I'll get him right up here. He won't mind." "Half-hour." The line clicked. "My uncle is a sheriff. He just got elected last year." "How old are you?" Mulder asked, relieved she wasn't wasting her time with pleasantries. "Seven. Listen, my name is Meri Aimes. I live at 5537 Highway 422 East. In DeMarr Louisiana." "Thank you, Merry." Mulder leaned against the wall of the cubicle smiling. "Could you come and explain it to Uncle Kenny and then let him explain it to my momma and daddy?" "I think so." "I decided it was silly for me to be scared of them. Momma doesn't even spank. The little kids. . .they. . ." She paused. "It was silly of me." "How long have you been seeing the murders?" "I don't know. Since I was in first grade I guess. They took me to a psychiatrist and made me stay in a hospital. Now I have to take medicine. But I can't think when I'm on it and I think, even though I don't like it, that the dreams are important. You have bad dreams too." "Yes." Mulder tried not to breathe. "A lot of them." "Yes." "Oh. I guess I gotta go. I got school in the morning." The phone clicked again. Scully refused to pass judgement. "The child has dreams with information she could only have gotten as an eyewitness." Mulder said the next morning as they boarded the plane that would take them to Houston. From there it was a commuter plane to Lake Charles, and from there a rental car to DeMarr. "You're taking her word from three telephone conversations, two of which lasted less than a minute." She pointed out, letting Mulder stow the carry-on luggage. "Her father is a minister and Agricultural Agent. Her mother is a schoolteacher. She's seven years old and has been very sheltered since she was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at the age of five. She attends a rural school where the average class size is 14. She doesn't even watch television unless it's off a video tape her parents have previewed. Where is she going to get information about a murder that took place in Oregon?" "I don't know. But her allegations are. . ." Scully threw up her hands ". . .all right. I admit to not having the slightest clue how she knows. Can't I refuse to give into the notion of psychic phenomenon for at least the length of the plane ride?" Mulder sighed, smiled. "Hi. So you're agent Mulder. Meri has told me a great deal about you since this morning." Sheriff Aimes took Mulder's hand in a firm shake. "I'm sorry she was so. . .elusive when she first called your hotline." "I understand she was worried about. . ." Mulder let the sentence falter, hoping Aimes would pick it up. He did. "Robin and Ellie have been sending Meri to a shrink since she was real little. They've tried so many drugs. . ." Aimes shook his head, led both agents down a gravel path towards the small, neat house. "She's been on imprimine for sleepwalking for, oh, I don't know. A couple of years." "Meredith. . ." Ellen Aimes, a young woman, not over 30, closed her eyes. "Is our only child. We've spoiled her somewhat. But it's hard not to. She's always had problems. When she was two the doctor first said she was autistic. She had her own inner world. Hadn't learned to speak or stand. Then in a year she discovered. . .I guess she saw the outside world or something. When she was four she started hearing voices, seeing things. They said she was childhood schizophrenic. Then she stopped. Just stopped." Mrs. Aimes snapped her fingers, tossed her blonde hair back over her shoulder. "She told us she was tired of being in special preschool. She wanted to be in kindergarten. When she was five she started waking up in the middle of the night screaming. She developed all these phobias--she was scared of the dark, of shadows, people in white dresses made her scream. I still can't take her to a baptismal service or a wedding." Mrs. Aimes looked up. "I know this sounds so odd. But you have to meet Merri. She's. . .she's so delightful to be around." "Merri never has acted like a child." Robin Aimes added, shifting from his spot leaning against a bookshelf. "I guess that's our fault. She's always been around our friends, adults. We're the only people in our social group with any kids." He looked down at his leather work boots. "I don't believe in psychic phenomenon." "Your daughter has described murders that have happened in states as far north as Oregon and Maine. She has said things she could not have known, things we didn't even know." "Did you know there had been other murders?" Reverend Aimes asked. "I suspected it." Aimes nodded. Sheriff Aimes glanced sympathetically at his brother. "Ellen, why don't you go get Meri?" Ellen nodded. "Meri?" She called, getting up from her seat in an old rocker. A small figure appeared from the door way. She looked perhaps six, but Scully's belief, having heard the description of her mental problems, that she would be a thin child, with dark circles under her eyes, was shattered. Meredith was tiny, petite, but she was also a beautiful child with dark brown, curling hair, deep set brown eyes. She hugged three big chief tablets to herself like a talisman. "Agent Mulder." She went straight to Mulder's seat beside Scully on the loveseat. She stared a moment, wrinkled her nose, smiled. "Hi. You were right. They weren't mad." "I told you they wouldn't be." Meri nodded and sat down on the coffee table, facing Mulder. She glanced back at her mother, not hesitantly, but as if to assure her mother. Then she looked at Mulder. "I. . . this are my books. I kept them taped to the undersides of the bottom shelves in my closet so no one would find it. Umm . . ." She held out her tablets hesitantly. "I wrote down after every dream what I knew. The first one has really big handwriting. I was only in kindergarten." Mulder took the pads gently. "How do you have your dreams?" Meredith looked at her parents, at Scully. "Do you want to talk privately?" Mulder asked. Meredith glanced at her mother, bit a lip. "I don't mind." Ellen Aimes said softly. "I won't be hurt." Meri considered Agent Mulder and Agent Scully. "Yes. I don't like talking about it." "They tried to make me stop, so I stopped telling them. It worried them." Meri told Mulder. They sat, alone, in a glassed in porch. "Who's them?" Mulder asked. "My momma and daddy and the shrink and oh, everybody." Meri replied. "I dreamed about this church. There was this preacher and we'd play games in the church. Preacher was so nice. He told me Bible stories. I started having dreams when I was three. See, I wasn't talking to anyone or anything. Preacher said he was going to help me know how to talk to people outside." "When did the dreams change?" "When I was five." "What did you start dreaming?" "About the murders. The first one took place in his church. Then Preacher was gone." "How often do you dream about the murders?" "As often as they kill someone." Meri stared at Mulder unflinchingly. "How often is that?" "Once every three weeks." Mulder nodded as though this information did not shock him in the slightest. "How do the dreams go?" "I wake up and I've been asleep on a pew. I sit up and I see they've got a little kid strapped to the communion table. And they . . ." Meri shut her eyes. "They cut him up." She opened her eyes. "People don't die when you cut them open. People don't die then. They don't even die when you take their heart out." "No." Mulder agreed. Meri nodded. It was obvious she had cried often in the past. She was used to this knowledge now, horrible as it was, it was something she knew, had to live with every day. "The next night or the next, they bury the body. The last place was very cold. We've had a heat snap here, that's why it's so warm. I only wore my cotton nightie to bed. But it was so cold there. Icy cold." Meri stared at Mulder. "I don't know why I know. But I do." Mulder nodded, taken with the child before him. "I don't scream anymore. I'm just like you that way. But you were older." "Yes." Mulder nodded. "You were in a hospital too. That's where I learned not to scream too." Mulder looked away, to the winter woods outside. "I'm sorry." Meri's