X-Files: Trust No One

by Tim Lebbon

  Scully almost gasped as she too caught the resemblance.

  “What does this mean, Mulder?”

  “It may mean Alice Creed orchestrated these kidnappings.”

  The seeming absurdity of that brought an incredulous smile to Scully’s face. “And killed her own daughter?”

  “She didn’t kill her daughter: Charity was a difficult girl and the offspring of Creed’s other wife.”

  “But, Mulder, what about Cliff Dain? If he wasn’t guilty, why would he flee?”

  “What’s so unusual about a drug-dealing dropout heading for the hills when the cops want to talk to him? Or maybe they’re in on it together, could be Cliff’s into milfs.”

  Scully rolled her eyes.

  Mulder raised a forefinger. “One thing’s certain, Scully... Alice said it herself: Creed’s not going to get a ransom call tonight... not with us still around.”

  “Do you think Alice would harm her real daughter?”

  Mulder shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, she pampers her, shelters her... but who knows what some parents will do to their kids these days. Anyway, I think I know where to find Heather. But we have to wait to look for her.”

  Scully frowned. “Where do you think she is, Mulder?”

  “In there,” he said, nodding toward the big house. “Somewhere in there....”

  And Scully turned her narrowing eyes to the barn-like structure while a chill breeze ruffled the barren branches of the hanging trees around them.

  *****

  BANEWICH, MASSACHUSETTS

  SUNDAY, 2:34 a.m.

  The phone did not ring throughout the long evening.

  Deep into the night, after the Creeds had finally gone to bed, Mulder and Scully with their flashlights went prowling through the huge house—every room, including the large finished basement, every nook and cranny of the garage. Finally, utilizing a crowbar, and knowledge that the real estate agent had shared with him, Mulder carefully pried loose a wallboard...

  ...and he and Scully soon found themselves wandering through passageways, flashlight beams beams slicing the darkness as they moved down hidden hallways that existed between walls and ancient barn wood. Finally a passageway opened into a dark, attic-like room, where off to one side they found a trunk.

  An airhole-punched trunk.

  Inside was Heather, in what was apparently a drug-induced sleep.

  Scully knew at once that the child needed to be taken to a hospital. Mulder cradled the unconscious girl, looking at her with longing concern, and Scully—gun in hand—escorted them from the house. Gently Mulder put the child in the backseat of their rental car and dispatched Scully off into the night, with the Banewich emergency room her destination.

  As she drove off, Scully watched Mulder go back inside, silently wishing him Godspeed, and headed down Hickory Hill. As she paused momentarily at the driveway’s mouth, a hysterical-looking disheveled figure staggered in front of the car.

  Cliff Dain!

  *****

  BANEWICH, MASSACHUSETTS

  SUNDAY, 3:48 a.m.

  Mulder, in the meantime, had gone back inside the house to deal with the Creeds, unsure whether Arthur Creed and his wife were in this together. Mulder found Creed sleeping fitfully, his wife not beside him in the rumpled bed.

  Mulder shook him awake. “Where’s your wife?”

  Groggily, he said, “What...?” He looked at the empty place beside him. “Alice? Uh... I... I don’t know.”

  Then Creed’s eyes widened and he cried out as a carving-knife slashed down past Mulder, sinking deep into the writer’s chest.

  Creed tumbled back in bed, bleeding, barely conscious; Mulder wheeled, gun in hand, but Alice Creed’s withdrawn blade slashed through his sleeve into his arm, causing him to drop his nine millimeter.

  Mulder—seeing the knife poised to swing down on him—threw a fist into the woman’s stomach, doubling her over. The knife flew from her hand and skittered under a dresser. Mulder dove for his weapon, but Alice grabbed him by his bleeding arm and tossed him against the wall, with shocking strength.

  Then she was on him, choking him, her grip vice-like, her face contorted with rage and dementia, pushing him back against the wall—a wall that oozed red.

  Alice, seeing the bleeding wall, recoiled in horror, and Mulder knew at once that the woman feared this house, feared these manifestations, and he used her hesitation to shove her off and away from him.

