Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997
Subject: Acadia 1/2

Acadia
RivkaT@aol.com
Classification: XA, UST.
Rating: R for violence and language
Summary: A multiple murder case in Maine tests Mulder and Scully's
partnership.
Spoilers: Fourth season, between Demons & Gethsemane.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and make no claim to anything herein.

Acadia
Prologue

The trees were singing in Fox Mulder's dream.

Their voices were varied, alto and baritone and soprano all rising and
falling in a chant like the ones he remembered from long-ago Saturdays,
reciting prayers in a language he couldn't understand. Its
incomprehensibility was beautiful.

The trees bent towards him, and suddenly he was in a small clearing, bald
dirt surrounded by tall trees and underbrush. It was twilight, but he could
still see the bark swirling, gently moving in harmony with the chanting. The
sound was like the wash of the ocean. It made him dizzy.

Then he was standing on a rock, and the trees had receded away; the circle
had grown larger. Over their heads he could see the mountains around him. He
looked down and there was a section of a tree trunk at his feet, displayed on
the rock like a sacrifice. Its bark was black and shining with wetness.
Liquid had filled the ridges, so that the striations in the bark were traced
in silver in the dying light.

Mulder knew with dream-certainty that the tree was soaked in blood. He tried
to turn away, but some force drew him down, and he stretched out his hands.
When they touched the bark, a great gout of blood rushed up into his face,
covering him. He heard footsteps behind him, but could not rise to meet
whatever it was that walked the bleeding forest.

And came awake, soaked in sweat and stuck to the couch in a most unpleasant
fashion. He blinked at the VCR clock, which told him that it was well after
three in the morning, and realized that he had forgotten to turn on the air
conditioning even after seeing the report that the D.C. area was due for an
unseasonable heat wave. Mulder peeled himself off the couch and staggered
over to the thermostat, nearly kneecapping himself in the process, and
managed to bludgeon it into producing cooler air.

He found a sheet from the hall closet to separate his skin from the sweaty
leather of the couch, and went back to sleep.

I. A Tree Falls

There is the faint tinge of brine in the air, close to the sea. The sound of
the waves, never once the same but always familiar. The gulls, whose wings
flap and then still as they glide, flap and still until they are out of
sight. The spruce, unrepentant and tall, whose new spring needles are as soft
and welcoming as the eider duck's down.

And with everything, the rock. Underneath the trees, the rock. Above the
trees, soaring free, rise the bare mountaintops that gave Mt. Desert Island
its name. Little orangey rocks on big tan rocks on slabs of grey-pink rock
that are mountainsides. The only true fjord on the continent, with its
mountain dipping directly to the river.

The rock has been here for a long time. It was underneath the glaciers when
they came and it stayed when they retreated. The rock will be Acadia when
that name has been forgotten.

There is no Mt. Everest in Acadia; nothing that cannot be tamed by ordinary
human perserverance and planning. Perhaps its human scale makes it
accessible. Acadia makes itself easily understood.

But in the spring, before crowds choke every road and trail, before the
pollution haze rises from the cars to obscure the mountaintop views, Acadia
is itself.

* * *

Richard Hughes had thought that Thunder Hole would be more interesting.

After all, hadn't Dad read the description from the guidebook that said that
air "exploded" out of the cave mouth when the water had compressed it enough?
Hadn't he said that the seafoam would spray twenty feet into the air when the
air roared?

Richard (or Rick, but never, please God, Dick) had run down the path just
off the road, nearly flying over the spray-slick granite and ignoring the
sturdy metal railings, which would simply have slowed him down. He plunged
headlong down the rock stairs, to where the sea-spray could drench him as
Thunder Hole earned its name.

But it was high tide. The water was too high to leave the cave thoroughly
enough to create a really strong noise. Instead of thunder, what Richard
heard was the ocean clearing its throat, sending water running out with a
phlegmy cough.

Phlegm was usually satisfying, but this did not cut it. His parents were
making the most of the poor show, nattering on about how lovely it was anyway
and how it would have soaked them on the upper level of the observation deck
if it had been any higher, but Richard was pacing back and forth, wondering
how soon he could get back to the car and his Nintendo.

He was about to run back up the stone stairs to the car, but he gave Thunder
Hole one last glare, as if it would suddenly turn cool.

That's why he was the first to point and shout at the arm that came gushing
out of the cave when it hacked again.

* * *

"The first victim was a little past his freshness date when he was found. At
first they thought he'd stayed up on the Bubble of his own volition and
frozen to death--it's still pretty cold in Maine--but then they found the
ligature marks."

Mulder passed Scully the picture from the file. The photo had been faxed,
and it twisted in her fingers as she touched it. It showed a man curled up on
top of a rock as big as a minivan. Judging by the bluish tint of his skin,
he'd been dead overnight. His eyes had the filmy white of beginning decay.

"Where is this again?"

"Acadia National Park, up in Stephen King country--a few hours past Bangor.
We're flying into Bar Harbor, and then driving to the park. This," he tapped
the picture, "is known as the Bubble Rock; this big rock was deposited by a
retreating glacier, so it sits on top of a mountain which is made out of
completely different rock. It's supposed to be rather striking, actually."

"So why are we being called in? I understand it's a federal park, but
where's the X File?"

"That's where the second victim comes in. Still unidentified, the second
victim's arm was observed emerging by a young boy who got a little more
excitement than he'd expected on his vacation."

Mulder handed over the next set of pictures, which displayed an arm, two
legs, a male torso, and a battered head (missing the eyes).

"The cuts look jagged," she said. "Do they have any idea what was used to
separate the parts?"

"According to the local funeral home--really big teeth."

* * *

They touched down in Bar Harbor midmorning of the next day and staggered off
the tiny plane. The weather had been stormy on the way up, and the journey
had been enough like a roller coaster ride to make the agents very unhappy
indeed. Two people on the plane, thirty-three percent of the passengers, had
thrown up, and one had very nearly done so in Scully's lap.

They picked up the standard rental car and drove straight to the park. It
was an hour-long drive, mostly on two-lane state roads. On the
straight-aways, cars were allowed to drive in the opposite lanes to pass, and
Mulder took full advantage of the opportunity, nearly getting them into
head-on collisions twice.

After the second time, Scully spoke up. She'd been trying to ignore him, but
something about blaring horns and headlights being flashed in her eyes got to
her. "What's the hurry, Mulder? I bet our victim will still be dead when we
get there."

"This isn't a legitimate X File," he said, gripping the steering wheel more
tightly and grinding down on the gas pedal. "It's an excuse to get us out of
Washington, where we can't investigate anything really connected to larger
mysteries, and also it's a feeble attempt to get me profiling again. There's
clearly a killer here, escalating fast, but I'm uninterested in his delusions
and I don't think we have time for this."

"The job's the same as it ever was," she said softly. Dangerous, decidedly
unglamorous, and reasonably poorly paid.

"But we aren't, are we?" He glanced over, just for a second, and then had to
turn his attention back to the road as the car rounded a curve at a worrisome
speed.

She'd very much hoped that a completely unrelated case could get Mulder's
mind off his past and her future, but that was beginning to seem unlikely. If
he was right, at least they could probably finish the investigation quickly
and return home.

Anyway, being in an isolated cabin in the wilds of Maine might be the best
possible place to have a serious discussion with him. Somewhere he couldn't
run away from her, or claim that a suggestive lead made listening to her at
the moment impossible.

* * *

They checked in at the gate to the park, and the attendant didn't know what
to do about them. Usually flashing FBI ID was the best way to get service,
whether at the dry cleaners' or at the local library (the local police
department being a different matter entirely), but the attendant didn't seem
to grasp the concept that federal law enforcement officers might be
interested in crimes on federal land. He thought that maybe Mulder was
looking for a discount on the entrance fee, and he wasn't sure whether that
was allowed. Mulder considered just pulling out his wallet and paying the
regular car entrance fee, but that probably would just have confused the poor
fellow more. A few cars full of kids and harassed-looking adults waited
behind them as he called for instructions.

Finally, the park attendant directed them to a small building about three
hundred yards down the road. It was a good spot for an administrative
building, off to the side so that it wouldn't be in the way of tourists
stampeding to the best spots but would still be locatable if someone's golden
retriever ran away.

The building was the Hulls Cove Visitor Center. It was diamond-shaped, the
better to fit into the curve of the hill it sat on. They went inside; there
were tour schedules and pamphlets about lobster, ducks, and beaver scattered
around the walls. Most of the building was taken up with a large,
high-ceilinged room that Mulder inferred was usually used for lecturing to
large parties of tourists. A few rangers milled around the space, making it
look even emptier. Their mood, frightened and confused, made the room seem
larger and more ominous. This was not a security force, he thought grimly; it
was a bunch of tour guides in khaki. The head ranger in charge of park
security was named Jack Langbein, and he was almost unbelievably grateful to
see them.

"We haven't had a murder since I've been here," he said as he shook Mulder's
hand, hard, then turned his attention to Scully. From her expression, Mulder
thought that Langbein had been little gentler with her. "There was a suicide,
a few years back, and then that guy who fell from one of the trails...but
nothing like this," he hurried to finish as Scully glared at him.

Langbein seemed unsure what to do once the handshaking was over. Mulder used
the uncomfortable silence to evaluate him. He was in his late fifties, one of
those lucky people whose hair whitens rather than greys. He'd been unluckier
in his haircut--it looked like someone had been at his head with a pair of
garden shears, and tufts were sticking out of it at all angles and lengths.
He was sweating profusely, and he had to keep wiping his face with a patchy
cotton handkerchief as he talked. Scully would no doubt classify him as a
huge heart attack risk. His eyes were shockingly blue, and overall he looked
as if he should be one of the FBI's suspects rather than an ally.

Langbein coughed under Mulder's intense scrutiny. "You know, we don't even
have tape to keep tourists away from the, uh, the crime scenes. We had about
half a roll, and then we have another roll that says 'Construction,'
but--well, Bubble Rock and Thunder Hole are some of our most popular
attractions. We'd like to get them back up and running as soon as possible. I
can show you how to get there right now."

Scully gave him a look which Mulder translated as "If you really said what I
think you just said, I'd have a better chance of having an intelligent
conversation with the thing I just scraped off my shoe." Scully had very
little tolerance for tourist attractions when people were at stake.