voice was terribly soft. "I didn't mean to remind you." "It's all right." Mulder turned back to Meri, considered the pad he held. "How many murders have you witnessed?" "29." Meri replied. "I kept count." "Will we be able to find most of the churches and bodies from your descriptions?" "No. I can only tell what I see. Most of the time I can't see where I am." Mulder nodded. "You said on the phone that they were 12 and that you were 13." "It's in this book I checked out of the library. Momma and Daddy didn't know I got it, don't tell them 'cause they'd be mad at the librarian. They want to protect me from bad things; they're worried I won't grow up normal. "The book was on witches. It talked a lot about the good witches, how they're just another religon. But it says that black witches, the bad kind, must have their covens in 12 so that the devil can come and be 13. But see, they have their 12, but then I'm there too. They don't know I'm there. And I'm 13. So the devil can't come. They do the sacrifice to make themselves powerful, but since the devil can't come they aren't getting powerful. They just think they are." Meri flashed a quick, scared smile. "I guess. You know it's funny. I'm thirteen and so are you." Mulder didn't track. He shook his head. "Dana's the twelth and you're the thirteenth. The seer." It took a moment, but Mulder finally got it. He was the thirteenth agent on this case. A chill went up his spine. "She knew about something I've never told anyone." Mulder told Scully over lunch, a quick meal in the motel restaurant. "What?" Mulder sighed, looked around. Closed his eyes. "After Sam disappeared, my parents started. . .losing it." He said. ". . .Social services was called in on an anonymous report of child abuse. The social worker was sufficiently upset with my behavior that she called in a psychiatrist who decided I was emotionally disturbed. I was taken from my parents and placed in the adolescent unit of a psychiatric hospital for about a month." Open-mouthed, Scully stared at her partner. "I shared a room with a boy who was about 14. He got tired of my screaming at night, so he would punch me when I screamed. I learned not to scream." "I didn't know. . .Mulder, why haven't you ever told me any of this." "It didn't last long. My parents got another psychiatrist to say I was okay and the judge agreed with them so I went home." Mulder shrugged. "Were you disturbed?" "I don't know. I . . .I remember crying a lot and talking about how Sam would be home when I got in from school. I remember one night, right after they made their 'placement' decision, standing in front of the doors, which were locked, of course, and demanding to be let out because Sam was going to be home and I had to be there to babysit." Mulder smiled, embarrassedly. "I guess I was pretty far gone. I've never talked about that month, never made any mention of it. No one knows." "But Meri knew." "She knew." Mulder agreed. "You don't have any other kind of dream any more, do you?" Scully asked as their sandwiches were brought out. "I mean, all your dreams are nightmares now, aren't they? "What makes you ask that?" "Just answer it." "I used to have other kinds of dreams." "Until I disappeared." "Yes. But then, when you came back, they got better." His eyes begged her to believe him. "They did. I had okay dreams. But now . . ." He looked off, at a waitress. Scully sighed, bit into her club sandwich. Chewed carefully and swallowed. She wanted to push, to find out what was going on in his mind. "Mulder." She began, being very careful with her words. "I'm worried about you. I know it really bothers you for me to be worried. But I'm your partner. I know you trust me. Probably more than any other person in the world." Mulder stared at her, begging her to shut up. Shut up and leave it alone. Leave him alone. "I know you can probably keep going like this, you won't lose it. But. . ." Scully broke, searched desperately for words. ". . .you're hurting. I know you're hurting. It's not right, and it's not fair. When you saw that I was hurting, you didn't shy away from helping me." Mulder tried to think of something to say to this. She had not accused him of being crazy, she had not tried to find out what was going on. Those were things he could slap back, things he could stone wall. She said something that they both knew was truth. Any denial would weaken his own position. He smiled awkwardly. Scully ignored his reaction, tasted her potato salad. When she had eaten a small portion she looked up at Mulder. "I'm sorry." Mulder did not insult her by pretending not to understand. He nodded slowly. "I don't remember that you're safe." He said quietly. Scully looked at Mulder, questioning. "When I wake up, I think you're dead. I know it was my fault." Mulder pushed his roast beef plate away. "That's why it hurts so much." Scully reined her emotions in tightly, forced herself not to over react. She was walking a very fragile line. One misstep and he would shut her out again. "What can I do?" Mulder closed his eyes, took a deep breath. "I don't know." "I think. . .the dreams are getting worse, not better." Mulder opened his eyes, stared at Scully. "How did you know that?" "I've been watching. I am a government agent. It *is* my job." Mulder smiled. Scully let herself smile. They were on the road again that night. Five locations Meri had written about could be ID'd. And a body had already been found. They took the commuter plane to Houston, were on an almost empty American airlines flight to Omaha by midnight, spread out with copies of Meri's big chief tablets, reading, making notes, exchanging lists, making new notes. There were others reading and studying the Meri's record of course, but it couldn't hurt. And it was all they had to go on. The mighty force that was the FBI was poring over an eight year old's Big Chief Tablet with an intensity that more than equalled any other revelation or clue presented to it. He fell asleep somewhere over Oklahoma. They had taken over four seats on this nearly empty airplane, gotten comfortable. Scully smiled at Mulder, propped up by a pillow against the outer wall of the plane, knees slung over the armrest of his two seats and took his copy of the notes. A flight attendant got him a blanket. Scully put his notes away, reached into her portfolio and dug out the forensics on the bodies found and autopsied thus far. The child had been seven, born and raised in Stillwater Oklahoma. He had been killed in Merrick California, a tiny community in the northern part of the state. Scully glanced briefly at the faxed school portrait, flipped over to the meat of the report. A noise startled her. She looked over the top of her report, across the aisle, on instinct. Mulder jerked in his sleep. Scully eyed the flight attendant, so far the woman hadn't seen anything. Good. If she was fast and lucky, she could wake him; this would pass without incident. She edged over to where he sprawled. By the time she got there, the dream was in control. "Mulder? Wake up." Her voice was sharp. "Come on. Wake up. You're having a bad dream. Wake up." Mulder was crying, softly, without sound. "Come on. Wake up." Scully edged her voice with steel. "You have to wake up. Now." He jerked, hard, in his sleep, then sat up with a deep breath. "Okay." Scully brushed hair away from Mulder's face. He wrapped his arms around his chest. "You're awake now. It's all better. You're awake." He didn't hear her, just stared across the aisle blankly, crying silently, rocking softly. He did not look, not then, like her partner, Fox Mulder. He looked like a child, a terrified child. "Is something wrong?" The flight attendant looked over Scully's shoulder. At her voice, Mulder tensed, the rocking grew harder. "Mulder. Come on. Snap out of it." Scully said. She did not allow emotion into her voice. "Wake up and snap out of this. You're all right. I'm all right. Wake up." In a few minutes she hoped he would be better, he would focus, blow his nose. It would be all right. But somehow she knew it would not be all right. "It's all right." She