by Tim Lebbon
Though the FBI swarmed in on the park, they had lost their man. Apparently the jogger made his way into the nearby district of bars and restaurants and blended in.
A thorough search of the park took most of the night, the only result of which was the discovery of the hooded parka, ski mask and the now empty briefcase (which had been bugged), abandoned in a thicket.
*****
BANEWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
THURSDAY, 8:46 a.m.
The aftermath of the tragedy found Arthur Creed rebuking himself for bringing the FBI in. In his study, their frustrated host faced Mulder, Scully, and Hertel and said, “I intend to move my family—what is left of it—out of this cursed place as soon as possible.”
For now, no one argued with him. Later they would reason with him to stay put as long as the investigation continued. But at the moment, both Creed and Alice were clearly devastated. Mrs. Creed had to be sedated, while the author himself just sat there holding onto his surviving younger daughter like a life preserver. The child remained mute, in a kind of blank near catatonia.
Finally, mercifully, the family members went off to bed, in shock and sorrow.
Privately, Mulder asked Scully, “Do you still believe Creed himself could be involved in this?”
“Filicide is rare, but it does happen.”
“Like AB negative blood. Scully, the man was blubbering like a baby.”
“That could be guilt as well as sorrow... or psychosis, for that matter.”
“Scully...”
“Who knows? Maybe he’s just a good actor. Creed’s done all sorts of personal appearances, after all.”
Though they would stay the night, Hertel’s FBI team was already packing up. The SAIC told the X-File agents that homicide specialists from the Boston field office would be taking over the investigation tomorrow, no longer working out of the Creed home.
“There’s real concern from the Bureau,” Hertel said, “that the FBI will be blamed for this.”
Scully nodded gravely. “It’s already all over the media.”
“The two of you are to stay on here at the house,” Hertel instructed them, “to provide some continuity.”
“That’s fine,” Mulder said, “but we prefer to be actually involved in the investigation—”
“This isn’t optional. It comes straight from the Assistant Director.”
“But if we’re to stay,” Mulder insisted, “we’ll need the Creeds’ permission...”
“If anyone can swing it, you can, Agent Mulder,” Hertel said. “Creed seems to like and trust you. Make it happen.”
Alone with Scully, Mulder said, “This is punishment duty. Babysitting duty.”
“Yes, but at least we haven’t been pulled off the case entirely, which is what I expected.”
Mulder grunted a laugh. “I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way. What this really means is we can use our assigned duty to—”
“Keep investigating,” Scully said with that slight smile of hers that said so much.
*****
BANEWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
FRIDAY, 7:14 a.m.
Early the next morning—while Scully went off to Banewich General to perform the autopsy on Charity Creed—Mulder remained at the house on Hickory Hill, where he helped Hertel’s men load up their gear. Young Heather wandered out into the yard and Mulder went over to talk to the waif-like child, her expression blankly haunted.
“I don’t feel very sad yet,” the child said. “Am I a bad person, for not feeling sad?”
“No. Not at all. It probably just doesn’t seem real yet.”
“Charity was mean to me, and I said mean things to her, too.”
“She isn’t mad at you, Heather.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think she’s in heaven?”
Mulder swallowed—that wasn’t his belief system, but there was a child who needed comforting. “Sure she is.”
“Good. I was afraid she might be in hell.”
Mulder could find nothing to say to that.
In the house, he found Creed at the kitchen table, Alice preparing breakfast, in a rote, zombie-like manner. Mulder explained to Creed about the changing of the FBI guard from kidnap specialists to homicide, making clear that the FBI presence in their home will be minimized.
“Minimized how, Agent Mulder?”
“Well, with your consent, Agent Scully and I will stay. To provide some continuity, and protection.”
Suddenly Mrs. Creed, who had been rather submissive through all of this, spun to shake a spatula at Mulder like a weapon.
“You people caused Charity’s death! I want all of you FBI bastards out of this house. All of you!”
