************
Chapter 20
************
Warner residence
November 9, 2000
4:35 p.m.
Mulder's 'blue sense' hovers on yellow-alert.
It's dubbed 'blue' because of prevailing belief in law
enforcement that certain, exceptional cops possess an
intuition for danger akin to psychic power. Scully has long
maintained that the phenomenon stems from mental acquisition
of evidence and the mind's ability to store such data until
a conclusion becomes clear enough to act upon. Though he
gives lip service to her common sense approach, what else
can account for the amazing hunches he's owned through the
years that went beyond the obvious and the rational? His
ability to sense and pinpoint what others don't?
Tonight at Natalie Warner's house he paces the kitchen on
itchy feet. The accumulated evidence -- Benjie's nocturnal
restlessness, his supernatural connection to his mother B.J.
and to the killer, the attack on Scully at Darnell's
apartment, the gift of the small house and the startling
revelation behind it this morning -- all serve a conjoined
purpose in the dynamics of this case. Something, he feels,
is about to coalesce, to unfold... and not knowing when or
where it will happen irks the hell out of him.
Natalie, it appears, has similar vibes.
"Way too creepy for me," she swears to the two men,
glowering and smoking from a kitchen chair in the corner.
"Too much weird shit happening all at once. I figured it
was time to talk."
"'Discuss terms' is what you said on the phone," reminds
Darnell, flashing his own irritation. "Explain what you
mean by that. Are you requesting some sort of immunity?"
Natalie blinks. "I haven't decided yet. You got a problem
with that, detective?"
"No -- *I've* got a problem with that," growls Mulder,
turning on his heel to reply. "If you want to talk to us,
fine, do it. If not, then let me -- us -- make better use
of the time we still have."
"No need to get all testy on me, Agent Mulder. We both know
where we stand."
Her self-assurance galls him. He stifles a sarcastic guffaw
before grabbing another chair and dragging it to face her,
still standing. "Listen," he accuses, "you string us along,
then back off, as though this is some kind of game for you.
In the coffee shop I asked specific questions, whether
relatives of Cokely's past victims were still living in this
area, and you chose to bail rather than talk."
"Fall-back position. I needed to think."
"I call it cowardice."
He wishes Scully was present to witness how Natalie bristles
like a pea-hen. If his partner wasn't already bogged down
at the library, scrolling through worthless, outdated
microfilm crap, he'd gladly give her another crack at this
Warner woman.
"Something must have served as a catalyst at your daughter's
birthday party," he persists, returning Natalie's glare.
"Until recently Benjie Tillman was virtually a legend here
in Aubrey. His very existence was the stuff of cruel gossip
and supposition until he began kindergarten and interacted
with people other than his family. Lo and behold, he was
invited to a classmate's birthday party."
"No crime committed; mistakes like that happen all the time,
buster. I let the kid in, didn't I?"
"But Benjie isn't just any kid. His first party experience
and, by your own admission, he 'creeped you out' with his
remarks. What do you think prompted him to make that
'little sister' comment, Mrs. Warner?"
"How the hell should I know?"
Mulder pushes back from the chair in disgust, the legs
scraping linoleum. His voice gains volume. "Because
someone there picked up on it. Fed off of it." He glares
down at her. "Someone *used* it that day."
"It was a kid's game, for Chrissake! Alice got it started
to keep 'em in their seats while they ate their cake and ice
cream."
"And if we follow your original statement to police,"
pursues Darnell, "Alice Marshall was the only other adult
there besides Gwen DiAngelo -- right?" He looks to Natalie
for confirmation, then turns to Mulder again with an
ambivalent shrug. "That's a dead end right there; I mean, I
talked with her over at the hospital right after Viola Rains
was attacked. She's a grandma, one of the most sincere
people you'd ever want to meet. And, like Viola, she's been
a fixture around here for a heck of a long time."
************
Tillman residence
November 9, 2000
4:37 p.m.
She finally slips through the ice, but Scully is quietly
amazed that she doesn't fear drowning.
Turning her face to the light, the water feels warm as
summer sun, as a hot spring over her body. She floats like
thistledown, fluid, a flame-haired Ophelia in the silvery
currents of water.
