01 - Goblins (7 page)

That wasn’t so bad, actually. He had volunteered to do all the driving,
brought the coffee and some sandwiches, and had somehow convinced Webber that he ought to drive
on alone with Andrews, get to know her, let her get to know him. Partners, he
had lectured solemnly and truthfully, had to be able to predict each other’s
reactions so backs could be guarded and missteps minimized when the action got
hot. What he had failed to tell them was that the action hardly ever got hot,
except in the movies.

Unless, of course, the partner was Fox Mulder.

Licia hadn’t minded; Webber, to Scully’s amazement, had actually seemed
flustered.

Now she figured them to be fifteen minutes ahead, their first assignment to
book rooms in a motel called the Royal Baron, a recommendation Mulder had picked
up from a visiting agent stationed in Philadelphia.

There was no question it would be as horrid as it sounded. Mulder was an
expert at picking such places. He called it a knack; she knew it was a curse.

“You okay?” He glanced over. “You can sleep if you want.”

“Mulder, it isn’t even nine. If I sleep now, I’ll be awake at dawn.” She
watched him for a moment, then reached over and turned down the heater. The
night was chilly, but it wasn’t that cold. “What’s the matter?”

He shrugged. “Nothing.”

“This breaking into pairs isn’t your style.”

“Maybe, but four agents driving into a place called Marville would be like a parade, don’t you think?”

“And two cars with agents isn’t?”

He said nothing.

A mile passed, black and grey, before she repeated her earlier question. “And
don’t jive me, Mulder, I’m not in the mood.”

He laughed silently. “Good lord. First ‘tad’, now ‘jive’. What the hell did
you do on that vacation?”

“I didn’t change the subject every time I was asked a question.”

He drove on, thumb tapping lightly on the wheel. “I had a visitor the other
day.”

She listened as he told her about the man at the Jefferson Memorial, not
saying a word. At one point she pulled her coat closer across her neck; when he
had finished she had folded her arms across her stomach. She didn’t doubt that
the meeting had occurred, but she had never been able to fully accept his
absolute belief in extraterrestrial life, or his notion that there were those in
the government, and those seemingly beyond the government’s reach, who were just
as convinced, and were as dangerous to him as any murderer they had ever sought.

Add to that the equally bizarre idea that among those Shadow People, as he
called them, there were also a handful who were actually on his side, and in any
other human being she would see a full-blown case of whatever lay beyond extreme
paranoia.

In Mulder, however, it almost seemed plausible.

All right, she admitted; maybe more than “almost.”

The Tweed Man, on the other hand, was more likely a coincidence, nothing
more, and when she said so, he only grunted. Not entirely convinced, but with no
solid reason to think otherwise.

“So what does this case mean to… whoever?” she said, staring out at the
dark by her shoulder. “And what does it have to do with Louisiana?”

“Beats me. I’m not a psychic.”

She shifted. “Mulder, weird stuff, remember?”

He tapped his forehead. “Got it stapled right here.”

She caught the grin and held her silence until the silence made her sleepy.
Then: “So what does it mean to you?”

“I don’t know. Well, yes, I do. It means we have two people dead, and
there’ll probably be more.” A glance, a quick smile. “That’s all, Scully, that’s
all.”

She nodded her approval, even though she knew there was no question he was
lying.

The Royal Baron Motel was a long, white and red, two-story stucco building
facing the two-lane county road that led into Marville. On the west side was the
office, whose spotlighted top was supposedly a bejeweled gold crown; on the east
was a restaurant; between them were two dozen rooms, twelve up and twelve down,
with a red iron stairway in the center and at each end.

Behind it, and across the road, there was nothing but dense forest.

The restaurant—booths along the windows, round tables at the far end, and a
long counter—was called the Queen’s Inn.

Exhausted, Mulder slumped by the window in a red leatherette booth, still feeling as if he were on something that
moved and had no intention of stopping. His head throbbed, his vision blurred
now and then, and all he really wanted was to crawl into bed and forget the
world existed for a while. Webber and Andrews, however, had been waiting in the
office, rooms already booked, just as he and Scully had pulled up. Despite his
protestations, he was dragged off for something to eat.