Mulder excused himself, leaving the husband and wife alone, and went back out into the yard, to report Mrs. Creed’s reluctance to Hertel. Mulder’s cell phone rang before he could.
“Mulder, it’s me,” Scully said. The snapping of her taking off a latex glove told him she was calling from the hospital morgue. “Can you talk?”
“Yes.”
“Charity Creed, cause of death? Heroin overdose.”
“What? Are you telling me that kid was a heroin addict?”
“That’s just it, Mulder—I’m not. She has no needle ‘tracks,’ no indicators of addiction whatsoever.”
“From what we heard at the high school,” Mulder said, pacing in the yard, “it’s doubtful Charity was ever into anything but pot and pills.”
“If Cliff Dain was a dealer,” Scully said, “he’d have access to the harder stuff.”
“So now you think Dain’s our man? Hertel already agrees. ‘Wanted for questioning’ has escalated into a full-scale APB.”
“As well it should, Mulder. Flight’s an admission of guilt.”
“Yeah, I agree, of course... but Dain made more sense as Charity’s accomplice, running off with his girlfriend, after scamming her parents out of that money. Why would he kill her?”
“Maybe they quarreled, maybe Charity got cold feet. Or perhaps he didn’t love her. He could have been just using her. Didn’t you ever hear of a man using a woman, Mulder, to further his own ends?”
“Is that a scientific theory, Scully?”
“One of the more easily proven ones.”
*****
BANEWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
FRIDAY, 3:54 p.m.
The rest of the day remained tense, as the clock ticked, with Mulder and Scully all too aware that murder cases grow colder by the second. The morning had an inexorable feel to Mulder: Hertel’s unit moving out; Creed convincing his wife to allow Mulder and Scully to stay on; the two agents meeting the homicide team from the Boston field office and briefing them at the Banewich hotel out of which the team would work; and several reported sightings of Cliff Dain that proved to be false alarms.
Finally, Scully received information from D.C. pertaining to the wood shavings she’d sent in for analysis.
“No traces of blood, Mulder,” she told him, “AB negative or otherwise... but the lab did turn up certain organic traces...proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, plus some inorganic salts.”
Mulder snapped his fingers. “That could explain what we saw, Scully.”
“How?”
“The bleeding wall may have been an ectoplasmic manifestation.”
Scully goggled at him. “Ectoplasm? Mulder, you’ve outdone yourself. Do I have to say it?”
“What, that ectoplasm is a palpable protoplasm extruded from bodily orifices, conveying paranormal messages or images?”
“Actually, Mulder, I was thinking more along the lines of cheesecloth, netting, dough, or paste treated with phosphorescent paint. Parlor tricks by phony mediums.”
He grinned at her. “As opposed to legitimate mediums? Scully, that lab report indicates a biological compound with exactly the composition you’d expect of ectoplasm. You’re not arguing with science, are you?”
“Science denies the existence of ectoplasm, M
ulder.”
“Maybe you’ll get a chance to prove otherwise. That would be sweet: Dana Scully receiving the Nobel Prize for substantiating the existence of ectoplasm.”
That night, Mulder again awoke in the wee hours, hearing strange sounds. This time it wasn’t Scully rummaging for a late night snack. Moving through the dark house with his flashlight, Mulder entered the living room, where the walls of the house were throbbing, bulging, as if a living, breathing thing!
He rushed to Scully’s room and knocked, hard.
“Scully, I need you!”
Cracking the door, she looked out at him, sleepily wry as she tied herself into a robe. “This is a little sudden, isn’t it?”
Filling her in along the way, Mulder dragged her into the living room, where moments before the walls had protruded and palpitated.
Now—nothing.
“I suppose you also have a frog that sings,” Scully said.
“I saw it. Just like we both saw those walls oozing red.”
“Mulder, you were half-awake, in a dark house, with a mind filled with ectoplasm.”
“I know what I saw.”