Mulder suppressed the indulgent smirk he wanted to give her, so that she
wouldn't get mad at him, and fleetingly wondered whether he really had any
idea what went on in her head. His profiling skills worked extraordinarily
badly on her; no wonder she didn't really believe in his skills, when her
most direct experience of them was that he couldn't tell how she was feeling
if she hired a skywriter to tell him.

Langbein's second nervous cough shocked Mulder out of his reverie. "Um, if
that's all right with you. People--folks get mighty mad if they drive a day
to get here and they can't see everything that's on the map."

"I get the same way with theme parks," Mulder replied, and then he did get
Scully's nasty look, but Langbein hastily gave them directions--it wasn't too
hard, inasmuch as there was only one way to go into the park--and all but
begged them to give him the all-clear to reopen Thunder Hole.

"I'll send a ranger out to you, so you can tell us when you're through," was
the last thing he said as he ushered them out the door.

"Does he even understand that this is a murder investigation?" Scully asked
Mulder as they returned to the car.

He got in and shook his head. "Give the guy a break, Scully. Postal
employees see more violence than park rangers, usually. It's not his fault
some nutcase decided to play Operation near his most prized attraction."

They drove to Thunder Hole, a spot a few miles down the road. The park was
set up so that cars could only drive one way around most of its perimeter;
once you were in, you were in for the long haul. There were a few roads into
the center of the park, for better access to the mountains, but to get in and
out of the park there was no choice but the scenic route. They pulled over to
a small parking lot just off of the road.

Scully followed Mulder to the railings that marked off the Hole.

The sea was calm and gray; the sun was bright, but not hot. The familiar
yellow tape surrounding the crime scene looked particularly out of place
among the rocks and weeds and white birds, a few of whom were pecking at the
tape to see if it was edible. Only a few yards of tape blocked off the access
to the ramp down to the throat of the cave; most of the barriers had been
created using the orange construction cones that would normally be reserved
for road repairs. Rangers were stationed at both sides of the approach to the
Point, warning off tourists.

Mulder pried the tape off of one of the metal railings and held it aside so
that Scully could pass. They walked down the gray stone steps.

Scully looked out at the ocean, paying no attention to the near-roar of the
cave just below her. Far off in the distance, lobster buoys floated, green
and white and yellow in distinctive patterns. She wouldn't be familiar with
this shoreline, Mulder thought, but it was the same sea. Near the water, the
wind was brisk, and she settled her jacket more firmly around her shoulders.

Mulder hurried ahead, taking the steps two at a time heedless of the fact
that they were slick from sea-spray. He vaulted over the guardrails, ignoring
Scully's disapproving noise, and looked into the cave mouth.

He could almost see the arm as it would have appeared to the little boy,
something out of a video game or scary movie more than it was real. Moving on
top of the water, not waving, but drowning. For a moment, until the jagged,
grey edges at the shoulder were processed and understood, it would have
looked like a mannequin's arm, just standard flotsam from a polluted sea. And
then with one blink the world would have changed.

A Freudian would attribute the obvious meaning to the location, leaving only
the question of whether the killer knew he wanted to fuck his mother or not
(though, frankly, a Freudian would ask the same question regardless of the
victim's location; they were nothing if not creative). He looked in and saw
darkness, and jagged rocks, and the sea more powerful than any human agency.

A rush of water bursting from the hole filled his vision, foaming white and
furious, and soaked him. The salt water made him blink and rub at his eyes,
and he couldn't see clearly for nearly an entire cycle, so when he looked
again it was only to see that he should close his eyes against the oncoming
water.

The killer would have stood here, sopping wet and very cold, because it
would have been nighttime, when there were no visitors, feeding pieces
in--would he have known that high tide would create the right suction to take
the remains out of the cave? Mulder made a mental note to check if the
rangers had noticed any debris recently that would suggest someone testing
the wave patterns. He would have held his breath against the shock of the
water, and his hands would have slipped against the sharp rocks, acquiring a
thousand cuts and bruises before the job was done.

He shuddered from the cold, made worse by the splashes of water that
continued to wash over him, preventing him from becoming acclimated to the
air. The killer would have had as little regard for his own body as for that
of his victim, to come out here and stand until his aim was achieved.

Mulder turned back towards the guardrail and groped for it. Scully's hand
found him and guided first one hand, then the other to the metal rail. It was
smooth and strong under his fingers, but colder than her flesh.

"Nothing down there will take prints," she shouted over the noise of the
surf as he pulled himself back to solid ground. "And I don't think there's
anything left in the cave--the rangers tried to find more parts, but they
couldn't." Meaning, Mulder, why did you go down there?

The air felt freezing, now that he was soaked.

He tried to explain as she guided him back up the stone stairs, still
shivering and miserable, and she made him walk back to the car and take off
his shirt and jacket, replacing them with a dry shirt and the sweater he'd
remembered to pack. His pants were still wet, but at least he was partly dry,
and he wouldn't leave to go find a bathroom until he'd gotten a better feel
for the site.

The sun was white in the sky above. He could see for miles across the ocean;
the view was spectacular, even without Thunder Hole roaring below.

Scully, somewhat at a loss without hard evidence to find, followed him as he
paced by the railing at the top of the walk. He wanted to see the cave more
closely again, to fix in his mind how it would have looked, and so he went
down to the first landing, just above where the splash of the water hit. He
could feel Scully behind him--when had he grown so comfortable with that?
She'd prevent him from falling too far into this nut's mind. Hell, if she
could keep him from falling too far into his *own* mind, as she'd done within
the month, this tree-hugger would be no problem at all.

He frowned. Tree-hugger? Where'd that come from? Water, rock--no trees, not
yet.

Only in his dream had there been trees.

Mulder held onto the railing. It would have been so hard for the killer to
touch, this man-made abomination--this intervention, designed to make the
Hole accessible to just anyone, regardless of how lazy. Now, going into the
mouth of the Hole itself, that was something special. It required skill,
appreciation of the dangers, toleration of the extremes of wet and cold.

What did the killer want? Mulder could answer that question easily: He
wanted to close down the attractions of Acadia, to defeat the purpose of
coming here. He wanted people to recoil from the tourist spots instead of
flocking to them like fat sheep. He wanted to show how ugly human intrusion
into this pristine environment is--and there's no ugliness quite like death.

"Et ego in Acadia est," he said contemplatively, looking down.

"Isn't it Arcadia?" Scully asked.

"To Horace, maybe. Not to the little boy who's going to dream about that arm
forever."

"Can you give me some idea what you're talking about?" a voice asked
plaintively. Mulder stiffened and reached for his gun, wet in the sodden
holster but still functional.

Scully put a hand on his arm and whispered, "The ranger Langbein was going
to send."

She turned to confront the visitor. "It's one of Death's lines, 'even in
this paradise I am here.'"

She walked back up the steps, brushing past the confused ranger and leaving
Mulder to contemplate the ocean and the hiccuping surf rushing in and out of
the cave. He shook his head and followed her, giving the ranger an apologetic
grin as he passed.

* * *

At the top of the stairs, there was a footpath extending in both directions,
caught between the road and the rocks of the coast. Every twenty feet or so,
there was a tree; most bore marks of past pruning to keep them from
eliminating the path. In between the trees there were bushes and long grass.
Almost every plant sprouted some sign of spring: small green leaves, shoots,
or buds, red-veined and furled, waiting for their moment to emerge.

Not really having any particular plan in mind, Scully started walking down
the path, away from the parking lot. She heard Mulder peel off in the
opposite direction, and then the ranger's hesitant footsteps behind her.
Probably a law-enforcement wannabe.

Almost all of the trees had something wrong with them. Near the ground, or
on their limbs, there were odd-shaped protuberances, woody grey goiters that
made the trees look horribly pregnant. Most trees just had one, but some had
three or four. When Scully looked across the road to the hillside, where the
trees flourished in earnest, she saw that not as many were affected, though
the deformities were still fairly common.

Maybe Joe Friday could at least assuage her curiosity. She turned and caught
his eye. "What's wrong with these trees?"

He looked at her helplessly. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with dirty
blond hair and dimples. His nametag said "Gephardt." "Nothing's wrong,
ma'am."

"But what about those?" She pointed.

"Oh, the galls?" He sounded relieved. "Those are just natural. They're
caused by bacteria from the soil that get into the trees through wounds,
maybe, or sometimes there are mites or wasps that lay eggs in the bark, and
the galls grow around them."

"Is it dangerous to the tree?"

"No ma'am. It's not pretty, but it's like a scar on a person--just
cosmetic."

She frowned and bent to examine the nearest gall. It was as long as her
forearm, bulbous and grotesque. It loomed out onto the path, nearly blocking
the trail. "And are there always this many, Ranger Gephardt?"

"I don't know. I don't know if anyone's really looked. Does this--is this
part of the investigation?"

He said the last word as if it were an invocation. Scully suppressed a
sigh--she'd been right in her initial evaluation. "No. I'm just curious. Can
you take me to where the bodies are being kept?"

Gephardt gestured, and she followed.

End 1/10

Acadia
RivkaT@aol.com
2/10

Mulder considered the park. He'd wandered past the parking lot and onto the
rocks facing the sea after Scully disappeared. She'd find him when she wanted
to leave.

He was struck by the varieties of grey--in Washington, grey came in shades
from concrete to gum. Here there was infinite variety. The sun picked out
round bumps and jutting arms, warming the stones and making the individual
dots of pink and white within the grey sparkle.

The cliffsides were rifled like the pages of a poorly-cut book on the
landward side. In some places, the rock was so broken that he could stand on
twenty tiny peaks at once, hoping that his boots would hold up. In other
places, the rock was divided into car-size cubes and trapezoids.

Because of the rock's crystalline properties, it was easy to find
nearly-sheer drops only feet from the well-worn, perfectly safe trail. There
were many narrow crevices where the water had penetrated deep into the rock.

Mulder walked toward one outcropping, intending to look out at the sea, and
suddenly found that the path was blocked by a gap in the rock that was
invisible from even feet away. He was lucky he'd been walking slowly enough
to notice. He looked down into the shadowed, wet crevice. The white foam
where the sea met the rocks in an unending battle was visible, and there were
clumps of algae.

There was also motion, a hundred feet below him--human figures, bending over
the dank green masses on the shark-toothed shore. He squinted and decided
that they must be Japanese visitors, collecting kelp pods to eat as a
delicacy. He remembered kelp from the shores of his childhood, salty and
shiny, gelid green or rusted red, some kinds as delicately lacy as a fan and
other kinds dotted with hollow pods that would snap open and release the
scent of the sea.