grabbed his shoulders, tried to stop the rocking that frightened her so. "It's all right." She repeated. She had no idea how long it would take him to reemerge from the twilight. The only time she had seen, it had taken Mulder the better part of fifteen minutes to become lucid, then he had been useless the rest of the night, reticent, ruminating the dream, unable to focus on anything properly. Mulder had claimed five minutes and said he was a "a little depressed" and stupidly she had kept her mouth shut. He had also claimed that had been one of the worst times. She did not know whether or not he was lying. Meanwhile the flight attendant was looking terribly nervous. "My purse is over there. Get it." Scully said, finally. She did not want to do this, but she had no other options, not right here, not right now. A second attendant came and stood, made sure the other passengers did not notice. The attendants were watching, worriedly. Dealing with crazy--no, let's all be PC--dealing with "emotionally disturbed" people might be in the manual, but it wasn't something they were used to dealing with in real life. Scully fumbled through her purse. She had gotten this, and then cursed her own unprofessionalness, but she didn't want to be alone with his fear again. "Mulder. This is a barbituate, a major tranquilizer." Mulder was still in the darkness, lost somewhere. And he wondered why it scared her. She got a hypodermic, ripped it out of its little paper packaging, got the bottle out, filled it. . .50 mg a ml. 150-200mg usual dosage, not to exceed 5 ml, Scully recited to herself. 200mg then. He had taken off his suit jacket and was in rolled up shirt sleeves. Good. She pushed the sleeve up as far as she could. This would be much better in his backside, but circumstances warranted that she forego that convient muscle mass. It would take a few minutes now, but he would calm down once the drugs took over. Meanwhile, Mulder still showed no signs of emerging into the real world from his dream. "Mulder. Samantha is gone. That's true. But I'm not. I promise." She forced him to stare at her by putting her hands on his face, turning his head towards her, by not letting go when he resisted. "It's me. Dana. I'm here and I'm all right. I'm alive and I'm well and you don't have to be so frightened. It's Scully." The rocking began to still a few minutes later. Scully did not know whether it was the drugs or his waking. She knew she never wanted to deal with this thing again. She knew she had every reason to be frightened. Mulder calmed as the Nembutal began coursing through his system. Scully talked softly to him, about things that didn't matter. About how she was there and she wasn't dead, that it was all right. He listened numbly and she could still see the painful fear in his eyes. He had let their friendship go into the dark stillness of his soul without thinking about the idea that she could die. Scully wondered how desperate a betrayal it was for him to realize that she could die just the same as anyone else, to realize that he could be completely alone again. "What's happened?" The flight attendant asked Scully, once Mulder was again asleep, again sprawled across two chairs. "My friend and I. . .were involved in . . .some things. . ." Scully began cautiously. "We're federal agents." She tried again. "My partner has been experiencing the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, related to a past incident. What happened is perfectly normal. He would have eventually calmed down and begun acting rationally on his own." "What did you give him?" Another woman, the one who had kept other passengers from seeing their minor emergency. "Just a tranquilizer." Yeah, right. Thank god this woman had no medical training. "He'll be fine when we get to Omaha." "Does this happen very often?" "No. Very rarely. We're both extremely tired, that's all." Scully finished calming the attendants down and went back to her own nest, stared at the sleeping figure. "Come on." Scully shook Mulder gently. "Come on." He stared at her with confused eyes. "We're in Omaha." She added softly. She had waited until other passengers were gone. "Oh. I don't feel good." "I know." Scully smiled, took his hand, helped him up. When he came down out of la-la land he would be highly upset. She doubted he would remember being given a tranquilizer, but he would be able to figure out what had happened. She got him out of the plane and into a rental car without any difficulties, "I need two rooms, with a connecting door if that's possible." Scully requested, knowing how it sounded, not really giving a damn if some hotel clerk in Omaha, Nebraska thought two FBI agents were screwing like minks on taxpayer's money. "Umm. . ." The clerk, a middle aged woman looked through her reading glasses at Mulder. "We're pretty booked up. The Rodeo Finals are this week and we're the official hotel." She looked at Mulder again. Mulder was leaning against a wall, staring dazedly at a wall clock. "Why don't I just say that we only have one room open and make a note of the discount on your bill. Your beancounters may find it irregular but they won't say anything." Scully stared at the woman. "No, thank you." She said, flustered. "You're not going to be in the other room. Why waste it? We aren't going to have any vacancies when the night's over. This way I have to turn away one less traveler." The woman stared at Scully, eagle eyed. "Look, I don't think you're sleeping with him if that's what's got your panties in a wad. But he doesn't look too good, and he's not too with it or he'd be part of the conversation. I'm trying to do you a favor." Scully took a deep breath. "All right. Thank you. I'm sorry." "No problem." They went down to the other end of the counter where the credit card scanner sat innocently. The woman nodded in Mulder's direction, leaned over her forms and whispered softly, so that only Scully could hear. "My husband came home from Vietnam with it so bad he can't work, in and out of the VA hospital. At least whatever's happened to your friend isn't so bad he's getting a disability check from the government every month." "Come on." Scully helped Mulder out of his jacket, out of his pants and shirt. Mulder fell into the bed. "What did you give me?" He asked. "Nembutal." He nodded. "You were having a bad dream. Do you remember?" "No." "If I'd left you alone you would have come out of it on your own. But I couldn't leave you alone. There were other people." "I'm not crazy." "I know that." She sat on the edge of his bed. "But when we get back to Washington you have to see a psychiatrist." Mulder sighed, turned his face away. "This isn't going away." Scully sighed. "All right. This isn't the best time to discuss it. You go to sleep. I'm going to take a shower first. All right?" He nodded tiredly. "Okay." The next morning she woke to the sounds of Mulder showering. She got dressed while he took his time in the bathroom. "How are you feeling?" She asked, leaning close to the room's full length mirror as she applied make-up, watching from the corner of her eye as he emerged draped in a hotel robe. "I'm all right." He replied, going to his hang up, pulling out a suit and shirt, grabbing underwear from the side pocket. "I was going to be angry, but you didn't have any choice." "No." Scully stopped putting on mascara, stared through the mirror at her partner, surprised. He faced the wall and started getting dressed. "I don't remember anything until the hotel." Scully forced herself to finish putting on her mascara, got out a lipstick. "There's a window where you're awake but still part of the dream, and you may remember it as just a little out of touch, but even when you become aware of your surroundings, you're still not. . . normal." She said. "I tried to talk to you about it before, but you shut me out." Mulder zipped his pants, pulled on his shirt, and turned to face her mirror. "How long have you had tranquilizers in your purse?" "About three weeks." He nodded, tucked his pants in. "Why didn't you tell me?" He was upset, trying not