by Tim Lebbon
Mulder tried again. “What’s going to happen, Carlo?”
“You—you wouldn’t b-b-believe me if I told you!”
“I’m a pretty open-minded guy, Carlo. Why don’t you try me?” He knew they called him “Spooky” Mulder back at Quantico, and word had gotten around the D.C. office, too. It had a lot to do with his office having been relegated to a far corner of the dusty basement. And being assigned Scully to babysit him. He was too open-minded.
“It’s a full moon t-t-tonight and if you don’t let me go p-people are gonna d-d-die! That’s what’s g-gonna happen! So take off these—handcuffs... and let’s go back or... or let me go!”
Mulder glanced at the door, where Scully had disappeared too long ago. Still nothing. “Tell me more, Carlo... there must be a line in there.”
*****
Inside the motel lobby, Special Agent Scully was getting impatient.
“Hello?” she called out. She was half ready to walk around the counter and help herself to a couple sets of the room keys that hung from a double row of dust-encrusted hooks on the wall, when a middle-aged man with uncombed thinning hair finally emerged from the doorway.
“Hello? Hello?” the man said while adjusting his stained paisley shirt. His glasses were askew. Literally caught napping, Scully thought. Mulder would have blamed some faceless conspiracy or spy cell. He always looked for the most difficult and less likely reasons for everything.
That was the key to her job, in a way.
“Hello,” she said, trying to keep her natural impatience out of her tone. “It’s great that you’re open.”
“I wasn’t expecting anybody tonight with the storm and all. But I left the sign on just in case, eh?” Now he was adjusting his glasses. Scully nodded graciously, thinking of the mostly illegible no-tell motel sign, and forced herself to smile. His Canadian lilt was obvious.
“So, what can I do ya for?” the clerk, maybe owner, asked. He took a better look at his customer through the straightened glasses. Winked.
“Two rooms please, as close to the end as possible,” Scully said, ignoring the wink. “One night.” She slid her Bureau credit card across the desk.
“Terrible weather out there. Haven’t had a storm like this in I don’t know how long.” The man talked while processing the card, squinting at her. She might have been the best thing he’d seen in a long time. “American FBI, eh? What brings you out on a night like tonight?”
“Business.”
He hesitated, waiting for a more detailed response but none was forthcoming. Finally he handed Scully a form and receipt. “If you could just sign here,” he said, sniffing a little at her slight, and then he turned to retrieve the keys. “Last two rooms down that other wing, on the right.”
“Thanks.”
He nodded, looking over his glasses. “You got it, little lady.” Wink.
Shivering and not only from the cold, Scully returned to the idling car and climbed into the passenger seat.
“We missed you,” Mulder quipped. “Had a nice talk, we did. Didn’t we, Carlo? He still thinks he’s saving our lives if we consider releasing him. Even tried to bribe me with some ill-gotten gains.”
Carlo was in muttered prayer mode again.
“Last two rooms on the end,” said Scully, blankly. She pointed.
Nothing had been plowed, nor did it look as if it would be anytime soon. The tires spun for several long moments before finding a slight grip on the slickly covered pavement. Slowly, Mulder pulled the car up to their rooms. “Honey, we’re home.”
Once the agents were out of the Ford, Scully unholstered her pistol while Mulder muscled DesMarais out of the back. Their prisoner struggled, his hands gesticulating behind his back.
“Let me g-g-go!” he shouted, wriggling his whole body and almost escaping Mulder’s grip. Scully targeted him from the far side of the car, her hand steady even in the whipping wind.
“We can take you in with a bullet wound. Assistant Director Skinner gave us the green light. As long as you are still able to talk, we’re okay with damaged.”
The small witness was trembling as if suffering an epileptic seizure, but they’d been told he was cleared medically.
Mulder slammed DesMarais down on the car trunk. His feet slipped as the agent kicked them apart. “Take it easy,” Mulder barked. “We don’t want this to be any harder than it has to be.”
The shivering prisoner suddenly more malleable, Scully lowered her gun and opened the door to one of the rooms, waiting as her partner wrestled DesMarais inside and tossed him sack-like onto the sagging bed. Still outside, she looked around once more and saw the manager’s disembodied face across the lot, staring at them from the behind the lobby door. She considered flashing her badge, but then followed them inside instead.
“Please, I’m b-b-begging you, for your own g-g-good, let me go!” yelled Carlo from his new fetal position. Suddenly nervous, Scully trained her gun on him again.
“Sorry, Charlie, no can do,” said Mulder.
Walking to the head of the bed, Agent Fox Mulder gripped the headboard and shook it to make sure it was secure. It was a rank of steel bars, and bolted to the floor. Then he dragged DesMarais closer, unlocked one of the prisoner’s wrists and quickly latched it to a steel bedpost. Then he leapt up out of the way before DesMarais could reach him with his free hand.
“No! Please, you don’t understand!” Carlo shrieked. He wasn’t trying to grab Mulder—he was supplicating.
Mulder ignored him and turned to Scully. “That should hold him no matter what’s supposed to happen...”
Carlo DesMarais was still crying and yelling incoherently when Mulder escorted Scully out of the room and into the cold of the blizzard again, closing and locking the door behind them.