There were birds below him, floating in the water. Every few minutes, a duck
would spot something edible in the water and a whole flock would dive down at
once, turning into blurry white lines in the water and then returning en
masse to the surface, sated.

There was a crack! a few hundred feet to his left, and he spun around,
nearly losing his footing on the rock. He regained his balance in time to
focus on the herring gull swooping to eat fragments of sea urchin. It had
dropped the green, spiny ball from a height of several dozen feet to crack
the shell and get at the tasty flesh inside. He grinned at the bird, wishing
it well in the Darwinian struggle. His own feet crackled over remnants of
past such meals.

Mulder frowned, realizing he'd lost focus. He could feel the profile
crawling around in the back of his head, but he couldn't quite articulate it.

Was this a long-term consequence of his recent impromptu surgery, he
wondered, subtle damage to the linguistic centers of the brain that would
make communication even more difficult for him? Usually he could spit out
letter-perfect profiles while simultaneously knotting his tie. It was his
gift to be fluidly, expressively snide and patronizing about his specialty,
even though he was unable to communicate anything else without a thousand
false starts. If that facility were gone, how would he maintain the mystique
that offset his obvious instability?

God only knew what Scully would say if he told her this fear. Probably
remind him that he was lucky to be alive, and then turn around and patronize
him for not realizing that the brain tissue 'that quack,' as she called him,
had penetrated was not generally associated with any linguistic processing
functions in any reported research. As if that would reassure him.

She'd told him that the areas potentially damaged were some of the ones
suspected to affect visual memory, which might explain the
hallucinations/memories/whatever he'd recovered, and in particular might
explain how he appeared in them full-grown. Spot damage to those portions of
the frontal lobe could produce flashes of memory, or what seemed to be
memory, and would certainly be conducive--Scully-speak again--to conflation
of one memory with another, or a memory with a wish or a dream.

There was nothing to be done about it now, anyway, and so he wished she'd
stop harping on it. She was the one who thought that time was a universal
invariant; what did she expect him to do?

Apparently not, if he wasn't going to be able to produce a profile that
would enable them to get back to D.C. and let Smokey the Bear take care of
catching the bad guy.

He knelt and picked up a handful of pebbles, pink feldspar and sparkling
quartz intermixed with greyish shells. They ran through his fingers and left
no trace behind.

Their killer wanted this tracklessness--wanted to leave no mark on the
land. Wanted to turn the tables, mark the people instead. He put the bodies
on the landmarks, carrion in the midst of stunning beauty--to show how people
were corrupt and corrupting? To warn them away?

The symbolism was crude and at the same time inarticulate. It couldn't be
long until he became completely irrational, but that wasn't as helpful out in
the wilderness as it would have been in the middle of a city. Even an
irrational person can get along fine if he only encounters one person at a
time, and kills that person to boot.

Mulder rose and turned away from the ocean. Picking his way over the rocks,
he returned to the path and then crossed the access road, into the forest
proper.

The park had thousands of colors of green. There was the dry, mint green of
desiccated moss on the rocks. There was the living, but somehow unhealthy,
deep and velvety green of the living moss near it. The trees were green and
fresh. In some places, the grass was also young and bright green; in others,
the grass was green right where it emerged from the ground, but straw-white
after about half an inch, as if Mother Nature had her hair frosted by an
over-zealous hairdresser. Small ferns emerging from the ground were green;
the epicytes that hung from dying trees like fairy hair were a light, minty
green.

There were other colors, too: Rocks of uniform gray, or black where they had
been exposed to water, or rich brown. Tree trunks were gray, and where a limb
had broken off recently, he could see a shocking contrast where the inner
wood of the tree, vibrant orange-brown, met the gray of the bark. There were
also white birches, their pallor constantly interrupted with round black
spots where branches might have grown, or patches where a layer of bark had
come off, revealing a gray layer beneath. The soil was black and soggy with
water, sprinkled with fragments of leaves. Acadia wore a coat of many colors,
as spring worked its alchemy on the detritus of the last season.

He could still smell the ocean, salty and true through the mossy scent of
ferns and the odor of balsam. It had been a cold spring, and not very much
was growing yet, but he could smell the new life just under the surface.

There were very few insects, not at all as the tourist brochure had promised
for summer visitors. Occasionally, he could hear birds: the soft hooting of
an owl, the tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker, or other, less identifiable noises.
Leaves laced through his field of vision, spiky and round and everything in
between, strung on branches that grasped higher towards heaven than he
aspired.

Mulder could feel the weight of the forest, pressing in on him even when he
was so close to other people. The forest had swallowed him; if Scully began
to look for him, as she would undoubtedly do in a minute or two, she would
have no idea where to start. He was insulated, protected, alone. He could
stay here forever, with the trees. They made no demands of him. They were
tall and strong. Maybe he could learn how to be like them.

Mulder shook his head, confused. He stared down at his hands--familiar
hands, though he could barely feel them now and he didn't think it was
entirely the cold that was to blame. These thoughts didn't feel like his own.
If they were his own, there'd be more guilt for considering laying down his
burden and hiding from the rest of the world.

This peace wasn't for him; it was the killer's. Always remember who is doing
the hunting, Patterson had said. It's harder than just existing. Any fool can
learn to be someone else, he'd lectured, but the real trick is to be both of
you at the same time.

He emerged from the woods and paused on the grassy strip dividing trees from
concrete to look both ways before he crossed back to the trail by the shore.
He strongly wished for more assistance. This wasn't a case that required his
special talents; what they needed was forty or fifty more rangers and a good
manhunt.

As if God heard and wanted to punish him for his presumption, just then he
felt it. It was as if colored filters had snapped down over his eyes. The
world twisted and shuddered under his feet. He spun around, gripped by the
certainty that if he left his back to the forest it would eat him alive. The
sky became white and featureless; the trees began to dance, swaying back and
forth as if following the rhythm of an unheard waltz. Their branches
smoothed and grew liquid and graceful, black against the contrasting sky.

He sank to his knees, trying to understand what had gone wrong.

His head felt heavy, fuzzy. It was so hard to think when the trees weren't
helping him. How had he ever made it this far, without them? He wanted to
weep with gratitude, but he was so lonely when they stopped talking. How had
he gotten so far away from them? He'd have to get back. He rose carefully
into a crouch, looking in every direction to make sure that he was safe.

Across the concrete scar, a young tree waved reassuringly. So much filth
around him, filth and corruption; he felt again unworthy, and so grateful, to
have been chosen from all the meat in the world to join with them.

He was on his hands and knees, watching the white sunlight sprinkled on the
loam, highlighting random places. There, a rock shone, bright as a diamond;
here, a patch of moss glowed, green velvet. The face of the last intruder
he'd punished shone from the tree's whorled bark like an object lesson.
Moaning with relief, he crawled toward the welcoming tree and buried his face
in her beckoning, tattooed lap.

And came back, feeling his face sting where the bark had scratched him.
Mulder wiped at the dirt and bark fragments without much hope, trying to make
himself minimally presentable. No one was yelling for help for the crazy man,
which meant that his performance had probably gone unobserved. He remembered
the handkerchief he'd been carrying around for Scully, and used it to wipe
off the worst of the grime from his face and hands. The knees of his pants
were a total loss, still wet from the surf and now saturated with mud; he'd
even managed to generate a tear on that stumble.

He was standing, but he leaned against the tree for support, ignoring the
damage to his sweater.

Yuck.

Would he have been so monstrous as to understand the killer if his life had
not changed irrevocably when he was twelve? Or was the insight into the
death-drive a part of him anyway? After all, he'd planned his first murder
when he was seven--his first-grade teacher, the one who always singled him
out for special attention because he was so *smart*, thus ensuring that all
the other kids would hate him--and, looking back, it really would have
worked, except that, in retrospect, he hadn't been quite coordinated enough
at seven to make the door close at just the right time. He'd all but profiled
his baseball coach at ten, figuring out what to say to the sadistic bastard
to make things a little easier for the team--already, then, he had learned
how to irritate adults and draw their fire away from the more vulnerable kids
who didn't understand the dynamics of human suffering. Maybe Samantha was
just one more excuse, and he was always destined to live in dangerous
thoughts, to understand the evil and damaged half-people whose mission was to
make life on earth as hellish for others as it was for them.

He didn't want to do this anymore. He'd thought that the X Files would
protect him. He should have known better. There was no protection for what he
was; even if he quit the FBI and became a hermit, he'd still see the murders
when he looked around. Hell, they'd probably be drawn to him, because being
completely understood by another human being is a dream that few have
fulfilled.

He looked around again. No faces in the treetrunks, not at the moment. He'd
learned very little from the episode; the killer didn't seem to plan very far
in advance. The forest, with all its presence, felt empty of humans. The man
they were looking for had not stayed to watch the ants scurry, so to speak.
What was the need to watch meat stumble around?

"Well, that was pleasant," he informed the forest, and went to look for
Scully.

End 2/10

Acadia
RivkaT@aol.com
3/10

* * *

Scully had been working long enough that the powder in her latex gloves had
lost almost all of its effectiveness, and as she pulled the yellow material
off she experienced a sensation not unlike peeling her bare legs off of a
vinyl seat on a hot and sticky day. She shuddered and quickly went to wash
her hands, throwing the gloves into the tiny hazmats bin as she went.

Death was always ugly. So much of the beauty of the human form came from
motion; even the flush on the most emaciated model's cheek was at least an
imitation of the flow of blood beneath the skin. Still the heart and lungs,
and the imperfections began to matter. The pores of the skin gaped more; the
wrinkles spoke of hard wear and loss of elasticity rather than experience and
passion for living. Ignore that, and the hungry bacteria surging from the
gut, the air, the ground around the body still clamored for attention,
bloating the flesh in places, collapsing it in others.

Waterlogged dead people, in particular, were close to burn victims in sheer
unappetizing grotesquerie. Every lesson had to be literally squeezed out of
the body. Most clues had disappeared under the relentless erasure of water.
Flesh frayed, contents of arteries and intestines washed out...at least this
one hadn't had many fish at him. Not many.

She'd dictated her findings into her trusty little recorder, for whatever
good they'd do. Off the one arm they had, she'd managed to salvage a few
partial fingerprints. Dismemberment, in this case, had been an investigative
aid; the arm had probably tumbled this way and that in the small cave by the
shore. If it had been attached to a body, it probably wouldn't have changed
position as much, and the outstretched hands would have bashed into the sand
over and over again, quickly obliterating any useful prints.

