by Tim Lebbon
“Not at all.” Skinner crossed his arms over his chest. “You cut off this man’s funding years ago, and probably never even knew his name. He continued his research, which was so cutting-edge it sounds like fairy tales and make-believe, and then came after you for revenge. This is exactly the kind of case the X-Files handles—the ones that can’t be explained any other way, the ones that have long-term repercussions even when there’s no clear immediate effect. This is why that unit needs to stay.”
Malloy considered that, flipping pages idly as she thought. Finally, she nodded. “I see your point,” she admitted. “I deal in hard numbers, clear gains, quantifiable results. But yes, maybe there should always be one unit that handles things a little... differently. Things like this.” She nodded again. “All right, AD Skinner. The X-Files can stay.”
He did his best not to grin as he nodded back. “Thank you. Good luck with your recovery.”
As he let himself out and headed down the hall, he thought about it. At first he’d been defending the X-Files partially out of sheer stubbornness, like the dog that doesn’t want the bone anymore but will fight if you try taking it from him. But he’d known for a while that the X-Files did have value. And now he even knew how to explain it, at least a little, so others could see that value, too.
Now if only Sharon could see the value in letting him out of the doghouse and off the couch. But Skinner suspected that was something even Mulder couldn’t help him with.
Though chocolate might. Lots and lots of chocolate.
The End
Dusk
By Paul Crilley
CASTLE BLUFF, NEW HAMPSHIRE
21st December, 2015, 2:16 p.m.
Kim Duncan had made many dodgy decisions in her seventeen years on this planet, but this, she reckoned, ranked right up there with the worst of them.
But what could she do? When she’d caught Briony and her hell-spawn friend sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night she had to tag along. How else was she going to humiliate her sister? She needed hard facts for that. And hard facts meant threatening to tell the parental units unless she could go with.
She was kind of regretting it now. Kim shivered and pulled her dad’s quilted jacket tighter around her body. Heavy mist coiled slowly between the tree trunks. She couldn’t see more than five feet in front of her and it was getting colder with every passing minute.
“Marco!” she called out.
Audrey, Briony’s friend and the aforementioned hell-spawn, lunged out of the mist at her. “Shut up!” she snapped. “God, you are so annoying. You’re going to screw everything up.”
Kim shone her cell phone flash directly into Audrey’s eyes, holding it there till she squinted and looked away with a muttered insult.
Briony, Audrey, and Briony’s killjoy sister, Kimmy. It was like some bad teen sitcom.
“Let’s go home,” said Kim. “It’s going to snow soon.”
“I told you not to come,” said Briony.
“Yeah, and if mom found out I let you come out here on your own? I’d be grounded for a month.”
“What difference would that make?” asked Audrey. “It’s not as if you have any friends. You’d be able to just sit in your room with your stupid books.”
“Seriously?” said Kim. “That’s your best insult? That I sit in my room and read?”
Audrey turned away with a flick of her perfectly straightened hair and moved deeper into the woods. She only got two steps before she lost her footing and fell to her knees.
“Yeah,” said Kim, “high heels, forests, and hiking. Hashtag not-too-clever.”
“We’re not hiking,” said Briony. “We’re searching.”
And there it was. The lame-ass reason they were floundering around the woods on a freezing night three days from Christmas.
Searching.
For Callum James, the mysterious, five-hundred-year-old vampire from the multi-quadrillion-selling Dusk novels.
“How long will it take to convince you he’s a character in a stupid book and not actually a real person who hangs around in mist-shrouded forests?”
“Shows what you know,” sneered Audrey. “Sarah and Jasmine and Shauna all saw him. He was amazingly hot? But modest with it too,” she added.
Briony nodded. “Like, he looks like a Greek God but he’s not really aware of it?”
Kim gritted her teeth. She hated the way her sister spoke like almost everything was a question.
“And Sarah said she and Callum shared a moment? And that she just knew she was special to him.”
“So they spoke to him, did they?” asked Kim.
“No. It was the way he looked at her?” said Briony. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“She’s lying, anyway,” said Audrey. “No way would Callum James pick her. She’s such a loser.”
“Let me guess,” said Kim. “You’re more his type?”
Audrey flicked her hair. “Of course I am.”
“Hate to break it to you,” said Kim. “I’ve read the first book. His type is the quiet loner without any friends.” Kim flashed a grin at her sister. “So if anyone here is his type, it’s me.”
“Oh my God, you’re such a sad case,” said Briony. “As if he’d go for you.”
“Yeah. I’m the sad case. Says the one wandering around the woods in the middle of the night hoping a fictional vampire will notice her.”
Audrey whirled around and grabbed Kim’s jacket. Kim blinked in surprise as the girl’s face twisted with fury. “He is not. Fictional,” she snarled, her face only inches from Kim’s.
“Okay, okay. Fine. God, calm down.”
Audrey glared at Kim for another five seconds, then released her jacket, smiled sweetly, and smoothed the material down. She turned away and started marching deeper into the forest.
“You do know that even if there is someone out here it will probably turn out to be a catfish creep?” she called. But Audrey ignored her.