  Mulder scrambled for his nine millimeter, but a shaken Alice, eyes wide with walls that bled and bulged, kicked it from his hand and fled frantically from the bedroom.

  After retrieving his Smith and Wesson, Mulder followed her into the hallway, where the walls throbbed and pulsed and leeched scarlet. The floor too was bulging, making it hard for either of them to keep their balance. Creaks and groans seemed amplified now, like the moans of some huge creature, echoing eerily; doors were opening and slamming themselves, windows flying open, then shut, as if the house were a living thing having a nervous breakdown.

  Astounded though Mulder was, it was Alice Creed who was really freaking out, and no wonder—the house seemed to be attacking her!

  Mulder struggled for his footing and then pursued her, yelling for her to stop, which she ignored. She started down the stairs and to her shock, and Mulder’s, the steps seemed to fold up into a smooth, slick surface, as in a funhouse, and she lost her balance and went tumbling, toppling down, landing hard.

  When Mulder followed, however, the stairs returned to their natural state, allowing him to go quickly down after her. The house seemed to be settling down, but Alice hadn’t: she had gone to a closet where she was pulling down a shotgun from a shelf. She leveled the weapon at Mulder, and he fired at her, or rather tried to. The hard fall to the floor upstairs had jammed his weapon!

  Triumphantly, Alice trained the twin eyes of the shotgun on him, fingers on twin triggers, and was about to fire when she was sucked back into the closet, with sudden, inexorable force, like a vacuum cleaner picking up a gum drop.

  The door slammed.

  And the sound of the shotgun firing within the closet was like a terrible belch from the depths of the place.

  Tentatively, Mulder went to the closet, opened the door...

  ...and, wincing, saw what was left of Alice after both barrels of the shotgun had gone off in her face at close range.

  Around him, the house was still.

  Then his cell phone trilled and Mulder about jumped out of his skin.

  “Mulder,” Scully’s voice said, “it’s me.... Are you all right?”

  “Better than Alice Creed.” He was already moving back up the now normal stairs. “She just ate two barrels of a shotgun, after she stuck a knife in her husband.... Send an ambulance over.”

  *****

  BANEWICH, MASSACHUSETTS

  SUNDAY, 6:47 a.m.

  At the hospital, Mulder met up with Scully, who reported that the child was fine, and personally patched up her partner’s slashed arm, telling him that Arthur Creed would also survive.

  Then Mulder spent a tender moment with Heather, comforting her, sparing her for now of the news of her mother’s death, as the girl seemed to have no realization that her mother had kidnapped her.

  Mulder rejoined Scully in the hall, where she escorted him into a room where another patient recuperated: Cliff Dain.

  “He had a rather interesting story to tell,” she said. “He hitched a ride with me here.”

  Dain, sedated in his hospital bed now, had told Scully (who now told Mulder) that Alice Creed was his sister... and his mother.

  Over coffee in a waiting area, Scully gave her partner the rest of Dain’s story.

  Cliff and Alice had grown up together sharing the secret that they were “the evil” their father, Clayton Geech, had hoped to eradicate years before on that other night in the house on Hickory Hill. Alice had been the victim of her father’s incest; and Cliff had been the offspring. Alice’s mother had not known tha
t her daughter’s teenage pregnancy was Alice’s father’s doing, having been led to believe a local boy had done the deed. It was the discovery of Cliff’s real paternity that had led to the violence of that terrible night long ago.

  In the hallway, Mulder said to Scully, “I don’t think his daughter’s pregnancy was the only evil that drove Clayton Geech to his mad act.”

  “No?”

  “Alice had just entered puberty. Poltergeist manifestations had probably begun—let’s use your theory and say it’s some as yet uncharted natural mechanism of the mind that Alice generated—manifestations that seemed a sign to the preacher that the evil must be wiped out.”

  “The evil being his little girl.”

  “Yes, and his entire contaminated family. And by the way, every subsequent outbreak of manifestations in that house occurred when a young teenage girl was living there.”