Scully sighed and rolled her shoulders back, trying to work out the pain
caused by too many hours craning down at bad angles. Bar Harbor, not
surprisingly, did not have very extensive investigative facilities, and
adjustable tables were out of the question.

So what had all her exacting care told her? She tried to organize a list of
important points in her head. It was very important to be ready for Mulder's
questions. He thought so damn fast, and if she wasn't going to struggle to
keep up she had to be completely in command of her side of the story.

Caucasian male, mid-twenties (which, of course, only described about 35% of
the visitors to the park, she thought darkly). Blond, almost shockingly so,
judging by the arm and pubic hair. Even most natural blonds have darker, even
brownish, pubic hair, but not this man, which implied that he was very, very
fair. On a hunch, she suspected oculocutaneous albinism, probably
tyrosine-positive--though that was just a guess; she'd have to confirm it
with hairbulb analysis. She'd taken samples from his arm to send down to the
lab in Boston, just to make sure. If he had albinism, that would make him
easier to identify in some ways, but harder to track--he'd probably had thick
sunglasses and lots of protection from the sun, at least if he had any sense,
because one of albinism's less pleasant consequences was enhanced
vulnerability to sunburn and skin cancer. If he'd gone around the park
bundled up, it was unlikely that anyone would remember him very well.

He'd been taken apart with a hacksaw, she'd concluded after careful
inspection. The park officer who'd called in the FBI had been sure it was
teeth, which was why it was ostensibly an X File, but the officer had
obviously known more about preventing forest fires than about identifying
death mechanisms. Couldn't blame her, really. After nearly a day in the
water, the edges of the flesh looked pretty ragged. Only the scratches on the
bone itself, which the poor ranger couldn't have been expected to examine
fully, identified the cutting instrument as a hacksaw.

Scully realized that her hair was soaked with sweat, from concentrating in
the closed, airless little room they'd given her. It had been freezing when
she came in, but hours of work had bled heat off of her and into the room.
She pulled off the elastic band she'd been using to keep her hair back and
shook her head like a dog coming in out of the rain.

"Do you serve towels with your showers?"

She started, and opened her eyes to Mulder's shit-eating grin. "I didn't
hear you come in," she chided.

"I'm the strong, silent type."

Mulder looked like she felt. He had a good day's worth of stubble, except
for the patch near his mole where hair wouldn't grow; she'd diagnose it as
alopecia from stress if she didn't think he'd take her head off for telling
him so. His sweater, the nice new one she'd made him put on a few hours ago,
was covered with debris, and his pants were ruined. His greyish trenchcoat
hung from him like a loose skin about to fall off; even the drooping belt
looked dejected. His eyebrows were bunched and lowered over his eyes, so she
knew he had a headache. One pupil was still larger than the other. What was
the Bureau thinking, sending him out on a case only a week after he'd had a
hole drilled in his head? God, it was like a bad joke: Mulder needs another
serial killer case like he needs a hole in the head--oh wait, he *has* a hole
in the head. That butcher--she stopped herself and brought her attention back
to the case.

"I think our victim suffered from albinism, Mulder." She outlined her
findings quickly, and he took it in.

"Do you think that the victim's condition made him stand out to our UNSUB?"
she asked when she'd finished the recitation.

Mulder shook his head uncertainly. "I don't see it yet. You said he might
have been particularly dressed up? Unnaturally protected from the natural
world? I--" He winced.

"Let's turn in for the night," Scully said.

"Tired?"

"I could use some sleep," she conceded, for once letting him use her as an
excuse without protest. "Pickled corpses aren't my favorite."

"Yeah, it's pretty ripe, isn't it?"

Scully looked at him uncomprehendingly.

"The smell, Scully?"

She shook her head. "I--"

Mulder just looked at her, and it made her want to cry. She focused on
cleaning up, sealing the body parts into their separate bags, tagging and
labeling everything for future reference. So that it could be used at the
killer's trial, if necessary. Or in case someone else had to take over.

He was still standing there, watching. She could feel his gaze on her skin.

"I've been expecting this for a while, Mulder. My doctor said that the
olfactory nerve was unlikely to survive much longer. I suppose I just didn't
notice. It shouldn't impair my ability to do the job."

She did not look up to judge his reaction.

She let Mulder drive, even though she could tell that he had to struggle to
keep his attention on the road. The night was completely black; there was no
artificial light at all but their brights as they drove down the darkened
state road. The woods on either side of the road soaked up the headlights
after only a few feet. It was like driving through a trench. Mulder had found
the one non-static-filled radio station. "I'm married to a waitress and I
don't even know her name," the radio sang, and she couldn't even force
herself to smirk along with Mulder.

Scully stared out at the window, into the darkness, wondering if death would
look like the cool Maine night. Sometimes she thought that she could feel it
moving in her body, growing cell by cell.

Mulder spoke in half-sentences as he drove, telling her what he'd found
while she'd been slicing and dicing. He'd taken a look at Bubble Rock. No
signs of struggle, further evidence for his conviction that the killings were
done elsewhere and then the bodies were moved to prominent tourist spots.

Langbein had wanted to clear away the police tape so that tourists could
return to the Rock. He'd already had three Representatives' offices call and
ask why their constituents couldn't see the wonders of America preserved with
those same constituents' hard-earned tax dollars.

Mulder had told them it was fine, let the tourists scramble over the site
and Thunder Hole as well to their hearts' content, because he didn't think
there was much more to be learned from the sites, and there were plenty of
photographs. The setup at Bubble Rock was rather simple: Dead body, left to
be found. Minimal planning, zero trace evidence. Rock and tree trunks didn't
take footprints very well, let alone fingerprints, and if their UNSUB was
some sort of mountaineer type living lightly on the land he wouldn't leave
many traces at the best of times.

As they pulled up the twisting gravel driveway leading to their cabin,
Scully reflected that it was a sign of Mulder's trust in her that he'd let
her hear him thinking out loud. At least there was some trust left between
them, however fragile, however limited to the professional.

Mulder had found them a cabin at the top of one of the bigger hills, at a
place called the Blue Moon. It was the off season, so even though the cabins
didn't have a government rate, they'd still be able to avoid a fight with
Accounting. It had two real bedrooms as well as a minuscule bathroom and a
main room that served as a kitchenette and living room. One wall of the main
room was taken up with sliding glass doors and a huge picture window; Scully
gathered from the promotional literature left on the kitchenette table that
the sunset from this cabin was remarkable.

Then she went into her bedroom; Mulder had already chosen the one on the
left. She wearily removed her suit and hose. The hose stuck to her feet
unpleasantly. Just another rough day.

Mercifully, she slept almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

* * *

Scully woke with the dawn. The bed was positioned so that the first rays of
the sun came through the high window, which she hadn't even noticed last
night, and hit her pillow. Scully rubbed at her eyes and checked her watch.
It was not yet six. Following the next step of her morning routine, she
checked the pillowcase--still pristine and slightly stiff, the cheap hotel
cotton blend smelling of pink soap.

She laid back and tried to rest, but it was hopeless, so after a few minutes
she got up and put on her robe. She didn't hear Mulder moving around. As
quietly as she could, she opened her bedroom door and entered the main room.

Mulder was outside, leaning on the wooden railing that circled the deck,
looking out over the darkened treetops. He was facing west, where the stars
were still visible. He didn't turn, and she thought that she hadn't made
enough sound to travel through the glass doors.

His hands were braced on the railing, as taut as if he were about to swing
over and throw himself to the ground below. But his eyes were on the stars.
His long, brown-furred legs were bare, though he had a green sweatshirt on.
She could see the faint steam from his breath rise over his head and
dissipate.

Making a decision, she picked up a blanket from the couch and walked over to
the door. She slid it open, then shook out the blanket as she walked onto the
deck. The weathered wood was cold against her feet.

Scully wrapped the blanket around Mulder's hips. She would have put it
around his shoulders, but the blanket wasn't big enough and neither was she.
He didn't react until she put her hand on his right arm--it was cold, too
cold--and moved it to hold the blanket up.

"My sister's blood cries out to me from the ground," he said, as if he were
reading a far-off sign.

Scully wanted to cry. It was too early for this. And too late.

"You're not God, Mulder. You aren't responsible for what you can't know,
what you couldn't have done anything about."

"But I do know. Somewhere, if I could only remember. I can remember every
stupid thing Professor Greeley ever said, even though I already knew it was
mostly wrong, but I can't remember what happened to her." Now he took the
blanket, pulling away from her hands, wrapping it around himself to give
himself its fragile protection.

Scully shivered, hugging herself. "You'll never fix the present by
rediscovering the past."

"Says the woman who refuses to live in either."

She fell silent. That wasn't exactly fair, but it wasn't wrong. Her breath
barely created any fog; even the air knew that she was half a ghost already.

"You know, the operative assumption at VCU is that I did her--in both senses
of the word, Scully--and repressed it, and the guilt is what makes me so good
at what I do."

"I can't believe they would say something so unprofessional, Mulder."

"She's a case study. One of Patterson's games. You show up for training and
you get all the facts and you're asked for a profile. You're specifically
asked if the brother could have done it. You know what the correct answer is?
'Cannot be excluded.' Everyone there thinks I 'cannot be excluded.'"

Scully reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. She could feel the
bones, burning through the sweatshirt.

He half-turned and flicked his eyes down her body. She would have found it
insulting in anyone else, but she knew by now that she'd made different rules
for Mulder, and in any event he was only evaluating how much weight she'd
lost recently. "Let's play a game."

She waited apprehensively, letting her hand fall to her side.

"I'll tell you things about the body on Bubble Rock, and each time you get
the meaning right that's one lecture of yours I'll sit still for."

Scully rubbed at her eyes. "Do we have to do this?"

"Why, Scully, whatever happened to that ambition of yours? Don't you want to
know how it's done, how the sibyl reads the bones?"

She didn't like the fey, mocking tone in his voice. It was a little too thin
and strained; he was trying too hard to be Fox Mulder, the unaffected, the
blank wall that absorbed everything and admitted nothing.

"What did you find?" she asked, resigned.

"Our first victim's a simple beating death--a sharp blow to the back of the
head with your standard blunt object. From the dirt and bark fragments
embedded in the wound, even Doc Holliday the local sawbones was able to
discern that the instrument of death was most likely a big branch. With me so
far?"