They carried on walking. The mist grew thicker, a white haze that draped across the forest, blocking out the trees until they were almost on top of them. A branch got tangled in Kim’s hair. She swore and pulled up short.
“Guys!” she called. “Hold up.”
She winced, moving her head around as she tried to unwind her hair. She had to eventually yank it free, leaving behind a clump in the process.
“Perfect.”
She snapped the branch in irritation, dropped it to the ground.
That was when she realized she was alone.
Kim looked around. The mist had closed in even more, a gauze bandage across tired eyes.
“Briony?”
No answer.
“Audrey?”
She moved a few paces, then stopped. She had no clue where she was going. Couldn’t see more than three feet in front of her. She’d read once that if you get lost you were supposed to just stay where you were and wait for someone to find you. But... she looked around, shivering as the mist brushed wetly against her cheeks. She couldn’t hang around here all night. She’d freeze to death.
She decided to keep moving.
She kept her eyes downcast, watching where she put her feet. Last thing she needed was to fall and twist an ankle.
Every few minutes she paused to listen, wondering where the other two went.
And then she saw the white glow from up ahead.
*****
FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
MONDAY, 8:54 a.m.
“I’m nobody special. I’m not one of the cool kids. I’m not one of the emos. And I’m not one of the goths. I’m just somebody trying to get through high school so I can leave this crappy town and study journalism in Chicago.
“Which was why I found it so weird when Callum James kept bumping into me. Almost like he was doing it on purpose. Which was crazy. Because hot guys don’t hit on girls like me. That’s not how it works. They prefer the cheerleaders. The airheads. Somebody who won’t challenge thei
r already tiny mindset.
“To be honest, Callum freaked me out a bit. He was a loner. A bit of a weirdo, really, with skin so white it was like the smiles on Hollywood stars. And his eyes...
“...His eyes were deep, dark pools, hiding everything. Giving away nothing.”
Scully slammed the book shut in disgust. “Sorry. Not really my thing.”
Mulder nodded gravely. “More of a Dan Brown fan?”
Scully tossed the book on the desk. It hit a pile of papers and fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
“Hey. Easy on my book.” Mulder swung his legs off the desk, picked the book up and carefully brushed it down.
Scully frowned. “Your book?”
“Yeah,” said Mulder, checking the spine for damage. “A first edition.”
Scully watched him, waiting for the punch-line. It didn’t come. “Seriously?”
“What? A guy can’t read books about teenage girls and vampires without it being weird?” He paused, obviously running this last sentence back through his mind. “That came out wrong. Thing is Scully, I was a fan of the writer way before the Dusk books. Eugene McEllroy. He was a contemporary of Hunter S. Thompson. The two of them blazed the trail of gonzo journalism back in the seventies. You should hear some of the stories about them. They took every drug known to man. Mescaline, LSD, uppers, downers, you name it. Apparently, McEllroy’s favorite was MDMA. Said it was the only time he didn’t want to kill everyone in the world.”
“That’s so sweet. And he went from gonzo journalism to writing books for teenagers how exactly?”
Mulder shrugged. “No idea. But when Dusk started outselling all his other work a thousand times over, he must have decided he was on to a good thing. You should read them, Scully. You might be surprised.”
“Mulder, what year is it?
“Why?” He sat up straight and leaned forward eagerly, a slight grin on his face. “Have you experienced lost time? Did you come to in your car on a lonely road with no recollection of how you got there?”
“What year?”
“2017.”
“Mulder!”
“Fine. 2015.”
“Which means we’ve known each other how long?”
“Twenty-one years?”
“And in all that time have you ever seen me reading a book like that? Just from the first page you can see they’re marketed to lonely teenagers and frustrated housewives. The main character is ordinary in every way. Much like how most teenagers feel about themselves. A blank template that they can imprint on while they read the books. If such an ordinary character can draw the attention of a centuries-old vampire, then there’s still hope for them.”
Mulder was nodding. “That’s why I thought you’d be into it.”
Scully raised an eyebrow. Mulder held up his hands in defense.
“Kidding.”
“Besides,” said Scully. “I get enough weird stuff in my day job without reading about a three-hundred-year-old man who spends his time hanging around the local high school.”
“Yeah, McEllroy explained that. His vampires also feed on high, intense emotions. Not just blood. And what better place to pick up that kind of energy than a high school?”
Scully sighed. “If you say so. And we’re talking about this... why?”
Mulder handed her a file. Scully flipped it open and scanned the top page—a missing persons report.
“There have been reports of teens going missing in a little town called Castle Bluff,” said Mulder. “Three so far.”
Scully flicked through the file. Basic police reports. Three teens. All disappeared during the night. And all gone missing within three weeks of each other.
“Do they have a connection?”
“They’re all obsessed with the Dusk books,” said Mulder.
Scully waited. Nothing else was forthcoming. “Mulder, half the teens in the country are obsessed with the Dusk novels. That’s not a connection.”
“What if I told you people have sighted Callum James in the vicinity of the disappearances?”
Scully blinked. “The vampire from the books?”
Mulder nodded. “And what if I told you that Eugene McEllroy lives in the same town?”