Light ripples above her... honey-golden, indescribably
brilliant. The sound of a bell laps her ears -- no, it's
the voice of an angel. A sweet, muffled child's voice,
calls out for her, slowly stroking her senses. Teasing her
back to the surface.
("Mommy? Mommy, please...")
She reaches toward the clear, echoing sound, her heart full,
tears mingled with the water in which she floats. Above
her, crystalline edges of the ice hole beckon.
"I'm coming, sweetie! Mommy's right here..."
("Hurry, Mommy, hurry!)
The little hand waving high. Scully's fingers brush it,
grasp it, feel an answering tug and she drifts up toward the
surface and safety. In her palm the child's fingers twitch
to escape, like slippery minnows.
("Let me go now.")
"Emily?" Her stronger fingers quickly caress the smaller,
pudgy ones in a last chance effort to memorize and know
them. To remember every soft, childish contour...
("Please, Mommy... you have to let me go...")
The tiny hand waves, disappears. Gasping, Scully collides
with the surface, ice shattering in an explosion of light,
which cuts to thick darkness. Nothing remains of the vision
except acute, stabbing pain in her head and a wet, warm
trickle down the side of her neck.
Coming to, she's huddled on her side in the gray-dark room,
knees bent, hands duct-taped together behind her back in a
posture so extreme it rivals yoga. Stiffened muscles twitch
from strain and her chin and cheekbone burn against the
carpet, new contusions scoured over old ones. Tasting the
metallic saltiness of blood, she knows tender membranes
within her mouth were torn when she was struck from behind
onto the floor.
Survival instinct surfacing, she takes quick inventory. Her
ankles and lower legs are fused, held fast by the wide heavy
tape wound over the fabric of her slacks. Nothing rests
over her face or mouth, thank God, so she takes
unrestricted, full breaths, as far as her bonds and lungs
will permit.
Her head -- scalp bleeding unchecked, split deeply enough,
she feels, to require many more stitches than Mulder. It
strikes her with a sickening jolt that she's helplessly
immobilized, trussed like a sacrificial lamb.
The cloying smell of hot candle wax makes her gorge rise.
Flame flickers low beyond her truncated range of vision. It
fuels flashback memories of Donnie Pfaster loose in her
apartment, hell-bent for revenge and the trophies he could
hack and harvest from ill-fated victims. From her, the one
who got away. Breaking into a cold sweat beneath her
blazer, she coaches herself to get a grip on reality, to
ease her wildly pounding heart and think with clarity. To
regain control by smothering the electric surge of panic
that prickles through her body.
Yet Pfaster had not prevailed, for all his lurking and the
element of surprise he'd gained. In cold, clean,
irrevocable execution, she'd dispatched the villain with her
own weapon. Done, finis. For the first time in less than a
year she savors full peace and justification for pulling
that trigger one cool, fateful night. Roast in Hell, you
bastard.
Now she faces a different, unknown monster.
If only Mulder knew her whereabouts. He'd already left for
Warner's from the library, carpooling with Darnell. Too
occupied with his own agenda, he wouldn't feel the need to
check on her progress until later, when hunger would stir
him. Maybe too much later. Calming herself, her gaze roams
Tillman's living room, eyesight adjusting to floor-level
dimness.
Not far away she spots Benjie in profile, lower lip jutting
into a pout, backlit by a halo of candle glow, a star-child.
He kneels beside the prone, taped body of his father.
Unconscious, half of Tillman's face is smeared black with
either blood or shadow. Innocent words he spoke in jest
last week meander through her mind and she shivers --
"Already I feel like I'm under house arrest with my hands
tied behind my back," he'd joked, never guessing the
prophetic resonance behind those simple words.
Of the three of them, only Benjie sits unbound, the small,
white house he'd built for her resting inexplicably beside
him on the carpet. The toy, she knows, had been jammed deep
into her coat pocket; on an end table she spots the twin
bottom edges of her cell phone and service weapon,
confirming that she's been suitably searched and emptied by
her assailant. The killer must have assumed the toy
belonged to the child.
"Ben-jie... can you hear me?"
Testing unknown waters, she calls to him under her breath.
Frightened and mesmerized, waiting, he seems in tune with an
invisible force that eludes her, that seems to control his
movements. Waiting... for what?
"Are you all right, sweetie? Benjie..."
