From steiner@acadiacom.net Thu May 15 19:23:21 1997
Subject: Every Sparrow Falling (1/5)
From: "Alloway" 
--------

Title: Every Sparrow Falling
Author: Alloway - steiner@acadiacom.net.  Comments welcome!
Summary: Horror.  Deadly birds, mysterious soldiers and abandoned
carnivals lead Mulder and Scully to small-town America, where they
discover that dwelling on the past can be a very dangerous thing.  
Class: X 
Rating: PG - profanity and some gratuitous gore. 
Disclaimers: The X-Files, all characters therein, etc. belong to
Chris Carter, Fox network, and all that...
Spoilers: Vague references to various seasons, including 4th.



EVERY SPARROW FALLING (1/5)


For James LeBlanc, it began as it always did: the tang of
buttered-popcorn scent, the flashing lights of the carnival rides,
the cool weight of the semiautomatic stashed in his duffel bag.  This
time was different only in that he was alone; there would be no
airlift to carry him out afterwards and no dozers to raze the remains
of the neighborhood.  This time would be his last.

He'd clear this site himself--unauthorized, unescorted--because he
quite simply deserved to die.  He should have just obeyed his
captain, but he hadn't, and now his mistake had multiplied a
hundredfold.  All those little sparrows coming home to roost.

James barely heard the signal above the crowd's ruckus, but his
battle-trained nerves stood his hair on end and helped him listen. 
Peanuts, the Gathering-cry rang.  Popcorn.  Crackerjack.  The
festival obligingly plunged into darkness--apocalypse disguised as a
power-out--and James took the moment to observe the stars.  They were
so beautifully visible, out here in the country.  He'd marked
Orion-the-Warrior and grinned at Betelgeuse when the painful wheeze
of the zydeco music reminded him that the fair was coming back alive.

Only everything was different now; every *one* was different.  The
night air filled with the low rumble of erupting mud interwoven with
an inhuman shrieking.  Because, of course, they really weren't human
anymore; it had been folly to ever think otherwise.  Stupid, James,
stupid.  Too stupid to live.  

"Site confirmed," he whispered, although there was no radio relay. 
"We have the event."  No choppers.  "Trailwoods *is* Gathered."  No
escape.

He managed to get into a decent semblance of fighting stance and lay
down a first spray of fire before they overwhelmed him.  As they
swarmed over him, eyes glittering and hands curled into claws, he
reflected on the fact that they still looked so very human.

It had been such an easy mistake for him to make.


**************************


For Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, it began with a
sparrow.

More precisely, with a flock of sparrows.  Or, as Agent Mulder had
put it, a *fall* of sparrows.

"Clever turns of phrase aside, I imagine this must have been quite
painful," Scully murmured, hunkered down by the body.  The dead man
was sprawled out peacefully, save for the bloodied mats of hair and
the bird feet dangling out of his skull.  Scully surmised she'd find
the rest of the bird buried within.  "Looks like it fell beak first,
but still...given the impact, the rate of speed had to have been
tremendous."

"Indicating a long fall from a high point of origin," Mulder agreed. 
"Consistent with the recent evidence of lights in the clouds, odd
humming noises--"

"Mulder--" she protested.

"Come on, Scully, this isn't the first unexplainable 'deadly rain'
recorded," he argued.  "You've seen the reports.  Hell, you've
*written* the reports."

She nodded.  "Frogs, rocks, crickets, seas of blood, and the
inexorable sacrifice of the first-born..." she trailed off.  Mulder
was first; Samantha had been second-child.  "No, Mulder," she said. 
"This rain is man-made.  Or at least sent by aliens with terrible
penmanship."

"What?"

Latex-sheathed fingers plucked one of the birds from its chosen spot
of ground.  "It's been stuffed," she said.  "Hardened with a
shellac-like coating.  And Mulder--the writing is a dead giveaway." 
She rotated the bird to face him.  Ignoring the blind, dead eyes, he
focused his attention on the scrap of fabric sewn to the sparrow's
chest.  

"Wife beating," Mulder read.  Scully could almost hear the gears
grind as Mulder shifted from alien-chaser to manhunter.  "Scully,
pass the gloves."  

The other tiny bodies yielded similar results written in the same
shaky hand.  Gang murders.  Gambling.  Fairs.  Stealing.

"A roster of sins," Mulder observed.  "Punishment?  Penance?  A cry
for help?"

"Why fairs?" Scully said.

"You puke on a big pink stuffed elephant on the Tilt-A-Whirl after
six or seven hot dogs, and I'll show you the true meaning of evil,"
he deadpanned.  "Seriously, maybe they have have bingo or sell beer."
 He shrugged.  "Check out the writing, Scully, what do you think? 
Child or invalid?"

"Invalid.  So you're telling me we have a religious invalid
unleashing stuffed killer sparrows across the Midwest."

"Looks like it," he said.

For once, though, he was wrong; it was a child.


**************************


The field behind Henry and Patricia McCormick's barn was cluttered
with sparrows.  They were formed from metal, plastic, and mylar; they
flapped, flew and fluttered.  In the shadow of a six-foot copper
fledgling, Fox Mulder regarded a delicate wood carving that hovered
in midair, seemingly of its own accord; only the metal disk
underneath suggested some other force at work.

"You said you've seen the...craft...he built," Mulder said.

McCormick nodded.  "Yeah.  Saw it flying around, dropping his
sparrows left, right, and center."  The old man shrugged.  "Didn't
see any harm to it.  I guess I didn't know he'd take it out so far. 
Or fly it so high."  McCormick sighed, the lines etched in his face
settling in even deeper.  "I called as soon as we heard the news. 
D'ya think--they won't take the boy to jail now, will they?"

Mulder shook his head.  "Given what we've seen here, no, I don't
think so."  Privately he thought that the couple could have used the
rest.  Caring for a thirty-year-old, self-directed savant with a
mechanical bent and an obsession for sparrows had to be taking its
toll.  The boy--Henry and his wife both called Steven a boy--had
refused to speak to him, but had immediately latched onto Scully. 
Hopefully she was getting something coherent from him.  Meanwhile
Mulder was stuck playing tourist; McCormick had proven a worn but
dedicated tour guide, painstakingly pointing out the strange
creations his sister's son had wrought.

"I have to ask," Mulder said.  "What's with the birds?"

"Thought you'd be wanting to know that," McCormick said.  "Come on
back to the house and I'll show you."


**************************


The McCormicks had warned Scully that Stephen rarely talked.  His
mother had disappeared, abandoning him, long ago; Maria hadn't been
right, they'd said, and after hearing a little more of the story
Scully had had to agree with them.  

She had faced off against this wiry little blond man, seeing his
home-brew haircut, the professor-style tweed jacket he wore despite
the heat, and most of all the deep blue eyes.  She had known it was
an unfair fight; nothing she could do would possibly penetrate the
world wrapped around this man.  