to be. "Tell you what?" Scully turned to face him, amazed. "You arched like a spitting cat when I even mentioned your dreams. If I said anything you shut me out completely. I'm supposed to go in and tell you I got a prescription of Nembutal filled so that the next time you wigged out I could get you calmed down? You wouldn't have even let me into your thoughts the little bit that you did." Scully took a deep breath. "Mulder, I know you've been having a difficult time, and I know you'll make it through this. But when you wake up from a nightmare and I'm there I have to deal with it somehow. I don't have the physical strength to restrain you, and you are incapable of any rational thought at those times so I can't talk to you. I had to have some way of dealing with the aftermath of your dreams." She was suddenly sick to her stomach. "If you don't go see a psychiatrist--not just a therapist, I want you to see a medical doctor--when we get back to Washington I'll go to Skinner and I'll make it sound like you are about two steps from psychosis." She stared at Mulder unflinchingly. "You know he'll believe me. If I didn't care about you I wouldn't bother and you know that too." Mulder stared at Scully, not quite believing what he was hearing. Suddenly he nodded, defeated. "All right." "Good. Finish getting dressed." They were given a young woman to drive them to the site. "She has a Grand Cherokee and relatives who're members of Grace Baptist." Supervisory Agent McCall told them. "You'll need four-wheel drive to get out there. She had to drop out of Quantico, after her family--Mom, Pop, Bro's and Sis's got wiped out in a car accident. She'll be back next session." Mulder and Scully had both winced. The young woman, Becky Martin, was professional, however, except for her liscence plate, which read "Precious." The area was desolate and bitterly cold. The people working on the site seemed not to notice the winds gusting around them. Scully knelt beside another forensics worker, discussed whatever it was that a good pathologist would find to talk about. Mulder separated himself from the others. Martin, luckily, was not someone who insisted on talking. She left him alone, let him scope out the playing field. He stopped about fifty feet from the activity. Here. Meredith had said that this was the place. She stood here, bare feet burning cold on an ice strewn ground. A little girl, Meri's diary recorded, a blonde girl missing three teeth. He squatted, trying to see things as Meredith would have. It had been dark, and the moon had only been a quarter full, but very bright. Mulder squinted up into the morning sky, at the crystalline blue sky. Three men in a Bronco. They brought out shovels and dug a small hole, slid the body, wrapped in heavy plastic drop cloth, down into their shallow hole. Then they covered the place as best they could and moved on. Mulder stood. There was nothing really to be learned here. A stench began to assault him. He strode towards its source. Scully came to him at the edge of the excavation. "Was she accurate?" He asked. Scully nodded tersely. "Down to the placement of the missing teeth." She responded. "I'm going to stay here for a while." Mulder nodded. He'd seen what he came to. "I'll take Martin and go back then." "All right. I have some errands to run when I'm through here. I'll meet you at the field office around five." "Yeah, fine." The church had crime scene tape over the doors and a sheriff's deputy curled up in his cruiser reading a Ghost Rider comic book, but otherwise the area was deserted. A small church, not one to attract any attention. Mulder found everything as Meredith had said it would be. Folding chairs set up in loose circular rows around a small podium. A communion table set to one side. The only ostentation, only evidence this was a church and not a community hall, was a leaded glass window depicting a dove flying out of a fire. "It's not such a bad little church." Martin said. "Never been real big on church in my family." Mulder smiled faintly, wished he could say the same. Meredith had woken on the floor, facing the window. He moved around, trying to find her place. There. She sat there. So close she sat on the plastic covering. Mulder dropped down, considered how it would have looked. First, clad in their white robes, members of the coven had tied the naked child to the table, had carefully prepared the area. Then the leader and all the members of the coven assembled, all in white robes. They gathered around the child silently. Their leader stabbed deep with his knife. Blood spurted. The leader rips up, cuts through the ribs, up into the chest. Finished, he pulls out the heart, shows it to the child then squeezes all the life away. All right. He had a victim, he had a ceremony. That much was certain. Mulder put his knees up, apart, sat with his arms between his legs. Martin sat in one of the chairs, glanced at him, shrugged; she'd heard the stories about Spooky Mulder. This smacked of procedure rather than ritual. Ritual, define it. Mulder thought of what the word connotated. Doing things a certain way because it was comfortable, because it had been done that way before. Did it have to make sense? No. In a cult a ritual had a purpose. It had to be that way or something, some higher force would be highly upset. Procedure. Define it, he ordered himself. A way of doing things that has developed or been developed with a purpose. Procedures changed when they needed to change. People as a rule are scrupulous in the observance of rituals, they do rituals even when it isn't best to do them. Why? Because, that's the way a ritual is done. If you don't do the ritual right something bad will happen to you. Sometimes, because of repetition people got sloppy with procedures, procedures did not carry the same penalties. Rituals meant something. Procedures were just efficient. Five murders had been found because of sloppy procedure. There were no sacred words according to Meredith. No sacred rituals. They bound the child to the communion table, put down plastic wrap. The leader came and killed the child. All right. That was ritual. They did that the same way, perfectly. No. scratch that. Their leader did that perfectly. That was all he did. The coven did everything else. And sometimes they got sloppy. They were twelve because the thirteenth was Satan. Mulder stared at the leaded glass. No mumbo jumbo, no ritual involved in choosing places, just crafty planning. There should be ritual, there should sacred sayings, something. No. Just the leader cutting out the heart with business-like precision. Well, a heart surgeon uses procedure and never gets sloppy or people start dying. So the leader's actions could be defined as procedure too. So what were they trying to do and why didn't they act like a cult? Mulder put a hand to his face, thought about it. This was not a cult. No, this was a an organization working towards a practical goal. A goal? That was a new question. If they had a goal what was it? The killings were not killings for the purpose of killing were they? In a cult, the killings would be part of a religous ceremony. Not here. They had a purpose. If he took Meredith on face value, which he did, then this was not a cult. They would be impossible to catch. No, scratch that. They should be impossible to catch. Mulder had Meredith. He had a chance. "Let's go." He told Martin, standing up suddenly. Mulder was finishing a preliminary report when Scully showed up at the regional office. He let her read over his shoulder as he proofread the report. "Are the wounds identical?" He questioned. "I assumed they were." "Yes. Everything is depressingly the same." Mulder nodded, unsurprised. "Do you remember what Meredith said about the first church she witnessed a murder in?" Scully thought back. Nodded. "She had dreams about it before." "Dreams where she and an older man, a minister, went around the church. Played games. He taught her Bible stories and songs." Scully nodded as though she had the foggiest idea what was going on. "So?" She prodded. "I think