by Tim Lebbon
“Go ahead,” she told him.
“What if Mayfield is right?”
“About aliens landing? The light in the graveyard—the burned grass? Father Timothy said that they’d had trouble with kids and young adults—like the ones they’re questioning at the station—before. Kids get crazy around Halloween. You know that.”
“Crazy and destructive. They have school clubs, hazing, things to prove. They drink, they get into sex and drugs. But they don’t become murderers.”
It was Dana’s turn to be silent.
“Scully, I went into the catacombs of the church,” he told her.
She nodded, looking at him. She’d expected as much.
“All right, what it appeared to be is that... I believe that there is an alien intelligence at work here. They aren’t little green men. They don’t have brains like ours, but they are highly involved—just differently.”
“Slime—so you’re suggesting highly evolved slugs?”
“They wouldn’t be slugs—they would just appear like slugs to us.”
“They change what they are—like chameleons?”
He hesitated. “This is all theory.”
“Thank God.”
“They can inhabit other bodies,” he said quietly. “They landed in the graveyard. They tried the dead. The dead didn’t work. The dead happened to be by Mayfield’s Monsters and Mayhem. They tried the creatures—the things in the store. They didn’t work either.”
“I’ll play along. So, they needed someone living,” Dana said.
Mulder nodded thoughtfully.
“No!”
He looked over at her and she quickly continued, “They needed something living? They found Hannah Barton and they tied her up and then killed her friends? That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if they were afraid, if they could control the dead or the dolls—but only for a few minutes.”
“And why would that be?”
“They need the strength of the host they’ve taken. I don’t believe they meant to kill.”
“Wait—you want me to believe that body-stealing aliens arrived in a grave yard—and realized that they couldn’t inhabit and utilize the bodies of the dead—and then tried the shop—trying to inhabit and utilize the bodies of a bunch of dolls and puppets—and then finally found live bodies?”
Mulder looked at Scully. “You’ve got a better theory?”
She stared back at him. “Yes. Someone came and ripped all the bodies out of the ground and tore up the cemetery. They got into the shop. They used the Caitlin Corpse doll to attack Hannah, and then realized that some idiot fabricated the doll with nails sharp enough to kill—to slit a human throat. They killed Randy and Roberta—they didn’t get to Hannah once they’d figured out how to kill and that they needed to—or be caught, perhaps—because she dialed 911 and the police came so quickly.”
“I went down into the catacombs. I broke open the stone that had replaced the one that had been broken by mischief-makers according to Father Timothy. I looked at the remains—Dana, there was a weird slime all over it.”
“It could be anything,” she told him.
Mulder looked at her, shaking his head in that way that sometimes deeply aggravated her.
Mulder believed with his whole heart that aliens had come to earth. Of course. It all went back to his sister. But for Dana belief was much more of a challenge. She believed in Mulder, but that wasn’t the same as sharing his beliefs. Her relationship with the man was so complex. They’d investigated the absurd so many times, and often, the investigations had revealed the totally absurd. And yet...
“So, let’s test our theories,” he continued. “It will be dark just about when we get to the church and the cemetery. We’ll wait—and watch.”
She didn’t argue with him; she thought they should be at the police station, questioning the boys. But they could continue along that line of investigation in the morning.
Yellow crime tape glistened oddly in the rising moonlight. Little had been done to set the graveyard to rights; Dana wasn’t surprised. Police photographers were busy all day. Crime scene people set markers about. It was a monumental task.
And two young people were dead. The investigation had to be thorough.
There were two patrol cars stationed in front of the store and two in front of the church. She saw uniformed men at the gates to the cemetery.
Mulder flashed his badge and they headed on into the church.
It was a lovely old church; engraving on a plaque over the door denoted that it had been built in 1714 to replace an earlier structure. The windows were stained glass, the altar held a gorgeous silver cross, and old stone stairs behind the altar led down to the crypts beneath, while doors to the side led, Dana believed, to the small rectory alongside.
As she entered with Mulder, Father Timothy came out of the door to the rectory.
“Thank you for coming tonight,” he said. “I couldn’t leave. My faith should keep me strong, but I didn’t want to be alone.”
“I’m not sure what we’re watching for, but we’re glad to be here with you, Father,” Dana said.
“Come, come this way. I’ll make tea,” he said.
They followed him through the church to the rectory.
“You live here?” Dana asked him.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t hear the big boom that Mayfield heard? You didn’t see a flash of light?”
He hesitated and winced slightly. “Anything could have happened. I’ve been diagnosed with cancer. I’ve had some treatments—I don’t sleep well, though they say I may make it. At any rate, I take pills to sleep. A complete invasion could be going on—and I wouldn’t awaken.”
He made them tea. They sat in a cozy little Victorian-style parlor and sipped it. And waited.
Suddenly, Mulder said, “Cancer?”
“Yes.”
Dana looked at Mulder. It seemed rude and cruel to push the point.
But, to her surprise, he stood and pulled out his cell phone. He’d called Fuller, she realized. “Can you find out for me if Hannah Barton and Randy and Roberta suffered from any ailments? Yes, even if one of them had a common cold.”
