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Mulder gets up from bed and,
as he passes a mirror, sees the reflection of his younger
self, 11-12 years old. He joins Sam at the upstairs railing
and, as they look down into the living room, he sees his
parents fighting.
He calls Scully and wakes
her at 4:50 in the morning. He tells Scully he's covered in
blood and when she asks if he's hurt, he says he doesn't
think so. He doesn't think it's his blood.
He thinks the house has some
meaning to him. They find out the house is 20 miles away and
Mulder says his parents' summer house was in the same
vicinity.
Mulder falls to his knees,
clutching his head as if a terrible pain is ripping through
him. Flashes of "memory" begin to assail him. His mother
saying, "How can you do this to our family," and his father,
"I'm not doing it. It's not just me. These orders are coming
down from on high."
As Mulder rolls over the
male victim's body and looks questioningly at Scully, she
gazes back at him with an indefinable mixture of confusion,
sympathy, worry, and fear...fear for him.
He tells Mulder his gun was
the murder weapon. He's also had the blood on Mulder's shirt
tested and it matches the blood type of both victims. Mulder
tells him he won't get a confession because he doesn't
remember anything.
Scully hears a gunshot as
she exits, and rushes back to the cell with the others,
finding the officer dead from a self-inflicted gunshot
wound. She finds the puncture wound at his hairline and asks
to talk to the detective immediately.
Scully finds an "Abductee"
magazine in the house with a feature photo on the cover of
Amy Cassandra. Scully tells the detective that both the
officer and Amy had a deep puncture in the cranium going
through to the brain.
His father slams the door
between them and Fox runs upstairs to Samantha. Downstairs
their parents are now fighting and Mrs. Mulder keeps
repeating, "Not Samantha."
Scully says it's beginning
to look like a murder-suicide which still doesn't explain
why Mulder was there. She tells him that she believes he
contacted Amy because he thought she was an alien abductee.
Amy was seeking psychiatric treatment that was supposed to
be effective in recovering her past.
The doctor denies having met
Mulder but speaks freely of his attempt to help Amy access
repressed memories. He tells them he uses a method to
electrically stimulate the brain using light and sound. He
doesn't mention puncturing their craniums.
Mulder says Goldstein is
lying, that he was here before with Amy. Scully says she
thinks they were both treated with the drug and the seizures
and black-outs are a result of the treatment that Goldstein
administered.
Mulder thinks he has access
to his past memories that might reveal what happened to
Samantha. He wants the car keys so he can go to Connecticut
to see his mother and Scully finally agrees. But she's
driving.
Fox: (defiantly) You had
some kind of relationship with him. MaMulder: Who? Fox: You
know who. The man who worked with my father. The man who
came to you that night when I was 12 and forced you to
choose Samantha. MaMulder: No, Fox. Fox: Yes! You betrayed
my father.
Mulder goes back to
Goldstein's office that evening and asks what was done to
him. When Goldstein says he did nothing wrong, Mulder points
out that he put a hole in his head. Goldstein tells him it
was to deliver electrical stimulation directly to the brain
to trigger memory. Mulder says he wants him to finish the
job.
Mulder sees a collage of
scattered memories from his previous flashback
hallucinations along with his past recollections from the
night of Samantha's abduction. While Mulder is in the midst
of this barrage, Goldstein puts restraints on his arms and
powers up what looks like a small drill (!).
When Scully shows up, she
learns that Mulder has already left and she forces some
information out of the good doctor. He finally tells her
that the last thing Mulder said to him was that he was going
to exorcise his demons.
Mulder's sitting in a chair
in the middle of a room in a trace-like state, experiencing
flashback visions. "It's all falling into place," he manages
to say amidst his panting and gasping.
"This is not the way to the
truth, Mulder. You've got to trust me." Mulder yells, "Just
shut up!" Scully presses on, saying, "Put the gun down. Let
it go."
But if that knowledge
remains elusive, and if it's only by knowing where he's been
that he can hope to understand where he's going, then I fear
Agent Mulder may lose his course and the truths he's seeking
from his childhood will continue to evade him, driving him
more dangerously forward in impossible pursuit.
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 Demons
This episode opens with a strange flashback/dream quality
sequence. A grown Mulder is shaken awake by his young sister
Samantha. The "memory" has a choppy, hallucinatory quality.
There are voices in the background, a woman's voice
predominately, and they're fighting. Mulder gets up from bed
and, as he passes a mirror, sees the reflection of his
younger self, 11-12 years old. He joins Sam at the upstairs
railing and, as they look down into the living room, he sees
his parents fighting. The only words I can make out are "my
baby". Sam turns to Mulder saying, "I'm afraid, Fox. I'm
afraid."