She'd examined the wound herself. It had required considerable force;
depressed skull fractures aren't easy to create. She scowled at him. He knew
she'd seen it. If she humored him too much, he'd sense it and get even more
resentful.

"So, a wagonload of happy campers hikes up the hill to the famous Bubble
Rock, and they find themselves staring at the dead man's face. Eyes open,
face slack." He paused. "Comments?"

God, how she hated this. *She* didn't expect *him* to know science, actually
it was better when he didn't try, and she'd even let that silly lecture on
'punctual' equilibrium slide. She closed her eyes, imagining the photos of
the scene, trying to compare it with others.

Her eyes snapped open and she looked up at him defiantly. "He didn't know
the victim. Didn't need to cover the face or close the eyes to apologize or
depersonalize--the victim was already just a symbol to the killer."

Mulder mock-applauded, letting the blanket slide from his shoulders. "We'll
make a profiler of you yet."

Scully opened her mouth to point out that she probably wouldn't have too
much time to become comfortable with the skills, but bit the comment back.
That was too cruel, even for this game.

"So how's the man look to you, all curled up on the Rock. Remind you of
anything?" He stared fixedly into the distance. His eyes didn't follow the
birds that soared in the near-darkness, still searching for dinner.

She frowned.

"Here's a hint: What did the killer do? What did he need to have happen to
make the scene right?"

Again, the black-and-white photographs rose from her memory. The balled-up
corpse, staring eyes and trailing hands, perched like a thrill-seeking
contortionist on top of that rock. The sun coming over his uncaring shoulder,
but he'd never be sunburnt again.

The rock on top of the mountain. The man on top of the rock.

"He's--formed into the shape of the rock. Before rigor set in, probably
right after the murder, the killer arranged the body into the shape of the
rock," she said wonderingly. The real world was fading, the photographs
taking on an increasing reality. "That's what had to happen--he needed a
symbol."

She tried to focus on Mulder. A few blinks, and the blurriness cleared. Some
color leached back into the world: midnight green trees, lightening sky as
blue as absinthe, Mulder's bark-colored hair.

Mulder turned and smiled at her, pleased; it was heartbreakingly genuine.
The storm had broken, and he was ready to forget it had ever happened.

She had an insight: He thought she was water, through which he could rage
without leaving marks. This, in its way, was his testament to her strength,
the strength he believed he saw in her. For her own sake, she tried to
believe it as well.

Mulder stretched, letting the blanket fall to the wooden planks beneath him,
and turned to go back into the cabin.

"Ready for breakfast?" she asked, bending to pick up the blanket. She shook
it, raining fragments of leaves and twigs onto the deck, and refolded it.

She let him wave her through the door, holding the blanket in front of her
like a shield.

End Acadia 3/10

Acadia 4/10
RivkaT@aol.com
II. Secret Operations of Nature

Some say that people find themselves in the forest. They discover, away from
the babble of the city, what they are without constraint.

Others maintain that people lose themselves in the forest. Humans are social
animals; they are not fully human in the absence of companionship. Falling
trees may make whatever noise they like, but people exist only in the plural.
Alone, truly alone, something vital is stripped away. Whether this loss is a
detriment or a benefit is a question on which commentators are divided.

Acadia, as is its wont, keeps its own counsel on the issue.

* * *

The call about the latest body came just after seven a.m.

They dressed quickly; Mulder had warned Scully to bring layers, so she
dressed carefully, with thermal underwear to wick away sweat from her body, a
Polar fleece shirt over that to keep warm, and a Gore-tex parka on top, to
shield her from the wind. Heavy jeans, thick socks, and sturdy boots
completed the outfit. When she met up with Mulder in the main room, she was
mildly amused to find that they'd even chosen the same dark colors for their
parkas; they looked like they came from the same scout troop.

The Blue Moon cabins were only fifteen minutes away from the park, and it
was a much easier fifteen minutes with the thin sunlight guiding them. They
were waved through the entrance this time, and they drove around the loop
road just long enough to get to the entrance to Cadillac Mountain. The rental
Taurus protested against the thirty degree grade, but Mulder just called it a
piece of shit and stepped on the gas.

Scully had never before been on a mountain from which she could see the sea.
She scanned one of the ubiquitous brochures as they climbed upwards. Cadillac
Mountain was the highest mountain on the East Coast, and also the
easternmost. According to the park's self-congratulatory literature, visitors
who wait for sunrise at the top of the mountain could be the first people in
the continental United States to see the sun in the morning. The brochure
made it sound, Scully thought, as if the Park Service itself had erected the
mountain, just so the God-fearing tax-paying citizens of America could see an
early sunrise.

They pulled into the parking lot, almost empty except for the park vehicles.
It had over a hundred spaces, by her quick appraisal, and apparently that
wasn't enough to satisfy the demand, because, according to the rangers,
during the summer cars were backed up all the way down the mountain, couch
potatoes waiting for their turn as King of the Hill. There were restrooms and
a small gift shop, too, she noted, though the latter bore a sign that it was
closed for the season.

The mountain was flat near the top, flat enough that making the parking lot
probably hadn't been very difficult. Above the grey concrete, the mountain
sloped upwards in smooth lumps, bare of most vegetation except for a few
scattered bushes. The flat yellow-brown of the stone was punctuated by wooden
signs indicating the directions of various trails down the mountain.

A circle of rangers surrounded the tallest hillock. They were all facing
outwards, as if they were unwilling to look again at what they were guarding.

Mulder shouldered past them, opening up a space for Scully to slip through.

They were standing around a trail marker. Since the ground was solid rock,
and wood doesn't penetrate very well into rock, the marker was supported by a
cairn of stones. Scully could see that there were at least three trails that
passed this point.

She couldn't see their names, though, because of the entrails hanging off of
each pointed sign.

Scully estimated that enough viscera to constitute one human being was
strewn over the wooded post.

"I don't see the rest of the body," she said, assuming that one of the
rangers would reply if the rest had been found.

Her faith was rewarded when one, still not looking inward, stiffened and
said, "It's under the rocks."

Scully looked down at the stones keeping the pillar upright, but couldn't
see anything.

"Over here," Mulder's voice came. "On the other side."

She walked around and found him kneeling between a hand, outstretched in one
final, pitiful attempt to find release, and a head. It was cool on the
mountaintop, and there were as yet no visible signs of decomposition; she
could see that the victim's eyes had been blue.

Mulder looked up at her. "He'd have to have an incredible sense of balance
to keep the sign upright while he stuck this guy in among the rocks." He
pointed to a spiderweb, littered with the husks of insects, stretched in
between the pillar and a few of the rocks on the top of the pile. One section
of the web was stained where a splash of gore had hit it. "The sign didn't
move at all. He's got a real feel for this."

"For murder?"

"That too. He's got a real feel for the park, Scully. I think he's more at
home here than he's ever been anywhere else."

Mulder stood, brushing dirt from his knees. "They've sent someone to get a
camera, to get pictures of the scene. I guess you can do an autopsy of
whatever they can scoop up, but I don't think we need to wait to decide the
cause of death."

Scully nodded. Mulder's eyes were unfocused, and she left him to his work.
She confirmed with the rangers that a photographer was coming to record the
scene, and that they would take all the body parts to the local police office
as soon as the mortician showed up. Her quick examination of the scene
produced no immediate leads, and if Mulder was right about their UNSUB, it
wasn't likely that they'd find any evidence to connect him with a house or a
job.

She returned to Mulder's side when she was sure that each of the rangers
knew what he or she was responsible for. If everyone had a task, the whole
thing would seem more manageable, less sickening. It was odd for her to be
managing people; it wasn't one of her best skills, but Mulder would have left
the rangers standing there like trees all day. Actually, he was paying more
attention to the trees.

He acknowledged her return by beginning to speak.

"I want to walk the trail. To see what he sees when he looks around." His
head was turning, scanning the scene in short, sharp jerks. Tracking.

"You think that hiking will give you clues to our killer?" To Scully, this
mountain looked very much like the others they'd seen. Trees, stone, dirt.
Irregularity and disorder, quite natural of course, but civilization was
built to conquer the natural. If Mulder thought the madman was enamored of
natural chaos, he was probably right.

"Hiking couldn't hurt--he's picked some of the park's main
attractions--Thunder Hole, Bubble Rock, Cadillac Mountain. I want to see why
the park's important to him."

Scully sighed and checked her fanny pack. The canteen was full; she had
trail mix and binoculars, and a Swiss Army knife, gauze, and antibiotic cream
if anything went moderately wrong. Planning around Mulder, she knew, would
admit of no more preparation than that. "So, let's hike." She hurried back to
exchange a few last words with the silent ring of rangers, then followed
Mulder's retreating form down the trail.

"The rangers say we should be careful," she told Mulder when she caught up.
"About a third of the trails are impassable in places, because of waterfalls
from melting snow or snow cover that's still hanging on. None of them knew
about anything dangerous on the main trail here, but don't go running
anywhere. They say these rocks get slick."

He just looked at her; she gave up, embarrassed. He didn't need to tell her
that she wasn't his mother. Though, come to think of it, his mother didn't
exactly seem like the overprotective type.

They traveled mainly in silence. It was apparently still the off-season for
birds as well as tourists, for there were very few noises from the forest
around them. Scully only saw one bird in the first hour of the hike. She
didn't recognize it. This was much further north than she'd ever come as a
child.

The forest was almost all evergreen. When they traveled over soil, the
ground was as spongy as a mattress underneath their feet. The long winter
finally over, rotted leaves had absorbed the melting snow and were at their
richest. "Forest green" was a misnomer for the color, Scully thought as she
looked around; the forest had a thousand shades of green at least, more when
the light changed.

The trail was well-marked, and years of hikers had left it mostly bare, with
thick roots crossing it at intervals, breaking the descent into large natural
steps.

On lower ground, the forest floor was covered with last season's pine
needles, reddish-brown and straight (like Scully's hair, Mulder said, just to
tick her off, though she had to admit that the color was close). Runnels of
water divided the ground in some places, runoff from the ice melting higher
above.

Everywhere she looked, it seemed, she saw trees with bulbous projections
from trunk or branches. Some of the goiters were bigger than her head. They
were smooth as eggs, roughened like basketballs, round and oblong and bulbous
like clusters of insect larvae. They were far more varied than their uniform,
upright hosts.