Slowly he turns his head toward Scully and blinks in
helpless confusion and fear. Like his, her eyes must appear
wild, pupils dilated in shadow and uncertainty, reflecting
the candle's light. Before he can answer other movement
distracts him away from her. She hears the soft wheeze, the
shuffling tread of yet another person in the velvety
duskiness near the kitchen.
Enthralled, she watches Alice Marshall, the volunteer
coordinator from Memorial Hospital loom into sight from the
shadows. Her initial surge of hope for rescue shatters when
she perceives several large plastic bags in the woman's
hands. Black plastic draped and custom-cut to fit over a
person's head. With the same gentle, wheedling voice she
used in the hospital near ICU, the old woman dons one bag
over her head, smiles, and speaks.
"Well, well... now that everyone's present and accounted
for, I think it's time to resume our festivities. Resurrect
the little party that was so rudely interrupted last week.
What do you say, boy?"
She dotters toward them in an obscene, grandmotherly gait,
gloating over the silent child, who on splayed knees scoots
crab-like, closer to his father's prone form.
"And two new faces join us. The good Lieutenant, whom I
expected anyway, and..." she sighs contentedly, "our guest
of honor from the FBI." Craning her head, Scully feels the
woman's virulent gaze play over her. "What a most pleasant
surprise to have *you* drop in, my dear. Two birds caught
with one little stone..."
Alice cackles and crosses to the end table, lofting the rock
that served to disable both agent and officer. "Just one,
see? 'Waste not, want not', as the old saying goes."
************
The snow is inches deeper and Natalie Warner remains a
holdout, testing the limits of Mulder's patience. When his
cell phone rings, he excuses himself to the living room,
leaving her to Darnell's capable hands and persistence.
Glancing down at the number, he steels himself for what he
knows to be a call from Shamrock Women's Prison. Dr.
Reinholdt offers apologies before turning the phone over to
his patient.
"Agent Mulder, you have to do something! My son is in
danger! That monster has Benjie, I know it!"
"Hey, take it easy, B.J.," he soothes, peering out the
window at the dusky snowfall. "How can you be so certain?
What can you tell me?"
Wretched sobbing noises dissolve the conversation and
Reinholdt's voice returns. Mulder's radar takes a decided
lurch toward red-alert and his pulse pounds after what he's
heard. "You didn't say how long ago this started," he
demands of the doctor.
Only within the last fifteen minutes, Reinholdt explains,
has B.J. begun screaming about the danger to her son. That
Agent Mulder should be warned, that the Evil which sprang
from Cokely was afoot again, thirsty to kill.
Ending the call, he heads back to the kitchen, motioning for
Darnell to follow him out.
"Not so fast --" Natalie eyes Mulder with the calculating
squint of a Siamese cat. "I'm not finished here."
"Ask me if I care."
"Stop right there!" She's on her feet, moving quickly to
block the doorway. "You can't go clomping over to Marshall's
unannounced; you'll scare everybody shitless and do way too
much damage."
The two men exchange looks, expecting explanation.
"I know something about Alice," continues Natalie
feverishly, "about her past. But if I tell you, she can't
ever find out it came from me. Got that? Both of you? She
hates gossip with damn good reason and if word gets out
about *my* connection here... that I opened my big mouth
about it, well... my reputation is toast. It's like an
unwritten rule around here to respect her privacy about
this."
"Something like 'honor among thieves'?" Darnell scoffs.
Mulder's skin prickles. "So, which one is she? Van Cleef,
Eberhardt, or Bradshaw?"
"Shit -- you're really gonna make me come right out and blow
my cover? All right, then, listen up..." She breathes hard,
her unease palpable, and the two men angle in toward her
like conspirators.
"Okay..." She rubs sweaty hands on the front of her designer
jeans in preparation. "Alice married Owen Marshall and they
settled here in Aubrey, where she'd grown up. After he died
she gave the house to her son, provided she could keep an
apartment for herself that was separate from the rest of the
family. Hell, I would, too, with all those grandkids
swarming around --"
"The name, dammit!"
He watches as Natalie Warner salvages one last shred of
cockiness and control. Crossing her arms, she stares back
at him with a bitter, spiteful squint.
"Eberhardt, Agent Mulder. Alice Eberhardt. Her younger
sister Kathy was killed right across town by that murdering
bastard Cokely in 1942."