“Aren’t we going to stay and stand guard?” Scully asked as she took the room key.
“Yes, we will. I just need to get away from him. We can take turns staying awake, but from next door. I don’t want to listen to him all night. And where’s he gonna go?” The wind whipped some of his voice away as an exclamation point, but it couldn’t cover up the nervous quality in his tone.
Scully paused, lips pursed, looking at Mulder questioningly.
“He’ll be all right,” Mulder assured her. “If he doesn’t grow fangs.” He stood and stared out into the white heart of the blizzard for about a minute, then turned back and waved Scully ahead of him.
They entered the second motel room and Mulder switched on the light, shrugged off his parka, then stepped into the washroom. He leaned over the grimy sink, and splashed cold water on his face.
Scully observed all this without comment. But then she asked, “Do you really think it’s safe to leave him in there alone?”
“I couldn’t stand another minute more of his yelling and carrying on. I mean, if you’re going to turn into a werewolf just do it, don’t go on and on about it.” He dropped into a threadbare armchair.
Scully sighed. She should have seen this coming. “Mulder, you can’t be serious. You can’t really believe that man in there is a werewolf, a man who turns into a hairy monster when the moon is full. Please tell me you don’t believe it.” She paused, waiting, but he said nothing.
Then her eyes widened. “And don’t tell me Spooky Mulder volunteered us for this jaunt just because he was curious about something in the transcripts of his interrogations. Please don’t tell me!”
Mulder smiled crookedly. “Are you forgetting the origins of our little enterprise here?”
“What are you talking about?” She’d shucked her parka, and now she tried giving herself a neck massage, but gave up and just rocked her head, waiting for a snap that would bring relief. Then she pulled over the rickety desk chair and sank gratefully into it with a groan.
Mulder stared at her white turtleneck sweater for a second, then settled into the lecturer’s tone he often preferred. “It was 1946, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover came face to face with something he could not explain
. If you open Case File number one and read between the lines, it’ll be obvious that he and his trusted agents were faced with exactly that—a man they realized could indeed morph into a Canis lupus.”
“Mulder, that’s what happens when you read between the lines.” She shook her head, her neck just as stiff as it had been. Lack of sleep was beginning to show on her pale features. “Give them more credit than that. They found perfectly rational explanations for what happened.”
“Yeah, it was rational to admit something strange was going on when the human tracks switched to paw prints and back again. We saw that once, too, Scully,” Mulder continued. “Remember that case in Montana? The reservation, the rancher’s son, then the rancher himself? The time gap between the groups of murders... ring any bells?”
She chuckled. Sometimes her partner was so predictable. She could almost read the report she would have to doctor for Skinner.
Not the first time, and certainly not the last.
It was her job, after all, to officially debunk his wild theories.
But Mulder went on, undaunted as usual, “Look, the ancient Greeks called it lycanthropy, the Normans had the garwalf, the Italians call him uomo-lupo, literally man-wolf, and our friends up here in French Canada call it the loup-garou. You can’t ignore the spread of a legend across cultures.”
“No, but you can ignore it when it’s more likely a mental illness that makes people believe they can turn into wolves—”
“Or any other animal,” Mulder said.
“A mental illness, Mulder, that makes people think and believe they can turn into all sorts of animals is still a mental illness. Something that looks like something is not automatically the other thing.”
“Scully, that’s weak and you know it. You disappoint me.”
She smiled. “Let’s go with your theory, then. It’s too bad you didn’t bring any silver bullets with you.”
“Believe me, if I’d heard this guy’s ranting before we left, I would have.”
“Where would you have bought silver bullets, Mulder? Your local sporting goods shop?”
He made a face halfway between patient and irritated. “What makes you think I would have had to buy some?”
“You already have some? Wait a minute—Mulder, don’t tell me you’ve made silver bullets!”
He shrugged. “I’m a big fan of preparedness. Big Scout thing, being prepared.”
“You were a Boy Scout?”
“No, but I read things.”
Scully shook her head in exasperation. She checked her watch. “Speaking of preparedness, if the roads are plowed sometime tonight we may be able to get an early start. We’d better get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch.”
“Okay, Scully, and I’ll go give him a bathroom break. Unless you’d like to...”
She held up a hand. “Say no more, he’s all yours!”
“I hope he’s off the Larry Talbot routine. I love Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, but this is getting ridiculous.”
*****
NEAR PERTH, OTTAWA
12:17 a.m.
Something woke Mulder from restless sleep. The heater really did not work very well, so they’d kept on their parkas. His rustled as he rolled onto his side. Dismayed, he realized this was supposed to have been his watch shift.
“Scully, you awake?”
“Well, one of us had to be, Mulder.”
“I was just resting my eyes...”
Scully was about to make a wry comment when Mulder sat up straight, cutting her off with the suddenness of his movement. “Shhhhh... Do you hear that?”
The sound of distant baleful howling filtered through the window again as if in response.
“I’ve been listening to it the last five minutes,” she said. “Coyotes, I think.”
Mulder listened as the chorus of howls and yelps multiplied.
“That’s not coyotes,” he said.