Yet the blue eyes had flickered across her, and Stephen had spoken
calmly, almost casually.  "Are not two little sparrows sold for a
penny?  And yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your
Father's leave and notice."

It was a challenge she could match.  "Matthew 10:29."   

"Then you too are a keeper of the sparrows," he had replied, and
smiled.  <>, Scully thought.  <> 
Mulder had herded the rest of the crew out of the room--she was
profoundly grateful for his ability to read her smallest 'get them
out *now*' gesture--and she was left alone to hear the sad
confession.  

It was, she was discovering, more an epic than an explanation. 

>From what she could gather, Stephen's mother had believed that the
evils of the world were due to God's simply not noticing them.  If He
saw them, the reasoning went, He would fix them.  

And the Bible promised that God saw every sparrow falling.

Those two theories had fused into a bizarre ritual; as a child,
Stephen Nicholson would sneak out with his mother in the dark of
night, carrying a blanket between them, and--here Scully's mind
reeled--they would toss sparrows.  Sparrows they carefully prepared
and labeled, using the blanket as a makeshift trampoline to blast a
message straight to God.  But mixed up with the bird-flinging was a
host of other, unrelated images: Ferris wheels, bugs in holes, army
men, flying machines...

There was a point to Stephen's story (or at least Stephen thought
so), but his desperate attempts at communication only underscored the
verbal short-circuit he'd wired himself with.  The more he
concentrated, the more obscure and fragmented his language became. 
Finally he was reduced to phrases. 

"You shall dance with the devil in the pale moonlight."  That was
from the first Batman movie, Scully knew. 

"The swarms know, and the tides know, but the people must forget." 
No clue.

"Clovis Hill is Gathered."  She was lost, and Stephen recognized it. 
"Clovis Hill," he repeated softly, resigned; then he grabbed her hand
and pulled her down the hall to his room.


**************************


Wading into a room piled high with circuit boards and scraps of
metal, Scully was met by Mulder and McCormick.  McCormick gestured to
a giant mixed-media painting, professionally framed, that hung on one
wall.  "The mother," he explained.  He had never referred to her as
'my sister', Scully noted.  "Her...work...has become quite popular. 
The rest were sold, but Stephen hung on to this one.  Nobody wanted
to buy it anyway; didn't fit the theme."

Scully had to wonder what the theme was.  This painting was mostly
deep blue sky.  Night sky.  Mother-and-child silhouettes leaned in to
each other, hands stretching towards each other as if to dance. 
Hugged between them was a bit of fabric--she would bet anything it
was from the original blanket--and the sky was filled with the
feathers of falling sparrows.

Without a word Stephen reached up to tear the fabric from the canvas,
unfolding it where he could and tearing what he couldn't unfold. 
"Stephen!" McCormick cried.  Stephen blinked regretfully at the
ruined canvas before presenting the scrap of crumpled fabric to
Scully.  

It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing.  "Mulder,"
she said.  "There's a drawing here...looks like it was made with a
marks-a-lot.  Pretty crude, but I think it's a map..."

"Clovis Hill is Gathered," Stephen confirmed.

"What's Clovis Hill?" Mulder asked.  Stephen shook his head in
frustration; he had the answer, but the words were too few and too
small to jump the gap between them.  

McCormick answered for him.  "Clovis Hill is where the evil people
lived."



From steiner@acadiacom.net Thu May 15 19:23:59 1997
Subject: Every Sparrow Falling (2/5)
From: "Alloway" 
--------

Title: Every Sparrow Falling
Author: Alloway - steiner@acadiacom.net
Ratings & Disclaimers in part 1.



EVERY SPARROW FALLING (2/5)


There had been a point in her childhood when Dana Scully had finally
been able to make up for her killing of the snake.  She had been
playing at the edge of the lawn where a birdfeeder was posted--a
clear plastic box shaped like an old-fashioned streetlamp--when a
tiny sparrow tumbled in through the top feedhole and was trapped
inside.

Dana had eased the pole down and removed the lamp from its post,
studying the captive with solemn eyes; it was the first time she had
ever seen a live bird so close.  It had been a brown, small thing,
but so full of life.  Even now she could still picture it, beak gaped
open and body heaving as it panted in air like a dog, trembling and
still for a moment before launching itself frantically against the
plastic walls that caged it.  

The young girl had allowed herself a minute to appreciate the
discovery; there was power in saving, just as there was power in
killing.  As she had released the sparrow she had felt an irrational
impulse to watch the bird for some type of reaction: anger at being
caged, or happiness at being free.  Instead the bird had just blinked
its beady eyes and flown away.

Scully saw the same calm acceptance in the stuffed sparrow that
Stephen had insisted on giving her.  Stitched on its chest was the
message he had picked for her: 'Fear'.  She kind of liked having it
on the dashboard.

Mulder hated it.  

Scully had to admit that it did seem to keep diving at him.  As
Mulder changed lanes to pass an RV, the sparrow landed in his lap for
the third time; he juggled it while making 'Gaakh' noises before
managing to toss it back on the dash.  Scully's lips quirked.  "You
don't seem very comfortable with the weight of someone else's
beliefs, Mulder," she observed.

"Scully, we're not talking about beliefs here, we're talking about--"

"Obsession?" she said innocently.  "Then why don't you tell me why
we're following a hidden map to 'the evil place'--which is
conveniently located right off the interstate, by the way--instead of
taking the next plane home."

"The fact that Maria Nicholson was obsessed doesn't mean that there's
nothing for us to investigate," Mulder replied.  "Although it does
sound like a crummy sequel to Waterworld, doesn't it?"  The wry grin
he flashed her confirmed her suspicion that he was hiding something,
a suspicion that grew even stronger as he continued.  "Me as Costner,
you as the slave babe, following a cryptic map to a strange land...."

"I see you more as Dennis Hopper, but that's beside the point."

"So you're willing to go with the slave babe concept?" he leered.

Scully blew out her breath in exasperation.  "Mulder, this is the
third time I have asked why we're doing this.  The first time you
gave me a lecture on rural spiritualism that seemed to consist of a
convention you went to entitled 'Elvis is God'--"

"Good seminar," he agreed.

"--where the featured guest was a lesbian Elvis imitator band called
'Elvis Herselvis and the Straight White Males'--"

"Great band."

"--and the second time you subjected me to a detailed analysis of the
outcome of the falling sparrow case.  Which, if you haven't yet
noticed, is *over*."

"Have you got the report typed up yet?"

"I will type up the report," she said, "when you tell me why you're
stalling.  Afraid that I'll pick your pet theory to pieces?"

"No."

"Then what are you afraid of?"

Scully saw Mulder's jaw tighten and work for an instant; then the
sign of distress was gone.  "You ever wonder how a town dies?"