She swallowed. “If you say you saw bulging walls, I believe you saw bulging walls.”
“Thank you.”
“But suppose this house is a focal point of some sort of paranormal activity? That’s not why we’re here. Bulging walls don’t pertain to the death of that young woman.”
“How do we know that? You’re usually not much for coincidences, Scully. I think these walls hold the secret. Maybe they’re trying to...speak to us.”
Scully looked at her partner, sensing his frustration, knowing that the abduction and murder of the girl resonated with his own personal loss.
“I think you’ve been put through two long, harrowing days.” She touched his arm, gently. “Get some sleep, Mulder.”
*****
BANEWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
SATURDAY, 6:46 a.m.
Just after dawn, Mulder awoke to the sound of rapping at his bedroom door. He quickly answered it and found a distraught, horror-struck Creed.
“Now Heather’s been kidnapped!” The big man’s voice was trembling, his face a mask of agony. “Right under your damn noses! Come see what you’ve done!”
In the child’s bedroom, Mulder and Scully took in a nearly identical crime scene right down to the cut-and-paste ransom note with that now-familiar signature-in-blood: SECOND CHANCE. NO COPS, NO FBI THIS TIME, MAYBE YOU GET THIS ONE BACK.
Creed’s voice was soft now, yet threatening. “I want you two out of here.”
Scully said, “Yes, of course, until the crime scene techs—”
“No! Out of here. Alice doesn’t know about the second kidnapping and I want to tell her myself. By myself. I want you to leave, and keep the FBI and any authorities away from this house. This time I’m going to pay the ransom and act alone.”
“Mr. Creed,” Mulder said gently, “kidnapping is a federal crime. Sir, you don’t have the option of turning us away—but I can help you minimize the intrusion.”
It took five minutes to convince him, but finally Creed agreed, and went off to deliver this latest awful news to his wife.
Using the speaker phone in Creed’s study, Mulder called Skinner, bringing the Assistant Director up to speed.
“We’ll respect Mr. Creed’s wishes,” Skinner said, “and leave you and Scully as the family’s only FBI contacts. But I’ll inform Hertel, and get his team back in—at a distance.”
“That’s wise, sir,” Scully told Skinner. “The kidnapper may be watching the house; there was a definite awareness of our role here.”
They could hear the frown in Skinner’s voice. “I thought the kidnapper was I.D.’d as Clifford Dain.”
Mulder said, “He’s just one suspect, sir.”
“Do you have another?”
Scully and Mulder traded looks, her eyes widening. Would Mulder tell Skinner that he suspected the late Clayton Geech? Or maybe the house itself?
“We’re still developing that, sir,” Mulder said, to Scully’s obvious relief, and the phone conversation ended.
Scully prowled the study anxiously, saying, “Mulder, haven’t you been troubled by the ease with which both these kidnappings were accomplished? The second time circumventing FBI presence? No one, none of us, heard or saw anyone in the house. It’s as if... don’t say it.”
“A ghost did it? We did hear something last night, after all, or at least I did.”
“And saw something.” Scully headed out of the study. “Let’s have a look at those walls that bulged.”
Mulder followed Scully to the living room. She knocked on the walls, listening for hollow places.
“Heather saw and heard strange things the night of the first kidnapping,” Mulder pointed out.
“Yes. Suppose those ‘paranormal’ activities were staged as distractions...”
“While the kidnappings were taking place?”
Scully nodded. “Maybe when this house was remodeled, and new walls dropped, space was left behind, for storage, or passageways, for access to wiring...”
“You mean, perhaps the walls bulged because someone was moving behind them?”
“Maybe. Or an accomplice putting on a show. And maybe there are ways in and out of this house we don’t know about.”
“Well, I know who would know.”
“Who’s that, Mulder?”
“The man who had the house remodeled—Clayton Geech.”
Quickly they went to Creed, who told the agents that there were no plans, no architectural drawings of the home: do-it-yourselfer Geech had done his own remodeling.