if we could find the history of that first church we might have a clue as to the reason for these murders." Mulder paused. "There was some reason Meredith dreampt about that particular church. I don't know. Maybe she visited it when she was younger and didn't remember it. But there had to be a reason." Scully groaned. "What?" Mulder glanced up at her, surprised by her reaction. "This means we're flying back to Louisiana, doesn't it?" Mulder smiled. "No middle of the night flights, please." Scully told him. "Come on. Let me send this and we'll go to dinner. Martin told me about a great steak place." She pulled Nembutal into the syringe, sitting on the bed. Mulder pretended to ignore her preparations. "I'm not going to sleep tonight." He told her, coming out of the bathroom in his jogging sweats. "You've got to sleep." Scully replied, putting the cap back over the needle. "Here." She had gotten a prescription of Ativan at the druggist, not bothering to tell anyone why she needed to stop at a pharmacy. Let them think she was out of birth control pills or that her period had come early, let them think she needed Ativan because Mulder was driving her crazy. "No thanks." Mulder smiled, headed out the door. Scully sighed and pulled out her file on the little girl, as yet unidentified. It was not human. Scully's eyes opened and she reached instinctively for her gun. There on the coffee table. Darkness. She had fallen asleep on the couch, over paperwork. Mulder had graciously put the file away and slung a blanket over her. The sounds of the shower reassured her and she put her gun back. Mulder had come in, tidied up and was taking a shower. She lay a moment in the darkness, thinking she ought to get up, get undressed. The sound. Again. Scully sat up, questioning. A faint noise. She got up. "Mulder?" Rapped on the door. "Mulder?" She questioned again. "Hey? You in there?" She got no answer. The sounds were coming from the shower. Scully stumbled back to the bed and got the Nembutal. He'd fallen asleep in the bathroom. Wonderful. The door was not locked. Mulder had gotten his sweatshirt off and turned the shower on. He sat, huddled on the tiling, bleeding a puddle on the floor around him. "Mulder?" Scully knelt beside him. His hands and face were bloodied. The blood in his hair was drying in pockets of mats. She touched his face. "Shh." She said, considering him under the bright bathroom lights. She could not tell the extent of his injuries. They did not appear to be serious, but there was so much blood. She put the syringe down on the toilet seat. "How did you get this? Did you fall?" She asked. Mulder stared at her dazedly, shivered. Scully snapped her fingers trying to get his attention. Carefully, she took his face in her hands. There was no evidence of any drugs or head trauma though she could see a large cut on his temple. His pupils responded normally to light, his skin was not clammy. Pulse rate fast, but not dangerously so. He pulled away from her hands. She crawled over to the shower, turned the water down to the spigot, wet the bathmat, then turned the water off. "Do you know who you are?" She asked, sponging water onto his face. He did not respond, but jerked away from her ministrations. Scully sighed and pulled his face back to her. "It's all right." She held tightly onto his chin, cleaned blood away from a large wound on his right temple. It looked as though he had fallen, hard, onto something hard and sharp edged. She looked up, directly at a towel bar. No doubt if she inspected it she would find blood. That did not account for most of the blood though. Mulder jerked away from her again, rolled onto his side, tucked fetal, hands wrapped tightly around his chest. Scully could not explain this. It was not head trauma. It was not a psychotic state induced by his nightmares. She pulled, but he was completely tense now, unwilling to let her do anything. She reached for the Nembutal and injected it intramuscular, tugging the sweatpants down, cleaning a spot on his hip with alcohol. He had a headache. Mulder stared at the ceiling blankly. His head hurt and he was terribly thirsty. He tried to sit up. Someone gently pushed back, then let him push up on the pillows just a little. "Good afternoon." Scully swam into view, held a glass of water, helped him sip it. "How are you feeling?" She helped him push into a gentle recline, bolstered by pillows. "Head hurts." He said, licking his lips. "You've got a nasty cut on your forehead." Scully told him. "You were lucky it didn't need stitches." "What happened?" "I don't know. I was hoping you might remember. I found you on the floor of the bathroom completely incoherent." Mulder tried to think back. "Someone threw blood on me." He remembered. "What?" "When I went out jogging. I was coming back and someone threw blood onto my face." "Did you see who?" Mulder shook his head. "By the time I cleaned out my eyes they were gone. I came straight back. You had fallen asleep. I got you a blanket. I was going to clean up so I went to the shower." He paused, confused. "I don't remember anything else." Scully nodded, got up, returned with some aspirin and more water. "Here. This should help your head." Mulder took the pills, holding his own glass this time. "It's already noon. I woke up last night because I heard you moaning. When I went into the bathroom you'd taken off your shirt, you were curled up against the wall. You wouldn't let me help you and you didn't seem to understand anything. I drugged you, cleaned you up as best I could, got you into bed. You went to sleep. As soon as you're feeling better you need to shower and wash your hair. I changed the plane reservations to 3." She got up, dug around in her portfolio for an evidence bag and a small pair of shears. "If the blood in your hair isn't yours we need to find out whose or what it is." Mulder nodded, turned his head. Scully considered carefully before clipping. She didn't want to leave her partner bald in a patch. Carefully she clipped around the side of his face, catching two clots of blood into her bag. "It's conceivable that the blood is cow's or chicken's." Mulder said, pushing up into a higher sit. "But I doubt it." Scully nodded, looking at the two clots. "This means someone knows we're on the case." She said, sitting on her own bed. "Someone related to the coven." Mulder amended for her. "I know. It confuses me though. Why just throw blood onto my face? Why not kill me?" Meredith hoped her message had been heard, but she doubted it. She leaned over her schoolwork, frowned at the instructions Mrs. Andersen had sent. Uncle Kenny was busy with paperwork at his desk. They had set it up so that when Meri wasn't at home she was at the sheriff's office. That way the FBI didn't have to have agents out taking care of her. Momma got her schoolwork for her. Meri had gone to DeMarr elementary in Kindergarten. It was a big kindergarten. 