**************************


Probably when its idiot citizens break their necks crashing through
underbrush in the dark, Scully thought.  Sixty-foot pine trees swayed
in the breeze overhead and tangles of weeds and bushes dogged her
every step.  Hard to believe they were less than a mile from where
they'd left their car, back at the old interstate exit.  "Mulder,"
she shouted, shining her flashlight in what she hoped was his
direction, "unless there's an EZ-Serve over the next hill, I
seriously doubt that we're going to find *any* evidence of suburbia
here, let alone the not-very-plausible town of Clovis Hill."

A shadow loomed up from between the trees.  Mulder shook his head in
disappointment, bending back some of the branches to clear a path for
her.  "An interstate exit not marked on any maps, barricaded behind
'exit closed' signs and cement blockades, and you wonder if
anything's here?"

"A blocked-off exit just means that the road doesn't go anywhere
anymore," she protested.  "With all the driving we've done, we've
passed hundreds of dead exits."

"Scary, isn't it?"

"But it doesn't mean that they lead to secret bases, weird science
labs, or ominous 'evil beings'.  We checked this already, Mulder. 
Maria and Stephen Nicholson lived in Jason Forks."

"Scully, Maria Nicholson was terrified of Clovis Hill.  The things
that she said were happening there--the things that she said were
happening to *her*--" 

"Are an outward representation of an inner conflict.  Except in a
symbolic sense, there *was* no Clovis Hill."

"Maria left 300 paintings and 36 binders full of writings that say
there was."

"And there are volumes of records and towns full of people that say
there wasn't--"  She stopped, abruptly, as she stumbled over a piece
of rock; she swung her flashlight beam at the offending material.

At one time, it might have been a well-manicured subdivision sign
surrounded by flowers and possibly a fountain.  Now wildflowers
surrounded the crumbling mortar and the welcome sign was barely
there; if you knew what to look for, though, the words 'Clovis Hill'
were all too readable.

Mulder's voice were soft.  "*Was.*"


**************************


Scully had run out of protests.  Around them lay the carcass of what
appeared to have been a neighborhood-slash-small town, circa 1975. 
Most of the buildings had been torn down but a few broken walls and
bricks jutted from the bushes; tilted street signs and rusted,
half-buried car parts marked the passage of man from this ground. 
Mulder had even found the corner of a small store, complete with
blacklight posters and 70's-rock tee shirts.  "Disco inferno," he'd
muttered.

The further in they hiked the more evident the tear-down efforts
became, until they found themselves walking on cleared soil.  The
bare ground continued for such a stretch that even Mulder was ready
to turn around.

Then Scully caught the glitter of a chain-link fence at the edge of a
grassy field.  She swung her flashlight in an arc, the beam revealing
strange sights at every turn.  Carnival booths.  Lights strung on
poles.  Stuffed animals.  In the distance large, vaguely defined
objects loomed; Scully shivered, knowing that they'd have to
investigate, but not liking the shadows she saw cast.

"You were right, Mulder," she reluctantly admitted.  "Something was
here, and this looks like the center of it.  It's the only thing left
standing."

Mulder fingered the chain-link fence, then narrowed his eyes and
leaned his weight against it.  The fence shifted and tilted before
crashing to the ground.  "This was torn down once too," he said. 
"Looks like someone's tried to put the fair back together--didn't do
a very convincing job though."  He focused his attention to the
shadows beyond.  "Those are different," he said.  An understatement,
Scully thought, but she took his side as he headed towards them.


**************************


Neither agent noticed the eroded skeletons until later.  Crumbled,
covered by a viscous orange fluid and the remnants of clothing, they
lay half-buried among the ruins.  The people who had once worn those
bones had made one desperate, demented attempt to resurrect the fair
after its destruction; it had been their final act.

Not their final act as humans, of course; that had come and gone long
before the fair's demise, though life of a kind remained even now.

That orange awareness, still harbored elsewhere in the ruins, dimly
realized that people had returned to the fair.  They rippled with
excitement; their plan had finally worked.  So very long ago, they
had sent out some of their...their...what was the old word, from the
human times?

Bodies.

They had sent some of their bodies lurching out into the night, mud
and blood wiped from jeans, feathered hair carefully brushed forward
to hide the bullet wounds inflicted by the soldiers.  The bodies were
to rebuild the festival, to bring more people to join in the
Gathering.  But the orange, already diminished and hungry, had been
further weakened by the effort.  Their bodies had crumbled and
fallen.  The rebuilt fair drew no more people; the plan had failed. 
To the orange, it was a sign that they were wounded mentally as well
as physically.

But now the lonely, damaged minds exulted.  People had seen the fair,
and returned!  People loved a fair.  The song said it all.  We can
meet at the fair, we can eat at the fair.

The orange loved to meet people.  They loved to eat people too.

Now they had only to call, and the Gather would begin...


**************************


Wandering among the outer rings of spires, Scully could almost
convince herself that the twelve-foot smokestacks surrounding her
were the work of ants, termites, or one of a handful of other
mound-building creatures.  There was ample evidence of insect
habitation--husks and eggs from dozens of species--and insects had
been known to do such things.  

Heading into the center of the rings shattered that illusion.

Insects don't sculpt.

This portion of the would-be fair housed works that would win any
sandcastle contest, as long as the judges were liberal in terms of
subject matter.  The people depicted danced, coupled and tore at
themselves and each other with eyes closed and mouths open in a sandy
expression of agony, delight, or quite possibly both.

At the very center of the rings, surrounded by a shallow, empty
crater, stood a different sculpture; groupings of men in uniform
faced off against the horde of man-beasts surrounding them.  Some
fired guns, some fell to the ground, some seemed to be wrestling the
creatures.  The expression on these faces was hostility, except for a
small form that stood off to the side, hugging one of the mounds; his
face showed only grief.

What held the eye, as much as the size and odd nature of the
sculptures, was the realism of the figures.  The weapons, the
clothing, even the spilled flesh of the fallen were all rendered in
painstaking detail.  Fortunately, Mulder's macabre suspicion that the
real things might be buried inside had been disproven by a few
careful probings with a sharp stick.

"What happened here, Mulder?" Scully whispered.

He shrugged.  "It's right in front of you.  U.S. Army versus the evil
monsters."

"Who won?"

He gestured to the darkness surrounding them.  "You see any evil
monsters around?  I'd say that clinches things for the U.S."

He left unspoken the fact that the soldiers were wearing generic
camouflage, not army uniforms, and that they almost certainly hadn't
celebrated their victory by making oversized sculptures of
themselves.  Defeated or not, someone--something--had remained behind
to leave this mark.

Slapping an insect away, Scully was reminded of the old saying: male
mosquitoes hum, but don't suck blood; females suck blood, but don't
hum.  When should you be afraid of mosquitoes?  When you don't hear
humming.

Scully didn't hear humming.

But Mulder did.  A child's lazy tune drifted through his thoughts. 
"Peanuts... popcorn... crackerjack..."  

"Did you hear something?" Mulder asked.  Scully cocked her head, then
shook it: no.


