by Rocky Wood
In this Maine Street Horror storyline an FBI agent visits an unnamed small Maine coastal town while on a weekend break. Polly Turner’s fisherman father had found a Doll in a lobster pot and given it to his daughter. He was killed three days later in a freak boating accident involving a grappling hook.
Later, people began to act strangely around the Doll, clawing their eyes, suffering strange accidents, and killing themselves in odd and gruesome ways. Those who said no to little Polly also faced the wrath of the Doll. Polly is said to be autistic, an affliction also suffered by Annie Wheaton, the “heroine” of King’s screenplay, Rose Red.
In one incident the FBI agent, Dana Scully, entered the town Super Saver store just as Polly and her mother Melissa exited, leaving many people inside attempting to claw their eyes out. Intrigued, Scully discussed the incident with the town police chief, Captain Jack Bonsaint. She also called her partner, Agent Fox Mulder, who suggested that St. Vitus’ Dance (or “Dancing Sickness”) might be a cause of the problems in the town. Scully responded that particular illness had not been diagnosed since the Middle Ages.
Among the Doll’s victims was Jane Froelich. She had once been the proprietor of the day-care center Polly Turner attended but, after slapping Polly’s face, lost her license. Inside the Super Saver she glared at Polly and her mother. Later that day she cut her own throat with a broken record. The butcher at the Super Saver, Dave, had an unrequited love for Melissa and, when the shoppers started clawing their eyes, he stabbed a knife into his own right eye, and died.
Another victim was a waitress at a fast food restaurant, who caught her very long ponytail in a milkshake mixer after upsetting Polly and, presumably, the Doll.
Under the Doll’s direction Melissa Turner tried to kill herself with a hammer but survived thanks to the intervention of Bonsaint and Scully. Realizing something was not right with the Doll, Melissa prepared to burn down her house with herself, her daughter and the Doll inside. Scully arrived in time in to prevent this, threw the Doll into the microwave, and turned it on.
In typical X-Files tradition, however, this was not the end of the Doll, and another fisherman later pulled it, still burnt, from another lobster trap.
Interestingly, Carter and King chose to center this episode on Dana Scully, the skeptic of the two FBI agents (Mulder was the “true believer”), placing her in this small Maine town while it was briefly under siege from the apparently possessed Doll.
It seems the storyline is set about October 1997 on the basis that the expiry date on a bottle of orange juice in Mulder’s refrigerator was for that month.
The basic storyline of an evil doll is not entirely original (in fact Chucky, from the Child’s Play movie series which premiered in 1988, is even mentioned by Mulder) and it is possible this was a story concept King had previously considered but did not use until this opportunity arose.
Unlike some authors King has chosen to incorporate as much of the real world in his fiction as possible (trademarks, the cultural trends of the day and so on). He has also found it of interest on occasion to step into the “realities” created by other writers or artists.
He has, for instance, stepped into the following fictional worlds – Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (The Doctor’s Case); H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos (Crouch End and N); Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey (Wimsey); and the X-Men (Heroes for Hope: Starring the X-Men). He has also paid homage to Poe, in Dolan’s Cadillac and The Old Dude’s Ticker, among other tales, and adapted Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.
X-Files fans and critics do not rate this episode as one of the best from the franchise but King fans will find this small diversion into another mythology of interest. The teleplay forms the base of a reasonably interesting episode of a landmark science fiction series, adding to both the mythology of that “reality” and linking its major characters, Mulder and Scully, into King’s Maine Street Horror Reality. The X-Files is also mentioned in another Maine Street Horror story, Dreamcatcher.
If readers cannot access a copy of the screenplay they can at least view the produced episode to appreciate this work.
Molly
As stated earlier, King’s first original screenplay for The X-Files was actually Molly (the cover page reads The X-Files / “Molly” / written by / Stephen King). It seems clear that it was written in 1997, after discussions between King and Chris Carter about a possible episode for Millennium turned into an episode for The X-Files. The script is of 79 scenes over 57 pages.
King’s cast list for Molly is Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Melissa Turner, Polly/Molly Turner, Jack Bonsaint, Mr. Bierce, Jane Froelich, Agent In Charge (Hal), Agent Two (Buddy), Agent Three (Jose), Agent Four (James), Rebecca Callahan, Supermarket Woman, Supermarket Man (Older Gent), Cop, Kid, Waitress, Man in Uniform, Prison Matron and Little Girl.