8 teachers just for kindergarten. Now she went to Breaux High School, which was all the schools in one. There were only 11 kids in all of third grade. Momma taught at Breaux, so Meri went with her to school. Mrs. Andersen had sent all Meri's schoolwork. So Meri had something to do for about three hours. Uncle Kenny took her to the library every morning and Meri had all kinds of art supplies--crayons, pastels, tempera, watercolors and lots of paper. She looked up from the work on four number subtraction, sighed and watched uncle Kenny work. When there was something Meri shouldn't see or hear she went out to the dispatcher's office or to a detective's office. He was busy, busy enough he wouldn't notice if she took a break. Meri, curled up on a little rug, put her paperwork down and picked up her book. Mulder popped two extra-strength Tylenol into his mouth, swallowed with some diet coke. They were cramped into their assigned seats on this flight into DFW. He looked down at his copy of Meri's notes, looked at an annotation they'd gotten in from the bureau. Handwriting experts said the writing was consistent with the fine motor development of about a four or five year old. A child psychologist said that the writing style was more reminiscent of a third grader. A call to the Aimes confirmed that Meredith had been reading since preschool. A great deal of trauma present in the first accounts. A notation that it seemed as though someone was telling Meredith to write the first entries. Mulder scratched the back of his neck. Preacher's influence? How did Meredith's Preacher fit into all this anyway? From Meredith's account Preacher was the one responsible for leading her out of Schizophenia. Mulder pulled out the report on Meredith, read the nitty-gritty information. He'd heard it all before so he hadn't bothered until now. He knew what he would find. "Scully." She looked up from her perusual of photos of the sites they hadn't visited. "Hmm?" Mulder handed his partner Meredith's file. "Look at this." "What?" "Meredith was adopted." Scully groaned. "Now you're going to tell me she has some kind of psychic link to someone in the coven because that person is her genetic mother." Mulder gave Scully a hurt look. "I was not." "Well, what then?" "Her birth mother is a a close friend of the Aimes who got pregnant when she was raped. I was going to suggest that someone in the coven must be her birth father." Scully groaned again. Meri was glad to see Agent Mulder. As soon as she got him alone, she would see if he got her message. "Hi." She told the two agents, leaning against her uncle's car. "Hi." Both agents replied. From the window, Uncle Kenny watched. Now that she was with the two agents, he went back to his work. Meredith lead them into the sheriff's office, past the receptionist, past the first set of offices. There was a little room where they talked to people they weren't going to arrest. Meredith didn't like it much because it smelt nasty, but it was a good place to talk. Uncle Kenny'd told her they were coming in last night. But they'd gone to the Best Western and it was this morning before they saw her. They'd talked to her parents over the phone. Meredith heard Aunt Alexandra's name mentioned several times. She knew Agent Mulder hadn't slept last night. He'd done paperwork instead. Agent Scully had a drug in a needle to give him if he went to sleep and had a nightmare. It was odd that she saw him. It was odd that she had seen him before. She'd been listening to him cry for a long time. Since a couple of months ago. Before she knew who he was. Aunt Alexandra was nice. Babies came out their mother's uterus, which was a place in a woman's stomach, another way of saying womb. But Meredith had come out of Aunt Alexandra's uterus because Momma couldn't have babies. That was why she didn't look like her Momma or Daddy, because you looked like the person whose womb you came out of, and like the person they loved. Aunt Alexandra liked to spoil Meredith. Aunt Alexandra was in college, getting a Master's in psychology but when she came home she would take Meredith to the Mall in Alexandria and spend lots of money on her. Momma pretended to get upset, but wasn't. Daddy didn't even pretend to get upset, just admired all of Meredith's new outfits and laughed at the gag gifts Meredith and Aunt Alexandra bought Momma and Daddy. But now Agent Mulder and Agent Scully were here. She told them about how she wasn't allowed to go to school for a while. But it was pretty cool because Uncle Kenny or Mr. Grant, one of the detectives, took her out to eat at a fast food restaurant for lunch. "It's cold in Nebraska." She finished. The agents exchanged looks, Agent Mulder shrugged. "Yeah. But it'll get colder." "Mhm." Meri smiled. "Did you get my message?" "Message? No. Did you send me one?" "Last night. Late. I wanted to tell you about Preacher. I didn't know you were already coming." The two agents exchanged another look. "How did you send your message?" Mulder asked. Meri frowned. "Special way." She said. "I've never done it before. The books say it's ESP. Daddy thinks ESP is horse hooey, which is a nice way of saying horse poop." She decided not to mention knowing Agent Mulder's dreams. Another look. Agent Mulder fingered a bandage on his forehead. "I got it." He said. "But I couldn't hear what you were saying." "It was about Preacher." "The one who taught you." "Mhm." Meri bit her bottom lip. "I don't understand. But I think Preacher's the reason I see the Murders." "What can you tell us about Preacher?" Mulder asked. Meri frowned, bit her bottom "My daddy has a picture of him in a photo album. I found it last year when I had the flu. He was really nice. He taught me how to read and how to write. He taught me about manners and lots of games. He had a big orange cat named Ba'ar." "There he is." Meredith pointed to the photo of three men sitting around a small table, eating ice cream.. "That's him." Reverend Aimes pushed up his reading glasses, stared at the photo, glanced around his church office nervously. "Meri, why don't you and Agent Scully go outside." Mulder suggested. "You can show me the church." Scully suggested, taking Meredith's hand. "Can you tell me who this is?" Mulder asked, when they were gone. "That's a distant cousin. He was a minister in Mississipi, Jim Kelly, we grew up together, real close friends. This was taken before Meri was born, in Glorieta, a Baptist conference center. Before Meri was born, Ellen and I went every year. We'd plan it out so that Kelly would be there at the same time. Then we'd all go up to Colorado for a week." "Did Reverend Kelly ever have a Cat named Ba'ar?" Mulder asked. "Yeah. He used to smuggle Ba'ar into hotel rooms; cat went everywhere with him." "Where is Reverend Kelly now?" "Umm. . .about seven years ago he was killed in an auto accident. Ba'ar too." Aimes frowned. "That's when we stopped going to Glorieta. There were too many ghosts." Mulder nodded, glanced down at the first page of Meredith's notes. "This is from your daugther's notebook. Does this describe any church Reverend Kelly pastored?" Aimes took the highlighted material, read it. "This is Kelly's last church." He said, surprised. "It's a really nice church. He was full-time, not bivocational." Going back to their hotel, Mulder and Scully discovered that the media knew that the FBI had gotten psychic help, that the psychic was a child, and that there were 29 murders. So much Mulder and Scully watched on CNN before going to lunch. Bernard Shaw reporting. "At least they don't know who she is or where." Mulder commented wrily as an FBI spokesperson dedicated to not saying anything, appeared on the screen. He was part of the "official" taskforce. "They will." Scully replied reading through their messages. "Have you tried to use your cellular?" "Nope." "Well, apparently there isn't any cellular coverage in DeMarr Louisiana." Scully held up three notes. "What do you want to bet that we're supposed to get Meredith Aimes and her family under Federal Protection before Ted Turner's hounds find her?" Mulder took the pink notes, frowning. "Wonderful." Scully sighed, picked up the phone, called D.C.. "I'm going over to my room to change." Mulder said. Scully nodded. He came back before her call had gone through. "That can wait. Come over here." He ordered, face pale. Scully hung up the phone, followed him out. Scully wrinkled her nose at the stench. Mulder stood just inside the door. Blood, urine and feces covered the walls, the floor, the bed, the furniture. Obscene words had been scrawled in blood and feces on the mirror. The television had been smashed as had the toilet, to judge from the water spilling onto the floor. Mulder's files had been strewn about the long lowboy and shredded, then covered in blood and urine, his clothes covered in feces. His laptop lay in several violent pieces on the floor. "They know we're here." He said unnessesarily. "They probably know where Meri is." Scully added. They left the room before either agent could follow through on the stomach's command to vomit. Scully called Sheriff Aimes from her hotel phone, described the scene, then called D.C.. They sat in the Best Western's restaurant as darkness began cloaking the