**************************


The orange rippled again, this time with disappointment.  The
soldiers had destroyed so much of them, so long ago; there was no
strength left even for the Gather-call.  It had been foolish to even
try.  They were not thinking clearly; it was finally time to admit
that they was damaged beyond repair.

The orange began to diminish themselves from the Spires, sending waxy
molasses flows of awareness to the abandoned shallows that once had
been their merging-pool.  Rising from the center was the death totem
they had built for themselves: sandy admission that here, at least,
the Gathering had failed.  They twined themselves along the soldier
sculptures, remembering that wonderful day when the Gather had first
been called, all their bodies celebrating, before the men had come
with their guns.  Their tail ends trailed away from the mounds and
the other sculpture.  The boy.  Some final trace of emotion made them
pause for a moment, and remember sorrow, before leaving the Spires
entirely.

As they began to thin themselves into oblivion, the orange caught a
familiar scent on their surface as the horseflies and the mosquitoes
deposited their final gifts of plasm.  Here was a cousin, the worms
whispered; here was one who knew the lure of dirt and blood.

But the cousin, no matter how vulnerable, was still stubbornly human;
still hard to talk to.  The orange arranged themselves, trying to
form the old familiar letters for the man to see.  "Hungry," they
wrote in waves.  "Help help help."  There was no answer; the cousin
did not understand.  They had failed again.

The sluggish flow from the Spires puckered and trickled out.  In a
final gesture of kinship they caressed what they could reach of the
man, and let themselves die.  


**************************


Mulder drew his foot back from the moat with a noise of disgust.  The
shimmering, changing surface of the rapidly-filling pool had drawn
his attention, and despite himself he had poked a foot in; for a
second he thought he actually saw the material *crawl up* to meet
him.  He was about to see if Scully had noticed when she countered
with her own unhappy sounds.

Mulder followed her gaze; Scully was examining the remains of the
mounds.  Or rather, the remains of what had been inside the mounds. 
The mounds themselves were just waist-high now, with sticky trails of
oil leading into...the moat.  

<>

The bodies revealed within were well-preserved men and women with big
hair and polyester clothing;  Mulder's instincts told him that the
missing Maria Nicholson had finally been accounted for.

"Looks like I had the right idea after all," he said.  "We were just
poking the wrong ones."


**************************


Scully had to admit that the cliche was right; things really did look
better in the daylight.  Here they were in the middle of a
nice-looking grassy field, with no mounds, no sculptures, and no
seventies corpses to be found.  

"Don't know about you, Scully, but I am getting sick and tired of
this hotel-torching, evidence-disappearing, site-cleaning..."
Mulder's voice had that loud rasp he got when he was frustrated; some
of the workers were pausing their futile earth-tilling to look at
him. 

"Mulder," she warned him.

"...Bullshit." he finished, in a lower tone of voice.  "*This*," he
said, kicking the nearest anthill with his foot, "is the worst." 
Last night's anonymous cleanup crew had left them a token of
sorts--little anthills, ankle high, in almost the exact placement of
last night's monoliths.  It was a sign of great control and a bleak
sense of humor.  

It was also, Scully thought, a sign of hope. Any apartment dweller
knew that you couldn't stop bugs; you could spray them, flood them,
or even stomp them, but they'd just pop up somewhere else a few hours
later.

Scully wondered how long it would take this particular species to
come back.



From steiner@acadiacom.net Thu May 15 19:24:17 1997
Subject: Every Sparrow Falling (3/5)
From: "Alloway" 
--------

Title: Every Sparrow Falling
Author: Alloway - steiner@acadiacom.net
Ratings & Disclaimers in part 1.



EVERY SPARROW FALLING (3/5)


The exhibition series was called 'Outsider Art', a placard told
Mulder; smaller lettering informed him that the term, a replacement
for folk art, better communicated the alienation and struggle of the
untrained rural artist.  This showing was 'Outsider Art, Phase IV:
Maria Nicholson,' which explained the working aspect of Mulder and
Scully's working lunch.

The series focused on the artist just as much as the art; in addition
to Maria's work, her writing desk, K-Mart brushes and tattered
diaries were all on display.  Walking through the gallery, Mulder
couldn't shake the feeling that he was moving through a less noble
form of exhibition, a zoo whose patrons--'insiders' like herself, he
supposed--were to be amused by the antics of the animals kept within.
 He half expected a hawker to stroll by with cotton candy.  Or
peanuts, and popcorn, and crackerjack...

The sad little life catalogue before him did nothing to dispel that
feeling.  Maria Nicholson, born 1931, disappeared 1976.  Secretary
for the county's largest taxidermist; led a seemingly average life
from 8-5, typing and filing, before shutting herself up at home to
become something extraordinary.  A woman who for decades carefully
transcribed her madness into an army of notebooks and an acre of
canvas.  A passionate narrator of her town's transformation to a
place gone wild and hungry.  

A human soul, reduced to a few paragraphs for art lovers on their
lunch hour.

Mulder left the biography to join Scully in her contemplation of the
canvases.  Maria had offered up hundreds of windows with which to
gaze upon her landscapes; some of the views were disturbingly
familiar.  

The mounds, for example.  The fairs and carnivals.  And of course the
falling sparrows.  All scrawled with slogans straight from Hell's
advertising agency: "Clovis Hill is Gathering."  "The early bird
catches the wyrm."  "To ancients we return."

Other portraits were unfamiliar; where did the endless road lead? 
What did the fog cover?  Who was the huge man squinting down at the
viewer?

"I never knew you could paint with so many shades of black," Mulder
mused.

"Or red," Scully added.

It took a second to get the charcoal-and-crimson paint splashes into
focus.  Fragments of a boy's photo--Stephen's?--had been torn and
scattered among the teeth of an oily dragon-worm creature; the edges
of the photo limbs were daubed with more red.  Absurdly oversized
yarn tendons dangled from each wound.

Mulder shook his head in amazement.  "Where did this woman live,
Scully?"

"Someplace bad," Scully answered. 

He raised his eyebrows at her.  "A probing psychological workup from
Dr. Dana Scully?"

"Go probing on your own time, Mulder."  She ignored his further
eyebrow-wiggling.  "You don't need a degree to know that *that*"--she
nodded at the painting--"is not a healthy expression of emotion."

"A cry for help," Mulder agreed.  <>, he
thought. <>.  Cries he'd passed over and never
answered.  He paused for a moment to mentally berate himself before
continuing.  "I got a letter a while ago.  Actually *we* got a
letter.  Although I should say letters--turns out we've collected
quite a few of them over the years.  But they make more sense once
you've seen...these.." he said, gesturing towards the paintings.  "I
wanted you to see them before we leave."  

Scully sighed, acknowledging the inevitable.  "Leave for where?  What
kind of letters?"

"Oh, the usual, you know.  Army death squads, lost towns, omens and
portents, that kind of thing."