We see Mulder waking from this dream recollection in the
present day. He finds himself in a strange room, lying on
the floor. As he picks himself up and sits on the bed
disoriented, he realizes he's covered in blood. He calls
Scully and wakes her at 4:50 in the morning. She wants to
know what's wrong and where he is. He doesn't know what
happened but he knows where he is by the motel key in his
possession. It's a motel in Providence, Rhode Island. He
tells Scully he's covered in blood and when she asks if he's
hurt, he says he doesn't think so. He doesn't think it's his
blood.
When Scully arrives, Mulder's in shock and has no memory
of how he got there or what he's been doing there. Scully
finds that two rounds have been fired from his gun but he
doesn't remember that either. Scully wants Mulder to see a
doctor in case he's suffering from encephalitis or some kind
of aneurysm, but Mulder wants to investigate the crime if in
fact one has occurred. She tells him that first he needs to
take care of himself and she repeats this throughout the
episode. But her warning and concern falls on deaf ears.
Mulder finds a set of keys that aren't his and they open a
car in the motel lot that has blood on the steering wheel.
Following the address found on the car's registration, they
head to the house of David Cassandra in search of more
clues.
When they reach the house, the housekeeper says the
Cassandras are out and she doesn't know where they are.
Mulder is drawn to a painting on the wall. It's a picture of
an old house and when he inquires, he's told it is a
favorite study of Amy Cassandra, David Cassandra's wife. The
housekeeper says it's the house Amy grew up in but Mulder
seems to recognize the house. He thinks it has some meaning
to him. They find out that the house is 20 miles away and
Mulder says his parents' summer house was in the same
vicinity. When they arrive, Scully is noting that the house
appears abandoned when Mulder falls to his knees, clutching
his head as if a terrible pain is ripping through him.
Flashes of "memory" begin to assail him. His mother saying,
"How can you do this to our family," and his father, "I'm
not doing it. It's not just me. These orders are coming down
from on high." Mulder sees himself, first as an adult then
as a boy, walking toward the shouting. His father appears in
a doorway, looks at Mulder, then slams the door shut. As the
young Mulder turns away, he sees another man in the house. A
man smoking a cigarette who says, "You're a little spy."
When Mulder comes to, he's lying on the ground with a
justifiably concerned Scully leaning over him. She warned
him, even saying he might have an aneurysm that could drop
him in a second. But he's as stubborn now as when she first
brought up a visit to the hospital. Using a key from the
same keyring, Mulder opens the house to find that it's not
exactly abandoned. They find the bodies of Amy and David
Cassandra, each with a gunshot wound to the heart. As Mulder
rolls over the male victim's body and looks questioningly at
Scully, she gazes back at him with an indefinable mixture of
confusion, sympathy, worry, and fear...fear for him.
The partners call the police, but Scully informs them
that Mulder is suffering from some type of seizure and needs
treatment prior to questioning. The detective seems a bit
suspicious. He asks Mulder if he knew the victims but
Mulder's answer to all his questions is that he can't
remember. The detective wants him down at the station but
Scully's lobbying for the hospital. He agrees but "offers"
Mulder a ride. Scully tells Mulder to say nothing until she
can look at the bodies and the forensic reports. While
examining the bodies, she finds a puncture wound on the head
of Amy Cassandra. It's at the top of the forehead, near the
hairline, and Scully asks the pathologist to also run a
craniotomy and histological exam.
Meanwhile, Mulder is in a holding cell being questioned
by the detective. He wants to know if Mulder wants to change
his story, the part about only possibly being in that house
as a kid. For starters, he tells Mulder his gun was the
murder weapon. He's also had the blood on Mulder's shirt
tested and it matches the blood type of both victims. Mulder
asks about the prints in the house but the detective seems
to be waiting for some other response. Mulder tells him he
won't get a confession because he doesn't remember anything.
The detective arrests him and reads him his rights. Mulder
gets a nifty orange jumpsuit and a visit from Scully who
says she's going to get him out of there.
Scully tells the detective that there's medical evidence
he should consider. Amy was found to have an anesthetic in
her blood called ketamine, a drug that can cause
hallucinations in humans. She says the drug is also in
Mulder's system and could explain his memory loss and other
symptoms. The detective feels the other evidence outweighs
the news about ketamine and doesn't budge on Mulder's
arrest. Mulder tells Scully she doesn't have to go the extra
mile for him. She's convinced of his innocence, saying it's
all too convenient and suspect.
As the detective takes Mulder to his cell and Scully is
leaving, we see a police officer walk into an empty cell and
pull out a picture of three women with the face of a man cut
out. We actually saw this man earlier in the episode in a
brief sequence where he sat at a table cutting his face out
of a stack of pictures with an exacto knife as blood seeped
down his forehead from a small puncture wound near his
hairline. Scully hears a gunshot as she exits, and rushes
back to the cell with the others, finding the officer dead
from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She finds the puncture
wound at his hairline and asks to talk to the detective
immediately. This is Scully in action, in her best
investigative form. An agent with a mission.
