The X-Files: Goblins

TWENTY-TWO

“Vincent?” Scully gripped the dashboard as Mulder squealed out of the parking lot. The Caddy took a second to grip the slick tarmac and soon lost the Royal Baron in a swirling, twisting mist. “Officer Maddy Vincent?”

Webber and Andrews followed behind, their car nothing more than a smear of headlights.

Despite the storm, Mulder didn’t bother to check his speed. Either what traffic there was got out of his way, or it didn’t, it was their choice. He had a difficult enough time seeing through the rain.

“It’s why Carl wanted to talk to her,” he explained. “He wanted what he thought she knew about who was what, where, at the time of the killings.” He grunted as the car threatened to fishtail. “Who else knows where all the cops will be, Scully? Who else knew where we would be yesterday?”

“Mulder, that’s not enough.”

He knew that. “Watch your back.”

“Huh?”

“The goblin said ‘Watch your back’ to me, out there in the woods. Just before I was clobbered. This morning, on the way back from Tonero’s, Vincent told Spike to watch his back.” He glanced at her. “The same voice, Scully. It was the same voice.”

He plowed through a lane-wide puddle, sending a wave soaring over the shoulder onto someone’s front lawn.

Ahead, a pickup doused the windshield with backspray, and he cursed as he set the wipers to their highest speed.

It was almost enough.

At the corner of his vision he saw her shift so she could watch him and the road at the same time. “The makeup,” she said, recognition hitting home. “The calamine lotion. It’s—”

He listened to her mumble to herself, then catch her breath as he pressed on the horn and rocketed past the truck.

She had caught it now; she had caught the scent.

“It’s breaking down.” She was thinking aloud. “Whatever treatment they were giving her is breaking down. If… if it works correctly, she ought to be able to revert to normal color with no residual effects. It isn’t happening. Mulder, it isn’t happening, and she has to hide it somehow.”

He had no argument.

The Project had failed; he guessed it wasn’t the first time. He also suspected that Elkhart and Tymons had come closer than they ever had before, which was why the doctor and the major were packing to leave.

They were going to try again.

And he still couldn’t shake the image of shadow armies, sliding through the night.

Another car ahead, its taillights flaring red as the driver pumped his brakes. Mulder grunted and swerved quickly into the other lane without reducing speed, and frantically spun the wheel right when the blinding bright headlights of an oncoming van blurred across the windshield.

It was too late to slow down.

He swung around the leading car on its right, fighting the wheels’ stubborn inclination to take them straight into the woods, ignoring the frightened, angry blare of the other car’s horn. His side began to burn. The Caddy jounced through a pothole, and he was on the road again.

“Mulder,” Scully said calmly, “we can’t help anyone if we’re dead.”

He stared at her in near panic. “Jesus!” He slapped the wheel with a palm. “Elly! If she’s cleaning up… Elly!”

“But how?”

“Vincent’s the dispatcher. All she has to do is call — who cares with what excuse? — and Spike is gone on some fool’s errand. And Elly is alone.”

He swung to the shoulder and braked, was out with the engine still running, instantly drenched and waving his arms. The car he had just passed swept by and honked loud and long as it emptied a puddle onto his legs. But Webber saw him and pulled up, Andrews rolling down her window before the car had fully stopped.

Mulder grabbed the door and leaned in. “Get to the station Hank. Find out where Vincent is, go there, and wait.”

“Vincent?” Webber said incredulously. “You’re kidding. Vincent?”

“Just do it, Hank,” he ordered. He turned, and turned back. “And be careful. If Scully’s right and she’s gone off because something’s gone wrong, she definitely won’t hesitate to cut a couple of FBI throats.”

There was no time for details. He jumped back into the Caddy and pushed the accelerator all the way down. The rear wheels spun, kicking pebbles and mud before they found traction and leap onto the blacktop again.

Webber’s car had already vanished into the rain.

Elly Lang jumped when a gust of wind rattled the bay window. But she wouldn’t panic. She had her spray can, she had the cane with the large ivory knob Officer Silber had found in her bedroom closet, and she had his promise he would be back in less than ten minutes.

Still, she was frightened.

The storm had come so suddenly, after so long a wait, and the light had dimmed so fast, that it was hard to believe it was only a few minutes past noon.

It wasn’t, she told herself; not really.

It was midnight.

Time for the goblins to make their rounds.

Shadows snaked down the wall behind her, over her, while the rush of water in the eaves sounded too much like thunder.

She had been told to leave the lamp on, but soon after Silver left, she had turned it off. It was better this way. She could see outside better, and she hoped it would be harder for someone to see in.

The window rattled again.

The rain fell harder, and pellets of hail shot-gunned against the panes.

I’m ready, she thought; I’m ready.

And then she wondered if she had locked the back door.