**************************


The letters, spanning decades, showcased varying degrees of literacy
and sanity.  The worst ones--that is to say, the majority--were
indeed little more than 'omens and portents'.  Photos of two-headed
cows and defaced brochures for the 'New England Fall Festival'
competed for folder space with a twelve-page longhand account of
mysterious road crews camping aimlessly for weeks at a vacant stretch
of road.  

Maria Nicholson had sent many such letters.  But James LeBlanc had
only sent one.

It was laser-printed on a premium brand of bond paper, paper not
quite thick enough to mask out the headline of the New Orleans
Times-Picayune article underneath it.  The letter offered evidence on
'strange things happening at fairs and festivals' in exchange for
'assistance in correcting a grave error.'  It concluded with concise
notes on how to reach LeBlanc for more information; if he was not
available, his brother Harris was familiar with the situation and
could also be contacted.  The letter was polite, educated, and
intelligent.

Unfortunately the polite, educated, and intelligent James LeBlanc had
committed suicide in the main pavilion of SwampFest '97 shortly after
posting the letter.  He was dead before the FBI's
thank-you-for-writing form letter could even hit his mailbox.

The medical reports and interviews supported the T-P's article;
LeBlanc had been a respected 35-year-old freelance writer and history
buff who neither smoked, drank, nor took drugs.  He was a quiet
individual whose dying words had been about monsters.

Scully closed the folder as a soft chime, and an increasing pressure
on her eardrums, announced the plane's final descent into New
Orleans.  Turning away from the glare of the clouds rushing past the
window, Mulder unlatched his seat belt; as usual, he was ready to get
moving before the plane even touched ground.  

"Time to go meet the monsters," he told her.  It sounded like he was
looking forward to it.


**************************


The middle-aged man at the terminal wearing a business suit and
holding a white card with 'Mulder' scrawled on it turned out to be
Harris LeBlanc, James' older brother.  He had been one of the only
ones to show interest in Mulder's inquiries; experts both medical and
legal had already declared the investigation dead.  With little
evidence to go on, and not even a body to examine--LeBlanc had been
cremated--Mulder had decided to go low profile. "I'd like to hold on
to the proof for a few hours more this time," he'd told Scully.

As they walked through the terminal, Harris fleshed out what the
agents already knew from the transcripts: the elder LeBlanc and the
rest of the family had always been proud of, and a little bewildered
by, their changeling dreamer of a relative.  Harris admitted he
hadn't been close to his brother, mainly because of the age
difference; still, he said, they kept in touch.  

"James always made sure to send me any magazines he was in," LeBlanc
said.  "And we got together sometimes for a beer."  No, he didn't
know anything about the letter James had sent.  Yes, he'd be happy to
help with their investigation.  "My brother deserved better than a
little story on page 20 saying he shot himself."  Monsters?  "Shit if
I can explain it.  I think he got misquoted."  

Their progress came to a halt at the abandoned car rental counter. 
Seeing the agents' confusion, LeBlanc explained, "We lost a lot of
cars from the flooding this summer.  The rental agencies have been
booked up for months--they're still trying to ship in cars from
out-of-state.  The good news is, I've got a brand-new car, but the
bad news is you're going to need to borrow one of the company trucks.
 Don't worry, I'll have one available by the time we get across the
bridge."

"Why's that bad news?" Mulder asked.

LeBlanc shrugged.  "No offense, Agent Mulder, but wait'll you see the
truck."  He walked them across the street to the parking lot,
stopping alongside a gleaming black Infiniti.  "Here we are."

An airplane streaked by overhead, and LeBlanc's next words were
drowned out by a splattering noise.  For what seemed like minutes,
all Mulder could see was a flickering of light and shadow as
something dark splashed to the ground all around them.  "Ah, no,"
LeBlanc moaned as the rain finally ceased.  "Goddamn jet engines." 
The cars and ground were coated with birds...bloody, torn pieces of
birds.  Soggy feathers and hunks of meat dripped down the car windows
and slid onto the pavement. 

Mulder instinctively looked for Scully, amazed to find her relatively
unstained.  A pain in his arm told him that he'd been marked, however
glancingly.  LeBlanc, on the other hand, was positively coated with
gore.  "Welcome to the Moisant International Airport," he gasped,
wiping his face.  "We're planning on building covered parking any day
now."

"I'm fine," Mulder said, shaking off Scully's grasp as she reached
for his arm.  "Just a scrape."  She nodded as he bent to the ground,
delicately picking up the offending object.

It had been a sparrow.  The foreparts were still intact: beak gaping
open, feet pulled up tight against the body and talons clenched.  It
was impossible to guess what the wings and tail had looked like, but
even without those, it was obvious that this was one bird who had not
gone gently.  

"Stephen's killer sparrows," Mulder said softly.

Scully tried to make light of it.  "Stephen would say that God is
watching us."

Mulder shook his head, rubbing the scratch along his arm.  He was
surprised at the anger in LeBlanc's  voice as the other man spoke. 
"Tell God he *missed*."



From steiner@acadiacom.net Thu May 15 19:24:33 1997
Subject: Every Sparrow Falling (4/5)
From: "Alloway" 
--------

Title: Every Sparrow Falling
Author: Alloway - steiner@acadiacom.net
Ratings & Disclaimers in part 1.



EVERY SPARROW FALLING (4/5)


Mulder shifted impatiently, inching the seat back a little further
for the fifth time in ten minutes.  "Six o'clock traffic," LeBlanc
grunted.  "Everybody's getting the hell out of New Orleans.  Don't
worry, things'll be different once we hit the bridge."  

As the line slowly inched forward, Mulder could see the bridge
itself: two long flat spans vanishing into the horizon.  By the time
they passed the toll booth, he had read the signs that proclaimed
"World's Longest Bridge", "Check gas gauge--No fuel 24 miles," and
"Causeway updates--1610 am".  "Seems like we're heading off the face
of the earth," he observed.  "What's the attraction?"

LeBlanc shrugged, flooring the accelerator.  "Mandeville's really
exploded in the past few years.  According to my friend the real
estate agent, people are looking to get back to, quote, a
traditional, old-fashioned, country town atmosphere."

"Do they find it?"

"Well, if big houses, big lots, and big golf courses make an
old-fashioned country atmosphere, then I guess they do," LeBlanc shot
back.  

"As long as they don't have sparrows," Mulder murmured.

"Other than the ones on my car?" LeBlanc grimaced, although the
Infiniti was once again gleaming.  "No sparrows.  Too common.  You'll
be seeing gulls, pelicans, purple martins.  They come from miles to
nest under the bridge at night, the martins.  Big tourist attraction;
it's incredible, the sky just fills with birds.  My brother--"  

LeBlanc stopped himself abruptly; when he spoke again, the bluff good
humor had vanished.  "James was the one to notice the martins.  They
used to have steel fencing on the southshore, so you couldn't really
see the birds coming in; he climbed over the fence and got some good
pictures and a story out of it.  It's in all the guidebooks now." 
The voice was hesitant now, almost pleading.  "James could always
find things like that.  Out-of-the-way things.  Hidden things.  Do
you think--Agent Mulder, Agent Scully, do you think that's what
happened?  That he found out something bad, knew something he
shouldn't have?"  