The story is set in Ammas Beach, Maine (this fictional town does not appear in any other King fiction). Dana Scully is staying with her college friend, Rebecca Callahan (could she be related to Father Callahan?). Scully visits the Ammas Beach Supr Savr, where Melissa Turner is shopping with her five-year-old daughter, Polly. Jane Froelich is also in the shop, “about sixty, with stern, narrow face … The vibe is similar to the old lady who wanted to scrag Toto in The Wizard of Oz.” All this is being recorded by a security camera, timing from 2.14:09 PM. After Polly sees Froelich her eyes narrow and, shortly afterward, Froelich begins slapping herself across the face and smashing a box of cookies into her forehead. A woman who tries to help also begins uncontrollably slapping her own face! The “epidemic” spreads to other shoppers, with many dancing or screaming uncontrollably. As she tries to help, Scully begins to slap herself and to dance – the market is in total pandemonium. Cut to Melissa, who orders Polly to, “‘Stop it!’ Polly says nothing, but her frightened eyes say it all: ‘I can’t’.” Her eyes cut left and we see “The Polly Doppelganger” inside a frozen food case, “peering out through the frost-etched glass with MALEVOLENT HATE.” Meanwhile, the chaos continues… Following this introductory scene, the Opening Credits were due to roll.
In Act One Mulder arrives at the Portland Jetport and joins Scully, who tells him there is video of the incident in the supermarket, “No flying saucers, Mulder. No little gray men. As for the rest, see for yourself.” Scully, Mulder, Mr. Bierce (the Supr Savr manager) and Ammas Beach Chief of Police Jack Bonsaint review the video from the four different security cameras. Mulder speculates what they are seeing is “The Dancing Sickness,” from the 14th century Rhineland. Starting about 1370, it spread across all of Europe within six months and burned itself out within two years, although thousands died. “One school of thought believes the Dancing Sickness was caused by a kind of contagious psychokinesis, and may have started with as few as half a dozen telekinectic senders. Maybe only one.” Scully demurs that most people think it was caused by an organic hallucinogen in the wheat used in bread at the time.
Carefully reviewing the tapes Mulder notices that neither of the Turners is slapping, dancing or leaping and that Melissa is looking at one of the frozen food cabinets, “her face caught in a look of surprise.” Bonsaint tells the FBI agents that Melissa’s husband had “died in an accident about three years ago” and that Polly is autistic (as was Seth Garin in The Regulators; Annie Wheaton in Rose Red; and, of course, the version of Polly Turner appearing in Chinga). There was also bad blood between Melissa Turner and Froelich, with Melissa having been involved in the closing down of Froelich’s daycare, after Froelich continually lost her temper, and sometimes hit the kids. Finally, she broke little Todd Carter’s nose. When Bonsaint interviewed the woman she admitted hitting the boy but claimed, “I never slapped any of the others … they slapped themselves.”
Mulder decides to get an enlarged print of the frozen food cabinet’s glass doors, “On it we see what looks like a cloud-shadow … or a ghost image.” When the agents and Bonsaint visit Mrs. Froelich she refuses to talk to them, saying it would be “unwise
” and that they are “not the right ones” for her to talk to, suggesting they visit Mrs. Turner and, “that bad little girl of hers.”
When Mulder and Scully receive the video enlargement that evening they see, “It’s not a shadow Melissa is looking at in the glass door of the freezer compartment; it’s a Little Girl. She stands with her hands pressed against the glass, indistinct but really there. There is the SNARLING LOOK OF HATE on her face.”
Mulder claims it’s the same girl, “Polly. Same striped top, see? The hair’s the same. It’s her.” Scully suggests the image is a reflection but Mulder points out one of the girls is sitting in a supermarket cart, the “other is on her feet, chilling out with the Stouffer’s frozen dinners and the Tombstone pizza.” They decide to visit the Turners, not realizing there are four government agents in a house across the street, armed to the teeth with tranquilizers and child restraint devices! Just before knocking on the Turners’ door, Mulder picks a Raggedy Ann doll up from the porch glider, looks at it and puts it down as the door opens.