************
"Go away!"
Benjie's tearful, frightened whisper reaches Scully's ears,
but Alice Marshall's hearing isn't as acute. Sensing
disturbance, she frowns and cranes her neck, wrinkled and
saggy as a vulture's, her height formidable from their floor-
level perspective.
"Worried about the little agent? Oh, I won't kill her just
yet," she cajoles the terrified child, feeding off his
horror. She walks to where Scully lies bound on the carpet,
black plastic trailing like devil's plumes. "Maybe I should
just hurt her a little bit, to show I'm serious when it
comes to assigning blame. And accepting it --" The razor
slips from her pocket for their collective admiration, white-
handled, blade glinting in the shallow light. "Give her a
little taste of what happens when you meddle in affairs that
aren't yours to meddle in."
In a move to protect the child before he can comprehend the
meaning of those words, Scully calls out to capture the
woman's attention, running interference. "Please, Mrs.
Marshall... let the boy go."
"Don't you *dare* dictate to me!" With viciousness and
surprising strength, the woman kicks out at Scully's side,
thick boot jarring her ribcage, knocking her breath away.
The resulting crunch and searing ache tell her that one rib,
possibly two, must have fractured from the heavy blow.
Rolling weakly on the carpet, as her bonds allow, she
muffles a deep groan so as not to fuel the child's fear.
"You remind me of *her*... small and oh-so-pretty, the
Favorite. They treated her like a little queen of Sheba.
And I --"
More sharp, spiteful kicks, this time to Scully's abdomen
and bruised hip. She internalizes the blows, absorbing the
onslaught until, in a final eruption of pain, a cry rips
from her throat.
"Don't you do that!" Benjie's protest, an outraged yelp.
Alice whirls around toward him, her eyes glowing.
"You know what I'm talking about, don't you, boy? The
cruel words that hurt you, that make you feel no better than
barnyard filth scraped off of Papa's shoe... lower than a
cockroach in the cellar." She halts, eyes shining, head
raised to one side as she stares into a past no one else in
the room sees. "That's where they put me sometimes, when I
was your age... in the cellar with the vermin. *She* never
tried to stop them, oh, no. Year after year... currying
favor from everyone at my expense. But I made sure she paid
back her debt."
When Alice cackles and shuffles closer to the boy, Scully's
head snaps up from the floor. "Stay away from him!" she
warns, gasping with the effort. "He's done nothing to you!"
Amused laughter rings out through the darkened room.
"Nothing? NOTHING?" The old woman stops and covers her
face; Scully hears muffled weeping. The gnarled hands drop;
there are no tears, only madness and simmering rage.
"HE RECOGNIZED ME! Do you call that *nothing*? You stupid,
silly bitch! You have no idea the power he has! He saw me
at that party -- he knows what I did!"
"*Who* knows?"
Alice's eyes glitter crazily and she points an accusing
finger at the shaking, stalwart child. "COKELY does!
Cokely knows my secret, and he's come back for me through
HIM!"
************
"Alice Marshall's not at home," reports Darnell, pocketing
his phone and turning up his collar when they reach the car.
Meringue drifts of white mound the hood and dust the frosted
windows. Mulder climbs in the passenger side, waiting as
the detective clears the windshield with one hand before he
takes his seat behind the wheel of the squad car and turns
up the heater. "Her son claims she went out earlier to
visit friends. Now the snow has them worried."
"D'you believe that?"
"Steve Marshall has no reason to lie. And it makes sense,
since she was sent home by hospital security today."
Mulder snaps to attention. "Tell me..."
"They found her snooping around intensive care again and had
it up to here..." He drags a finger across his brow, "and
gave her the afternoon off. Can't blame 'em, with Linda
Thibodeaux showing signs of improvement. I mean, she's not
conscious or anything yet, but --"
"Does Scully know this?"
This disclosure brings to mind one recent, early morning
when he tugged his partner, soft and sated, back into his
arms and listened with affection to her whispered, post-
coital ramblings about paper cut-outs marking the passage of
time. Her musing over ischemic stroke and the variables in
Linda's case made him yawn, but murmurs about the Marshall
woman's near-access to the ICU seemed peculiar enough to
raise a hazy red flag in his brain at the time.
Another piece of the puzzle drifting in, belated as the
snowfall, seeking connection...