“Well, I guess it could be wolves,” she said, hesitantly. “We’re north enough.”
“Wolves,” he began. “You know what that could mean...”
Then a crash cut off his next words, and a second crash followed rapidly after the first.
It sounded like furniture suddenly being tossed and bodies being thrashed.
And it came from next door...
Screaming, turning into a hideous gurgle. Another scream.
Also from next door.
The agents locked eyes for a long second in the dim light of the one glowing desk lamp, then scrambled for their weapons and tumbled simultaneously toward the door.
Glass was breaking with dramatic abandon in the other room, a crash and tinkling that briefly overrode even the wild wailing of the wind.
Then there was another blood-curdling scream, but it was clipped off.
Gun in hand, Mulder reached the door first and threw it open, falling back as a blast of wind and snow washed over him. He dived into the wicked weather, Scully close behind.
Outside the snow whirled through the white landscape, thrust by the wildly wailing wind. No more sounds came from next door.
That sudden silence was unnerving. Mulder trampled through where snow had drifted like sand into a pyramid shape immediately outside their room. He scanned the area for movement, looking for anything that might explain the commotion. To his immediate left he could see the swath of light shining not from Carlo DesMarais’s door, but from the shattered window that had been set next to it. Mulder side-stepped to stand almost in front of the jagged hole. Blood painted the remaining glass shards.
And outside of their prisoner’s room splashes of crimson stained the broken snowdrift and the path of large prints that led away from it.
“Carlo!” he called out. There was no response. “Scully, Carlo’s gone! He’s loose!”
Scully was so close behind him that she stumbled into him when he abruptly stopped again, fumbling to fit the key into the door lock.
“Carlo, are you in there?” Mulder called out, but he knew there would be no answer.
I should have listened to my gut, he thought.
The moon was up there, somewhere behind the snow clouds. He imagined it was full.
“I should have known, Scully!” he shouted in frustration. “I had it, and I let it get away! I should have—”
“You can’t blame yourself, Mulder!” Scully’s eyes were awake now, but her hands were shivering.
Mulder swung around and entered the room, his Sig leading the way. Scully was right behind him at a crouch, her own sidearm scanning the remaining space.
The bed was awash in blood. A pool of it was already soaking into the mattress near the headboard and in the depression left by Carlo’s body where Mulder had thrown him a few hours before. A path of splatters led from the headboard toward the window.
But Carlo himself was nowhere to be seen.
Something rested in the center of the pillow. The agents stepped closer, their breath ragged.
There, on the spreading crimson stain, was Carlo’s still-cuffed hand, its fingers curled obscenely.
It had been chewed off just above the wrist.
“God, Mulder, looks like he mauled off his own hand to get away!” Scully’s voice was full of shock.
“I told you—” Mulder began.
Somewhere outside the room, but not far away at all, the agents both heard the growling of a dog—or was it a wolf?—echoing through the milky white environment.
Mulder spun around, Scully following closely, and they retraced their steps out the door, this time staring at the series of blood splatters marking the path from the shattered window out the open door into the storm. Lampposts had come on with nightfall, throwing anemic light in globular shapes that did nothing to dispel the whiteout. Indeed, the lights probably worsened its effects on visibility.
Mulder pointed at the splatters.
Like Hansel and Gretel following a trail of bloody breadcrumbs, he thought.
“Come on!” he called out to Sc
ully, but she was already on his heels, all thought of cold forgotten in the heat of the chase.
The tracks seemed somewhat round in nature, perfectly compatible with the kind of disturbance in fresh snow Mulder figured a wolf’s paws might make. He saved his lecture for later.
They followed the trail of disturbed snow, they themselves struggling in the deepening layer. A second trail of tracks from across the lot joined the first at an angle. The agents pulled up at the far end of the empty parking lot, light globes glowing with surreal intensity above them.
“Scully, look.”
“I see it.” She hefted her gun again. “Mulder, what is it?”
Just a few yards away on the white expanse of blanketed pavement, something lay steaming in a pile on a swirly snowdrift. One of the bloody trails of prints led right to it.
They approached warily, guns up and ready.
Mulder thought his heart would burst.
They hunched over what at first looked like ragged clothing.
There, on the ruined beauty of the snow, lay DesMarais’s body, fat white flakes melting as they landed on his still-warm corpse.
His butchered corpse.
Carlo’s neck had been ripped through clear down to the spine and his head was missing. His belly had been torn open, loops of his intestines scooped out and strewn in a wide circle around his torso. Protruding jagged ribs indicated where his heart had been sloppily removed. Around him, more bloody imprints were already filling with snow. They were paw prints. And the sets of tracks left by three—or maybe four—apparently large animals led directly into the stand of tall pines guarding the motel’s perimeter like sentries.
There was no helping Carlo, so Mulder and Scully half-heartedly followed the tracks to the trees. One set of tracks seemingly changed from animal to human and back in a distance of several yards.
Like a playful au revoir message.
The agents stared at each other, not knowing what to say. They realized they were still shivering as the blizzard continued its frenzy around them.
“What about the manager?” Scully said, staring along the other trail toward the front door of the main office.