The detective and Scully search the officer's house,
finding all the pictures. He tells Scully the guy had been
demoted to a desk job recently and was thought of as a joke
by his co-workers because he believed in extraterrestrials.
Scully finds an "Abductee" magazine in the house with a
feature photo on the cover of Amy Cassandra. Scully tells
the detective that both the officer and Amy had a deep
puncture in the cranium going through to the brain. She says
the officer knew of Amy and somehow his suicide is linked to
her death. Scully thinks the Cassandras' deaths might not
have been murder but more like a suicide pact.
Meanwhile, Mulder is tossing and turning in his cell,
having another nightmare/flashback. CSM and Bill Mulder are
arguing as the young Mulder stands watching. His father
slams the door between them and Fox runs upstairs to
Samantha. Downstairs their parents are now fighting and Mrs.
Mulder keeps repeating, "Not Samantha." Fox looks down from
the loft and his father looks up and sees him watching, then
Mulder is awake.
When Scully arrives in the morning she is told that
Mulder kept everyone awake all night and into the morning
yelling for someone to talk to. The detective says he wants
to talk to Scully, that his memories are probably coming
back to him. His first words are that he didn't kill the
Cassandras and Scully agrees, saying she thinks she has
enough proof to get him out. She says it's beginning to look
like a murder-suicide which still doesn't explain why Mulder
was there. She tells him that she believes he contacted Amy
because he thought she was an alien abductee. Amy was
seeking psychiatric treatment that was supposed to be
effective in recovering her past. Scully thinks Amy and the
officer were suffering from a syndrome brought on by their
treatment that caused them to enter trance-like states
leading to vivid dreams of the past.
Scully gets Mulder arraigned and released and together
they go to visit Dr. Goldstein who was responsible for the
victims' treatment. They find Mulder's car in the lot so it
seems he's been there before. The doctor denies having met
Mulder but speaks freely of his attempt to help Amy access
repressed memories. He tells them he uses a method to
electrically stimulate the brain using light and sound. He
doesn't mention puncturing their craniums. Mulder asks if
this is an accepted form of medical treatment. Goldstein
says that it's unconventional but non-invasive. He must be
repressing the part about puncturing their cranium. The
doctor becomes agitated and very defensive about his ethics
and reputation when they ask if he had any indication that
his patients were suicidal. Scully holds eye contact with
Goldstein and says, "I know what you do," before she and
Mulder leave his office.
As they leave, Mulder says Goldstein is lying, that he
was here before with Amy. Scully says she thinks they were
both treated with the drug and the seizures and black-outs
are a result of the treatment that Goldstein administered.
In the parking lot, Mulder has another episode and sees the
face of his mother as she cries out, "My baby!" while being
shaken by CSM. When he recovers, he tells Scully, "I'm
fine." Despite this being HER favorite answer, she balks,
saying he doesn't belong at work. She tells him he needs to
be somewhere that he can be monitored because , as it
stands, he's a danger to himself as well as her. He asks for
the car keys and when she denies him, he tells her he
doesn't want the symptoms to go away. He wants to remember,
maybe at any cost. He thinks he has access to his past
memories that might reveal what happened to Samantha. He
wants the car keys so he can go to Connecticut to see his
mother and Scully finally agrees. But she's driving.
Walking right past his mother into the house without a
word, Mulder begins to drill his her in front of an
embarrassed Scully. With his head down, avoiding eye contact
like a truculent youth, Mulder accuses her of keeping
secrets from him. (Big surprise.) Turning to Scully for
help, Mrs. Mulder asks what is wrong with her son. Scully
tells her that he's undergone some treatment that he
believes has helped him to remember things.
MaMulder: Remember what? Fox: You told me that when they
took Samantha it was because you had to make a choice but
that's not how it happened. It wasn't your choice to make.
M: What do you want to hear from me? F: I want to know what
happened that night on Quonochontaug and I need to speak to
you privately. As they step into the next room, the anger is
already obvious in his mother's countenance and the way she
throws open the door. F: (defiantly) You had some kind of
relationship with him. M: Who? F: You know who. The man who
worked with my father. The man who came to you that night
when I was 12 and forced you to choose Samantha. M: No, Fox.
F: Yes! You betrayed my father. Your husband. M: Never! F:
How far back did it go? Mrs. Mulder delivers a well-earned
slap across Mulder's face. His mental state and possible
justification aside, he's out of line talking to his mother
this way in her home. M: How dare you . How dare you come
here and accuse me. F: WHO is my father?! M: What do you
want? To kill him again?! F: Just answer the question, Mom.
