The X-Files: Goblins

TWENTY-FOUR

With a silent sigh he stared at the ground, at raindrops splashing out of the grass. Then he looked over his shoulder as he turned without haste, blinking the rain out of his eyes. The umbrella had been discarded. She sat on the bench back, wearing a long black coat that reached halfway down her shins, her bare feet on the seat, braced to spring. Her short dark hair was matted into a skullcap, her large dark eyes slightly crinkled, as if she were smiling.

Her left hand lay on her thigh, fingers drumming out of rhythm; her right hand held a bayonet, and he could see the gleam of the sharpened edge as she tapped it against her knee.

It was odd, this meeting. Like two friends coming across each other on a rainy day in the park. Only one of them, before it ended, was going to die.

She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think so, Mulder. Not me, anyway.”

“You can read minds, too?”

“No. But you have that gun in your coat, and I have—” She held up the bayonet. “It’s not hard to figure out.”

The water had taken most of her makeup off, and had washed the white lotion from the backs of her hands. The skin was mottled as if it were dying and ready to slough away in the rain, but it wasn’t just gray and black. He could see blotches of pale green, dark green, and near her toes a smear of something almost red.

It could have been blood.

“Where’s Elly?”

Maddy shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried to get in the back door, and the next thing I knew I heard the front door slam.” She laughed so hoarsely it made his throat ache. “I didn’t know an old lady could run so damn fast. I would have gone after her, but as luck would have it, you showed up.”

Her eyes shifted away, shifted back.

“Tell her to be careful, Mulder,” Maddy suggested. “You may be fast, and a bullet is real fast, but it won’t stop me from doing what I have to, understand?”

“I heard,” Scully said from somewhere behind him.

He spread his arms. “It’s silly, you know. I die, you die, it isn’t going to do you any good.”

Her voice deepened. “I’m already dying.” She held out her hand. “It doesn’t work anymore.”

He couldn’t believe it when her fingers shifted, flesh to splotchy green to smooth cream, and back. Except two of her knuckles stayed dark far longer.

She giggled. “What a bitch, huh? Instead of getting famous, I’m getting dead.”

He didn’t know what to say. Somehow, “You’re under arrest for murder” sounded awfully stupid.

She giggled again, and that was when he saw the madness — in the tilt of her head, the movement of her eyes.

“Why?” he asked, gesturing at her skin. “Didn’t you know how dangerous it was?”

“Sure.” She waved the bayonet idly. “But do you know how much a cop in a burg like this makes? A dispatcher? Do you know how much that bitch gave me every month?” She laughed and rocked back, rocked forward quickly, bracing herself again. “She had pictures, I saw them, I can read, I knew the risk. Besides…” Her voice faded.

He waited, not moving when she began to toy with the coat’s buttons, opening them, closing them, opening some and leaving them.

She wore no clothes beneath the coat, and that didn’t surprise him. For what she could do, and had to do, clothes would have been a problem.

What he needed now was for Scully to get into position to cover him when he made his move. He had to. He couldn’t stand here, waiting for her to decide it was time, and he wasn’t about to let her go. No matter how sorry for her he felt. Which he did as she began to ramble about the tests in the room below the hospital, about the solution baths and the injections, about spying on her friends and on strangers and—

“—feeling such a sense of goddamn power, Mulder. Power.” She grinned; her teeth were brown and black. She whispered, “Power.”

“Maddy,” he said, “don’t do this.”

“Oh, knock it off,” she snapped, straightening, the bayonet catching silver light from the rain. “You can’t appeal to my better nature. I don’t have one anymore. You can’t offer me a cure. You, and you,” she shouted to Scully, “can’t offer me a damn thing.”

“How about living a while longer?”

She laughed, and brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “Who’s going to stop me, you? Her?”

“I can bet Elly’s called the police by now. They take one look at you, they won’t stop to talk.”

“Big deal. I’ll be gone.” She bounced a little on her rump. “Don’t you know I’m the Invisible Woman?”

Her eyes again, shifting, frowning. Scully had moved to his left and was moving to get behind her. One step at a time.

“She’s not fast enough, you know.”

He lifted his right hand. “Fast enough, if she has to be.”

Maddy tensed.

He knew it was coming, and as soon as he recognized it, the calm finally returned.

The wind nudged her, and she hugged herself, then slipped off the coat.

He only just managed to keep his expression from reacting to the sight of her, skin rough in one place, seemingly raw in another, dark clouds of color rippling across the ridged plane of her stomach.

“You know something?” she said, licking her lips, gauging distance.

“What?” He kept his voice quiet and steady.

“I learned a lot from that bitch. I’m going to tell her that before she dies.”

“Like what? What can you learn from killing people?”

