June 2, 1996
6:46 p.m.
Near I-395, Massachusetts
Manda drummed her fingers on the steering wheel of the Voyager before fingering the ignition and starting the engine. Odd. Decidedly odd, she thought... it looked like she'd need to call for backup on this one. But backup for what? Steering down onto the main road and veering for the highway on-ramp, she chewed on her lip, frowning.
When her sister had called three days before, sleepless and harried, she'd agreed immediately to the trip to Massachusetts. Carrie worked part-time in a group home for troubled adolescent girls, putting herself through school... the Fischer tendency to attract strays, Manda smiled. Her youngest sister had never uttered word one of complaint about the job, though her vacation anecdotes occasionally made her sister glad she'd chosen a comparitavely stressless job like FBI Special Agent. Runaways, attempted suicide, young felons, "demons in training" - Carrie had them all. And they'd never worried her... until now.
The group home was located in a rambling old Victorian just outside of Springfield, Massachusetts... there were many of those, left over from the time when Springfield and nearby Chicopee and South Hadley had been industrial paper giants. And to expect that there weren't a few ghost stories circulating would be foolish - Yankee houses took pride in their supernatural tenants, and the old house's creaks and groans lent credence to the tales of Emmaline, the miller's daughter who had hung herself, and John, her ghostly lover, who'd shot himself in grief. But it wasn't the supposed resident ghosts that was frightening the girls... when Carrie had called, she'd distinctly said that the girls were afraid of the dark. Afraid of the dark. Manda had had access to the "surface records" of the thirteen residents... aside from being well into their teen years, and supposedly beyond such childish fears, these were, for the most part, streetwise girls whose tough exterior might give even fellow agent Abigail Beck a run for her money. They'd lived through beatings and rapes, pregnancies and police de-lousing... some had even lived off the streets, where dark, both physical and emotional, was well over half a life.
But they were afraid of the dark. Without exception, every one - and Manda had made a point of speaking to every one, in detail, with her sister trying hard to ease the terror the straightforward questions evoked. Many of the girls were frightened beyond rational thought, and could not say anything at all, only whimpered in inarticulate fear, despite the sunny afternoon. The mood was pervasive, Carrie said, and had been building for some time now. The girls as a collective whole had been silent to begin with... but had finally come to their adult counselors when the shared anxiety had mounted to a breaking point. By then it was too late, of course... there was no detail or coherence in the stories, only the screaming terrors.
Several of the girls had stopped eating... too afraid to eat, with the emotional overload causing whatever they managed to get down to come up again in short order. Most slept with the lights on at night... or in the counselor's lounge, well lit and inhabited around the clock. The adult employees, from counselor to cook, reported no peculiarities... and, as the girls could not name the source of their fears, could not prevent them.
It was only when the two youngest girls had run away - and had been found, two days later, dead, not a mile from the house - that Carrie had leaped out of the "chain of command" and called Manda. That event had tipped the scales... and even the full-time professional staff could not soothe the girls who demanded that they leave the place immediately, and permanantly, fearing for their own lives. The eleven remaining would be transferred and separated in a week's time, Carrie said... but what, until then, could be done?
There was nothing - nothing at all - that Manda could see about the old house that aroused even the faintest of suspicion. A beautiful house, on a large parcel of land... no health code violations, no environmental signs to watch for tainted water or lead paint chips. And supernatural activity was less than inevident... there was one "true" ghost story, but even that had no historical proof, let alone documentation. Even Mulder would have shook his head and walked away, Manda suspected... then shook her own head, knowing that exactly the opposite would likely be true. Mulder would not only have stayed with the case... he would have pooled whatever resources he'd had, piqued by the challenge.
*But I'm not Mulder. Not by a long shot in broad daylight.* Without evidence - without even a solid case file behind her - how could she justify calling in her colleagues? Vacation time was at a premium... who would want to spend it poking around a perfectly friendly-looking old house, to help out a coworker's sister?
The sun was setting West, a golden glow dropping behind the humps of the Berkshires, staining the sky with golds and reds, darkening to blue and violet in the east. Manda turned off the exit ramp. It was growing darker even as she drove... dusk creeping out of the twilight hedgerows along the road, coaxing the streetlights on. She'd rest for a bit at the motel, and then go back tonight. It was logical that she wouldn't have found anything in the daylight... perhaps another inspection at full dark. Yes, that would be much more the thing... and she'd call in to the Basement in the morning to report.
She heard the faint hissing... like tires through a shallow puddle, or a snake coiled in the grass. A faint hiss... and then, nothing. Manda cocked her head, slowing the car slightly, but the noise was gone. It was probably the road... something on the road, already passed. She fell back into thoughts of young girls being afraid of the dark... and did not notice the darkness growing almost palpably thick around her.