Other trees were covered with white and brown fungus, growing like tiny
shelves from the trees, some so thick than the underlying bark was invisible.
Moss coated exposed roots, climbed up trunks, frothed over the path. Sickly
green-white strands of something she could not name, but feared to touch,
hung from other trees. Sometimes a tree's branches would be draped with the
stuff while the trunk was covered with half-mushrooms or moss, so that there
was very little tree left, as such; it had been completely converted into a
host.

The roots looked to her like arthritic fingers, curled over in pain, ugly
from their lack of symmetry. Where they'd encountered obstacles to direct
growth, they'd simply curled around--threading through rocks, crossing each
other, and following the ground where it dropped sharply. The roots sought
life, no matter how deformed.

She had never hated an investigative site so much.

Mulder looked back once, saw she was having trouble keeping up, and stopped,
sitting down on a sizable rock by the side of the trail. "Do you need to stop
for a while?"

Pride and common sense warred briefly in her, and the victor was
preordained. "I'm fine," she panted.

He looked at her almost indulgently and blinked slowly a few times. He was
all but batting his eyelashes at her, begging her to be a little easier on
herself. She walked the last few steps down to him and sat heavily on the
rock, her back brushing his. "Want some water?" she asked, pulling the
canteen from the bag at her waist.

"I'd be delighted," he said, accepting the bottle. He only took a few sips
before handing it back to her. Sometimes his desire to deny himself made life
a little easier for her, after all.

"So," Scully said, after she'd drunk her fill, "what have you found out?"

"Acadia's a beautiful place. It must be nice in the summer." Mulder was
sweating lightly. Her covert glances at his face showed that the pupils were
back to normal. His eyes were green today, complementing the forest.

"In the summer there are hikers up and down this mountain like ants on an
anthill." She sounded bitter, and that was unfortunate. She was unlikely to
make it to summer, so she shouldn't begrudge the tourists their vacations.

"Yeah, I guess the people aren't too pleasant." He was distracted. She was
distracting him. He'd be better off without her.

Scully slumped a little. Usually she was better at pretending that he needed
her investigative skills. It involved an astonishing amount of denial,
inasmuch as he'd relied on those skills oh, maybe twice in their partnership.
But his voodoo for today would obviously work better if she were gone. Maybe
there was a polite way to extricate herself from it. And she was so tired,
already.

"Would *you* come here for a vacation?" Mulder asked, breaking into her
silence.

She thought about it. "In the summer, the bluebottle flies and mosquitoes
are everywhere. One of the rangers told me last night that he ends up dunking
himself in a bathtub full of ice at least once every summer, to bring down
the swelling."

"You sure he wasn't trying to get you to help bring down his swelling?"

A rush of goodwill surged through her.

She tilted her head back, bumping him in the shoulder, and snorted. "Mulder,
I know your vision's still for shit, but even before last week you should
have been able to tell that I'm not at my most attractive. I've got
Bloomingdale-size bags under my eyes and, what's worse, they clash with my
hair, which is doing its best string impersonation. None of my clothes fit
anymore. I look like Little Orphan Annie."

She realized that she'd said more than she had intended to, and fell silent,
the momentary contentment draining from her.

Mulder shifted awkwardly on the rock, turning to touch her shoulder. She
didn't look at him. "I--you look like you always do. I mean--"

She forced a smile and reached up to grasp his hand. "I know what you mean."
She let the silence settle back over them, and then shook her head to clear
it. "Let's get going. I'm sure the rangers are worrying that we're the next
victims by now."

Mulder rose and set off down the hill again. Scully might have imagined it,
but she thought that his shoulders slumped a little more.

It was another half hour before he spoke again. Scully entertained herself
with looking for the few living things with which they shared the trail--two
birds, one squirrel, and a few slow-moving beetles were all that she could
find. Then, finally, he cursed. Once again, she sped up to stand beside him,
panting a little with exertion.

Mulder looked down at the stone steps that had been carefully arranged on a
steep part of the trail for hikers to use without endangering their ankles.
The steps led between two old, well-entrenched trees; without them, the
narrow path would have been too sharp a drop, and too uneven.

"They *cheated,*" he said, and his whole body was stiff with outrage.

"What do you mean?"

"This isn't natural. This isn't showing people a trail through the forest.
This is no better than paving a road through--look, the stone isn't even from
this part of the park, it's from the other side, look how pink it is compared
to the stone on the sides of the path. They rebuilt it so it would be easier,
just like they built a road to the top of the mountain so you can drive up
and be the first to see the sunrise without ever doing any honest work
yourself."

Scully stared at him. "I didn't know that you felt that strongly about
preserving the natural environment."

Mulder shuddered and put his hand on a nearby sapling. His hand encircled
the trunk easily. "I don't feel that way. That's how he feels--he thinks it's
cheating."

He set off again down the hill, easily outpacing her. Scully took a few deep
breaths and followed, trying not to lose sight of him. She got to the bottom
of the stone steps, but then her foot hit a patch of rotting leaves and she
skidded down the trail, only preventing herself from falling by grabbing on
to a tree with all her might. The trunk hit her solidly across her upper left
arm as her right swung around to embrace the tree, and she was grateful that
Mulder didn't look back to see her communing rather too intimately with
nature.

She'd grabbed onto a tree covered with greyish fungus, and several of the
dry things crumbled onto her arm as she pulled herself away. She brushed at
the fragments, which had a texture like styrofoam. Under her jacket, the
flesh of her arm crawled, overshadowing the pain of the impact.

Scully regained her footing and continued down, realizing from the twinge in
her arm that she'd added another bruise to the catalog. She bruised so easily
now, whether from the drugs or the cancer itself she wasn't entirely sure.
She told time less by the calendar these days, and more by what parts of her
body were blue-black, or deep crimson, or brown-yellow as the healing slowly
took place.

She was going to die looking like an abuse victim, she thought sourly, still
brushing absently at the dusty residue of the impact.

God damn those trees.

"Come on!" Mulder's voice was excited, impatient, his concern for her
mercifully vanished because of whatever scent he'd picked up. Scully shook
her head to clear it of self-pity and hurried down to where he was.

"Look at this," he pointed to a hollow at the base of a large tree. Erosion
had exposed many of the roots on the downward-sloping side, and a space large
enough for a man had opened up. The roots and stony ground were partially
covered inside the wooden cage by what looked like dried grass. Mulder knelt
down and pawed at the faded green strands.

She sighed and knelt down next to him, pulling out her gloves in case it
wasn't too late for any evidence. Mulder produced a small flashlight and
flicked it on; when she adjusted to the sudden brightness, she saw that the
hollow went even further back than she'd first imagined. Something was
killing the tree--the mini-cave not only went into the hill, it burrowed into
the trunk as well, and the wooden ceiling was rough with decay. Small strands
of pulpy wood hung down into the space, giving it an oddly furnished look, as
if someone had carpeted the ceiling.

Scully ducked her head down under the highest roots--she was able to lean
further into the hollow than Mulder--and went in, trying to keep the tree-rot
off of her hair. Keeping her head close to the ground made it easy to see the
discolorations on the grass and underlying dirt. The stains had the familiar
color of old blood (it could, she supposed, be spilt coffee, but somehow she
was willing to bet on the obvious).

She glanced around. It would be a claustrophobic space to sleep in, even for
her, but probably better than staying outside where there was still snow.
There was a churned patch of soil at the very back, and she was suddenly very
grateful that her sense of smell was not all that it might be--it looked like
their suspect's latrine area. "You think this is our suspect's nest or
something?" she asked Mulder.

"Or something...I don't think he's too big on wiping his feet before he
comes in, that's for sure. I'm betting there's blood here from the Thunder
Hole victim, and maybe even the one this morning--the first one was a little
neater, we might not find anything from that one." Scully was scraping
samples into evidence envelopes as he spoke; he would give her a new one
whenever she held out her hand.

"We should call for backup, have the rangers watch this place for him to
come back," she suggested.

He shook his head. "He won't come back. It's his nest and we fouled it;
he'll find someplace else."

"How will he know?"

"Maybe the trees will tell him."

She frowned. "Mulder..."

"I think he knows we're here."

She paused in her evidence collection efforts and looked at him. "I sense a
theory coming on."

"You're not going to like it."

"That's a given, isn't it?... So, what do you think?"

"I think...I think he senses me here. I knew we'd find this, I mean not just
that we'd find a nest but that it would be *here*, about this far down the
mountain. I think I can see through his eyes, some--and that means he can see
through mine."

Scully got the last of the blood-soaked soil and began to crawl backwards
out of the tree's guts.

"I know you think that what happened with Roche was a fluke, was me
profiling in my sleep, but I don't know this guy's work, Scully, and I can
still see him."

"Where's the weapon, then?" It came out sharp and querulous.

"Hanging from his belt, I guess. Look, I'm sorry, it's not like I've got a
transmitter stuck in him, okay?" He paused, as if realizing that he hadn't
made the most tasteful possible analogy. "I just...I get flashes, and
sometimes I can interpret them, that's all. I wish--if I could make it work
better so we could just go grab him and go home, believe me, I would."

* * *

Mulder said that he wanted to keep looking, but she needed to get the soil
analyzed to see if it really was stained with the blood of the victims. The
tests were simple, even with the primitive equipment immediately available,
so she took advantage of her freedom to go do the autopsy of the latest
victim in the local funeral home. The building was a converted house still
painted pink, perhaps to make the neighbors feel better about it, with a
discreet sign and a scalloped awning over the front walk that signaled its
current function.

The room they gave her was in the basement, cold and clammy with the chill
rising from the concrete floor and through the walls. They had a decent
table, but she was glad that she'd brought her own knives.

The victim was a trace technician's dream--or nightmare, for the lazy ones.
He was covered in gravel and smaller fragments of dirt, leaves, shells, and
other detritus. The blood had helped him collect his evidentiary cargo. She
was almost grateful that her sense of smell was barely working; unlike the
victim in the water, who'd been somewhat washed clean, this man was still
covered with the wastes released when his sphincter and bladder muscles went
slack.

The killer was improving: He'd taken fewer practice cuts, gone for the
joints with more confidence and success. She was willing to bet that the same
hacksaw had been used, though confirmation would have to wait until they
found the weapon.

As she worked, weighing and recording, she considered the emerging pattern.
He hadn't cut up the first one, but two dismembered in a row was beginning to
look like he'd developed a strategy. Then she chided herself for trying to do
someone else's job; mentioning her thought to Mulder would be worse than
teaching her grandmother to suck eggs, whatever the hell *that* meant.

Nearly ready to close up now. She bent over the torso.