Melissa refuses to let Mulder and Scully in. Meanwhile the agents across the road record the events on video as Polly comes downstairs chanting, “Chinga. Chinga. Chinga.” Melissa tells Polly she hasn’t seen Chinga and continues to talk to Mulder and Scully. After Mulder frightens Melissa with threats that she might end up “talking to some people who don’t bother knocking” Polly reacts, pulling away, her eyes widening. Mulder suddenly loses control of his hand, smashing a wind-chime and cutting himself on the shells from which it is constructed. His arm starts to bring a sharp-edged shell toward his throat as Scully struggles to help. Mulder sees “the same little girl” as the one now held by her mother “standing in the shadows halfway up the stairs, dressed in the same white nightgown,” hissing at him! Act One ends.
Act Two opens with the shell’s sharp edge at Mulder’s throat and Melissa yelling to Polly, “Make her go away! Make Molly go away.” Scully now sees Molly on the stairs and the strange little girl forces Scully to slap her own face. Mulder asks Polly, “Do you still want Chinga? … Make her go away, then. Make Molly go away and I’ll give you Chinga.” Mulder regains control of his arm and hands the Raggedy Ann doll to Polly who cries out, “Chinga!”
Apologizing, Melissa takes them all inside while the Agent in Charge across the road tells his men that they will be taking the girl but “…maybe not right this minute … That was Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. They are prophets without honor in their own country.”
Melissa explains to Mulder and Scully that such incidents had occurred almost since Polly was born, mostly in the form of making her and her husband dance. The slapping had only begun after Polly went to daycare. Queried about Molly Melissa replies, “I don’t really know. I don’t think I want to know.” Mulder warns Melissa that she needs to help them as, “Molly may have attracted attention from the wrong people.” She replies that Molly is getting stronger, “and more violent.” Mulder sends Scully to visit Froelich again to determine who else has been talking to her. He tells Scully that Molly is, “Polly’s mirror-image. Her doppelganger. If there was ever an evil twin, it’s Molly.” As Scully leaves, the Agent in Charge of those watching remarks that, if she is going to see Froelich, she’s wasting her time.
Sure enough, at the Froelich house Scully finds the woman hanging from an overhead beam, with a note on her body reading, “I’m so ashamed.” Searching the house Scully finds a balled up note reading “LITCHFIELD PROJECT” and “WHITING INSTITUTE.” Back at the beach Mulder asks if Scully believes the death is suicide, particularly after finding the note, “The Whiting Institute for the Criminally Insane. Where the government keeps their failures, their genetic leftovers … their Adams … their Eves.” He claims Polly will become part of the Litchfield Project, where “they’ll study her. And reproduce her. If they can.” Of course, it is not Polly they want but Molly, yet Mulder speculates “they” do not yet know of Molly’s existence. Mulder also claims, “the Bureau doesn’t know us on this one – the people behind the Litchfield Project are very powerful, very high up. We’ve got Chief Bonsaint on our side, and that had better be enough.” Mulder had already briefed Bonsaint and called “a guy in Ohio. He’s in another Federal organization. He’s also a friend.” They begin to plan.
In Act Three Bonsaint and Mulder arrive at the Turner house the next morning, with Mulder claiming that Scully had been called back to Washington late the previous night. Bonsaint says his investigation had revealed “some fellas” in the house across the street. To Mulder’s comment that they had been “remarkably careless” the Chief responds, “I’d say they think we’re hicks. They might find out different. That’d be lovely.”
Mulder briefs Melissa about the men across the street and his plan to help her and Polly escape. He joins Polly in a pretend picnic for Chinga and begins to talk to her about Molly. After he asks her if she wants Molly to go away, she nods and tells him, “Molly-bad. Molly-slap.” Mulder convinces her to try and bring Molly outside, “so she can’t … can’t run back inside.” Mulder gives Bonsaint a pre-arranged signal and he drives off, siren howling, drawing the attention of the agents across the road.
Immediately, they don Federal Marshal jackets and grab their equipment. The Agent in Charge tells his team if Mulder gets in the way, “Nobody likes him anyway – he’s a bowser. Kill him.”
Mulder and the Turners make a run for Mulder’s car just as the agents spill out of their house yelling but their targets climb into the car while one aims a gun at Mulder. Now we can see the ghostly image of a “HATEFUL little girl” in the front passenger seat. Of course, the “Marshals” begin to attack themselves, probably saving Mulder’s life, and his car screeches away. Mulder catches a glimpse of what might be Molly in the front seat before the image disappears.