Rosemary Elkhart stood in the middle of her living room and decided it was hopeless. She hadn’t been here five minutes, had barely taken off her coat, when Joseph had called, demanding reassurance that he wouldn’t be burned, that his reputation would be intact, that no one would find Tymons’ body in the woods. She had done her best, but second thoughts changed her mind after his third call.

He was hopeless.

After all this time, after all the bases and posts and installations they had been on, working through the kinks and dead ends of Leonard’s discovery, Major Tonero had become, virtually on the night of their success, hopeless.

And a hell of a pain in the ass.

Worse; she had been around him long enough to know what that meant — cut your losses, cover your ass, offer the sacrifice, and start again somewhere else.

With someone else.

She looked with regret at the suitcases waiting near the door. To give him his due, he had bought her a lot of nice things, jewelry and clothes, some of which she had begun to convert to cash as soon as it became apparent that this phase of the project, while not perfect, was nearing its end.

A girl, she thought, can’t be too careful.

Cover your ass.

Cut your losses.

And something else:

Travel light.

She picked up the bag at her feet, made sure Leonard’s disks were inside, then zipped it closed and reached for her coat. A cab to Philly would be expensive, but she considered it an investment. God knows there were plenty of private businesses out there, not necessarily in this country, who would be more than willing to learn what she knew.

She checked the bag again, recognizing her nervousness, and reminded herself that somehow, between here and the airport, she’d have to lose the gun.

“Okay,” she said, and smiled at the room. “Okay.”

At the moment she didn’t give a damn for Madeline Vincent. The woman would have to learn to fend for herself. For what little time she had left.

She hadn’t taken two steps when someone knocked on the door.

Mulder swore and slapped the steering wheel angrily when storm-slowed traffic finally forced his speed down.

Dana didn’t scold. She had been infected by his urgency as well, to the extent that she lowered her window and tried to see if there was a way he could pass again on the right. Parked cars lined the curbs, however, for as far as she could see, and she didn’t see suggesting he use the sidewalk as a lane.

If she did, he’d do it.

“Two blocks,” she told him. “Just two blocks.”

Equally frustrating was the lack of communication between here and the others. If she had a radio, she could have called ahead to Hawks and double-checked on Webber, and on Silber’s being at the apartment.

She sighed and opened her bag, to be sure her weapon was loaded and ready.

Her hand touched something else.

Oh God, she thought, and debated for nearly a full minute before making up her mind.

The drum of rain on the roof forced her to raise her voice: “Mulder—”

“I wish I could fly,” he said, glaring at the windshield as if that would give his vision a better chance. As it was, the rain was so hard, with the wind blowing now, that it seemed as if the street had been invaded by drifting fog.

“Mulder, listen.”

He nodded. “Okay. Sorry.”

“The shooter.”

“What? Now?” He shook his head, and raised his hand to use the horn, changed his mind and throttled the steering wheel instead.

“Yes. Now.” She tossed a sprig of pine onto the dashboard, and waited for him to see it. When he looked, she said, “It was caught under the car. Hank’s car. I found it when we were at Elly’s.”

He was bewildered and lifted a shoulder. “So?”

“So Mrs. Radnor only spoke with Licia for five or ten minutes. So Licia has been fighting you every inch of this investigation. So Hank and I are the only ones who have used that car, and I know damn well I didn’t hit or run over any tree.” She stopped. Looked outside. “Hawks said they found the spot where the shooter had backed off the road into the woods. It wasn’t a clear area.” Her hands danced an apology over her lap. “I didn’t read her notes, Mulder. She said she had them, I even watched her put them in her briefcase… but I didn’t read them. And she didn’t bring them to your room.”

“Scully—”

“I screwed up.” Her hands again. “Damnit, I screwed up.”

“Nope,” he said, rocking back and forth, body English for the car. “If I was dead, then you would have screwed up.” She saw the grin. “Then I’d have to haunt you.”

“Mulder, that’s not funny.”

“But you don’t believe in ghosts and goblins.”

Hail bounced off the hood.

She jumped when a car honked behind them.

“So,” he said, “what do we do?”

“We take care of business,” she said without hesitation. “And when that’s done, we take care of more business.”

He nodded, groaned when traffic came to a complete halt, and finally unsnapped his seat belt. “Take the car.”

She reached out to grab his arm, but she was too late. “Mulder!”

He stood in the middle of the street, rain dripping into his eyes. He pointed. “I can’t wait, Scully. I can’t. Just…” He flapped the hand helplessly. “Just come after me as fast as you can.”

He was gone, the cars behind discovered their horns, and she slid awkwardly into the driver’s seat, all the while watching him race to the sidewalk and around the next corner.

If there were any rules left in the book that he hadn’t broken, she couldn’t think of them.

All she could think of was, watch your back, Mulder. For God’s sake, watch your back.