Time seemed to slow; she saw the shining drop of blood halfway between her
face and the body, and dropped the knife she was holding in a desperate
attempt to catch it. But her body was sluggish and gravity insistent, and it
landed with a soft ploshing sound right where the man's navel had been.

Scully reared back, trying to limit the damage. She almost put her hand over
her nose, but just in time remembered what was on her gloves and pulled off
the outer pair, letting her blood soak into the concrete floor, where it was
indistinguishable from the other fluids of the dead. Still wearing the second
pair of gloves, she tilted her head forward to keep the blood from going down
her throat and choking her, pinching her nose closed to aid clotting.

She kept the usual five-minute count, taking the chance to look around the
basement. It could have been anyone's basement; the water heater hummed in
one corner, the industrial-strength refrigerated units in the other. As
suited the primary tasks of an undertaker, most of the tools on the tables
around the sides of the room were cosmetic, designed to improve upon death
and even, in some cases, on life. Wigs, lipstick, small plastic inserts that
could fill out a face, larger ones for replacing the chest cavity, ties,
scarves, even a few boxes of cheap earrings.

She shivered, waiting for the flow to stop. The soil on all sides of her,
behind the walls, transmitted its chill to the room, which was no doubt
efficient but was still claustrophobic. The concrete walls had a few damp
cracks in them, and occasional stains as if fungus had been scraped off. The
floors were made of the same dark stuff, stained with runnels of dried fluids
that stuck to the bottom of her boots as she walked around.

Scully checked her watch and released her nose. Nothing more trickled down;
she found some paper towels and wiped herself off, using her distorted
reflection in the metal dispenser to guide the clean-up.

Then she allowed herself to consider what had just happened.

This wasn't like bleeding on a file folder. Everyone spilled things on case
files; chocolate stained just as badly as blood, and coffee was worse because
it was more likely to make ink run. But this was *evidence* she'd just
compromised. Letting this go on endangered the investigation. What if, next
time, it happened at the beginning of the autopsy and confounded vital trace
evidence?

Her shoulders hitched, once, twice, and then she controlled herself. She'd
known that she'd have to quit eventually, when she could no longer perform up
to the high standards the Bureau demanded, but she'd thought that it would be
some sensory failure, or even dementia, that stopped her. Not a stupid
nosebleed, not a *symptom*.

Mechanically, she put on a new pair of gloves and finished the last few
tasks, sewing the torso back together. Neat, even stitches. Would the
pathologist who sewed her up be so careful? He'd better, or Mulder would--her
vision blurred and she felt the sudden stab of a headache from holding the
tears in. She prayed to God, automatically, for strength, feeling the
futility even as she mouthed the words.

When the body was back in its refrigerated cabinet, she took the samples
she'd collected and headed up the rickety wooden stairs towards the ground
floor and the Maine evening. At the top of the stairs, attached to the back
of the door, there was a mirror. She'd gotten almost all of the blood; she
licked her finger and wiped at the remaining spot. The dried blood was only
faintly coppery to her reduced sense of taste.

Aboveground, Scully called the rangers' station for a lift, and they said
they'd send someone right along. The funeral home had a porch, like the homes
that surrounded it, and she sat on a wicker chair, waiting to be picked up.
She stared into the road, watching an occasional car go by and following
leaves as they tumbled across her field of vision.

There were arrangements that she should be making, that she should have made
already, but she hadn't had the courage. She wanted an autopsy done, of
course, and the tumor dissected and studied if it could do any good. But then
what? A cremation, as her father had done? A memorial service for a few
friends and family--which would make it less evident that she didn't have a
large crowd of mourners, maybe.

Cremation would be a good idea, she decided. Burning, disappearing,
gone--and returning to the world, idiot dust, to be breathed in by thousands
of people all around the world, carried by water and currents of air. It
would be more influence than she'd achieved in life. And then there would be
no rotting for her body. She'd seen enough rotting that she knew she'd rather
avoid it. She'd leave a note for her mother, who didn't want to talk about it
(<I wonder if we're related,> she thought wryly) but would have to face facts
soon enough.

She imagined the memorial service. Mom would have a priest, no matter what
she asked. The man wouldn't have known her, and would mouth meaningless
generalities. She could see Skinner, Mom, Bill, Charlie and his wife--they
didn't bring the children, who were too young to understand. Where was
Mulder? She looked around in the church of her imagination and found only a
dark nothingness.

Tires chuffed on gravel; she opened her eyes and saw a Jeep with a
grim-faced ranger waiting for her.

End Acadia 4/10

Acadia 5/10
RivkaT@aol.com

Mulder was not yet back at the cabin when she arrived. She decided to
shower, because she could no longer tell how much of the autopsy odor
lingered about her. The ranger hadn't winced or had any obvious reaction, but
he'd also driven with the window open.

She shampooed twice, just to be sure to get at the scent, and sprayed
perfume on her wet hair when she got out. <The oncologists never tell you
about this part,> she thought. <How you don't know if you stink or not, so
you have to assume that you do. And now I imagine I'll use so much junk that
everyone will smell me from miles away.>

When she emerged from the bathroom, Mulder had returned. He was making
grilled cheese sandwiches. He handed her a plate and they ate in silence. She
was grateful for that, grateful that he felt comfortable enough with her to
return to their older patterns.

After dinner, they moved to the couch by mutual, unspoken consent. The couch
itself was a seventies relic, covered with a scratchy brown plaidlike fabric
with little pills of material poking up from it every few inches. With a pink
acrylic blanket from the linen closet thrown over it, it was a little more
comfortable. Scully looked at Mulder, knowing that she needed to reach out to
him. Just so that she could say, honestly, that she tried.

He spoke first. And said something utterly unexpected.

"It's important to me that you acknowledge the possibility that I have
precognitive dreams."

"Mulder," she said helplessly, then stopped, unsure how to continue. Where
did this come from? She took a deep breath to gather her thoughts and began.
"I believe that you have a unique ability to extrapolate from minor clues,
imperceptible to most observers, and find a pattern where others see only
chaos. Or, at times, the reverse. Your ability is so far away from the center
of the bell curve that I'm not sure 'intuition' is the proper term. Should I
call that 'precognition'? I don't know. Yes, it's extraordinary. Yes, it's
predictive. I...I believe in you, and I believe in what you say about our
suspect. I can't in good conscience tell you that I believe that your ability
is the result of extrasensory perception, and I think you shortchange your
own mind when you describe it that way."

Mulder smiled, with a small sardonic twist to the left side of his mouth.
"I'm not entirely sure if I've been insulted, or complimented."

"Yes," she said, and he smiled at her for real.

"Why this? Why now?"

He shrugged. "Because it's been between us, since...since Roche. Because I
dreamed about you last night, and--I believe that you're going to be all
right."

Scully turned her head, looking at her nearly black reflection outlined in
the glass door. The trees were visible around her half-image, penetrating
through it.

She couldn't tell him everything, not after that.

The decision was reassuring, in a twisted way. She relaxed and leaned back
into the scratchy old couch. "Sometimes I just wish your talent were more in
the area of predicting the stock market."

"Oh, but it is," he said, sounding surprised. "How do you think I afford
this wardrobe?"

Scully shrugged. "I never thought about it. So, you hold a pencil over the
financial pages and invest in what you're drawn to?"

"Not quite. Actually, I wanted to talk to you--a few years back I set up a
trust fund for you, in case something happened to me, so you could continue
to work on the X Files, unofficially or officially. If you wanted. I guess
you could move to Maui, too."

"How much money are we talking about, Mulder?" She stared at him intently.

"If you started using it tomorrow, about thirty thousand a year. But it's
building principal. Anyway, I just had some of the terms changed--there's a
medical emergency clause now. If there's anything that the insurance won't
pay for, no matter how experimental or far-away, you can draw on the trust
fund. I wanted you to know that you don't have to discount any options."

Scully's eyes were wide and disbelieving. "I don't know what to
say...Mulder, I--" It was too much. She didn't want this solicitude. What
could it pay for? Maybe she could have her blood drained somewhere in Mexico
and replaced with some street kid's. Surely some mail-order diploma doctor
would tell her to do so.

"I have to do this." He looked away, toward the tiny fire he'd coaxed out of
the fireplace. "I have to."

Scully lowered her head. She couldn't tell him that it was too late, too
late by far. Instead, she put a hand on his arm, forcing him to look at her
again. "Thank you."

He shook his head, but she leaned toward him and stilled his head with her
other hand. She was kneeling precariously on the sofa and there was a good
chance she'd fall into his lap, but it was important to her that he pay
attention.

"It's not your fault and you're not making up for anything you did. Thank
you for giving me the options. Thank you for helping me through this. I know
it's been hard for us both, and I'm probably not going to be able to say this
again. But I want you to know how much it means to me."

She paused, and then began again, needing to get it out. "This is probably
going to be my last case, Mulder. The tumor--the latest scans suggest that
the optic nerve will soon be compromised. I might be allowed to work in the
lab for a while--but the field will be out of the question, then."

Mulder could not speak. He stared at her, trying to memorize her, maybe,
absorbing her with his eyes until she could disappear. When he looked at her
like that, eyes as hard as stone, she thought that living in his memory might
be enough.

The air changed. It got darker, somehow, or the smell changed, or it began
to vibrate in the way that air vibrates between two people who are finally,
after a long time, going to take a significant step forward in their
relationship.

Scully leaned toward him, dizzy with the knowledge that this choice was the
first serious acknowledgment of her impending death. It was not difficult,
after all: no harder than cupping her hand around a candle flame and blowing
it out.

Mulder blinked rapidly, then left his eyes closed as his mouth came closer
to hers. His hand brushed her shoulder, tugging her towards him.

Then he groaned and bolted for the bathroom, pushing Scully aside so that
she fell back onto her side of the couch.

He was already vomiting before he reached the white tile floor. He fell to
the floor as soon as he crossed the threshold; the bathroom was so small that
he ended up leaning over the toilet, retching helplessly.

Shocked, Scully followed him, stepping over the worst of the spatters. She
wedged herself in the small space between Mulder and the sink and reached
around him to feel his forehead.

He was sweaty, not feverish; his pulse was racing. He was still vomiting,
though there was nothing left in his stomach and he was spasming pitifully.

After five minutes of his hacking, Scully was concerned enough to go to her
medical bag.

"Mulder," she said when she returned, "I have some anti-nausea medication I
want you to take." She knelt beside him and ran her hand down his back, from
his neck to his sweat-sodden T-shirt.