She grinned. “That I like it.”

He saw her toes flex.

“Please,” he said, just before she giggled. Just before she jumped.

There was no time to pull his gun from his pocket. He twisted away from the blade and, at the same time, fired through the coat, lost his footing in the slippery grass and fell on his back.

Maddy screamed when she landed on her hands and knees, spun around, and tried to stand.

“Stop!” Scully ordered, rushing up, aiming low.

Mulder couldn’t stand, couldn’t move; he could only watch as Maddy Vincent feinted with the blade, then tried to run-crawl at him.

“Stop!” Scully yelled.

Maddy toppled onto one shoulder as if someone had put a boot in her back, and screamed again, stabbed the ground, and slumped whimpering into the mud.

As Mulder pushed himself to his feet, as Scully braced herself behind the woman, he saw the blood seep out from under her arm.

It didn’t look black at all.

It looked red, and it didn’t stop.

He leaned over and took the bayonet from her hand, held it close to his eyes for a moment and placed it on the bench. Scully pressed three fingers to the side of the woman’s neck, then checked her wrist. She rose awkwardly, a hand pushing through her hair, and Mulder took off his coat and spread it over the goblin’s body.

He stared at it for a long while, until he laughed once, sharply, realizing he had been waiting for her, like the Invisible Man, to return to normal, now that the adventure was finally done.

But she didn’t.

She just lay there.

Mulder didn’t know how long it took to answer the questions, for Scully to make sure the body would be placed in the right hands for the proper examinations, for the cold to finally leave him, for him to finally feel dry.

But it was after eleven that night before he was able to sit in the Queen’s Inn and stare at the plate of pancakes in front of Hank Webber.

“Please,” Hank said. “Don’t say it’s amazing.”

“It is, but I won’t.”

Scully was at the counter, ordering coffee and tea, and finding out just what the cook would make this late on Saturday night. Mulder waited until her back was turned, then lifted a finger to get Hank’s attention.

“Protest not,” he said. “Don’t insult me with denials. But how many times have you called Douglas since we’ve arrived, to tell him how many times I didn’t follow the book.”

Webber almost choked, but he managed to hold up his fork and say, “Just once.”

“What?”

He looked embarrassed. “I couldn’t. I mean… I like you. And I didn’t see that you were doing anything really wrong.”

Mulder grinned as he stretched his arm across the back of the seat. “Webber, I don’t care — that’s damn amazing.” He looked out the window, but all he saw was the night and the rain. “You know that Douglas is probably a plant, don’t ask me by whom, and he probably won’t be there when we get back. You know you’ll probably be transferred somewhere else once we get back and the paperwork is done.”

“Sure. I figured. But hell, it was fun while it lasted.”

Mulder laughed, a little sadly, because he knew poor old Hank probably wouldn’t be with the Bureau for very long. “Fun” wasn’t exactly the way to describe the way it worked.

“And by the way,” he said, “in all the excitement… thanks.”

Webber waved it away. “Not needed, Mulder. I was just doing what I had to, you know?”

And he blushed.

Scully slid in then, clucked at Webber’s choice of a meal, and fussed with her napkin while she waited for her order. “You do realize, Mulder, don’t you, that that was an incredibly lucky shot. By all rights, you should be dead.”

He knew that. He had especially known that when he had seen the rent across the front of his coat.

The blade had come a lot closer than he’d thought; it had sliced clear through the cloth.

“Don’t ever try that again.”

“Believe me,” he said. “I won’t.”

They ate, then, in companionable, weary silence, interrupted only by a phone call he took at the register. When he returned to the booth, he only said, “They found Tonero’s body. Shot once. He was in Dr. Elkhart’s apartment.”

“And her?” Scully asked.

“Gone. Not a trace.”

“They’ll find her,” Webber said confidently. “After this weekend, half the country’ll be hunting for her. Don’t sweat it, Mulder, the case is closed.”

“I suppose,” Mulder said. He looked out the window, through the rivulets of rain. “I suppose.”

Scully touched his shoulder, light and quick. “Mulder, don’t.”

He didn’t look. “Sure.”

They both knew he was lying.

Because, he thought, looking through his dim reflection to the woodland just beyond, what if they don’t find her.

What if, next year, or the year after, you’re walking down the street or climbing your steps or standing on your porch or you’re waiting for a bus, and an arm comes out of a wall or a tree or…

He stretched a finger toward the glass, watching its reflection stretch toward him.

…a simple pane of glass.

The lights flickered for a moment, and for a moment the reflection vanished.

He rubbed his arm absently, watching the headlights of a car he couldn’t see float past and disappear.

We’ll never know they’re out there—

Armies of living shadows.

Slipping through the night.

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