Mulder cut Scully off before she could begin her standard
no-evidence-of-foul-play speech.  "I think your brother knew a lot of
things," he said evenly.  "Tell me, Mr. LeBlanc, have you noticed
anything unusual about the level of insect activity in this area?"   


If the other man was nonplussed at the apparent change of subject, he
didn't show it.  "Well, there's a lot of them, but that's normal for
Lousiana.  Let's see...one of my men mentioned something the other
day."  LeBlanc owned a pest control company called Ha-Bob's; Mulder
had drawn Scully's attention to that fact earlier, but she'd just
rolled her eyes at him.  LeBlanc gestured to the bridge railings;
spider webs shimmered between the gaps, their fragile threads
outlined clearly against the setting sun.   "Apparently they cover
the whole bridge.  I thought it was interesting.  Other than that,
though, you'd have to ask my people--you can do that when we pick up
the truck."

LeBlanc fell silent, and Mulder had no more questions; the car was
quiet for the remainder of the 24-mile trip.  The view was indeed
breathtaking: the still water around them glowed with pinks and
blues, courtesy of the sunset, and gulls glided alongside the rails. 
But it was the spider webs that surrounded them as they made their
way to Mandeville.


**************************


Tommy Boudreaux, the college student whose truck they were borrowing,
was one of LeBlanc's employees: young, handsome, earnest, and
dreadfully limited in conversational topics.  After giving Scully his
business analysis of Mandeville--"It's hot, it's damp, everything
rots.  Total job security."--he seemed bent on personally
demonstrating it to her.  "You've got heels?" he said, glancing down
at her legs.  "Wow, do you!" he said admiringly, squatting down to
ground level.  "Now, just lean back a little, enough to get your
heels through the topsoil."  He reached out one hand toward her ankle
to hold her steady. 

"You know, I saw her eat a bug once," Mulder said conversationally,
stepping up to them.  "Plucked it out of a jar, crunched it around
for a while, and swallowed it right down."  Tommy looked up,
confused, before being spared further conversation by a car pulling
up to the driveway.

"Looks like my girlfriend's here to pick me up," he told Mulder,
looking relieved.  "Y'all keep my truck in good shape now."

Scully watched in amusement as Tommy bolted for the car.  "You scared
him, Mulder.  He was only trying to show me some termites."

He feigned surprise.  "Holding on to your ankle produces termites?"

"Look," she said.  "Tommy was right."  The pressure from her heel had
formed a small hole in the mud; there was a squirming flurry of
activity as the termites within scrambled away from the light.  "I
guess it really does help to have an entomologist hold on to
your...ankle," she added, the pause between words almost casual.

Mulder knew better.  "Time to get moving," he informed her, and led
her to the truck, where a huge rubber roach stared balefully at them
from the top of the cab.  "More old-time country stuff," LeBlanc had
explained.  "Increased my revenue 300 percent."  <>, Mulder thought, but that was a good sign.  Clovis Hill
had had a lot of bugs too.


**************************


"Chez Best Western," Mulder announced, hefting his luggage out of the
truck.  "There's the vending machines; want ice or anything?"

Scully shook her head.  "Those crawfish fajitas will hold me for a
while.  I think I'll call it a night."

"All right.  Good night."  He paused.  "Scully...didn't you think
things were a little odd tonight?"

"What, the 24-mile-long bridge, the truck with a rubber bug on it, or
getting rained on by birds that had just collided with an airplane?"

He rewarded her with one of his infrequent, genuine smiles.  "The
neighborhood where we picked up the truck.  Did you notice that
everybody was outside, spending half their time trying to ignore us
and the other half trying to figure out who we were?"  He'd nearly
gotten soaked by one hose-wielding housewife who'd wandered a little
too close while "watering her garden"; she'd stayed so long in one
place, listening, that her seedlings had actually begun to float down
the driveway.

"Just plain nosiness won't do as an explanation?"  He gave her a
pained look: no.  Scully cocked her head, considering alternatives:
standing here talking with Mulder, or kicking off her hose and
relaxing.  "I'll have to get back to you," she concluded.  

Mulder nodded.  "Sweet dreams, Scully."


**************************


Scully dreamt.

She was in an abandoned building; it was dark and smelled of rotted
wood and pigeon droppings.  Her flashlight was squarely aimed at a
jagged, sticky hole in the wall.  Tooms had oozed himself through it
and Mulder had crawled in behind him; she was left to wait and watch.
 Suddenly, with the logic of dreams, a man dressed in camouflage
stood beside her.  "The early bird catches the worm," he said.  "Are
you in time, Agent Scully?"

<> Scully thought, getting her answer as Mulder's
waving legs appeared in the hole.  Mulder was screaming for help;
screaming her name.

"Pull him out," the stranger prompted.  "Pull him out, quickly.  Else
when he goes in, he *stays* in.  And one day he never comes out at
all."  Scully grasped Mulder's struggling form and pulled with all
her strength.  Slowly his body slithered out from the hole, coated in
Tooms' slime.  She eased him to the ground; as she did so she saw
that it wasn't just Tooms' slime, it was *Tooms*.  He had melted
himself around Mulder, a gooey, quivering muck that stared up at her
with angry orange eyes.  

The stranger made a tsk'ing noise at her.  "Now look at the mess you
have to clean up."

Mulder on the ground, writhing in agony.  Foul-smelling secretions
flying in all directions.  Tooms stretching out one impossibly long
hand to claw at her.  "Why me?"

"Because that's what Sparrows do."

Where had she heard that before?  It was important, she knew.  It was
important for Mulder.

Tooms had her throat now, squeezing, squeezing...


**************************


Mulder awoke sweating, sheets tangled around arms and legs.  He
picked up the ringing phone.  "Scully?"  he said, instantly alert.  

There was a click on the other end of the line, followed by an
electronic buzz.  A voice said, "Hello.  If you are concerned, as I
am, about preserving our heritage and returning to our traditional
values..."  Mulder glanced at the clock; what was a political hack
doing calling at 3:30 a.m.?  Then he heard the static behind the
voice and realized he was listening to a pre-recorded hack.  Somebody
had done a rotten job of programming a timer, somewhere, and he was
suffering for it.  Mulder slammed down the phone.

The phone rang again, and Mulder picked it up, annoyed.  "Listen, you
scumbag, take your phone and--"

"Mulder?"  A bewildered voice: Scully's.

"I--never mind.  What's up?"

"They know the house has termites," she said.

"What?"

"The people that were staring at us.  They know the house has
termites.  Tommy said they're a big problem here; some houses have to
be covered and fumigated, and some even need to be torn down.  If
there were a bunch of official-looking people and a termite truck at
my neighbor's, I'd be a little concerned myself."

"You mean nosy," Mulder said.  

