Mulder is asleep on the couch in his apartment and awakens to see a red light on his ceiling. It's a playful, focused beam that wants him to follow.

Mulder gasps awake to find it was a dream but the realness impresses him enough that he looks up the name of the park in the phonebook and drives there in the early morning darkness.

He tells Scully he knows what happened to the girl and his explanation seems on point, down to the detail of a post-mortem removal of a small, heart-shaped piece of cloth from the front of the child's dress.

The case was called Paper Hearts because of the trophies Roche collected from the bodies.

Roche admitted to 13 murders but they never found the cloth hearts and Mulder always wanted to be able to count them and confirm the number of victims.

"I used to think that missing was worse than dead because you never knew what happened. But now that I know, I'm glad my wife's not here. She got luckier."

Inside the car's camper shell is a book, "Alice In Wonderland" and the hearts are safely tucked between the pages. When they find 16 hearts, Mulder thinks it's time to pay Roche a visit.

As he goes to get his father's gun, he is paralyzed by the sudden light pouring through the door but instead of an alien being silhouetted in the doorway, it is a man in a suit. It's John Lee Roche.

When Mulder presses him about Samantha, he is told to bring the hearts and maybe he'll be given more information. At this Mulder hauls off and punches Roche as he sits at the table.

Mulder asks Scully point blank, "Do you believe my sister Samantha was abducted by aliens?" Scully sighs and breaks eye contact and Mulder has his answer. He is now questioning all he has ever believed.

Mulder and Scully go back to see Roche and take him the hearts from the two unidentified victims. He covets them. M: Name them. R: I think you know one of them already. S: Prove it. Roche begins to describe in detail the scene at the Mulder residence the night that Sam was taken.

Mulder's obsession is unstoppable and in an agonized voice says, "Just help me, Scully." She allows her concern for her partner to win out and joins him in digging up the raw dirt with her bare hands. They find the small victim but the child is not Samantha.

Going against Scully's advice, and acting on his own, Mulder gets a removal order for Roche and we see them both on a flight to Boston.

Scully tries to express to Skinner the "uniqueness of the situation and its effect on Mulder." Skinner tells Scully, "You let me down."

Mulder has fooled him, tripped him up. He took Roche to his father's house in West Tisbury which was purchased after his parents' divorce instead of to the house in Chilmark where the abduction took place.

"I profiled you. I got inside your head. Maybe you got inside mine. Maybe some nexus or connection was formed between us and through that you got access to my memories of my sister Samantha. "

He pulls some keys out of his pocket, unlocks the door, and pulls Samantha safely out of the car. As he hugs the young Sam to him, he sees the red light on the pavement. It spells out one word...BYE.

As the knock comes again, he jumps from the table to find that he now wears the handcuffs and his prisoner is missing.

Where would Roche go? Scully finds his old address in Boston on Alice Street. Mulder says he's there. That's where he got the whole idea for "Alice In Wonderland".

Roche holds up the cloth heart. "You have one left. How are you going to find her without me? How sure are you it's not Samantha?" Roche seems to be easing down on the trigger so Mulder makes his choice and shoots Roche in the head.

S: Mulder, it's not Samantha. And whoever that little girl really is, we'll find her. M: How? S: I don't know...but I do know you. Why don't you go on home and get some sleep. Mulder laughs at the irony and Scully joins him in a small, sad laugh. She hugs him to her and leaves him to his solemn contemplation.

Paper Hearts

Not necessarily mytharc in the conspiracy sense but an episode that deals with Samantha's abduction. The current case forces Mulder to question his memories of her abduction and the truth of what he's always believed he witnessed.

The episode begins with a dream sequence incorporating an "Alice In Wonderland" theme which runs through the entire case and episode. Mulder is asleep on the couch in his apartment and awakens to see a red light on his ceiling. It's a playful, focused beam that wants him to follow. It occasionally spells out words (FOLLOW, MAD HAT) as it leads him outside to a park and finally to the body of a small girl. The light settles on her chest in the shape of a heart and, as Mulder watches, the body sinks into the ground. Mulder gasps awake to find it was a dream but the realness impresses him enough that he looks up the name of the park in the phonebook and drives there in the early morning darkness. With flashlight in hand, he walks to the location of his vision to find everything looks just as it did in his dream.

We see the next morning, Mulder has a forensics team sifting through the area and digging for the child's body. Scully arrives and asks Mulder what he's doing out there at five in the morning. When he explains she asks, "You're saying that you're out here because of something you saw in a dream?" The look of understanding and exasperation is clear on Mulder's face but it is obvious he has a gut instinct about this. His hunch pays off when the excavation uncovers the skeletal remains of a young girl. He tells Scully he knows what happened to the girl and his explanation seems on point, down to the detail of a post-mortem removal of a small, heart-shaped piece of cloth from the front of the child's dress. When Scully asks if he got this ALL from the dream, he says he knows this M.O. from one John Lee Roche. He says Roche killed thirteen 8-10 year old girls and this body brings the total to fourteen.