world of DeMarr Louisiana in her soft blues. Agents Mahoney and Greer from the New Orleans office sat with them. Mulder was tired. He wanted to curl up on his couch at home and watch a really bad horror flick. Meredith was somewhere else, a safe house Mulder supposed, though he didn't know where right now and really didn't care. Scully watched him, concerned. She was of the same two minds as the FBI was. They were in danger and needed to be taken off the case. But Mulder's work had made more headway into this case than the work of all the other agents combined and the public was demanding a solution to the case. Janet Reno was promising a solution to this case. So Mahoney and Greer had been sent up. In the morning the pair would be replaced by two other special agents who would, essentially, babysit. Mahoney and Mulder had gone to a J.C. Penny's and bought Mulder some other clothes. He sat in new Levi's and a rugby shirt, new hiking boots. She knew that in deference to her sex no one would try to stay in the room with her. Mulder she wasn't so sure about. His room, his things had been targeted. "They're not going to try to kill me." Mulder said for quite possibly the twelth time. The waitress brought their orders out, glanced nervously out the window at their motel room now festooned with yellow police tape. Scully frowned at her broiled chicken and baked potato, tried to eat. Mulder didn't even glance at his hamburger, but sat thinking. "Eat." Scully told him after a couple of minutes. "Hmm?" Mulder looked at her surprised. "Eat something." "Oh." Mulder glanced down the table at Greer who was busy with a Rueban. "Hand me the ketchup." He asked Mahoney. Mulder covered his fries, stared at the ketchup, lost again in his thoughts. "You haven't been without sleep long enough to get this spacy." Scully said, swallowing a bite of potato. Mulder looked up, played back her comment mentally and then smiled. "No. Maybe not. I'm just. . .Meredith's birth mother is in school down in Baton Rouge?" "Mhm. She's taking graduate courses in psychology and teaching high school English." Scully replied. "But she lived in DeMarr when Meredith was concieved." "I guess so." "You know, when I was growing up the minister of our church asked friends of his to preach our revivals." Scully's eyes narrowed as she caught his train of thought. "Are you suggesting that Kelly was Meredith's father?" She asked. Mulder shrugged. "Was Kelly ever married?" "I don't know." "I think I want to talk to her." Mulder talked the other two agents into driving them down to Baton Rouge that night. Scully was against the idea whole heartedly, but decided not to argue too strenously. They rode in the back of the agency Taurus. Greer and Mahoney talked with each other about Louisiana problems, riverboat gambling and how financial support for state colleges and universities was drying up. "If you start having a nightmare" Scully told Mulder softly "I'm drugging you immediately." Mulder considered this and nodded. It would be best if the agency didn't have to get involved with his emotional problems, at least not right now. It would just be SOP to remove Mulder from the case and put him on extended leave. There would be no argument, no appeal no matter what the reason. Mulder settled back in the dark. Scully did not have to see him to know he was thinking, mulling things over in his mind. She thought back to a professor she'd once had in Med School, she forgot the class; the professor had come in one day on a rampage about something, about some incident that had nothing to do with the course and proceded to give them a lecture on Post Traumatic Stress. "A survivor of extraordinary stressors suffers because he behaves normally to an abnormal event. The stressful event imprints a mind hard" the professor slapped his lectern sending a rousounding pound through the hall "deeply, so deeply that all behavior from that point on relates to the experience. When a person has had such an experience all thoughts lead back to that one event. All thoughts." He had paused for thought. "When the indivdual ties his shoes, his mind is wondering, did I tie my shoes before? Is that what lead to it happening? When he orders the veal instead of the chicken his mind is wondering, was it the veal last time? Did I order veal sometime before it happened? Should I order chicken? "The mind will avoid that horrible incident if it can in any way, so the mind is constantly challenging any new experience for similarities. It doesn't want to ever, ever, ever let anything like that happen to it again. "If similarities between the stressor and a current happening are found the survivor reacts strongly. Chemically, there are differences between someone with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and someone without the syndrome, which indicates that the incident has been imprinted. Indicates that the person is obsessive because they cannot stop being obsessive. "You've all seen a movie where a Vietnam vet has bad dreams. Well, hell yeah. If every thought that ran through your brain went back to one horrific event you'd wake up in the cold sweats too." The professor had paused, thought, gotten to whatever was bothing him most. "When someone like this comes into an emergency room or walks into your office don't patronize, don't judge. *THEY DO NOT HAVE A CHOICE.* They're stuck with the constant thinking. The best you can do is try to help." The lecture had remained with Scully. Dealing with Mulder you had to remember that. All his thoughts led back to Samantha. He hadn't said her name this entire case, but Scully knew that dealing with the murders of children the same age as Samantha, dealing with a child Samantha's age who bore a resemblance to the child in Mulder's photographs, must be hell. All right. This was not Dream Anxiety. This was not Sleep Terror. Were these, as Mulder assumed, severe flashbacks? She moaned. Not her speciality. Mulder was quiet, ruminating. Scully knew better than to try and draw him out. They were on I-49 when he surprised her by speaking. "I'm beginning to understand our Coven." He told Scully. "I don't know why they're doing this, but I'm beginning to understand some of their procedures." In the darkness Scully could see him wipe his face with his hands. He would need to buy toiletries in Baton Rouge, as well as more clothes, she thought inanely, giving him a kleenex. He hadn't bought any hankerchiefs. "They scare me." Scully tried to make out Mulder's features, but they were hidden. "They're not doing this from deluded notions. They have a plan. They have money. They have anonymity. I think we're dealing with twelve professionals. They've been drawn together for a purpose. They have a recognized leader. "Do you believe in Satan?" "As a being? I believe Evil exists. I believe Good exists. But not a fallen angel named Satan." "What about Demons?" "A couple of years ago I would have said no." "Now?" "Now I don't recognize them as part of my belief system. That's all I'll commit to." She could feel Mulder's smile through the darkness. "I don't." Mulder replied. "But I'm beginning to wonder. If you look at the ideas behind most theological descriptions of evil, it reduces to this--the purpose of evil is to defile good as much as is possible. Evil can only gain power through the plundering of the natural power of Good. That's what the whole mythos of Satan being a fallen angel is about and that's why most cultures have a fallen angel myth." "All right." Scully could almost agree to that. "Meredith is a catalyst. She has a great deal of power. She told me Preacher was sent to her to teach her how to connect with the outside world. This was during the periods when she was classified autistic and schizophrenic. He was gentle and loving and a perfect mentor. His going away coincided not only with the start of the murders, but also with the time period when most of Meredith's true problems ended. What's going on now is Post Traumatic Stress. "All right." Scully could understand that they were on Mulder's mental highway, but