They were the only customers in the room; the young waitress spent her time
dusting gleaming tables and whispering to the cook through the serving gap in
the back wall.

He didn’t order anything—the very thought of food made his stomach lurch—but
when the orders arrived, he had to admit that the plate of silver dollar
pancakes Webber had in front of him actually smelled pretty good.

“That bacon’s going to kill you,” Scully said dryly, nodding to the double
side order beside Webber’s plate.

“My guilty pleasure,” Webber told her with a boyish grin, and poured what
Mulder figured was at least a gallon of syrup over the heavily buttered stack.

Scully watched in amazement. “Never mind.”

Andrews had contented herself with a cup of soup, her lean face etched with
weariness, her topcoat buttoned all the way to her chin.

Outside the window, a breeze danced with a handful of dead leaves, guiding
them onto the road where they were scattered by a passing car.

“So are we going to check it out tonight?” Webber wanted to know.

Mulder looked at him blankly. “What?”

The agent pointed over Mulder’s shoulder with his loaded fork, then yanked it
back when syrup began to drip on the table. “Marville. Are we going to check it
out tonight?”

He shook his head. “Not until morning. Then the first thing we have to do is
introduce ourselves to the local chief, let him know we’re here.”

Webber nodded. “Hawks.”

Mulder blinked.

“Hawks,” Webber repeated. “Todd Hawks. The Chief of Police. That’s who he
is.”

“Ah.”

Webber glanced at his partner, but her attention was on the empty road, and
stifling a fierce yawn with her hand. “Didn’t you read the file? I mean, it’s
all in there. About him. Hawks, I mean.”

A gust shimmered the window.

Andrews shivered, but she didn’t look away.

“Fox?”

“Mulder.” He pushed a hand back through his hair. “Don’t call me Fox. Mulder
is fine.”

Webber nodded once, correction noted and filed, it won’t happen again.

This kid, Mulder thought wearily, is going to drive me up the wall.

And since he knows the drill full well, he must either be too excited, too
eager, or he’s scared. That wouldn’t be surprising. So far, the young man’s field work had
been primarily confined to the immediate DC area. Now he was out here, no
convenient home office to run to, working with a guy supposed to be more than a
little off-center.

That almost, but not quite, made him feel better.

Andrews finished her soup, yawned, and stretched her arms stiffly over her
head, clasping her hands and popping her knuckles. “God,” she said huskily.
“God.” The topcoat did nothing to mask her figure.

Mulder felt Scully’s shoe poke his ankle, so he figured he must have been
staring, even though nothing had registered. That more than anything convinced
him it was time to stop being sociable and make his good nights. What he hadn’t
counted on, however, was Webber trying to save the Bureau a buck by booking only
two rooms, one for the ladies, one for the men.

As he unlocked the door and staggered in, tossing his small suitcase on the
nearest bed, he said, “If you snore, Hank, I’m going to have to shoot you.”

Webber laughed nervously, swore he slept like a baby, and laughed again while
he unpacked, toiletries neatly arranged in the bathroom, fresh suit hung on the
clothesrack by the bathroom door, the rest put away in the second drawer of a
low dresser that stretched halfway along the left-hand wall.

Mulder was too tired to watch the ritual; he’d take care of his own things in
the morning. He washed, he undressed, he was in bed and sleeping within ten
minutes, ignoring the soft voice of the news on the TV.