"Whatever.  But it's not polite to stare, so they pretend to ignore
it while they check everything out.  Or maybe they really do ignore
it and hope everything turns out okay."   

"Is that *really* the best thing you have to dream about, Scully?"

A moment of silence.  "Well, I tried for Jean-Claude Van Damme, but
he was booked."  Her voice was light but he could hear the strain in
it.  Nightmare, then; unusual for Scully.

"Hey, I got some genuine Louisiana potato chips here," he said,
pulling up the bag so she could hear the rustle.  "Kettle-cooked
'Zapps Cajun-Dill Gator Tators.'  There's enough spices on one chip
to clog every artery you've got.  We can have a few while we explore
the theory you've just come up with regarding the nature of the
conspiracy here.  Unless of course you think we're just talking about
*regular* termites..."

"Mulder--" she began, but the phone was silent; he was already on his
way, full of ideas to bounce off of her, buried plots he was
determined to dig up.  *People must forget* was what Stephen
Nicholson had told Scully, but then he hadn't known Mulder; Mulder
would never allow himself the luxury of forgetting.  Not even to save
his own life.



From steiner@acadiacom.net Thu May 15 19:24:55 1997
Subject: Every Sparrow Falling (5/5)
From: "Alloway" 
--------

Title: Every Sparrow Falling
Author: Alloway - steiner@acadiacom.net
Ratings & Disclaimers in part 1.



EVERY SPARROW FALLING (5/5)


"This wasn't mentioned in the reports," Agent Mulder observed,
flipping clumsily through the stack of canvases propped against the
wall.  "Or this," he said.  There was a crash as the discarded
paintings scattered across the wood floor; Scully winced, thinking
that Mulder resembled nothing so much as the world's angriest garage
sale shopper.  She craned her head sideways to look at the offending
artwork: different style, but the same substance, as paintings they
had both seen before.  Charcoals and reds, dragons and dirt and
Ferris wheels. 

"Oh, those," LeBlanc said.  "James was dating an artist.  He said he
bought all those to get her to go out with him."  At Mulder's
inquiring glance, he elaborated.  "She was young.  Struggling, you
know?  She went around to all the fests, selling paintings, earrings,
carvings..." 

"Outsider art," Mulder said flatly.  "She lived at the same place
that he died, and nobody thought to look into it or at least talk to
her.  Not even you." It wasn't a question; it was something he knew
instinctively.  "Who is she?  Where is she?"

LeBlanc answered the rapid-fire demands automatically.  "Her name was
Theadra.  Where she is--this time of year, there's a fair every
weekend.  She'll probably be there."

"Where?"

"All the big fairs are at the same place," LeBlanc said bitterly. 
"Follow the road signs.  I'm not going."

Mulder nodded.  "I understand."  He looked up from the paintings, his
steady gaze leveled straight at LeBlanc.  "But there's one thing you
need to know.  We've seen cases like your brother's."  That wasn't
too much of a lie, and it definitely got the other man's attention. 
"In each case, people's memories of the event had been
suppressed--changed around somehow.  From what you've just told us, I
believe the same thing has happened here.  I don't think your brother
found out anything, Mr. LeBlanc...I think he was remembering
something.  Something I think you can remember too."

"I told you, Agent Mulder, I don't know anything.  I wish I did." 

"Your brother said you did," Mulder responded.  "Do you trust your
brother?"

There was an incredible flash of anger in LeBlanc's face, gone in a
heartbeat.  "I did.  But I don't remember anything."

Scully knew where this was going; knew, too, where she and LeBlanc
were going.  "If he puts on a stupid accent and claims to be your
soulmate, Mulder, I swear I'll strangle him," she murmured.

He either hadn't heard or chose not to hear.  "I'll be at the fair. 
Call me when you have something," he said, and then he was gone.


**************************


"Where are you?" the hypnotist asked again.

"Can't say...I mustn't..." LeBlanc muttered, eyes flicking half-open
and darting restlessly around the room.  They settled on Scully,
seeking something undefinable, and Harris smiled with relief as he
found it.  "Night," he sighed.  

"We're walking through the fair.  James is ahead--he's doing
something--something wrong.  I'm the captain; I know I should report
him, but he's my brother and I trust him.  Over the radio we hear
that the event is confirmed; we get into position and shoot
everything that moves.  When we finish I call the choppers to come
take us out, and flatten the earth..."

LeBlanc stopped, eyes opening, and Scully realized that she was
looking at someone else entirely: the steady gaze, the carelessly
upright posture, all the little things about him screamed soldier. 
"Hello again, Agent Scully," the soldier smiled.  "Good to see
another Sparrow here."


**************************


The woman in a gypsy skirt and dangling earrings had looked him up
and down scornfully before pronouncing, "You're looking for alligator
skulls, right?  Or those little varnished crawfish playing the banjo?
 Three stalls over, to the right."  Ten minutes of conversation, and
the purchase of a pair of earrings, had helped make Theadra Jones a
bit more amiable. 

"James was a good man," she said.  "You know, the first thing he ever
said to me was that he wanted to write about my art.  The second was
that I had beautiful eyes."  Theadra laughed, a soft throaty sound. 
"But his writing always came first.  He'd look at my paintings, and
then start scribbling like mad."

"He kept notebooks?" Mulder asked.

"Oh, sure.  Little red notebooks, stuffed full of sticky notes and
napkin notes and God knows what else.  He said they helped him
remember,"  Theadra paused.  "I still have some in my car.  Do you
want to see them?"  Something was wrong with her eyes, Mulder
realized, her eyes were...

Blue.  Her eyes were blue.  James had been right; they really were
beautiful.


**************************


"This is hard to admit to anyone," LeBlanc said.  "I promised I'd
keep it a secret, but I guess it doesn't matter anymore...and we're
just both going to forget it in a few days anyway."  He smiled,
ruefully.

"James was letting people go," he explained.  "A lot of soldiers do
that when they're new.  It's hard to shoot something that looks like
a little kid, at least until you see what it can do to a man.  The
captain is supposed to put a stop to all that, of course, and report
it."

"Report it?" Scully asked.

"There's a number we can call.  We're not to ask who it is.  But they
send trackers to hunt down the ones who escaped.  They're not the
same once they've been at a Gathering; at their best,
they're...wounded.  At their worst they're killers."  

<>, Scully thought.  "But you didn't report your
brother."

"He told me that he could tell if the people were still people.  I
trusted him.  But one night some of his 'people' took apart half my
team--some of my best men, my best friends.  Like I told you, James
was always great at finding things that were hidden; that night we
realized that what he was seeing...was the part of them that used to
be human."

"I couldn't call for the trackers," he continued.  "I'd let it go on
for too long, they would have punished me and James both.  I grabbed
him by the throat and told him that he had to track down every single
one of his mistakes himself.  I told him he couldn't forget, no
matter what it took: tape recordings, computer files; hell, I told
him I'd tattoo the whole story on his butt myself if that's what it
took to keep him going.  And I drove him into the ground, over and
over, until one day he didn't come out," he finished wearily.