It's a typical Basement morning, with agents going about their daily business... all the agents, except for Manda, who's not about. Her usual morning supply of donuts is the first thing noted and missed... until Anna Alexa arrives to visit her "favorite division." While the eccentric agent chats with the Basement Rats, glancing sadly at the vacant offices of Mulder and Kenedy Ryan, Abbe recieves a phone call from Skinner himself: Manda, on leave to visit her sister in Massachusetts, has been in a car accident and is in indefinite condition at Mercy Hospital. Her family has been notified, but the agents promptly pack for a trip north... "She owes me five bucks," notes Jacob Stillwater. "Just wanna make sure I collect."
Abbe is briefly phased by the sight of their transport, a Prop8 "coffin with wings." The intrepid agents press onward, however, discussing Anna's appearance Manda's situation. Anna, shaken up by a Unabomber "wannabe," decided to pay a visit to her friends in low places, and has tagged along because "hospitals don't know the first thing about healing." Lynn Cai inquires after Vic's disposition - after hearing of Manda's accident, he's been oddly quiet, but tells the others that Manda was visiting her youngest sister, Carrie, who works at a home for troubled teen girls.
It seems that something was frightening the girls, and Manda agreed to come up to see what she could find out. Vic is wondering if there's some sort of a connection between this unofficial case and Manda's accident. Jakes is of the opinion that Manda was simply over-meddling and possibly over-reacting, trying to help "when it ain't needed," but both men agree that Carrie, at least, is the level-headed type. Even if Manda would "fly off the handle," Carrie wouldn't.
"Scared?" asks Sue Bannion. "What were the girls scared of, that Manda would take seriously enough to head out there?"
"Their own shadows probably." Jakes comments. "They're justy kids aren't they? Manda was just over reacting again."
"Well, these girls aren't exactly sheltered..." Vic notes. "And they're *all* scared of something." Listening quietly througout this conversation, Abbe suddenly speaks up.
"They were afraid of the dark, weren't they?" she says quietly. The others turn to her, wondering how she knew... and Abbe shrugs, looking away, as if haunted by memory. "Just a feeling... you grow up in a place like that, it's hard not to know what to be afraid of... everything and nothing. But especially the dark." She shakes her head. "Just a theory, of course."
At the hospital, the agents are pleased to see Manda in apparantly good condition, sitting up in bed with a pretty blonde woman about her age sitting nearby. They're all a bit surprised when Manda doesn't greet them - she looks both pleased at their surprise visit and a bit ashamed. They're more surprised when the strange woman, Manda's other sister Beth, demands to know who they are - obviously very protective of her sister, and suspicious of strangers.
"My sister's not supposed to speak... she hurt her throat." Beth tells them, and after the initial introductions and silencing a wise-cracking Jakes with a glare, she explains why. "Manda came up to look in on Carrie... our youngest sister. She was driving back to her motel after spending the day at Brightwood when... when she drove... off the road."
The others glance at Manda in surprise. Manda, for her part, looks ashamed and will not meet their eyes. Abbe glances first and Manda, then at Beth, and back again.
"She drove off the road? I see... that doesn't sound like you, Manda. What happened?"
"Why did she drive off the road?" Sue wants to know.
"See why I drive?" Vic whispers to Manda, smiling and trying to lighten the mood. Beth's next words are anything but light, however.
"Something frightened her... badly. That's why she can't talk.... she was still screaming when the paramedics arrived..." At this, Jakes looks oddly at Manda, but remains silent. Abbe hands her a pen and paper.
"What was that, Manda?" she asks softly. "What was it?"
Manda closes her eyes now, trembling, blocking out the memory.
"Jesus..." Jakes murmurs, and the other agents look concerned. Beth pushes the pen and paper away, saying that she doesn't want Manda upset any more. As Sue tries to comfort her co-worker, Manda does try to take the pen and paper, but Beth snatches them away, glaring at the agents.
"She doesn't need to talk about it right now." she says sharply, exchanging icy glares with Abbe. Manda, visibly irked, looks sharply at Beth, then begins to finger-spell...
"We need to know what it was, otherwise how can we do something about it?" Sue insists, but Mand is looking to Lyn, signing to her... *Can you understand me?*
"Sssh... she's trying to tell us something. Who knows sign?" Abbe asks. Lyn can sign, and begins to translate, despite Beth's visible displeasure at this turn of events.
"Afraid of the dark." Manda signs.
"Why?" Lyn wants to know.
"Smell..."
"She says that the girls were afraid of the dark, because of a smell..." Lyn tells the others, then signs "Smell? what kind?"
Manda's hands begin to shake.... but she's signing still...
"Apples..."