He dreamed.

of a room not quite fully dark, outlines of bedroom furniture, outline of
a window where the moon crept around the curtains;

a cool night and all the voices that go with it, from soft whispering leaves
to the call of tree frogs and crickets;

a faint rumbling, but he knew he didn’t live near the tracks, knew it wasn’t
a train;

louder, and the light around the curtains brightened to a glare, spearing
suddenly into the room, shifting, slants and darts stabbing across the walls,
the bed and the figure that lay on it, the ceiling, as if its source was
spinning slowly outside the window;

frightened

he was frightened, standing by the door, slowly dropping into a crouch;

too frightened to move when the light became too bright and the rumbling too
loud and the figure on the bed rose and tossed the coverlet aside, her young
face colorless, her young eyes wide not with fear but with intent;

he wanted to stop her, but he couldn’t stop dropping, couldn’t stop himself
from trying to push backward through the wall to get away from the light that
exploded into the room, making him scream as the girl child was taken and
swallowed by the white.

making him scream.

Making him gasp and sit up, crushing his pillow against his chest, blinking
sweat from his eyes, sheet and blanket kicked away from his legs.

When he thought he could move without falling over, he sat on the edge of the
mattress and put the pillow against the headboard. A forced shudder, a hard
swallow, and he pushed himself to his feet, padding around a cheap table beneath
its hanging lamp to the thin drapes on the room’s only window. He parted them
and looked out, and saw nothing but the road and the trees ranged beyond.

He couldn’t see the stars, but he knew they were there.

Behind him, Webber snored lightly.

Oh, boy, he thought; oh, brother.

He wiped his face with a forearm and moved quietly into the bathroom, closed
the door, but didn’t turn on the light. He knew what he could see—a man forever
haunted by the disappearance of his sister, Samantha, when both of them had been
children. The dream tried to tell him how.

Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t make any difference.

Dream or not, it was what kept him going.

He splashed water on his face to sluice away the tears he hadn’t noticed,
before, dried himself, and returned to bed.

He didn’t look at his watch, but he didn’t think it was much beyond midnight.

A truck rumbled by.

When he slept this time, he didn’t think he dreamed.

“Dana?”

Scully grunted to tell Licia she was awake, and to tell her she was also
trying her best to get to sleep, whatever it was, it could wait until morning.

“Is there something… is there something wrong with Mulder I should know
about?”

The voice out of the dark was naturally husky, almost masculine; she had
already seen its effect on Webber and Mulder, and wondered how well Licia knew
how to use it. It could be a devastating weapon, no question about it. She
smiled at the ceiling—
when used for Good, not Evil.

“Dana?”

She sighed loudly and rolled onto her side. “No. He’s fine.”

“He sure seemed out of it.”

“It’s the beginning.”

“The what?”

Scully wasn’t sure how to explain; after all this time, she barely understood
it herself.

“At the start of every case that really catches his attention, he gets…
hyper. Charged up.” To say the least, she added silently. “Then, unfortunately,
he has to get where the case is. He doesn’t like that, the traveling. In fact,
he hates it. It’s valuable time wasted when he… we could be doing our job.
So whenever he gets there, all that- initial energy has been expended on the
trip. So he crashes.”

Silence for a moment before: “Will he be all right in the morning?”

She frowned her puzzlement. Concern was understandable for someone who hadn’t
worked with Mulder before, but she thought she detected something more in the
woman’s voice. Her eyes closed, half in a prayer that Andrews wasn’t going to
screw things up by developing a crush.

“He’ll be fine,” she answered at last.

“Good.”

She said nothing.

The woman’s voice faded as she rolled over. “I’d hate to have my first real
case screwed all to hell.”

Scully almost sat up to demand an explanation and, in the process, an
apology. It was natural for someone like Andrews to want to shine first time
out. God knows, she had prayed for it herself a hundred times before that first
one. In fact, it had made her a nervous wreck. But not only didn’t Andrews seem nervous, she seemed almost too calm, too ready. And
that could be just as bad.

Or, she thought, I could be overreacting because I’m so damn tired.

A truck growled by.

She yawned, and tucked the covers up under her chin.

“Dana?”

This time Licia’s voice sounded very small, very young.

“I’m listening.”

“Do you think I’ll have to use my gun?”

The corner of her mouth pulled back. “Hardly ever, Licia, believe me.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” She paused. “The government’s too cheap to buy us all that
ammunition.”

Silence again, while she thought, dear Lord, I’m starting to sound like
Mulder.