  “Well,” Scully sighed, “the teenage girl that was Alice Creed grew into a full-fledged textbook sociopath—able to convincingly play the role of devoted wife and mother. She sought out a rich husband and, when his fortunes began to fail, put this scheme in motion, with the help of her son... er, brother...”

  “Forget it, Scully—it’s Banewich town. So... is Cliff a sociopath, too?”

  “I don’t believe so—although I think, with a little research, we’ll find an interesting array of antisocial behavior on his part, over the years, culminating with his participation in the plot to return to the house where it all began... Alice manipulating Arthur Creed into doing a book on the subject, with Cliff’s job to get close to Charity Creed. I would imagine Cliff was told the kidnappings were simply designed to help hype Arthur’s book into a surefire bestseller.”

  “But Cliff wasn’t counting on Charity being murdered.”

  She shook her head. “No. That went well beyond his capabilities. He drugged the girl, at his mother’s bidding, not realizing he was giving her an overdose... and when he learned what he’d done, he freaked out. Now he’s cooperating completely. Turned the ransom money over and was hoping for immunity, if he testified against his sister. Mother.”

  “He’ll have to cut a different deal now. Where’s he been hiding?”

  “In the house... those passageways we found.”

  “Actually, Scully, you figured that out. I can’t take any credit... but I don’t agree with you that Alice was motivated solely by greed.”

  “Why else would she come back to that house?”

  “Maybe something compelled her. Something in that house drew her back. Called her home.”

  Scully didn’t bother controlling her smirk. “Well, I could accept a subconscious desire on Alice’s part, to confront her demons. But why bring her young daughter into harm’s way? Alice doted on Heather, loved the child—or at least she did as much as any sociopath is able to love anybody else.”

  “That house seems to be a conduit for troubled young girls. Maybe it called out to both of them.”

  With a lift of her eyebrows, Scully said, “Might I suggest you leave that notion out of your report? Anyway, the biggest surprise to me, Mulder, is Alice Creed killing herself. That’s the one thing a self-absorbed sociopath is generally incapable of.”

  Mulder shook his head. “Alice Creed didn’t kill herself.”

  Scully frowned. “Well, she certainly did. She looked down those shotgun barrels and fired.”

  “Scully, the house killed her.”

  Scully arched an eyebrow. “The evil house, you mean?”

  “I don’t think that house is evil, or ever was. In fact, I’ll wager the next bargain-hunting family’ll find it blessedly free of bleeding, bulging walls...even if they have a teenaged daughter.”

  “And what makes you think that?”

  “The evil that was haunting that house is gone.”

  That was all too vague and elliptical for Scully, who demanded, “What happened back there, Mulder? What really happened while I was rushing Heather to the hospital?”

  Mulder, who knew there was absolutely no way to convince his partner of what he saw and experienced, popped a sunflower seed.

  “Scully, you had to be there.”

  The End

  TIME AND TIDE

  By Gayle Lynds and John C. Sheldon

  PORTLAND, MAINE

  12th JANUARY, 2000, 9:20 a.m.

  It was dangerous going. Three teenagers climbed over the slippery rocks along the shore of Great Diamond Island, one of the Casco Bay islands near Portland, Maine. The tide had deposited slime on the rocks, and a fall would hurt. But the more risky terrain they put behind them, the more likely they could escape detection while smoking the dope they’d bought at the ferry terminal. Their names were Carole, Jackie, and Allen, and they were celebrating their high school graduation.

  Ahead stood a tall bluff, at the base of which lay a stretch of sand. After crabwalking over the final few yards of rocks, the teenagers crossed the beach to the base of the cliff. Where the beach met the high water mark of the sea stood some bushes that hid their view of the water and, more importantly, the view from the water.

  Chuckling with relish at their isolation, they sat facing each other. Jackie pulled out her stash, Allen the papers, and all began rolling joints. Then they shared a book of matches, inhaled, and awaited pleasure.

  Several minutes later, with one joint behind them, Allen stood and stretched his arms over his head. He was of medium height, with curly black hair down to his collar and the upper arms ⎯ exposed because he’d rolled up his sleeves ⎯ of a bodybuilder. As long as he and his family had summered on the island, he’d never had the incentive to visit this spot. He took a few steps toward the water, turned around and glanced up the cliff. There he spotted what looked like two large slits, each about twenty feet above his head and the same distance apart.