Back in the basement office, Mulder goes over the case file with Scully. The murders extended from 1979-1990. The case was called Paper Hearts because of the trophies Roche collected from the bodies. All the girls were kidnapped from their homes. Reggie Purdue (Young at Heart) brought Mulder onto the case to profile Roche and get into his head. Mulder's profile said the killer would be an ordinary man with a job like a salesman, used to gain people's confidence. His profile was on the mark. Roche was a vacuum salesman. He'd be giving his salespitch but really be checking out the kids in the house. Roche admitted to 13 murders but they never found the cloth hearts and Mulder always wanted to be able to count them and confirm the number of victims. Scully theorizes that Mulder's never stopped thinking about the case. That he had the information in his head all along and has now solved it in his sleep. She quotes Mulder, "A dream is an answer to a question we haven't learned how to ask."

Scully checks on the girl's identity and compares it to missing persons, concluding that the child was a young girl who disappeared in 1975. Mulder thinks this is too early to fit the timeframe of Roche's killings. When they confirm the identity with her surviving father, he says, "I used to think that missing was worse than dead because you never knew what happened. But now that I know, I'm glad my wife's not here. She got luckier." This must strike a chord with Mulder.

Mulder is now mildly obsessed with finding and counting the cloth hearts. He tracks them down to Roche's car, an El Camino which has been resold since his imprisonment. Inside the car's camper shell is a book, "Alice In Wonderland" and the hearts are safely tucked between the pages. When they find 16 hearts, Mulder thinks it's time to pay Roche a visit. They ask Roche to identify the last two victims and Roche says he has nothing to gain by doing that. "I understand you take this very personally," he says to Mulder. "You bring my hearts and give them back to me and I'll tell you everything you want to know."

As Mulder wearily reviews the evidence in his office, he sees the red light again. It moves across the wall and under the office door. When Mulder opens the door, he is cast into the past as the scene before him transforms into a night in 1973. It's his parents' house on the night his sister disappeared. We see a familiar scene with his sister and him playing Stratego but now the grown-up Mulder is filling the role of his younger self. As the Watergate hearings play in the background, the lights and power suddenly go out and the pictures on the walls rattle. "No. Not again," he shouts, telling Samantha to run. As he goes to get his father's gun, he is paralyzed by the sudden light pouring through the door but instead of an alien being silhouetted in the doorway, it is a man in a suit. It's John Lee Roche. Mulder jerks awake at his desk, shouting Samantha's name.

Mulder now questions his past memories and feels that one of the remaining cloth hearts may be Samantha's. He goes back to talk to Roche. He interviews him alone, though Scully is just outside with the guards. Roche wants his hearts but Mulder wants answers. Where was Roche on November 27, 1973...the night Sam was taken. Roche says he was selling vacuum cleaners that year and made a trip to Martha's Vineyard. He says he sold a vacuum cleaner to Mulder's dad. When Mulder presses him about Samantha, he is told to bring the hearts and maybe he'll be given more information. At this Mulder hauls off and punches Roche as he sits at the table. The guard comes in claiming to have seen nothing but Scully says, "I did."

As they exit the prison, she tells Mulder that it was only a dream. But Mulder believes it may have been buried in his subconscious. Scully tells him that Roche could have found out information on Mulder from the prison library or the Internet. She's even checked the records and Roche logged on to the Internet a day earlier. "He is committing emotional blackmail and you are letting him." Mulder asks Scully point blank, "Do you believe my sister Samantha was abducted by aliens?" Scully sighs and breaks eye contact and Mulder has his answer. He is now questioning all he has ever believed. He knows he needs to find out the truth. Scully seems very worried about Mulder's mental state.

Mulder goes to his mother's house in Connecticut. He asks her if she recognizes the fabric hearts which she doesn't. She trots out her favorite answer about her "bad memory" and adds the extra guilt-inducement about her stroke. He drops that line of questioning and gives her a hug. But he can't restrain himself from asking if his dad ever bought her a vacuum cleaner. She answers "Yes" which sends Mulder scrambling for the box only to find it's the model Roche mentioned. Proof positive to the mind of one obsessed.

Skinner finds out about Mulder's indiscretion at the prison but not from Scully. He says Mulder has no more access to Roche or the case. Mulder adamantly says Roche may have information about Samantha and Scully backs him up having done some research of her own. Skinner allows Mulder to remain on the case but warns him to tread lightly and tells Scully to see that he does.

Mulder and Scully go back to see Roche and take him the hearts from the two unidentified victims. He covets them. M: Name them. R: I think you know one of them already. S: Prove it. Roche begins to describe in detail the scene at the Mulder residence the night that Sam was taken. He says he was watching from the window. M: If that's true, tell me where my sister is. R: Pick her out. (Pushing the two cloth hearts toward Mulder) You choose the one that was your sister and I'll tell you where she is. Roche says either way they identify a victim so Mulder picks a heart.

Mulder and Scully arrive at the site specified by Roche and find "Mad Hat" carved into a rock. As Mulder begins to dig, Scully tries to stop him telling him they should get a forensics team out there to treat the crime scene right. But Mulder's obsession is unstoppable and in an agonized voice says, "Just help me, Scully." She allows her concern for her partner to win out and joins him in digging up the raw dirt with her bare hands. They find the small victim but the child is not Samantha. Before Scully delivers the results to Mulder, we see him alone with the small, skeletal remains in the autopsy bay. As he runs his hand along the collar bone, he finds for himself that it's not Sam since she broke her collar bone at the age of six. Scully arrives to confirm that it's not a match. Mulder replies, "It's somebody though." This scene completely captures Mulder's pain and suffering and his need to know.