Darnell shrugs in answer and the rear wheels momentarily
spin, the car lurching on the snowy pavement. "I told the
Lieutenant earlier today. Wouldn't surprise me if he's
already called her about it."
"Ask him."
Punching the station number with one hand, he speaks briefly
and hangs up. "Switchboard says he left with Benjie a
little while ago. Hitched a ride home with Agent Scully."
The words send a chill to Mulder's bones, as keen as the
bitter wind whipping snow into crazy swirls around the car.
Inner radar tells him all may not be well with his partner.
He punches Scully's cell number, waits, tries again. His
stomach clenches to a hard knot and his hairline prickles
when she fails to pick up.
************
Alice ceases her affectations, one gnarled hand held to her
heart, the other pointing outward towards Benjie, who
neither cowers nor cries. From her peripheral vision Scully
notices for the first time weak movement from Tillman. How
long he's been conscious she can only presume to guess.
"Poor Detective Morrow," continues the old woman,
outstretched hand fluttering. "No one realized until too
late how she was tormented. And then *that* one appeared,
her seed! HIS great-grandchild! Adopted by this
philandering lieutenant and his sot of a wife. I wondered
if the evil would be passed on, if it would ever stir in his
young blood... But he was too young, too weak for such foul
purposes... So the burden came to me, through the eyes of
this worthless pup!"
She stabs the air at the child, hand shaking in a palsy of
accusation. Again seeking to divert Alice's attention away
from the boy, Scully scrabbles against the couch. Each
movement sucks the breath from her lungs as she inches her
body into a semi-upright position. Gritting her teeth, she
leans back and beckons to the woman, her mother's heart and
FBI training working concurrently.
"Tell *me*, not him," she baits, huffing from pain.
"Impress *me* and don't waste your time flaunting pitiful
secrets to a child who has no clue or interest in what
you're talking about."
Alice moves in a blur and too late Scully realizes how fine
a line exists between reason and folly. Her head is jerked
back by the hair, throat taut and exposed. Carefully the
woman removes the razor from her pocket and holds it out
before Scully's widened eyes.
"I'll certainly tell you, little sister, now that I've got
*you* back. You didn't let me finish the job before, you
bad girl!" Another yank, harder, and the tendons of her
neck strain tight, making it difficult to swallow,
presenting a smooth, sleek target. "I waited so, so long
last night, but you escaped! You're like Viola, like
Gwen... another one who tried to get away from me. Another
who showed pity for that bad little seed over there." She
grins maniacally into Scully's face. "No one ever gets away
from *him*, little sister. Not even me..."
The words freeze Scully's heart, flashes of Harry Cokely's
face mingled with those of Donnie Phaster's in one
nauseating, terrifying montage. Her helpless, awkward
position intensifies the searing pain in her side whenever
she gasps for breath.
Alice sneers. "Aren't you at all curious about my little
sin? Why he came back to choose me for his dirty work after
so many years? Well?" Viciously she jerks Scully's hair by
the handful to punctuate each question, forcing a low
whimpered 'yes' and a glaze of tears.
"*I* was the Eberhardt that Cokely chose to kill so long
ago. Pretty Kathy died at his hand, but it wasn't supposed
to be that way. Oh, no..." she wheedles. Her eyes glow
amber in the candlelight and she grins, teeth flashing like
the blade she holds. "You see, he intended ME to be his
victim! I knew he followed me, I watched him... how he
stalked me through the dark house, calling my name --" She
cackles, breath fetid in Scully's face. "But I led him to a
decoy. I gave him my sister instead!"
The horror of this declaration stuns Scully, neck taut and
corded, her eyes trained upward into the woman's gloating
face. All Mulder's theories concerning empathetic
transference, of demonic possession, and the disassociative
behavior of a killer toward his victims come back to haunt
her as she stares into this visage of madness. The train
jumping the track and finding an alternate means to continue
its journey of evil...
Realization numbs her, that the killer they seek inhabits
the aged body of this grandmother, a woman who's harbored a
secret of unspeakable evil for fifty-eight long years.
"You're claiming that you deliberately engineered your
sister's murder," she gasps loudly, praying Tillman can hear
and later corroborate this verbal confession. "You provided
Cokely with a victim, your own sister... to escape him and
then put her out of your life."
