The X-Files: Goblins

FIFTEEN

Andrews wasn’t in the room when Dana returned, and she decided to take some of her own advice and scrub some of the afternoon away. Maybe some time alone would help her figure out the purpose of today’s attack. So little of it made any real sense. If it had been meant as intimidation, as a warning to stay away and drop the investigation — for whatever reason — it certainly wouldn’t work, and surely whoever was behind it knew that as well; if it had been meant to stop them permanently, that had failed, too, and she couldn’t convince herself that the shooter hadn’t been arming to kill.

“Unless,” she thought aloud, “he wasn’t an expert.”

She pushed a hand back through her hair, and rubbed the back of her neck. There had been a lot of wind, lots of leaves and things blowing around. Branches moving, targets moving. Plus, they had been shooting back.

So maybe, she thought, just maybe, they had gotten a little lucky.

That particular idea unnerved her more than anything. Especially when she realized that the shooter really could have killed her and Webber at practically any time before they had ducked into the trees.

They had been in the open far longer than Mulder.

But he hadn’t.

The more she thought about it, the more she believed he had only been trying, and succeeding, to pin them down. To take them out of the game as much as he could.

What he had actually been trying to do was put a bullet in Mulder.

The man at the Jefferson Memorial:

you have no protection, Mr. Mulder, you still have no protection.

“Oh, brother,” she whispered. “Oh, brother.”

Think. She needed a clear head to think this through, or she’d end up just as paranoid as her partner.

Once stripped and in the shower, however, it wasn’t the shooter she concentrated on — for some reason, she couldn’t stop thinking about Mulder’s other assailant. The explanations she had given him were more than likely correct, or at the very least, parameters. Which did not, under any circumstances, include anything like a goblin.

And yet…

She made a noise much like a growl.

And yet there had been times past when she had been forced to the unwelcome conclusion that explanations could very well be only rationalizations in disguise.

She growled again and turned away from the shower head, letting the hot water slam against her back and splash over her shoulders. Her eyes half-closed. Her breathing steadied as she willed the memory of gunfire to a safer distance.

Steam rose gently around her, condensing on the narrow pebble-glass window in the white-tiled wall, running down the translucent sliding door.

She felt nothing but the water.

She heard nothing but the water.

The perfect time, she thought suddenly, for good old Norman Bates to slip into the bathroom, knife held high and at the ready. Effectively deaf and vision blurred, lulled by the comfort of steam and heat, she wouldn’t know it was over until the end had begun; she wouldn’t know, because all she could see was a smeared shadow on the door.

Standing there.

Watching.

Biding its time.

The shadow, of course, was the drape of bath towels over their rack by the door.

She knew that.

No; she assumed that.

Her eyes closed briefly as she damned Mulder for sparking her imagination; nevertheless, she couldn’t stop herself from holding her breath to brace herself, and opening the shower door, just a little.

Just to be sure.

“Mulder, I swear I’m going to strangle you,” she whispered in relief and mild anger when she saw the towels, and the rack, and not a single place in the tiny room for anyone to hide.

The steam flowed over and around her, twisting in slow spectral ribbons, creating the momentary illusion she had stepped into a light fog.

She shivered.

The room was chilly.

And the steam that should have filled it flowed and twisted, because the bathroom door was open.

He didn’t want to sleep.

There was too much to do.

But the pain had finally ebbed, weariness taking its place, and he couldn’t keep his thoughts in an orderly line. They drifted, fading and dancing.

mulder, watch your back.

Patches of skin like snapshots, flashing too rapidly for him to focus on, barklike skin without the roughness of bark, without the texture, although he couldn’t really be sure because contact had been so brief.

Mulder

The voice was muffled by sleep and time, yet it sounded maddeningly familiar despite the fact that it belonged to no one he knew; a roughness here, too, and forced, as if the speaker, the goblin, was either suffering low-level pain or hadn’t yet gotten used to the voice that it had.

Watch your back.

And if it was true, that he had to watch his back, why hadn’t he been killed, like the others?

I don’t know, he answered, but the voice and the nightmare wouldn’t stop.

Rosemary couldn’t take it anymore. Her knees buckled, and she sagged weakly to the floor, her back against the elevator wall.

“Are you all right?”

Hoarse, painful to listen to.

She nodded.

“What happened?”

Gone, all gone, she thought; everything’s gone and Joseph will kill me and it’s gone, damnit, all gone.

“Dr. Elkhart, what’s wrong?”

She raised her head and gestured defeat.

“Dr. Elkhart, say something. You’re scaring me.”

“My dear,” she said with a brittle bitter laugh, “you have no idea what scared is.”

A shuffling, a shifting, a soft hand brushing across her ankle.

“Can I help?”

She made to shake her head, and stopped. She stared at the elevator door, seeing the two of them, reflections twisted out of recognition in the polished steel, and before long she felt her lips pull back into what might have been a smile.

“Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, dear, I think you can.”

Scully’s purse was on the floor between the toilet and the tub. She reached through the gap and fumbled it open, pulled out her gun, and straightened, staring intently at the bathroom door, still open about an inch. Her left hand shut the water off; her right wrist slid the shower door away.

Once on the bath mat, she grabbed a towel and wrapped it hastily around her; it was no protection at all, but it made her feel less vulnerable. Her teeth chattered and her lower Up quivered as the room’s chill raised a pattern of gooseflesh on her skin.

She switched off the light.

Water dripped too loudly from the shower head.