Just answer the question! M: I am your mother. And I will
not tolerate any more of your questions. As she walks out,
she tells Mulder he's bleeding and, reaching up, he finds
blood running down from a wound near his hairline.
When Mrs. Mulder rushes by Scully and up the stairs,
Scully goes to check on Mulder and finds the room empty.
He's gone out another door and ditched Scully, in his own
house. Mulder goes back to Goldstein's office that evening
and asks what was done to him. When Goldstein says he did
nothing wrong, Mulder points out that he put a hole in his
head. Goldstein tells him it was to deliver electrical
stimulation directly to the brain to trigger memory. Mulder
says he wants him to finish the job. Anyone who has been
blind to Mulder's slide from professionalism into obsession
over this season, can't overlook the extreme nature of
Mulder's current behavior. And of course, it gets worse
before it gets better.
Giving Mulder a shot of ketamine, the doctor helps him
into a dentist-type chair and puts headphones on him as
Mulder mutters, "I want to remember." Goldstein puts some
virtual reality-like glasses over Mulder's eyes then flips a
switch that begins sending flashes of light. Mulder sees
multiple flashes and bits of flashbacks. CSM drawing
Samantha's head down to his chest, CSM shaking Mrs. Mulder,
Bill Mulder slamming a door in his face, CSM calling him a
little spy. Basically, it's a collage of scattered memories
from his previous flashback hallucinations along with his
past recollections from the night of Samantha's abduction.
While Mulder is in the midst of this barrage, Goldstein puts
restraints on his arms and powers up what looks like a small
drill (!). Although we don't actually see it, the
implication is quite clear that Goldstein drills through
Mulder's cranium and into his brain. All sanctioned by the
patient, albeit a disturbed patient.
The poor ditched Scully has figured on the only place she
thinks Mulder will go and, of course, she's right. She calls
ahead to get the cops to Goldstein's office but when they
arrive they only find Goldstein cleaning his drill bit.
Mulder is gone. When Scully shows up, she learns that Mulder
has already left and she forces some information out of the
good doctor. He finally tells her that the last thing Mulder
said to him was that he was going to exorcise his demons.
Scully calls ahead to Quonochontaug to alert the police and
get them to the Mulder summer house, but Mulder beats them
to the scene and is already in the house when they arrive.
When Scully arrives, she tells the officer in charge that
Mulder is an armed federal agent in need of medical
attention. She says he is not himself. She tells him that
she's going in alone but wants him to instruct his men not
to shoot if Mulder flees the house. Then she pats the guy on
the butt, like she's breaking a huddle! Sorry, just a
useless factoid.
Scully enters the house and draws her gun. Better safe
than sorry. She calls to Mulder and in return hears, "Leave
me alone, Scully." He's sitting in a chair in the middle of
a room in a trace-like state, experiencing flashback
visions. "It's all falling into place," he manages to say
amidst his panting and gasping. Seeing the gun in his hand,
Scully asks him to put it down but he tells her not to try
to stop him. He wants these memories even as they are
destroying his mind. With visions of Samantha's face, then
CSM's, Mulder suddenly seems to snap awake and, bringing the
gun to bear on Scully, shouts, "Get away!" "Are you going to
shoot me, Mulder?" Scully asks. Mulder shakes his head in
the affirmative. Scully continues, "Is that how much this
means to you?" She tells him that he's been given a powerful
hallucinogen and doesn't know if these memories are really
his. "This is not the way to the truth, Mulder. You've got
to trust me." Mulder yells, "Just shut up!" Scully presses
on, saying, "Put the gun down. Let it go."
As we cut to the waiting police outside, there are
multiple gunshots as Mulder empties his gun. The cops break
for the house. As Mulder lowers the gun, we see Scully
standing behind him. He lowers his head and Scully comes up
and holds him from behind, placing her head on his bowed
back. The closed captions, but not the audio, has Mulder
saying, "I'm so tired. I need to know, Scully. I just need
to know."
A final voice-over from Scully as she types a report on
her laptop tells us that Mulder was cleared of any
wrongdoing in the deaths of the Cassandras. She says he
still has no memory of the events. His seizures have
subsided with no evidence of permanent brain damage. "But
I'm concerned that this experience will have a lasting
effect. Agent Mulder undertook this treatment hoping to lay
claim to his past. That by retrieving memories lost to him
he might finally understand the path he's on. But if that
knowledge remains elusive, and if it's only by knowing where
he's been that he can hope to understand where he's going,
then I fear Agent Mulder may lose his course and the truths
he's seeking from his childhood will continue to evade him,
driving him more dangerously forward in impossible pursuit."
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