The “Marshals” jump in their car for the chase, with Mulder careful not to lose them! They race down Maine Highway 114 through crowds of beachgoers. The angry reaction of a kid in a dune buggy they pass brings Molly back “too soon” and Mulder begins to slap himself, but Polly calls “Chinga!” and Molly disappears again.
Act Four begins with Mulder’s car roaring into the parking lot of the Lobsterland restaurant in Newshire, Maine (another fictional location not mentioned in other King works). They wait for the chasing “agents” and then run into the restaurant. As the pursuers burst in Agent in Charge Hal, yelling that they are Federal agents, demands everyone hit the floor. “They are waving guns and looking as crazy as an ATF posse out to roast ‘em a bunch of Branch Davidians. People don’t argue with that look; they grab for some tile.”
Hal has his gun trained on Mulder but the Turners have already made it into the ladies’ room, where they meet the waiting Scully. Melissa now asks Polly to bring Molly “all the way” out. Mulder, disarmed, announces to those in the restaurant, “I’m Fox Mulder, Federal Bureau of Investigation. And although these men’s jackets say they are federal marshals, I doubt very much they have convincing ID to back that … Please note their descriptions … and could someone take down the plate number of their car please?”
Molly appears in a bathroom stall, whispering in a creepy voice, “Give me Chinga. I want her … Give her to me, you little brat.” Polly cries, “Molly-bad! Molly-bad, mummy, can’t have Chinga! Molly pulls Chinga’s hair!” Meanwhile, the bad guys are demanding the Turners come out or they’ll kill Mulder. Melissa convinces Polly that the chasers intend to “hurt mummy” and Polly gives in, making her “sadder than anything in her whole unfortunate life, perhaps” and passes the doll under the stall wall to Scully, who gives it into the grasping hand of the nasty little doppelganger.
As Hal is about to order Mulder’s death Polly comes out of the toilet with Chinga in hand, “But it’s not Polly, and Mulder knows it straight away.” The “agents” again begin attacking themselves; one shooting most of his hand off and Mulder also begins slapping himself in something of a Three Stooges takeoff. Meanwhile, Scully escapes with Melissa and P
olly.
Inside the restaurant Molly watches the mayhem as patrons and workers join in the slap and dance-fest. She is “hugging Chinga and smiling. She’s having the time of her life …” but she has overlooked Hal, who shoots her in her now very real neck with a tranquillizer dart. She turns to him and tries to force him to gouge his eyes out with a broken water glass but succumbs to the drug before she can inflict this (well-deserved) damage. Hal and his men grab Molly’s slumped body and Hal prepares to shoot Mulder before approaching sirens convince him that discretion is the better part of murder.
Scully drives her charges toward Boston’s South Station, telling Melissa, “We’ve got to make at least one stop somewhere along the line. This little girl needs a new doll.”
Back at FBI Headquarters Scully tells Mulder she’d handed the Turners over to a tall, blond man after being given the right password, “Believe.” Mulder has arranged for them to be relocated under new names and tosses Scully a tee shirt. It reads, in big letters across the middle, “You Don’t Know Me” and, on the breast, carries a Federal seal with the words “FEDERAL WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM.”
The action cuts to a view of the Whiting Institute for the Criminally Insane (which had appeared in the Eve episode of The X-Files, first broadcast on 10 December 1993) while in voiceover Scully asks Mulder what will happen to Molly. He replies, “It may already have happened, Scully. Molly wasn’t really a doppelganger; she was an extrusion. Extrusions don’t have much of a future when they’re cut off from the life-systems which have supported them.”
In the same Cellblock Z as appeared in Eve we get a brief view of various steel doors, each stencilled with Eve and a number, “Eve 6,” “Eve 8,” and so on. “At one of them, a hand that ends in three curved claws grips the mesh-covered slot in the door.” A burly prison matron explains to a uniformed man that she doesn’t know what happened, “she was alright … at seven, when the orderly brought her breakfast.” The man replies, “She’s not all right now. There’s going to be a complete investigation of this, I guarantee you.” And Hal, looking furious, declaims, “Ask Mulder. He knows. That I guarantee you.” The uniformed man simply comments, “Mulder is back in Washington. Among such friends as he has. You should have taken him out while you had the chance.”