could not make out where he was headed. "What if the thirteenth is supposed to be Meredith?" Scully frowned. "They're trying to take over Meredith?" "No. Nothing so gothic. Just keep her from becoming whatever it is she has the potential to become. The forces of good have invested a lot in her--parents firmly committed to raising her well, even though it appears she will have limited abilites, a second ghost father who counsels her. A peaceful envirament. Meredith has great power. If they can take even little bits of it they can use it to their own ends. Plunder." The last word sounded obscene. Scully nodded. "Of course, it's just a theory." Mulder finished. He leaned towards Scully. "Give me some of that Ativan." He said softly. "No water." "I don't care." Scully took the small bottle out of her purse, handed him a couple of 2 mg. pentagonal pills. Great shape to put them in guys. She thought as he took it without water, swallowed it dry. Like we need any more dealings with pentagonal shapes: military, magical, or medicinal. Scully watched as he closed his eyes, crashed against the seat, legs eventually moving and taking over her foot space. She caught Greer's eye in Opelousas. "I see why they call him Spooky." Greer said. "And I don't mean it in a bad way." Scully smiled, glanced at her sleeping partner. "Imagine being his partner." She replied wryly. They were put up at the Hilton. Mulder roused druggedly. He was lucid, but stumbly. It looked as though he'd gone too long without sleep. At least Scully hoped it looked that way as she let Greer and Mahoney check them into rooms. Mulder didn't have any bags--his one surviving suit, the one he'd been wearing, was tucked in among Scully's hang ups. He fell into a bed the moment the bellboy left. Greer had a room next door to Mulder's room. Mahoney was across the hall and Scully's room connected with a door to Mulder's. Mahoney was going to take this room but she intervened. "No. We're not sleeping together." Scully took the key from Mahoney's hand with an ironic smile. "But unless you want Mulder waking you from a sound sleep with a new theory on UFO's at Roswell I wouldn't reccomend letting him have full access to your room." "He does that?" Mahoney asked. Mulder smiled, yawned from the bed. "No. Usually it's a new theory on Genetic Mutations among FBI agents. I'm of the theory that they're injecting us with DNA from J. Edgar Hoover and that's why I have this sudden attraction to feather boas and high heels. Scully believes it's from Eliot Ness and that's why she keeps wanting to carry a bigger gun." Mahoney and Greer smiled nervously. "Mulder." Scully said, shaking her head. "Hmm?" "Get to sleep before someone takes you away to a padded room." "Yes ma'am." She curled up on Mulder's couch after taking a shower, comfortable in warm-ups, pulled out paperwork, but it was only for show. She glanced through some files, then pulled a blanket over her shoulders and curled up like a cat. He was crying, softly. Scully woke, sat up, grabbed for the Nembutal. The bathroom light was still on and she made her way to his bed guided by this. She shook him gently. He rolled over, stared up, at her, then past her. "Come on. Wake up." She said gently. Mulder woke but did not sit up. He continued crying. "You're not dead." He repeated over and over again. "No." Scully replied every time he said his rote phrase. "But Sam is?" He finally asked. "Sam is still gone." Mulder nodded, swallowed, burst into sobs. "I dreamt you were dead." "I know. It's all right." "No. I. . ." Mulder trailed, but his crying lessened. He touched her hand, as if to assure himself that she were real. "Was Sam really abducted by Them?" He asked. Scully gently put a hand to Mulder's face. "I don't know." She said simply. "Possibly." "There were voices." "I know." "I heard the voices again once." "Oh?" Scully kept her voice gentle and soft. "In Puerto Rico." "What did they say?" "Not to be afraid. But I was. I don't remember anything else." Scully nodded. This didn't surprise her any. "Are you going to be able to go to sleep?" Mulder nodded. "Do you want any more Ativan?" "I. . ." He paused. "Yes." She nodded, got up and got another pill, filled a glass with water from the sink. "Here." Mulder took the pill, held the water glass himself. Scully tucked him back in, relieved. There were no dream terrors this evening. Just ordinary nightmares. Alexandra Breaux was animated when she described Meredith. Alexandra reminded Mulder of her daughter. Small and delicate, but alive with vibrancy. The same deep-set, moonstruck eyes, the same dark, curling hair. He let Scully do the interviewing, sat back on the woman's comfortable Ethan Allen couch and listened. Scully led Alexandra through basic questions about Meredith. Finally, she dropped the bombshell. "Who was Meredith's father?" Alexandra faltered. "I thought that you knew. I was date raped. No way to make a case, so I never reported it." Mulder leaned forward then. "The father was Jim Kelly. You met him during a revival." Alexandra's eyes opened, she sat a moment, speechless. "We don't want to embarrass anyone. We aren't going to spread this around. There's no reason the Aimes even have to know." "I. . ." Alexandra shut her eyes. "Who told you?" "No one." Scully replied. "It was a wild guess." Alexandra leaned back in her wing chair, composure lost. "I really loved him. He never knew about Meredith. I had just found out I was pregnant when he was killed. I thought about an abortion, but I couldn't. I actually made an appointment, but I couldn't go through with it. "So I made up a story and went to the Aimes. Kelly and Robin were best friends. I knew Ellen couldn't have children, I thought it would be right for them to raise the child." Alexandra sighed, closed her eyes, began crying softly. "Kelly's wife died of leukemia when he was in seminary and he never remarried. He. . .we met when he came to DeMarr for a revival and we just. . .fell in love. I know how silly that sounds, but it was true. We went back and forth between DeMarr and Lysander for about eight months. He was going to marry me. He gave me this." Alexandra touched a large cameo, in an ornate gold setting, pinned to her blouse. "It's nineteenth century, hand carved, of neptune's daughter. We went to the beach just before he died. That's where Meredith was concieved--at the beach, in this nasty little cabin. There were supposed to be two cabins, but the dumb owner. . ." Alexandra shrugged miserably. "He gave it to me on the beach. No one knew we were in love. It was like this big bad secret because he wasn't sure how his church would react--I mean most of the unmarried women in his churches were hot after him, so he like was introducing me to people as the `dear friend' of his best friends, the Aimes's. To get everybody used to me." She shrugged. "Meredith is just like him. Sweet and gentle. She even talks like him--uses Kelly's expressions. She likes the same kinds of jokes. I spoil her outrageously when I get up to DeMarr." Alexandra caressed the Cameo. "I've always meant to tell them who Meredith is. But. . . I just haven't had the courage. Why is this important? I know Meredith is the psychic in the Church Murders--Ellen called me so I wouldn't be worried. What does it have to do with Kelly?" Mulder smiled easily. "We believe one of the first murders may have taken place in Kelly's old church. If so it would be one of the few connections we have in this case." Alexandra nodded dumbly, lost in her own private thoughts. "Thank you for being honest." Scully told the woman gently. "No. It's all right. I. . .what matters is Meri. Not my pride. Did anyone tell you that Kelly's ghost has been seen in Lysander First Baptist? His old church?" Scully and Mulder exchanged uneasy looks. "No." Scully said. "I've only heard rumours. But for about. . .Oh I don't know, three or four years people used to say they saw him and his cat, Ba'ar. It stopped maybe two years ago. They say they hear children screaming there at night now." Alexandra shrugged. "But you know how people are."