Lyn is confused by this, but Manda's hands are shaking too hard to continue, though she nods... this is important. Before she can elaborate or steady herself, however, her sister turns from the tray she was fiddling with, testing a hypodermic needle.
"I'm giving you your sedative, Manda." she says. The other agents aren't really happy about that... but it's too late to protest. As her friends say their goodbyes, Manda's eyes droop shut. She manages one last message - "The dead girls." - and she's out cold.
The agents leave the hospital, puzzling over the cryptic message. Vic notes that the entire story about Manda damaging her vocal cords by screaming in terror is very unlike Manda... Manda doesn't scream easily.
"Well, then all that means was something scared her a LOT." Lynn points out. Jakes stops smiling, taking in both sides of that... that is not good at all.
"You know," Anna notes. "Some spirit apparaitions have been known to have an odor... In some 'hautings' people have reported smelling something sulpheric... and in some cases, rotton fruit. Maybe that's where these apples came in. Perhaps that's what scared your fellow agent?" Anna smiles, pleased with her own detective skills. "I should have went to the Academy."
"Hallucinations, probably." Vic comments, but Anna is unshaken.
The agents agree to split up - Jakes and Abbe going to check out Manda's car, and Vic, Lyn, and Anna heading out to see Manda's sister Carrie at Brightwood, the group home, all hoping to find some answers to the puzzle... and we PAUSE SIM.
Vic, Lynn, Sue, and Anna proceded to the group home to look about and meet with Manda's sister Janice. In the meantime, Abbe and Jakes headed for the police car impound to check out Manda's minivan. Guided to the totalled car by a grizzled old desk officer, they were astounded by the wreckage.
"Musta been drinking pretty much to do that kind of damage," the officer hazzards. "Some folks was out here before to claim it an' I told them they'd best just turn it over to the insurance."
"What folks?" the agents want to know.
"Did these 'folks' say who they were, or what their business was?" Jakes wants to know.
It seems that Manda's sister Beth was on of the "folks," but they didn't claim the car... just shuffled around inside of it, and checked around under the hood. Jakes wonders aloud if they ever had bloodwork done on Manda, but Abbe finds something of interest... a file folder containing clippings from a local paper - clippings about two teenage girls, both found dead not long ago... Manda was on her way to the morgue to look at the bodies, Abbe guesses, when the accident happened.
As the two agents decide to head for the morgue themselves, Jakes pauses to sniff... he smells something... old apples.
Back at the group home, Vic, Sue, Lyn, and Anna meet with Janice Fischer, who greets them brightly, happy that her sister did decide to call for backup after all. She explains the history of the disturbances... the girls having nightmares, the adults finding nothing unusual. The situation escalated, however, to the point that the entire staff and all the residents are being moved to Wayside, another group home, in an effort to quel the hysteria.
"Anything unusual happening around here lately?" Vic wants to know. Janice shrugs.
"Unless you consider having twelve teenaged girls afraid of the dark unusual." she says dryly. She then tells the agents of the nightmares, and the fear of the girls, and finally, of the two runaways who were later found dead in the wetlands not far from the home. That didn't help things at all.
Anna wants to see the girls' rooms, where all the trouble started... Janice agrees to take them all up, but later. There are workmen upstairs at the moment. "Wouldn't you know it... we FINALLY get central AC, and now we have to move..."
The AC has been trouble since it was installed a year ago... but it's an old house, Janice admits. They have problems with everything. Vic goes outside to check the perimeter, and overhears two of the workers coming out...
"Told you there was going to be trouble..."
"Was a confined area, that's all."
The workers hush upon seeing Vic, and aren't talkative... they have work to do. Vic inspects the outer portion of the AC unit, but it's not turned on, and another worker runs him off from the scene. He rejoins his companions, who have finally met one of the residents...
At the morgue, Jakes and Abbe have a look at the bodies of the two girls. There's no discernable cause of death... the autopsies have been done, and the tox screening came back clean. There was, however, some fluid - unidentified - found in the lungs of both girls. Fluid suggests pneumonia, but Abbe finds that odd. It's the middle of June in New England - how would an otherwise healthy girl die of pneumonia?
"Well, they were running around in the middle of the night," Jakes says. "Doesn't take much to make you sick, romping around like that." Abbe isn't convinced, though... and the two decide to go question Beth Fischer again. Two girls dead of pneumonia in June, and Manda, who doesn't drink, supposedly DWI... something isn't right. They head off to the hospital.
At the home, a young girl, Gina, enters and begins to make a scene. "Miss Fischer, I want to go... and I want to go NOW." She won't respond to Janice's attempts to soothe her, and neither she nor the agents can make much sense of the girl's rantings. Gina is terrified... she wants out of the house, and she wants out NOW... and won't respond to the agents' questions.