The only illumination in the outer room came from the brass lamp on the nightstand between the two beds, just as she had left it.

There was no sound or movement.

Using her left hand, she opened the door as slowly as she could, crouching low until she could slip over the threshold and duck behind the nearest bed. The gun barrel swept the room just ahead of her, but no one else was there.

Don’t assume, she told herself; never assume.

Feeling like a jerk now—never assume, Scully, never assume—she half-crawled around the footboard to be sure her visitor wasn’t hiding between the beds. Once satisfied she was indeed alone, she sat on the mattress and tried to remember if, maybe, she hadn’t left the bathroom door open by mistake; or maybe she had closed it, but the latch didn’t catch; or maybe Andrews had returned, heard the shower, and decided Scully didn’t need to be disturbed.

But if that were true, if she had heard the shower, why had she opened the door?

A trickle of water slipped out of her hair and down her spine.

“All right,” she said aloud, as much for the sound as the comfort. “All right. It’s all right, you’re alone.”

That didn’t stop her from turning on the hanging lamp over the table to help banish the room’s shadows, or from drying off as fast as she could, with the bathroom door wide open. Once that was accomplished, dressing was quick and easy — blouse, skirt, matching wine jacket. By then she was almost calm, and she looked in the dresser mirror as she smoothed the blouse over her chest, deciding that one of these days, Bureau or not, she would get herself a fashion life.

Back into the bathroom, then, to wield a brush through her hair, using her reflection as a sounding board as she practiced telling Mulder what his stupid notions were doing to her. It didn’t help. Her reflection just gave her the same sardonic look he would when he heard. If he heard. By the time she was finished, she had decided this was something her partner did not need to know.

A lopsided smile sent her into the front room, where she started and gasped when she spotted someone pacing her at the corner of her vision.

“Listen carefully,” Rosemary said urgently. She stabbed a thumb at the door. “He’s trying to destroy us. Tymons. He’s afraid, and he’s a coward. He doesn’t care about you, me, or the Project. He wants… he wants us all dead.”

A silence then, and she held her breath, praying.

“He didn’t approve of me from the beginning, you know.” Still hoarse, now with sullen rage. “He thought I was too… emotional.”

Rosemary agreed silently.

A giggle: “He’s really scared of me, you know.”

“Yes. I know.”

The giggling stopped. “What can I do? I’m not stupid, Dr. Elkhart. I know what’ll happen if you stop helping me. What can I do?”

Rosemary tried to think, tried to set the priorities that would keep her intact.

“Do you need him? Dr. Tymons?”

There wasn’t a second’s hesitation: “No. No, we don’t.”

“Others?”

“Three,” she said without having to think. Then concern made her stand when a wrenching cough made her wonder if they could pull it off. “Can you do it, dear? Are you well enough?”

“I can do it. Really. But it’ll take time. A couple of days, maybe. I can’t—”

The coughing increased, grinding into spasms that made Rosemary reach out a hand, grip a shoulder, and squeeze until it was over.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, rubbing now, soothing. “It’s going to be okay.”

And she believed it. It would be all right. Everything would be all right.

Then she spoke the names.

Scully’s right hand was already reaching for the gun on the bed when she realized the movement was only her reflection in the dresser mirror.

Too damn many mirrors around here, she thought sourly, and pointed at it as if to order it to find someone else to scare.

She froze.

Something moved on the wall behind her. A slight movement she would have missed had she simply glanced in that direction.

She watched, waiting, thinking maybe it had only been a shadow cast by a passing car.

It moved again, and she turned and made her way between the beds.

A moth fluttered its wings slowly and began to make its way toward the ceiling.

Fascinated, licking her lips, she climbed onto the bed, balanced herself, and looked away.

Looked back, and it took a full second before she could find it again.

“Well,” she whispered.

A tentative smile came and went.

Then she bounced on the mattress, just high enough to snatch the moth away in a loose fist. Feeling its wings beat against her palm. Whispering to it as she opened the door and flung it away. Standing back, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.

She needed another test, and footsteps outside made her think fast.

With the hanging lamp on again, the night-stand lamp off, she sat on the far bed and pushed herself back until she rested against the headboard, legs crossed at the ankles. She could barely see herself then, but she could see just the same.

A key turned in the lock.

She heard it but didn’t move.

The door opened and Licia stepped in. “Scully?”

Dana opened her mouth, but kept silent.

Andrews headed for the bathroom. “Scully, you in there? Look, are you going to leave me with that boy all night? Damn, you should hear—” She pushed the door open and cut herself off, sighed, turned, and yelped when she noticed Scully sitting on the bed, pointing at her.

“Jesus!” Her hand splayed across her chest. “God Almighty, Scully, I didn’t see you there. Why the hell didn’t you say something?”

Scully smiled. “You didn’t see me.”

Andrews scowled. “Of course not. It was dark. You’re sitting in the dark.”

Scully pushed at the hanging lamp. “Not really. But you see me now, right?”

Andrews didn’t know how to answer, her lips working without a sound. Finally she said, “Well… yes. I guess so.” She laughed at herself. “Of course I do. The light was—”

Scully pushed off the bed, shoved her gun into her purse, and reached for her coat. “Go get Hank,” she said. “Meet me at Mulder’s.”

“Again?”

“Again.” Scully pushed her gently but firmly outside. “God help me, but I have a feeling Mulder is right.”

Andrews gaped. “Goblins? About the goblins?”

“Something like that.” She couldn’t believe she had just said it. “Yes, something like that.”