“Roberta had juvenile diabetes and—” Scully lowered her head. She didn’t want to add fuel to Mulder’s feelings.
But there was no choice. She never hid the truth—even when it did feed his fantasies.
“Never mind on the other two—can you check into Miss Barton’s health issues for me? Thank you,” Mulder said, and hung up.
Father Timothy looked at Mulder with wary amusement. “You—you didn’t buy into Matthew Mayfield’s words, did you?”
“I just follow every path my mind takes, Father,” Mulder told him.
He’d barely spoken when they all started; a creaking sound, distant and yet clear, startled them all.
“It came from the church,” Mulder said.
“It’s—it’s the gate,” Father Timothy said. “The gate to the crypt.”
Mulder and Scully both rose, drawing their weapons.
The priest saw the guns and cried out. “You can’t do that, this is a church!”
“God will understand that we don’t want to end like Roberta and Randy,” Mulder told him.
Father Timothy didn’t argue that.
They moved through the rectory doorway and slipped behind the altar. Mulder hurried down the old stone steps first with Dana close behind him.
Father Timothy followed her.
“Light, we’ll need light!” he called.
Dana paused to accept one of the candles he handed her; his fingers trembled as he lit it. She wanted to rush after Mulder but she waited for the priest to gather his own candle. They were altar candles at least—large, and casting a nice glow of illumination.
She couldn’t cup her flame and manage the Glock at the same time so she moved carefully to keep her candle lit.
When they reached the crypt, the dampness, the smell of dec
ay, seemed to wrap around her.
Anything could slither here, she thought.
Then she stopped. Mulder was standing just before the centuries-old gate to the tombs, staring in.
She realized that there was a man there.
Matthew Mayfield.
She came closer to Mulder, lifting her candle so that the glow fell into the crypts—and cast some illumination on Mayfield.
“Mr. Mayfield, what are you doing here?” Mulder asked.
Mayfield turned and looked at him and smiled. “I need it open—but it is open. You opened the portal.”
Dana couldn’t help it; something in the way he spoke sent a shiver down her spine. The portal?
This was a church. The portal... to what?
Father Timothy let out a shriek and she quickly spun around. There was something in the crypt with them.
Something black and scurrying, like a large rodent. Something black and slithery... like an extremely fat snake!
It let out some kind of an ear-splitting sound—and seemed to rise like a bloated bird and aim directly for Father Timothy.
She fired—killing it in midair.
It fell to the ground, shrieking—and disassembling into a mass of...
Slime.
There were more of them. And they all intended to attack. There was no time to wonder about what they were...
Or if communication was possible.
She fired on one, and another. Mulder was firing as well.
Father Timothy was huddled down on the ground, shaking.
Then, she and Mulder spun around and looked at one another. They were partners; they judged their safety. The things seemed to be gone.
Not just dead. Gone.
But then, another sound—horrific, high, ear-piercing—tore through the room. This time it was no black creature aiming at her. It was Mayfield.
They hadn’t paid attention to him, and now, he was pitching himself at Scully.
She hadn’t expected him; she had lowered her weapon. She had no time to raise it before he was on top of her, staring down at her. Her candle went flying into the shadows of the crypt, and then its glow was gone and all that remained was the faint light from Father Timothy’s candle.
She saw the man above her, with his powerful death-grip upon her, crushing her.
And she saw his eyes. They were snake eyes, vertically slit, and gold except for those slits. These eyes were purely evil, filled with hatred.
He opened his mouth... and there was something black inside of it, something black with eyes that were the same. Snake eyes, evil eyes, eyes of hate and loathing and...
She screamed. And as she did, Mayfield was ripped from her. She saw that he was on Mulder, grappling him down with a strength unlike anything she’d ever seen.
She groped for her Glock, cast somewhere on the ground when she fell.
Before she could find it, Mayfield threw Mulder off. Mulder crashed against the wall and fell.
Mayfield was coming back for her.
She fired and caught his arm, but it didn’t stop him. He was back on her, his fingers around her throat, his mouth opening...
His eyes. His terrible eyes on her.
She struggled, and they went down. She couldn’t look away. Something was in him, something dark and fetid and evil and he meant to release it on her.
Just when she thought she couldn’t breathe anymore, when she would die or worse, Mayfield was torn away.
She heard an explosion.
As she gasped for breath, she managed to roll. Father Timothy was praying, words tumbled from his mouth. His candle illuminated the space they were in on the ground of the crypt.
She saw that Mayfield was prone just inches from her and Mulder was crawling over to her.
Mayfield was dead.
His eyes were open. He stared at her.
He stared at her with eyes that were an ordinary brown, with ordinary pupils.
“Scully, Scully, Dana... talk to me!”
She looked at Mulder. Smiled and touched his face.
Searched out his eyes.
“I’m all right,” she told him.
*****
The next morning, it was determined that the case was closed. The world would assume that Matthew Mayfield had played with creepy monsters so long that he had become one himself.