“I’d tell you to find out if he has a new book coming out, because this sounds like a cheap publicity stunt that’s gone wrong.”
“That’s what I thought at first. Then I saw this cell phone footage.”
Mulder swung his monitor around to face Scully and hit a button on his keyboard.
Scully leaned forward. It was footage of a snow-covered forest floor. Leaves and twigs, a pair of feet. She could hear frightened, panicked breathing. A moment later the image swung upward as the cell phone was raised to shoulder height.
In the distance, glimpsed between tree trunks, was a figure. But the figure appeared to be glowing. Scully squinted. No, not glowing. The figure... sparkled. Silver and white motes of light flashing around it like dust caught in the sun. A trick of the light? Moon reflecting off the mist?
Scully wasn’t sure. She leaned closer. The figure was staring down at two girls kneeling on the forest floor. The image shifted as whoever held the phone used the optical zoom. The image lurched closer, losing definition in the process. But Scully could still see the rapt looks on the faces of the girls—the look of devotion in their eyes.
Whoever held the cell phone shifted slightly. A twig snapped underfoot. The glowing figure whirled around. Scully heard an indrawn breath of fear, then the image shifted crazily as the person turned and ran. The image blurred and tilted. Panicky sobs came from Mulder’s speakers.
Then nothing.
“The two girls who looked like they were kneeling before an altar are Briony Duncan and Audrey Caplan. Both haven’t been seen since they disappeared two nights ago. Local police have drawn a blank. Same as with the previous case.”
“Why have the FBI only been notified now?”
“There was a possibility the first case wasn’t an abduction, but a runaway. The local PD reassessed the case in the light of the most recent incident and called it in.”
“Two nights ago, though? The crime scene will be contaminated.”
“I know. Agent Peters is already there with the Evidence Response Team. He’s the one who put the call through to me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘Hey, spooky. How’d you like a multiple abduction case carried out by a fictional vampire who has the hots for high school kids?’” Mulder grinned. “I mean, when he puts it like that, how could I resist?”
*****
CASTLE BLUFF, NEW HAMPSHIRE
3:23 p.m.
Mulder drove through a wintry tunnel of black trees, the leafless branches twisting up toward the leaden sky. He shivered and cranked up the heating. Snow tonight. A white Christmas. Been a while since they’d had one of those.
He checked the GPS. They should arrive at the town in a few minutes. He glanced across at Scully. She was fast asleep, a tiny line of drool hanging from the side of her mouth. Mulder stared at it for a while. She was adamant she didn’t drool in her sleep, even when he pointed out the damp patch on her pillow. He’d tried explaining that it wasn’t gross, manly drool. That it was dainty, classy drool. But that hadn’t done much to make her any less irritated.
He glanced in the rearview mirror then pulled over. He fished his cell phone out and was about to take a picture of her drool when she snorted and opened her eyes. Mulder quickly hid the phone.
“We there yet?” she asked, stifling a yawn.
Mulder pointed out the window. He’d stopped—more from luck than anything else—just shy of the town marker. It was a huge billboard with a bird’s eye view of 1950s suburbia. For some reason a cartoon vampire was flying through the sky above the houses.
She squinted at the sign. “What’s with the vampire?”
Mulder shrugged and started the car. “Maybe it’s a new addition. To drum up some tourism.”
“Classy.”
Written across the bottom of the sign were the words, “Castle Bluff. Pop. 3546. Stay the night. You won’t ever want to leave.”
“Is it just me, or is that slightly ominous?” said Mulder.
“It’s not just you.”
“Good to know.”
They drove into town about five minutes later. Mulder squinted through the fogged window. Not much to see. A general store, a few bars, a couple of old, family-run restaurants. The place looked like it was stuck in a time warp. But he supposed that was understandable. A town with a population of just a few thousand was going to be pretty insular. They were probably still on dial-up internet here.
“You want to stop in and meet the sheriff or should we look for a place to crash?” he said.
“Sheriff, I think. We can see if there’s been any progress and he can recommend a local hotel.”
Mulder eased to a stop at a red light. Four kids were pulling a wooden sled along the slush-covered sidewalk. Norman Rockwell, eat your heart out.
“I think a B&B might be our best bet, Scully. I don’t think hotels have been invented here yet.”
*****
The Sheriff’s Department was located halfway along the main street, on one side of what Mulder assumed was the town square. (A square that consisted of a ten by ten patch of snow-covered grass with a dry fountain in the center.)
There were only two parking bays outside the station and both were occupied by police cruisers that looked like they were from the seventies, the kind you saw on reruns of Kojak.
Mulder parked on the street. The freezing air stung his face as he climbed out and made his way onto the porch along the front of the building.
“You sure this is the Sheriff’s Department?” asked Scully as she joined him, nodding at a rocking chair with a folded blanket draped across it.
Mulder pointed at the door. Painted on the glass were the words, “Castle Bluff Sheriff’s Department. You have a nice day now.”
They both stared at these words for a while. Mulder wondered if they were meant to be ironic. Somehow he didn’t think so.
At least the inside looked a bit more like a proper police station, albeit a small one.