  “Hey, come check this out,” he said to his friends.

  Jackie and Carole were soon standing beside him. The girls were a Mutt and Jeff pair: Jackie was the tallest of the three and thin. She wore her brown hair in a ponytail. Carole was the shortest and slightly heavy-set, with long, elegant red hair in a braid down the middle of her back.

  Allen pointed up to the slits he’d discovered. They appeared of equal size, about three feet high and a couple of feet wide. The outside perimeter of each was rough, as if the opening had been harshly chiseled out, but on the inside each had a window.

  “One of them’s open. Let’s find out what’s inside,” Carole said, high and adventuresome.

  “You’re not going to climb up there,” Allen said, chuckling and shaking his head.

  That was a dare to an unathletic-looking eighteen-year-old who wanted to impress her male companion. “Watch this.” She started up the rocky face. A minute or two later she reached the open window, gazed inside, and turned to her friends below: “There’s a living room or something, and nobody’s here.” She checked back inside again, and then shimmied in through the window.

  The others gawked.

  “Good God, she did it,” Jackie said.

  “I didn’t think she could,” Allen agreed.

  A moment later, Carole stuck out her head. “Come on up. This is cool.”

  “We shouldn’t,” Jackie began.

  “Don’t be a jerk,” Carole said. “C’mon.”

  Thus goaded, Jackie climbed, followed by Allen. Soon all three stood inside the room. The place was about twenty feet square and smelled dank like a cave. Rusted rebar showed through the cement ceiling, which was stained with water splotches. The walls also appeared to be concrete ⎯ it was hard to tell because the only light in the place came from the windows, which were too deep and narrow to illuminate the sides clearly. There was a bed, slept in and not made, two chairs at a table, a lamp on the table, and a kitchen area against a sidewall. An unlit passageway opened on the side of the room away from the windows.

  “This must have been a bunker or something, from when there was a fort here,” said Allen.

  T
he three knew a military post ⎯ Fort McKinley ⎯ had occupied the easterly end of the island during wartime, although they weren’t sure which war or when. It had been abandoned for as long as they could remember.

  “This place creeps me out,” Jackie said.

  “Holy shit, look at this!” Carole said. She was staring down through the glass of the other window ⎯ the unopened one on the left side of the room.

  The others joined her. There, just beyond the bushes that had protected them from view, was a flat seabed. Two skeletons lay partially embedded in the sand, one ribs-up, the other on its right side.

  “What the—” said Jackie. Puzzled, she returned to the window through which they had entered. “Look down here!”

  Carole and Allen joined her.

  “High tide,” Carole said. “Nothing but water.”

  They went back to the second window: The tide remained low and the skeletons were still there. Carole grabbed the crank and opened the casement window. She lifted herself onto the sill to get a better view.

  Suddenly there was a grating sound behind them, the noise of a heavy door dragging across concrete as it was being opened.

  “Shit, someone’s coming!” Jackie said.

  “Follow me,” Carole said in a low voice. In the window, she pivoted on her backside and swiftly climbed down.

  Jackie jumped up onto the sill and followed. As soon as she’d cleared the window, Allen started through.

  “Hey, wait, don’t go out there!” a man’s voice shouted.

  If Allen needed any more incentive to hurry, that provided it. He skinned his knees as he clambered down the bluff. At the bottom, he took off with his friends across the beach and through the bushes to the exposed seabed.

  Before them lay the skeleton on its back, ribs bare and white. They slowed to gape at the ominous sight.

  “Gross,” Jackie said.

  “Wonder where it came from, and how long it’s been here,” Allen said.

  Carole gazed at the other skeleton, several yards toward the sea. “Look at that.” She pointed to a swirl of sand rising out of its rib cage, growing taller and wider. Its shape was vaguely cylindrical, a greyish golden twisting column. Spinning over the skeleton, it slowly bobbed up and down.