Mulder drove into Banewich, seeking further information on this subject, while Scully stayed at the house with the Creeds, waiting for the phone to ring. Mrs. Creed was not happy with Scully’s presence but kept to herself. Her husband was busy arranging for ransom money—Scully listened in as the author spoke with his publisher on the phone, arranging a further $500,000 advance on The Banewich Terror.
When he hung up, Creed said to Scully, with weary, even tragic resignation, “Now I have to write the goddamned thing.”
“Oh, but you’ll be back on the bestseller list,” his wife said to him bitterly.
*****
BANEWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
SATURDAY, 11:16 a.m.
In Banewich, Mulder easily located the real estate agent who sold the Hickory Hill house to Creed.
Seated across his desk from Mulder, the agent, who seemed near retirement age, confirmed Creed’s story that Geech did his own remodeling, and that no plans existed.
“We did do a survey once, of the exterior and interior of the house,” the real estate agent said, “just to come up with specs for our listing...and, funny thing—the outside of the house and the inside don’t quite match up.”
“How do you mean?”
“A number of the walls in that house are unusually deep.”
“Deep enough for passageways?”
“Deep enough for rooms, in some cases. I have pictures on file, of the house on Hickory Hill, if you’d like me to point some things out specifically.”
“Please do.”
The agent did, and as they dug into the real-estate equivalent of an X-File, Mulder said, “The other families who owned that house over the years, those who moved out, reporting strange occurrences...did any of them have children?”
“Why, I believe so. I believe all of them did...I can check on that for you.”
And in every instance of so-called poltergeist activity, a girl either about to enter, or just entering, puberty had been living in the Hickory Hill house.
Revitalized by this new information, Mulder again sought out retired county attorney Gerald Allison, at the man’s home this time, impressing upon him the urgency of the situation.
“One girl is dead,” Mulder said to Allison. “Another girl is in the murderer’s hands.”
Allison wore a haunted expression. “I
told you before, Agent Mulder: Clayton Geech is long buried.”
“So is the truth in this matter. You need to tell me what you know, sir. You may have been a judge, and a fine one, in your day...but right now, you’re no judge of what’s pertinent in this case.”
It took no further coaxing. The retired county attorney admitted that, although they’d been discovered drugged and near death, the two children of the clergyman had actually survived; it had been decided to protect them from their father’s terrible deed.
“They were sent to a distant relative of their murdered mother,” Allison said, “to be raised out from under the shadow of their father’s sins.”
“But his sins didn’t include killing his children.”
“No. We thought it better to lead the public to believe the children were...gone, so they could start over somewhere else, fresh, out from under that dark cloud.”
*****
BANEWICH, MASSACHUSETTS
SATURDAY, 1:42 p.m.
Back at the house on Hickory Hill, Mulder went to Creed’s office to sort back through the research materials on the history of the original crime. He studied a photo of the clergyman’s daughter. She was a sweet-looking young teenager, possibly thirteen.
Then Mulder joined Scully with the Creeds by the phone. No call had come in.
Alice Creed turned a withering gaze on both FBI agents.
“Until they’re gone,” she said to her husband, “we don’t have a prayer of getting Heather back.”
She began to berate Creed further for allowing the agents to stay, and finally Mulder held up a hand.
He said to the couple, “This is something the two of you need to discuss.... Scully, let’s step outside for a moment.”
“But Mulder,” Scully said, knowing that leaving the phone unattended was a serious breach of procedure, “what if the kidnapper calls...?”
“If that happens,” Mulder said to the Creeds, “we’ll be just outside. One of you come get us, right away.”
As a beautiful sunset painted the quaint little town of Banewich below, a frustrated Scully said, “What’s the idea of leaving our post?”
Mulder showed Scully the photo of the clergyman’s daughter. “Remind you of anyone?”
“No... I don’t think so.”
“Look harder. Could that be Alice Creed, as a child?”