"James wasn't dating Theadra," she said, understanding.

"Part of him was," LeBlanc said.  "Part of him was hunting her."

"Mulder," Scully said, scrambling for the phone.  "*Is* she one?  One
of them?" she demanded of LeBlanc.  

He shrugged.  "He never told me.  But considering what happened to
him...I'd say yes.  And one of the bad ones."


**************************


Mulder heard a ringing noise but it was very far away.  There were
other things at the fair that were much more important.  That little
girl, what was she playing with?  Something red, and long, and
sticky...

The little girl looked up at him and beamed, beckoning him close.  
He bent his long legs down, easing himself to her level and leaning
toward her obligingly.  "Peanuts," she whispered, dripping lips
splattering something onto his face.  "Popcorn.  Crackerjack." 
Mulder's legs buckled; he fell to the ground, slowly, as a rush of
murderous thoughts and feelings assaulted him.  A dark hunger that
could never be sated, a thrill of power and violence that would have
overwhelmed him if he hadn't spent so many years studying it.  If he
didn't, on some basic level, understand it.

The last thing he felt before he blacked out was an unbearably joyous
message of welcome.


**************************


"Call the number," Scully demanded.  Her voice was drowned out by the
crunch of gravel as the car tore along the dirt road.  "Call it now,"
she yelled. 

LeBlanc shook his head.  "You don't understand," he yelled back.  "I
call that number and they take out everything.  You, me, everyone
else in the vicinity."

"Then call your men."

"It's been years since we were active," LeBlanc protested.  "They
won't remember."

Scully's voice was low but dangerous as she held the phone out. 
"You've been living in Mandeville too long, LeBlanc.  *Make* them
remember."


**************************


The artist and the little girl dragged the agent's body to the ring
of Spires some yards away; for a few moments they scooped and poured
sand over the prone form until the man's ancient instincts took over,
slowly at first, then with an increasing eagerness and facility.  The
two women looked on with pride as a swarm of insects descended onto
the foaming mound of dirt, burrowing intricate access tunnels in
obedient response to the summons issued from deep within. Slowly, a
new flow began to feed into the merging-pool at the center of the
Spires.  

The orange was pleased.

Mulder swam up into a new kind of awareness.  Dimly he could feel the
mosquitoes injecting blood into his veins, worms massaging his skin,
mites carting oxygen into his lungs.  He was changing--he was
Gathering--but it would take time, and this was the beginning.

That vague sense of loss was the fluid that was leaking from him:
eyes, ears, and anus, he was secreting orange.  No invasion, this; it
came from him.  This was something the human body could do. 
Something it was designed for; something that it was meant to do.  

Apparently primal man had been one violent, mob-ruled, crazy orange
son-of-a-bitch.

{{{Agent Orange.  Quite a visual pun, if you could see it, Agent
Mulder.}}}  Human words came to him, from...elsewhere.  He went
questing after it, reeling as he slammed against a thousand orange
thoughts from Spires and Mobiles alike.  Not thoughts,
precisely--more like a slow network built of taste and current. 
Meaning conveyed by a scent released from army ants or a flutter from
the wings of wasps.  Here was a college-age murderer, bloodying his
secret collection of knives; there, a serial killer, gluing
photographs in a spiral pattern to match the one vaguely remembered
in his dreams.

{{{Theadra Jones was an artist who left her brushes and tubes at her
parent's house after a few painting classes revealed that her talent
was mediocre though her vision was true.}}}  

*There*--he reached for the voice--and abruptly he was in Disneyland.
 Under Disneyland, actually: he was one with the things hiding in the
service tunnels.  A wall of bees spent their lives desperately
fanning, fanning, so the orange could grow strong in the cool damp
air...

{{{During the floods her parents lost everything: furniture, photos,
carpet, all turned to mold and sewage.  But her father brought her
the tackle box she kept her gear in; he'd spent days cleaning the
brushes, rubbing off the oil paints.  Because he knew that she would
want them someday; she was his baby, and he was proud of her.}}}

Now he was in the Main Street Parade, rotting orange flesh covered by
a Mickey Mouse costume.  Inside the plush mouse fur, gears and wires
and armies of mantises gave motion to something that had no right to
be moving, something that loved to reach out and touch the children,
so sweet and so wonderful to touch the children...

{{{She tried art again, filled with guilt and fury and love of her
father--and touched on something she had found so very long ago, and
then forgotten.}}}  

All of them, together and safe, just like the old days... 

{{{And recently she met a man whom she had met before.  A man who was
a sometime soldier.  He sort of fell in love with her, until one day
he opened up her tackle-box.  As to what he found there, well, she
hadn't been painting with brushes and oils, not for a long time.  He
tried, stupidly, to atone for his mistakes...and so here we are.}}} 

The fairs would last forever, and the orange would be whole at last,
with the Gathering and the sand and the sweet sweet blood...

{{{WAKE UP CALL!  What's the matter, all that mousse got to your
brain?  I thought you were looking for the truth here!  Good God, for
someone who came to fix this situation, you sure love to dwell on
your own problems, don't you?  Let's see if I can get your attention
before you drown in orange...}}}

Suddenly there was a flood of memories, agonizing in their intensity.
 Everything he had done, everything he had been, came flooding back
at him.  Samantha and Scully and everything in between... 

Mulder's first words in this new medium were impolite in the extreme.
 A long howl of rage, followed by a ###MINE!### so vehement that the
ants relaying the message twitched and died on their own toxic
secretions.

{{{Much better, Agent Mulder.  Although 'yours' and 'mine' are
probably pointless in here.  I'm James LeBlanc.  There are things you
need to know before your Dr. Scully comes to rescue you...}}}


**************************


{{{You're a lucky man,}}} LeBlanc observed, a lifetime later.  Mulder
could feel the firefight outside as an itching on his skin, faint and
oddly distant.  Scully was wounded, but dragging her tiny form toward
him with a determination to match even the orange's.  

And then there was a tugging, and pain as light began to strike his
eyes again.  Words from outside.  "You can't do this, Agent Scully. 
He's one of them now."

"No he's not.  And don't try to stop me."

Darkness.


**************************


Insects rambled through the broken trails restlessly, unable to find
the target of LeBlanc's last message.  Finally, they spent it on the
empty sand.

{{{It was good to see you both again, old friends.  And I am so
sorry...}}}


**************************


That evening, the unmarked brown helicopters descended on Mandeville
and razed the Trailwoods subdivision.  A statue crumbled; known in
some circles as a death-totem, it had shown gun-toting old men in
baggy shorts, and two others besides.  Two younger figures caught in
an odd form of dance: the woman reaching down, arms straining, linked
hand in hand to a sprawling man who reached up to her.  Whether she
was pulling him up, or he dragging her down, was impossible to say.  

That evening, the two agents wrapped up a case that was slightly
changed from what it once had been.  

And that night, for Mulder, the visions began.

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