By morning’s light, Dana wasn’t even really sure what she’d seen herself.
Father Timothy thought that Mayfield had been possessed by the devil.
She knew that Mulder believed what Mayfield had told them. That a ship had come, crash-landed perhaps, and burned the hole in the graveyard. The creatures had known that to survive, they needed to inhabit living bodies.
They had tried.
They had needed healthy bodies.
First, they’d tried to inhabit the dead.
Then, they’d found Mayfield, and they’d tried for more, but despite whatever their intelligence, they’d tried to inhabit fabricated creatures.
They’d learned they needed the living, and the healthy.
By the time things were straightened out and she and Mulder were driving away, Dana didn’t know what she thought.
They’d been told to take a few days.
“Where do you want to go?” Mulder asked her.
Dana looked out the window at the fall decorations that seemed to cover the countryside. Scarecrows stood tall in fields, pumpkins were everywhere, dangling skeletons hung from trees and white billowing ghosts seemed to be everywhere.
“Anywhere,” she murmured.
“Anywhere?”
“Anywhere they don’t celebrate Halloween,” she told him.
Their eyes met. They would never really agree on what had happened. They wouldn’t be good partners if they did. He needed her to be skeptical.
He reached over and found her hand and squeezed it.
“I do have them digging up and searching that graveyard and the church, you know.”
“That’s fine. Where are we going?”
“Somewhere that doesn’t celebrate Halloween,” he assured her, and he gave his attention to his driving. She realized that they were headed to the airport. No doubt, Mulder would have a great place for them to go next.
Before they were called out again. She smiled and caught his glance in the rearview mirror.
He had great eyes. There was so much in the eyes. Human eyes.
She was the skeptical one. And yet she knew what the invaders had never realized.
It was all in the eyes.
The End
The House on Hickory Hill
by Max Allan Collins
BANEWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
29th DECEMBER, 1997, 4:15 a.m.
On a crisp afternoon in mid-November in quaint, seemingly idyllic Banewich, Massachusetts, sixth-grader Heather Creed—walking home from school—found herself at the mercy of a handful of sadistic male classmates.
The boys tagged along after the blonde, blue-eyed, cherubic child, teasing the “new kid” at school for being stuck up and a teacher’s pet.
Straight-A student Heather was a pleasant, if somewhat withdrawn, girl whose primly pretty Laura Ashley attire set her apart from the baggy, rumpled apparel of her schoolmates, particularly these boys.
They began to taunt her about the “haunted house” she lived in, an ancient barn remodeled into a modern home looming up ahead on Hickory Hill.
“They used to hang witches there,” a freckle-faced boy said. “Perfect for a little witch like you!”
A pig-nosed boy piled on, saying, “There’s monsters and murderers up there! They’re gonna kill you in your sleep!”
Heather walked on, chin high, apparently impervious.
“You know what they do to witches!” a buck-toothed bully said, and then the boys were pitching pebbles and twigs at the girl, “stoning” her. This too got no reaction.
But when they pitched harder, stinging Heather’s flesh, she whirled on them.
“Stop it!” she shouted, taking the bullies aback. “Stop it right now!”
Her sweet features were fierce now, a vein trembling in her forehead.
The red-haired boy clutched his throat and tumbled into a pile of leaves, his friends gathering around his thrashing form. “Help me—I... I... can’t breathe!”
Concerned, Heather rushed to him—and the boy bolted upright, laughing at her, hurling leaves in her face. His friends began laughing hysterically as the girl ran off, crying.
“It’d be quicker on a broomstick, ‘Carrie’!” the redhead shouted down the street.
Drying her eyes, Heather climbed the driveway up Hickory Hill in the shadow of the barn-like structure, thinking about how much she hated living in Banewich, in this awful house. She had a vague sense that it would not be forever—her father, Arthur Creed, was writing a book about the house and the “bad things” that had happened there, none of which he’d shared with his daughter.
Not that her mother, Alice, had been any more forthcoming about the house’s history than Daddy. And as for her teenage half-sister, Charity, well, Heather and she didn’t get along at all. If Charity knew anything about the house, she’d never said. The teenager almost never spoke a word to Heather.
Entering the kitchen through the back door, Heather decided not to say anything about the humiliation she’d just experienced from the bullies.
Instead she merely said to her mother, who was shucking corn at the counter, “I’m hearing things at school about this house.”
Her mother—slender, lovely, and as blonde as Heather—said, “Oh?”
“Stuff about witches and murderers and...what did happen here, Mommy? What makes it a place Daddy wants to write about?”
“Honey, this is just a house like any other. It has an unusual history and that makes it a good subject for your father.” She ripped stiff green away from golden sweet corn. “Just ignore them. It’s superstitious nonsense.”
Later, at supper, Heather looked for an opening to bring up the house’s history, but the atmosphere at the table couldn’t have been more tense if this was a haunted house.
Right now Charity—currently grounded and denied driving privileges—was asking in a phony voice, sweeter than the corn, that these restrictions be lifted.