Vic moves upstairs to check out the AC system there. The vents are the old-fashioned sort, set into the floors, but they aren't working at the moment. The upstairs is strangely empty... peering out the window, he can see why - all the girls are outside. Before any of those outside can be approached, however, there's a series of beeps, and a minibus arrives to take the girls away.
The agents ask Janice if they can stick around to check the place out, and she agrees, leaving with the busload of girls. The workers, too, leave soon after, refusing to speak to the agents at all - but Vic notices that the woman worker who's driving looks oddly familiar...
On the way, Jakes and Abbe realize that they've missed something at the impound lot... the officer said that the people who'd seen the car were poking around under the hood... and sure enough, Jakes turns up some tampering. It seems that the AC system was "adjusted..." and Jakes, opening it, comes up with the distict smell of rotton apples...
"It could be from some sort of gas..." he hazards.
"A gas strong enough to cause hallucinations, and to scare someone off the road?" Abbe asks. It sounds frighteningly logical.
"We'd better go see sis NOW." Jakes says. They return to the hospital to see if they can talk to Beth. Neither of them are comfortable with the woman... she's overprotective to the point of hiding something, and was clearly trying to silence Manda. Their efforts are for nothing, though... Beth isn't at the hospital, and they decide to rejoin their colleagues at the home.
Reunited, the agents settle in for the evening, poking around the old house, seeing what they can see. Anna turns up the diary of one of the girls, left behind, and reads it aloud to the others.
"Says here..this girl was waking up with nightmares..in the truest sense... that the girls were waking up from nightmares and feeling pain in their chests... technically, 'night mares' are demons that sit on your chest at night...a monster or evil spirit. Apparently this girl saw a nurse and she wrote it off as a cold..but can we be sure?"
Still upstairs, Lyn turns up a similar document... a letter to a boyfriend, revealing that the girls wanted the adults to move them out of the house because it was haunted. Jakes tells the others that they found evidence of Manda's car being tampered with.
"I doubt that ghosts tamper with cars." Sue quips.
Unable to piece the clues together, the agents settle in to see what the night turns up... or doesn't. The idea that the air conditioning unit may be to blame is put on the side... the night is chilly, and the AC doesn't come on. Anna decides to take a walk around the grounds in the moonlight. As the others whip up a late-night snack, there's a sudden rumble from the basement. The heat comes on. Not long after, the power dies.
Vic heads for the car to fetch a flashlight, leaving the others in darkness... but it isn't long before the agents inside begin feeling lightheaded and dizzy... even nauseated. Jakes passes out cold. Sue sees something scuttle away into the shadowy hall, and goes to investigate, with Lyn trailing along behind. Left alone in the kitchen, Abbe is the first to witness the familiar world beginning to fall apart...
In the darkness of the strange house, the agents realize, one by one, that reality has subtly altered... fragmented... grown strange. Sue, with Lyn following close behind, pursues a scampering form into the darkened hallway. Left in the kitchen, Abbe hears the crackle of flames, the same as those which long ago claimed the lives of the children in the orphanage she shared. As she desperately tries to rouse the unconscious Jakes, the flames - unreal flames, flickering black and growing ever closer, advance on her...
In the hall, Sue and Lyn realize that it was not one form moving... but many. The walls, the ceilings... all are covered with spiders... clinging, creeping, crawling... moving towards the two agents.
Jakes, rousing, is not aware of his surroundings at first... or of Abbe, tugging desperately at his arm. To his eyes, he is utterly alone... alone, save for Abbe's lifeless body clinging to him, with her blood staining his hands... and Sue's corpse sprawled in the doorway.
Vic, heading out to the car to fetch a flashlight, is mometarily freed from the haunting apparitions... until he returns inside. Sitting in the living room, waiting for him, is his father... the same father who beat Vic's sister and murdered their mother. Hefting a baseball bat, he greets his son... "C'mon, boy... are you man enough to take on your old dad?"
Vic's response is instantaneous and violent - drawing his gun and firing round upon round into the advancing figure. The sounds of the gun draw Anna from the lakeside, dashing up to the house to find her companions all passed out on the floor, their faces contorted in various expressions of horror...
The agents awake at the local hospital, confused and distraught, still haunted by what their eyes have seen. Manda and Anna are up and about, tending to their teammates, but nobody is really in the mood to be cheerful. The doctors, quite expectedly, have found no medical reason for the hallucinations, and have hazarded that the agents were overcome by swamp gas, flowing in from the nearby wetlands. It's not a sound theory, though. Questions abound... not the least of which is where their clothes are.
Only Lyn's jacket is found... and it smells of rotten apples.
~ END SIM ~
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