"Very, very good, my dear! Two more birds with one stone,
you see."
"But you didn't escape judgment," Scully wheezes, "because,
whatever power energized Cokely finally caught up with you -
-"
"And you won't escape blame either, little sister!"
The glittering edge of the razor descends, lopping two
buttons from her blouse, and then biting down into the
tender skin of Scully's exposed upper chest. She cries out
in agony. One inward cut and the blade remains, held in
place, waiting for what seems like an eternity in the
flickering candlelight. Sharp, burning pain, the wet, slick
trickle of blood between her breasts. Each inhalation she
takes swelling outward against the sharp metal that invades
her flesh --
"I'm a federal agent," she manages to gasp.
"Then you're in good company," sneers the woman. "Several
others of your ilk have tasted this before you." With a
sudden growl, she alters the blade to make another short,
angular cut, forcing a second shrill, explosive cry from
Scully's throat.
"NO! Stop it!"
Benjie's squeal rings out, stilling the old woman's hand.
Through a rippling filter of tears and ineffable pain Scully
perceives that the boy has leapt to his feet, the tiny house
grasped in his hand like a white, geometric softball.
Emily's house. His eyes blaze from a face too young and
angry, too red with outrage, his body quivering under a
force that feeds and taunts, but can't control him.
"You stop! Don't you hurt her!"
Tillman lifts his head from the carpet, murmuring to the
child, his tone low and urgent. As though in obedience to
instruction, the boy nods and takes a few tentative steps
forward.
"Sit down, you devil's whelp," Alice snarls, "or your turn
will come sooner than planned, I promise you that!"
Benjie Tillman stands his ground. Shoving Scully to the
floor and clutching her razor, Alice turns toward the
trembling, wide-eyed child. With every ounce of strength he
possesses, he hurls the little block house hard against
Alice's chest and throat. It explodes like a snowball, a
tinkling array of fragmented white plastic that shocks the
old woman, rocking her backward and littering the floor
around her with its fallout.
In a miasma of pain and fear Scully watches the effect of
Benjie's pitch. Anything to hinder this killer and further
delay her murderous agenda until help can arrive. Please,
Mulder, come soon, she prays, dread flooding her senses.
Time passes in measurable pulses of life, pumping through
her veins, the seconds ticking by like the black and white
frames of a cultic horror film as she beholds the woman's
struggle.
"Think you can stop me, little seed?" Alice gasps. Yet, she
fights to keep her balance, clutching the spot on her chest
and throat where the sharp edge of the missile has struck
its mark. Lunatic anger seething, she kicks at the shards
of plastic that make her stumble and weave, muttering to
herself about the time wasted. Minutes pass as she huffs
and recovers, the sheets of black plastic bag twisting
around her calves, hampering her progress back towards her
victim.
Scully sobs in entreaty as her head jerks back once more,
throat naked to the shining blade already stained with her
blood. She sees no mercy in Alice's face, a mask of fury
and wild, lunatic triumph. The razor floats high above her,
waiting to descend and end her life with one fatal slice.
After everything she's experienced, after flaunting danger
with a certain impunity, after eluding death for so many
years, to die like this... alone.
A sudden, splintering crash, and Mulder's voice shatters the
silence.
"Freeze! Drop the weapon or I'll shoot!"
What happens next Scully observes in ragged snapshots,
through senses skewed by pain, terror, and adrenaline
overload.
Alice Marshall bellows back a furious challenge, fist
knotted in Scully's hair, tight against her scalp. The
white-handled razor glints with a flash of bright mirror-
light before her eyes. Benjie Tillman screams, a shot rings
out, then two -- and the hand grasping her hair convulses.
Her head is wrenched back, then released as she crumples
breathlessly to her side on the carpet.
And Mulder... she feels rather than sees him. His arm
around her shoulders and neck, easing her toward him, both
ginger and frantic in his inspection. One of his hands cups
her bleeding head, fingers wiping her face. His strength,
his precious scent and presence stirs a whimper of relief
from her, when he lowers his mouth to her ear, whispering
her name with feverish urgency.
Oh, my God, safe... he came in time to save her, to save
them...
Moving her lips in silent response, she leans toward his
sheltering touch before slipping helplessly through the ice,
back under the blessed warmth of the water again.
************
End of Chapter 20