They go back to Roche for the identity of the victim. He remembers the name and the smallest details. Mulder gives him the final heart and Roche says, "That's your sister." But when asked where the body is, he says Mulder wants to know a lot more than that. He needs details, to be shown...lead through. Nothing less will satisfy Mulder at this point. Mulder says that Roche just wants to get out of prison. Roche agrees with this assessment but says more than that, he can't wait to see Mulder's face. Scully is outraged. She tells Roche all he'll see is the inside of his cell and that he's going to rot there. Scully tells Mulder the last thing they should do is give Roche what he wants.

Going against Scully's advice, and acting on his own, Mulder gets a removal order for Roche and we see them both on a flight to Boston. Roche makes a request to use the facilities and manages to slip Mulder's escort. Before Mulder can get to him, he has found a young girl on the plane and is crouching in the aisle talking to her. Meanwhile, Scully is reporting Mulder's actions and absence to a pissed-off Skinner. She tells him she feels they're headed to Martha's Vineyard. She tries to express to Skinner the "uniqueness of the situation and its effect on Mulder." Skinner tells Scully, "You let me down." I guess her duties now include being baby-sitter to Mulder. Doesn't seem fair of Skinner.

Mulder takes Roche to his old house and walks him through the night of November 27th. Roche gives details that coincide with Mulder's memory of that night. Watching the house, seeing the parents leave, the kids playing Stratego, cutting the power and letting himself into the house. But Mulder has fooled him, tripped him up. He took Roche to his father's house in West Tisbury which was purchased after his parents' divorce instead of to the house in Chilmark where the abduction took place.

Mulder thinks that somehow Roche got inside his dreams. M: I profiled you. I got inside your head. Maybe you got inside mine. Maybe some nexus or connection was formed between us and through that you got access to my memories of my sister Samantha. And you used them against me for this. R: You're just resisting me. M: And you're in the wrong house, you stupid son of a bitch. You were never here you liar.

Mulder's heard enough explanations and excuses. He checks them into a motel until the first morning flight. With Roche asleep and handcuffed to the bed frame, Mulder sits in the dark with the evidence bag containing the final heart. Suddenly he hears a faint voice from outside calling his name. "Fox...Fox," the 8-year old voice of Samantha cries. She is outside locked in an El Camino, the kind of car Roche used to have in 1973. He runs out to the car and sees Sam inside trying to get out as the engine revs. He pulls some keys out of his pocket, unlocks the door, and pulls Samantha safely out of the car. As he hugs the young Sam to him, he sees the red light on the pavement. It spells out one word...BYE. As the El Camino's engine revs, he spins around and finds that Sam is no longer in his arms as the car speeds away. He hears a knock and wakes to realize it was a dream. The keys he used to unlock the car door in his dream must have been used to set Roche free from his handcuffs since Roche is nowhere to be found. As the knock comes again, he jumps from the table to find that he now wears the handcuffs and his prisoner is missing.

Scully and Skinner were the ones Mulder heard knocking. Roche has taken the cloth heart, Mulder's badge, and his phone. When asked for ideas on where Roche may be headed, Mulder remembers the small girl on the plane. He calls for a passenger manifest from the flight but is told that an Agent Mulder already called 10 minutes ago. Roche has already grabbed the girl from her daycare posing as "Agent Mulder from the FBI". M: Sorry Scully, you were right. He was playing me the whole time. S: You don't think he took Samantha? M: None of that really matters now, does it?

Where would Roche go? Scully finds his old address in Boston on Alice Street. Mulder says he's there. That's where he got the whole idea for "Alice In Wonderland". When they get there the apartment's empty. As Mulder looks out the window, he sees the busyard and realizes this is where Roche took all his victims. Mulder runs up and down the rows of buses until he detects some movement and locates the bus. As he boards, he finds Roche sitting behind the young girl with Mulder's gun pointed at her back.

R: I'm beginning to believe we do share that nexus you spoke of. We always seem to find each other. As Mulder approaches, Roche says he will shoot. He doesn't want to go back to prison. He holds up the cloth heart. R: You have one left. How are you going to find her without me? How sure are you it's not Samantha? Roche seems to be easing down on the trigger so Mulder makes his choice and shoots Roche in the head.

Back in the basement office, Scully finds Mulder sitting alone at his desk. She tells him that the dye analysis on the heart's fabric shows manufacture between 1969 and 1974. Other than that, they couldn't determine more. S: Mulder, it's not Samantha. And whoever that little girl really is, we'll find her. M: How? S: I don't know...but I do know you. Why don't you go on home and get some sleep. Mulder laughs at the irony and Scully joins him in a small, sad laugh. She hugs him to her and leaves him to his solemn contemplation. As the episode ends, Mulder gently places the final cloth heart in his desk drawer.