"I'll be--ugh--fine," he said, then had to lean his cheek against the toilet
seat as the wave of nausea took him again.

"It's going to make you sleepy, but I think it's worth it to break the
cycle," Scully continued, sympathetically. She kept rubbing his back, hoping
to relax him.

Mulder nodded infinitesimally.

"It's a suppository. I'm sorry."

He moaned, this time with humiliation. She was embarrassed for him. "It's
okay. It will just take a second, and it's the only way to keep it in your
body. It's just medicine."

Mulder snorted against the porcelain; the set of his shoulders communicated
clearly that it was easy for *her* to say that.

She didn't offer to help him with his pants, even though his fingers were
shaking and he had to pause twice as fresh spasms wracked him. It wasn't as
if she hadn't seen him naked and helpless before, but usually he'd been
unconscious, or at least in shock.

She inserted the suppository as quickly as possible, and then did help him
pull up his boxers and get his pants completely off, leaving them on the
bathroom floor as the two of them retreated to his bedroom. The bathroom was
so narrow that she had to push him in front of her as they passed the shower.
The small size of the cabin was a great help once they'd cleared the
bathroom, though, as Mulder only had to stagger a few steps to get onto the
bed.

Scully left him and quickly tried to clean up some of the mess. The worst
were the spots of vomit that had landed on the carpet before Mulder had made
it to the bathroom. She soaked them in water and cleaned them up as best she
could with the thin paper towels provided by the management. The bathroom was
slightly easier to clean, though she had no doubt that it still reeked; even
she could smell it.

When she returned to the bedroom, the anti-emetic was already working.
Mulder was lying on his back, breathing carefully, but not retching any more.

"You okay?" she asked quietly.

"I saw him, how he sees himself." She should have known that it had
something to do with the killer. Mulder's brain never really shut off when it
had a puzzle, no matter what the distractions.

Mulder closed his eyes and continued. "He was jacking off."

Scully raised an eyebrow; so *that's* what triggered the association.

"He...oh God, this is so fucked up. He thinks he's a tree--no, not a tree, a
weird cross between a tree and a person, the spawn of a dryad or something
like that. He looks down and he sees branches and bark and he thinks that his
seed is something sacred. He masturbates onto the corpses. He thinks it's
some kind of fertilization. He's not very smart, but his delusion is
elaborate and complex."

Mulder's voice was slipping between the dry tones of a lecturing academic
and the haziness of a man wakened too quickly from a dream. Some of it,
Scully thought, was the drug; the rest was pure Mulder.

She sat down on the bed and smoothed his hair where it was standing on end.
"I want you to take off that shirt--it's soaked--and get under the covers."

"You're not listening," he said, a hurt little boy.

"I am and I believe you, but you need to rest."

"I can see what he sees. I don't think he bathes--trees don't bathe--that's
something we can use." His voice was getting lower. He did raise his arms to
let her pull the T-shirt off, which she counted as extreme cooperation.
Scully took the extra blanket from under the bed and put it on him, rather
than trying to extract the covers from underneath his bulk.

She sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for him to sleep. When he was still,
she left him and went to reexamine the pictures. It was something to do;
maybe it would give her an insight.

* * *

Several hours later, Mulder plodded out of his bedroom. He'd thrown on a
clean shirt and a pair of jogging pants, but he looked as if he could still
use a shower.

He sat down at the small kitchen table across from Scully and glanced at the
autopsy reports strewn across it.

They stared at each other for a minute; then Mulder caved in and began to
talk.

"Don't tell, Scully. After last time--lithium was the least psychoactive
substance they wanted to give me."

She shook her head. "This isn't healthy. You can't keep doing this. You're
not able to distinguish reality from what you envision. Just days ago you had
a hole put in your head on the off chance that you'd remember something from
your childhood. I don't know, maybe you thought fresh air would do your brain
good." Fighting dirty. "I, I don't know whether you're psychic or psychotic."

"Why do you have to choose?" he said, trying to smile.

She looked out the window, over his shoulder. The sun was going down, and
they had a glorious view. The sky was cloudy enough near the horizon to turn
the air a lovely, delicate pink, against which the sun was a blazing orange
ball.

"They really did give us the cabin with the best view," Mulder said,
following her gaze, trying to distract her. She was pleased that he was
capable of noticing.

"Can't you just be the victims for a while?" she asked hopelessly. "Just to
give yourself a break?"

He shook his head, smiling ruefully. "It doesn't work like that, you know
better. Anyway, the victims here are opportunistic--three men, all white but
that's not surprising given the demographics of the park's visitors, ranging
in age from twenties to forties--he's not interested in the standard
indicators of victimhood. If you want, I'll try to have nightmares about the
last things they saw--the knife, the hammer, the indifferent trees against
the evening sky--but I don't think it will help much."

Scully dipped her head, acknowledging that there was no way to get him to
change his methods at this late date. She picked up one of the autopsy photos
that she'd wanted to show him. She had to demonstrate to him that worrying
about his mental health didn't amount to a lack of trust.

"The man on the Bubble," she said. "There was dirt on his hands. The funeral
director's report didn't note anything unusual about it, but I took another
look, and there were fragments of mussel shells and sand in it. I think the
dirt came from the shore, maybe very close to the water--there isn't really
very much 'beach'-type sand here, it's mostly rocks. The victim was clutching
the ground violently, as evidenced by the abrasions on his hands, in which
sand and shell fragments are also embedded. I think he was killed elsewhere
and brought to the site. By contrast, Victim 3 has some defense wounds on his
hands and upper arms, and there's also dirt under his nails, but that dirt is
consistent with the soil found at the site; it has some shell fragments, but
no more than you'd expect from soil within walking distance of the ocean. I
believe that the third victim was killed where he was found. There was a
blood-soaked patch of soil near the cairn; he could just have been
dismembered there, but I think that's where he died."

Mulder stared at the photo.

"Usually they move from opportunity to planned killings," he said. "I
think...he killed the first two because they triggered some reaction in him.
Then he moved them to places that would make a point, places that people like
to visit. The next one, I think he just waited for. He knew that someone
worth killing would come along if he waited long enough. Somebody who was
polluting the land just by standing on it."

"But most visitors to the park are more ecologically conscious than the
average American. It doesn't make sense--seeing this sunset--" she waved a
hand at it--"must do more to make people appreciate the wonders of the
natural world than leaving it isolated."

"He's not a utilitarian, Scully," Mulder said tolerantly. Then a wave of
thought, almost a shudder, passed over him, and he spoke again, in the dead
tones of a recitation. "These houses of the dead. They breathe still, but
they are dying, dying with every tainted step and every piece of trash tossed
over a careless shoulder. Ah, Scully," and he came back to her, shaking his
head, "I almost wish that multiple murderers were smarter. Bad prose and I
think I'm losing IQ points just sharing his head." Then his face slackened
again and he was gone.

"How much more of this can you take?" she asked, reaching out for his hands.

He jerked away, and his eyes were as brown as woodchips, and less alive.

She waited, and after a few minutes he was coherent again, and she put him
back to bed.

* * *

Scully woke slowly. There was a noise, scratching at the edge of her
consciousness. Constant, rising and falling, low and pained and very close
by.

Mulder was sobbing uncontrollably. He was trying to muffle the noise in his
pillow, but he had to breathe and when he raised his head to gulp air she
could hear him clearly.

He sounded as if he'd been going for a while--too tired to continue, but too
tired to stop.

She put her feet down on the cold floor and opened her bedroom door. It was
pitch black in the cabin; a sliver of moon provided the only light. Two steps
took her past the bathroom door and into his bedroom.

She heard him roll away from her as she entered. She put her hand out,
grateful that the small size of the room precluded the presence of any
treacherous furniture, and leaned onto the bed, reaching until she found his
shoulder.

Scully knelt on the bed. "Mulder, don't. It's okay." He was rigid as steel
under her hand. He didn't respond at all.

She lay down in the darkness and put one hand on Mulder's waist. She
couldn't get the other under his body, so she rested it on his neck, trying
to stroke away some of the tension. "Shh, shh. It's okay. I'm here."

He rolled around in her arms so that they were facing each other. She
couldn't see him, but she was so aware of every inch of him that she could
have described his expression, as if she were sensing him by infrared.

Mulder choked out something--it might have been her name, but he was too
upset to be coherent--and crushed her to him. She felt his nose at her
throat, forcing her to tilt her head up as he pressed against her. Her
nightgown was quickly soaked with his tears.

She talked in nonsense phrases as he quieted, running her hands up and down
his back until he was no longer shaking.

Scully had almost fallen back to sleep when his voice, wrapped in darkness,
came from below her chin.

"I dreamed about the trees...They were bleeding, and the blood was so
red...They'd been slit open with blue knives. There were red knives sticking
out of them too, but they were old, and the blood on them had turned black
and begun to flake off...Blue knives everywhere, and you weren't there..."

"It was just a dream, Mulder," she whispered. "I'm right here."

He took a deep, ragged breath. "Yeah," he said wryly. "Uh, Scully?"

"Yes?"

"Can I ask a, a favor?"

"What is it?"

"I just...I want to hear your heartbeat."

Scully's hands stilled. "All right," she said in a small voice.

He sighed and slid further down, pressing his ear into her chest right over
her heart. His hands pulled her closer to his body, so close that it hurt.
They were each lying on their sides, bent towards one another so that their
knees were brushing. Tentatively, Scully moved her hands to his head, running
them lightly over his hair. She could feel her heart pounding and wondered
how he heard it. There was a wet patch growing on her nightgown where he was
drooling, just a little.

She fell asleep that way, and woke to the shrill of a cellphone.

Scully blinked, unsurprised that she didn't recognize the room but a little
more confused by the whining, unfamiliar ring of the phone. She snagged the
phone from the floor by the side of the bed--it was Mulder's phone, that's
why she didn't recognize the tone of the ring--and spoke into it: "Scully."

"Agent Scully? I thought this was Agent Mulder's number?" She vaguely
recognized the voice of the head of Acadia's park service--Langbein, that was
his name.

"Is there something you need to tell us?"

"There's been another body found, near the top of Mt. Sargent."

Scully arranged to meet them at the bottom of the trail leading up the
mountain in an hour, and went to look for Mulder.

He wasn't in the cabin. She assumed that he'd gone running, so she showered
quickly and when she got out, he'd returned. She told him about the latest
victim and then toasted some English muffins while he showered.

End Acadia 5/10